Where to, South Africa?

The political and economic situation in South Africa is showing a disturbing trend to those who care to look.  A comparison with the rise of Nazi Germany reveals some parallels that brings one to ask where we are headed.

The continued dominance of Julius Malema, and those who support him, either explicitly or by their refraining from condemnation of his extremism, bears a remarkable resemblance to the rise of Adolph Hitler.  In both cases, the use of extremist and popularist speeches were tolerated, possibly even tacitly supported, by those whose function was to protect the public.  In both cases a group was singled out as scapegoats, a group that was chosen to ‘bear the faults’ of the nation, regardless of the truth. 

In the case of Hitler, the Jews were singled out as the group that had brought the German nation down, even though any examination of the history of Germany would show that many of the great thinkers, artists and economic developers of the country were Jews.  The Jews were talked about as though they were a separate nation, even though almost all German Jews were Germans first and Jews only by religion.  The Jews were blamed for everything that was bad in Germany, and not given any recognition for what they had contributed to Germany, and were continuing to give to Germany.  The Jews were the subject of continuous and vicious rhetoric, a rhetoric that came to be believed, or at least accepted, by the mass of the undiscriminating public.

In the case of South Africa, the Whites have been chosen as the ‘bad guys’.  Everything that has gone wrong in South Africa has been the fault of the Whites.  The solution to every problem in South Africa is to remove the Whites from the equation, whether the problem is corruption in Government, total incompetence in Government at almost all levels, a jobless growth in the economy which, together with the rapid growth in the population, is leading to a massive growth in unemployment, a lack of competitiveness of South African industry and agriculture.  The list goes on.  And all of this is laid at the feet of the Whites, who have deprived, and continue to deprive the Blacks of the opportunity to make their contribution.  And all of this is used by the populist leaders to heat the emotions of their unthinking followers, to blind them to the real causes of the problems of the country, to induce them to elevate those ‘mini-Hitlers’ to ever higher positions of power.  Many of the trappings of the Hitler Nazi Party dominance are evident, such as the heavily armed bodyguards accompanying Julius Malema to the Court and the blatant lack of observance of the laws by the convoys of official cars, the killings of political opponents.

This is exacerbated by the use of words.  Blacks are no longer ‘Blacks’; they are ‘Africans’, a use of the term that seeks consciously to exclude all who are not Black, particularly Whites, but not excepting those of Indian origin, the Coloureds and other Asians.

What this campaign seeks to achieve is several things.

The first is the clear exclusion of Whites, and particularly White males, from economic power. 

It is a fact that the bulk of the economic growth of South Africa is a result of the economic activity of White males.  They are the ones who managed the economy, who built the railway lines to enable exports, who built the mines to exploit the minerals to develop the economy, who built the factories to manufacture the goods that fed and clothed the nation, who planned and built the roads that united the country.  A myth is being propagated that Apartheid, far from being the brainchild of Hendrick Verwoerd, was in fact instituted as far back as three hundred years ago!  People speak of White exclusion of Blacks from economic activity virtually as long ago as the first settlement of White, specifically Europeans, in South Africa under van Riebeeck, or, possibly, even further back in time.  There is no doubt that Blacks were not in the mainstream of economic decision-making in the last three hundred years.  However, that cannot be ascribed to a conscious exclusion of Blacks by Whites.  Surely it is more reasonable to believe that the reason is simply that Blacks at that time did not have the economic background or the education to play a meaningful part in the economic decision-making.  This is not because Whites did not permit them to become educated.  State education was not a factor at that time.  Education was something that the people did for themselves.  Education was a drain on the precious and limited resources of the community, and was afforded only to those who had a clear ability to contribute to the economic well-being of the community.  The Black tribes at that time were economically undeveloped, and had neither the tradition of economic activity engendered by the European civilizations and the Industrial Revolution in Europe, nor the social structure that permitted the diversion of large portions of the economic wealth to education.  The result was that the Black nations did not prosper to the same level as the Whites.  By their lack of ‘foresight’ or ‘development’, the Blacks effectively excluded themselves from the process of economic development in South Africa, as well as elsewhere in the world.  As the White people grew economically, the Black people, who were also growing, but at a much slower pace in economic terms but at a much faster pace in terms of population numbers, fell further and further behind.  This disparity in development was used by the political masters, the National Party, after 1948 to see the situation in terms of an ‘Us – Them’ comparison.  That, to a large extent, given the history of oppression of the Afrikaner nation by Britain, led almost inevitably to the development of a system of separation of the races.  The Afrikaners did not want to put the future of their nation in the hands of a group that, they believed, was less able to achieve the aim of economic wealth that they believed was possible.  The result was Apartheid.

There are several features of that dark time in South African history that are conveniently overlooked by those who seek to blame Whites for everything that has gone wrong in the country, or, indeed, for everything that has not gone right.  They ignore the fact that not every White supported the system of Apartheid.  There was a large minority of voters who regularly supported the Opposition parties, however weak and ineffective the leadership of those parties might have been.  It was not unusual for the Opposition to gain 45% or 48% of the votes in any general election.  This implies that there were almost as many Whites against the system as there were in favour of it!  There was a very vocal opposition to the many extremes of the Apartheid system, and of the National Party, even in the face of the very draconian laws and regulations, as well as extra-legal actions by Government organs such as the Special Branch.  Many of the Whites who were not in favour of the system ‘voted with their feet’, and left the country, in the belief that a sacrifice by them and their families would not achieve a reversal of government policy.  Many of the Whites who did not support Apartheid, particularly the English-speakers, recognised that the Opposition parties would not be able to bring about meaningful change and refrained from voting, in much the same way as numerous Blacks refrained from voting in the recent Local Government elections because they believed that no single Party would give effective voice to their wishes.  The National Party, on the other hand, had effective community organisations, such as the Broederbond and the Church to mobilise their supporters.  Yet all of these people who would have supported a rational system of universal suffrage, a treatment of the Black people as the equal humans beings that they saw them to be, are now being demonised as ‘the supporters of the previous regime’!  Helen Zille, the Leader of the Democratic Alliance Party and a vociferous antagonist of the Apartheid system, was aggressively questioned in a radio debate about why she, who claimed to support the views of Mandela, failed to support the ANC.  Her response, that in her view the ANC was diverging from the stated aims of the “Struggle’, was treated with disdain, and her Party was accused of being a harbour for the ‘White Supremacists.

Could it be that the term ‘White’ is a convenient pot into which to dump all the problems of the past, a convenient scapegoat for problems which, after seventeen years of Black rule, are as rapidly becoming worse as the extremism gains in strength?  Could it be that the ‘Whites’ are being made the new Jews of pre-Hitler Germany?

It is important for the Black population to understand that the Whites did not see them as inferior.  They were simply not equal to Whites in terms of their ability to compete for the scarce resources and positions at a time when the world did not accept that the ‘poor’ should be entitled to anything more than they could earn for themselves.  This did not imply ‘inferior’, but rather only ‘not equipped in relevant ways’.  The goodwill of the vast bulk of the White population is shown by the numerous charities and support organisations aiding Black schools, businesses and trainees.

The second objective is the abuse of Government power by the governing Party, in the appointment of ‘cadres’ to senior managerial posts in the organs of government below the political level, the granting of government contracts to favoured nominees, the failure to report to Parliament on the doings of Government organs, the promotion of unqualified persons to very senior posts in the Police, the failure to pursue and prosecute corruption by those in favoured positions, and generally treating an elected post as being analogous to ownership of the country, without any need to account to the electorate.  It is a fact that Whites are more experienced in the exercise of their rights in a democratic society than are Blacks.  By reducing the influence of the Whites in society, the rulers conveniently reduce the demands on them for honest and responsible exercise of government.

The third probable reason is that Whites can remember ‘when things used to work’.  It cannot be convenient to have your efforts at governing constantly held up to a standard that was certainly better, if not objectively good, than the current performance of the (Black) Government.

There are, no doubt, other reasons.  The real question is “What do intelligent, thinking people intend to do about it?”  The answer to this question will result in South Africa becoming the pride of Africa, an example of what a developing country can do, or South Africa becoming a new pariah State.