Whites and Foreigners in South Africa

The recent escalation in attacks on foreigner-owned businesses in many cities in South Africa are a predictable result of several factors, all of them promoted by the ANC and its allies.

The first factor, of course, is the extreme poverty of many people, particularly Black people, which results from the abjectly poor economic policies of the ANC Government, coupled with what seems, more and more, to be a policy to downgrade the mental capabilities of the electorate by providing one of the worst educations in the world.  A very large proportion of the populace is not equipped to participate in a modern economy, even with the forced advantages that the BBEEE policies provide them.  The ANC Government has intentionally removed many of the structures of education and training built up by successive Governments to keep the capabilities of the populace, or, at least, a part of the populace at a level near to that of Europe and the United States.  The Nurse Training College, the trade skills training centres, Medunsa, and many other places and systems of training have been dismantled and are now needing to be built up again, under management that has been shown repeatedly to be lacking in capabilities, skills and experience.  The people whose skills could have been brought to an employment-capable level have been left to fend for themselves, and the economy has gone into a nose-dive as a result, with skilled contractors being imported by virtually every organisation, such as Eskom, at huge cost and at huge dislocation, and, as is clearly evident, under the management of people who are more interested in driving expensive company cars and filling their Swiss bank accounts for as long as they hold the position, rather than promoting the objectives of the organisation or the community.

The second factor is that the Government and its organs have been directly involved in promoting discord between the Blacks and the Whites, as is evidenced by the recent spate of anti-colonialist statue removal demonstrations.  It can be no simple coincidence that these demands arose at about the time of the State Visit of that prime example of the Black destruction of democracy, Robert Mugabe, who spoke of digging up the remains of Cecil Rhodes, while his protégé, Jacob Zuma, sniggered his enjoyment in the background.  It seems to be clear that the present policy of the Government is to stir up hatred between the Black population and the Whites, as is evidenced by a series of television shorts and programs aired by the SABC ‘documenting’ the atrocities committed by Whites throughout Africa, such as the killing of the Hereros in South West Africa in 1908 (!) and the ‘anti-racism’ advertisement, aired several times per day, listing ‘Whites Only’ signs from Apartheid days, with a brief comment at the end of this inflammatory advertisement hat Nelson Mandela said that to hate is learned, and to love can also be learned.  Remarkably, nothing is said of the thousands of Whites who stood against Apartheid at the risk of imprisonment, or of the fact that the National Party was limited to less than a two-thirds majority at every election by White voters.  It is clear that a large proportion of Whites were against Apartheid from the inception.  Even Jan Smuts, a South African Prime Minister and one of the founders of the United Nations, is on record as having warned the National Party in 1948 that their racial policies would be a move that they would regret in years to come.  However, those facts have all been ignored in the rewriting of history to favour the ‘freedom movements’, and the truth has been perverted, just as Robert Mugabe now arrogantly claims that the British and the Whites were responsible for the slaughter of 45 000 members of the opposition tribe, their bodies being dumped down the shafts of mines, when it is a documented fact that those mines were in full operation until more than a year after Mugabe came to power.

The third factor is that one of the organs of Government, the King of the Zulus, made a public statement that foreigners were taking the jobs of locals, urging those foreigners to return to their countries of origin.  The fact that the Leader of the Zulu nation made this statement is noteworthy, particularly against a background of statements by Zuma and his cadres that the ‘problems of South Africa started when Jan Riebeeck came to the Cape’, clearly a statement that the Whites are foreigners, whereas the Black nations are not.  That ignores the fact that the Blacks are just as much immigrants as the Whites, having migrated from the north via an eastern route, to massacre the then-indigenous races of the area.  The statement also ignores the massive advances that the Whites and other ‘foreigners’ brought to the country.  Shaka Zulu, the national hero of the Zulu nation, was a murderous despot living in a Stone Age society when the Whites arrived in the area, yet he is glorified, ignoring totally the thousands of deaths of Zulus at his command.  History has been rewritten, and the credulous population, without the education to allow them to know better, is being exhorted to act against those who are not one of them, regardless of what they have to offer.  South Africa is going down the same road as Uganda did under Idi Amin.  If you have any doubt about that, ask one of the Indians who, as part of the mainstay of the Ugandan economy, were massacred, the survivors being driven from the country at the behest of a lunatic dictator.  Those Indians took their skills and work ethic to other countries, depriving Uganda of them, just as the Whites and other non-Blacks have been, and are being, driven from South Africa.  The economic and developmental results are clear to see in Uganda, as in South Africa.

The lack of public order, taking its example from the leaders of the ANC, who see that it is easier to take than to earn, is a major factor in the current attacks on foreigners.  This lack of effective policing is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the TV cameras arrive at each new looting well in advance of the Police, and by the ineffective Police action at each looting.  Is it really the case that a Policeman is slower than a looter carrying three trays of beer?  One could reasonably expect that at least ten or twenty looters would be arrested at each crime scene, yet the Police seem to be unable to do any better than to arrest a foreign shop owner who shot someone in the process of protecting his property and his life!  Of course, given the example of the extremely expensive arrest and extradition of Shrien Diwani and his subsequent acquittal after preparations of several years for the trial, it is perhaps understandable that the Police are reluctant to take action to arrest and bring to trial a simple looter and arsonist, particularly, probably, when he is doing no more than to give effect to the exhortations of his King.

Certain ANC-biased commentators claim that the attacks are a means for the starving poor to obtain food.  It is remarkable that the film clips of the attacks on foreigner-owned stores show the looters running off with crates of beer, the Police stealing packs of toilet paper!  One of the foreigners asked the obvious question.  ‘If they are stealing to feed themselves, why don’t they break into local-owned stores?  Why are foreigners being targeted?’  It is clear from the fact that the looting is taking place countrywide that the actions are being centrally controlled.  Is it a policy of the ANC, in contradiction to the statement of Thabo Mbeki that ‘South Africa belongs to the Africans’, (a statement that implicitly excluded the Whites), now to remove the non-South Africans, perhaps also excluding the Whites from the permitted group?  It certainly seems to the observers that this is the case.

The dissolution of the rule of law, upheld by well-trained and effective Policing, to the current state of mob rule, of hints given to the racist extremists by the President, of wishy-washy attempts by Government bodies to regain control of the country from the mobs, supported by statements by the President that show his unwillingness or inability to lead a law-abiding country, is an extremely worrying development.  The continuing slide of the country’s economy and the demolition of the excellence that had been built over decades is likely to continue, notwithstanding the statement by Zuma regarding Eskom that ‘We have plans’.  The public is entitled to know what the plans are, if, in fact, such plans do actually exist.  They are entitled to have a full elucidation of such plans in a public forum, such as Parliament, rather than the sniggering statement of omnipotence that Zuma made during his State of the Nation address.  If the Government does not have realistic and effective plans, ones that can stand up to public scrutiny and comment, that is a cause for huge concern.  If the Government does actually have plans, but is unwilling to make them public, that is cause for even greater concern.  Unfortunately, a rational analysis of public statements, evaluated in the light of events, makes one believe that the Government does have plans which have the objective of taking total control of the country, in the way that Stalin did in Russia, but which have no more than political and self-enrichment objectives, and which ignore the plight of the citizens of the country.  It seems more than likely that South Africa will continue to follow the lead of Zimbabwe.