Xenophobia and Education

 

Public discussions regarding the causes of the recent outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa have brought several intriguing questions to light.

The most obvious question is that of the leadership vacuum at the head of the Government in South Africa.  None of the persons or bodies that should have been most directly involved in efforts to prevent or stop the violence were to be seen.  Even the Zulu King, who, by his comments that foreigners should leave the country, was probably most directly responsible for kicking off the latent violence, failed to take any effective action, or even any action at all, to stop the violence.  One of his representatives made the remarkable assertion that the King is the direct representative of God, and therefore that anything that the King says has the force of the Holy Word, and cannot be questioned or investigated.  That statement raises frightening possibilities.  The ‘God-King’, as he is known, is able to give any instruction and have it enforced without question, no matter how irresponsible or ignorant that instruction and the understanding and knowledge underlying it may be.  Any intelligent observer would be entitled to question the educational and intellectual capability of the King to fulfil the role that he has assumed, and that has been supported by the laws of the country.  The statements made by the King and his lack of any effective action to prevent a situation that has the potential of escalating to a full genocide certainly give rise to doubt that those questions can be answered satisfactorily.  Equally, the frightening lack of effective action by the President and his cohorts confirm the opinion that the leadership of the country, apart from the tribal leadership of large portions of the community, which appear to be fragmented and uncoordinated, has no clear plan for the country, other than simply retaining office so that they can continue to benefit from the extra-ordinary income flowing from their offices.  The fact that Zuma cancelled his visit to Indonesia to attend to the local problem was lauded as an example of his statesmanship can only be seen as an illustration of the absolute lack of capability of the State President to fulfil the requirements of the office.  The excuses given by the Ministers of State Security and Intelligence are equally lamentable.  Both of those worthies should have known of the trend, and taken effective attempts to defuse them long before it gave rise to the violence and killings.  Given the lamentable state of their portfolios, one must ask what else is occupying their attention.  It is horrifying to think that other developing crises have been at the forefront of their minds during the build-up to the riots.

An obvious shortcoming that should be addressed urgently is the lack of any meaningful education in economic theory.  Calls by apparently well-spoken and educated people to talk shows raised the point that the foreigners do contribute to the creation of jobs by the need for the Department of Home Affairs to document them!  If that is a meaningful source of jobs, perhaps it would be easier to close down the Department and pay the amount that is expended on it directly to the unemployed!  The achievements of the Department are extremely poor, with an application for a Birth Certificate requiring nearly two years, so far!  The callers and, in most cases, the TV and Radio commentators show a remarkable lack of understanding of the chain of economic activity.  Even the Premier of Kwa Zulu Natal made a proposal that the solution to the ‘threat’ posed by the foreign shopkeepers would require an intervention to enable the locals to buy their goods wholesale and thereby become effective as shopkeepers in competition with the foreigners!  One wonders why the foreigners, who face the same purchasing constraints as the locals, should be more effective than the locals.  If that question could be answered, it might go a long way to solve the lack of competitiveness of South African industry as a whole!  Perhaps we need to appoint a foreign shopkeeper as Minister of Trade and Industry, or even as State President, so that he could apply his superior capabilities for the good of the nation!  It appears to be almost certain that the poor education of the bulk of the population is an important factor in the inability of South Africans to earn an income.  One wonders why this should be so, given the huge sums expended on education.  A possible answer lies in the fact that the ANC is heavily committed to a Marxist-Leninist policy, relying on their training in Russia, East Germany and Cuba at the time that they were still terrorists.  It may come as a surprise to the ANC that training in communist theories is very far from education in economics, law and politics.  It may equally come as a surprise to know that Government in a democratic country is intended to be directed to the benefit of the population, not for the purpose of enrichment of those holding office.

The comments made by and about the Zulu King, a man who holds an hereditary office which is devoid of any traces of democracy, give some indicators of what is urgently required to stabilise the country.  Democracy has failed in South Africa, starting the process under Thabo Mbeki, when he, abetted by the Speaker of the House of Parliament, went to extraordinary lengths to stifle any investigation into the corruption surrounding and driving the Arms Deals in the 1990s.  Jacob Zuma took the baton of autocracy and corruption from Mbeki, running with it and deepening their hold on the fledgling democracy that Nelson Mandela founded.  It is true that the Constitution was deeply flawed as a result of the personal and political interests of the delegates to the Conference that gave rise to it, flaws that have deepened as the ANC used the words of the Constitution to entrench their political support, putting the payoffs to the National Party members into the shade.  It has now become acceptable for the present Speaker of the House to make rulings against the Rules of the House and the terms of the Constitution, and to state explicitly that the State President and the Black royalty are not subject to the rules that apply to others.  The Zulu royal House has existed since the time of Shaka, a bloodthirsty tyrant who built the Zulu nation by means of conquering the smaller tribes, and killing any person who might become an opponent in the future.  That founding is, to say the least, illegitimate.  It is less legitimate than colonialism, and is certainly not an acceptable basis for the management of a nation that is seen by the world as a democracy.

When the riots are over and the damage done, to the foreigners and to the country, a sober assessment must be made of the suitability of the Constitution, the offices under it, and the people who fill those offices, to manage a modern economy.  That will not happen, because the result of any intelligent assessment will certainly be a change to the system that has been so profitable for the hereditary tribal leaders and the ANC.

Xenophobia in South Africa – Who is Next?

 

The wave of xenophobia that is sweeping over South Africa raises a number of interesting questions.

The sudden outbreak of violence against non-South Africans in seven cities widely separated around the country raises a strong suspicion, if not the certainty, that it was orchestrated.  It would seem surprising that so many ordinary people would suddenly take it into their heads to attack foreign store owners, looting and burning their shops and assaulting and killing the owners.  One of the attackers, a young woman, said on television that she would sit at home doing nothing while the foreigners opened their stores and stole the jobs of the locals.  That sort of sentiment could only have come from someone who wished to spread hatred and discontent.  Think about it.  The foreign store owner is a single man, operating a store of about ten square metres in area.  The sole worker in the store is the man, and the reason he has the store is that there is a demand, which no local is satisfying.  No jobs have been taken from locals.  On the contrary, the presence of the store provides a service to the local community which they need, and which they are not compelled to use.  The large number of people who protested the attacks is a good indication that a considerable proportion of the people in the relevant areas accept the presence of the foreigners and appreciate the service they offer.  That suspicion obviously raises the question of who is behind the sudden outbreak.  It seems likely that the instigators of these vicious attacks are members of one of the political parties which have staked their position in the area declaring that South Africa is for the South African Blacks.

The sudden rash of violence occurred at the time that Robert Mugabe arrived in South Africa to make his hate-filled racist speech condemning the ‘colonialists’.  Can it be a coincidence that the violence that broke out at that precise time seems to have been carried out by people bearing a strong resemblance to Mugabe’s teenage ‘war veterans’, who have terrorised the population of that sorry country for so long?  That view is reinforced by the wishy-washy speech by President Zuma, who has established his credentials as a White Hater over and over.  Zuma spoke of the foreigners as being ‘our African brothers’, words that have been used by him and his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, to give the impression to the unthinking Black populace that Whites are excluded as legitimate residents of the country, no matter the length of their South African family tree or the legitimacy in economic and other terms of their presence in the country.  It sounded very much as though Zuma was paying lip service to the principles of human rights that were so much a foundation stone of Nelson Mandela’s Rainbow Nation, while, at the same time, preparing the thinking of the thugs for an extension of the hatred of ‘foreigners’ to the White population, which has been so much a thorn in the side of the ANC.

The fact that the outbreaks of violence have occurred in so many cities at the same time seems to have escaped Zuma’s attention.  Zuma says that it is wrong to think of the attacks as xenophobia.  They are a manifestation of the people’s need for jobs!  That is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the thugs were filmed carting off freezer cabinets!  Zuma’s contention is perhaps a cause for the very ineffective action of the Police in controlling the violence – only thirty-five people have been arrested during the outbreaks, and at least two of those were the foreign shop owners who were trying to protect their property and save their lives!  There has been no mention of any plan to bring in the Army to fill the presence gap of the Police, although huge sums of money are expended every year in providing peacekeeping services to our brother African dictators.  Apparently, the lives of a few dozen foreign store-owners, most of whom are here legally, are of less importance, or, perhaps, it is necessary to allow the violence to spread unchecked so that the next phase of the plan can be commenced.  Looking at the history of Uganda under Idi Amin, f Ruanda, and of Zimbabwe, it seems to be not unreasonable to suspect that the next phase will be a ‘spontaneous’ spread of the hatred of foreigners to the Whites, who are frequently accused of controlling the economy to the detriment of the Black population.  Zuma has already built a security wall around himself in case there is a backlash, with over 7 000 security personnel who report only to Zuma and who owe their allegiance only to him.  Zuma has also gained control over the proceedings of Parliament, where the Speaker goes to great lengths, even illegally as has recently been demonstrated and confirmed by the High Court, to protect Zuma.  The Speaker has stated that Zuma is not subject to the normal Rules of Parliament!

In a blog some years ago, this writer asked whether the Whites will be handed the same treatment as the Jews in Hitler’s Germany.  The rise of the band of thugs, coupled with the undoubted active propaganda that are behind the attacks on innocent foreign shop owners looks suspiciously like the thugs and the tactics that Hitler used to bring himself to power.  The world should take note of this before a new world war can develop.  South Africa and its allies have the potential to develop in this way, and it seems that the first steps have been taken.

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.

The Story of Africa

The past weeks have demonstrated many of the problems that have beset Africa over the years.

The Lesotho Minister, after disbanding Parliament to avoid a vote of no confidence in him being taken, escaped to South Africa to ensure his safety.  SADEC was called in to restore stability, and that organization, headed by Robert Mugabe and represented by Jacob Zuma arranged for the elections, which went off peacefully, albeit it under a heavy armed guard of SADEC Military and Police.  The irony of an organisation headed by two of the least democratic leaders in the world ‘ensuring’ the democracy of Lesotho, which the Prime Minister explicitly ignored by his actions against an essential process of democracy, appeared to have escaped the media.

In South Africa, xenophobia enjoyed a continuing resurgence, with the stores of foreigners being looted and then burnt and in one cases, the store owner being doused in paraffin and set alight.  South Africans have come to expect the shifting of blame for the poverty of the nation from the Government, which bears the sole responsibility, to the foreign shopkeepers as a normal situation, but the reversion to the program of necklacing, a favourite of the ANC in the run up to the change of Government is worrying.  In the light of the manifest racism of the ANC and the EFF, South Africans who are not Black must wonder when they too will become targets of this racist behaviour.

This, shortly after Jacob Zuma made a conciliatory speech in Parliament, thanking the Leader of the EFF for his contribution to the State of the Nation debate (in which the two most noteworthy contributions were a demand to ‘pay back the money’ and a clearly racist diatribe about how the majority of the economy is still controlled by Whites, with a demand for nationalisation of mines and banks.  Zuma stated, in his insincere, sniggering, way that Whites are welcome in the country, although he reaffirmed that the problems of South Africa started when the Whites, represented by Jan van Riebeeck, were the source of all the problems faced by the country.  He made no mention of the fact that the civilised and industrially advanced Europeans arrived in a part of the country which was then not occupied by the Blacks who, in any event, were still stuck in the Stone Age, with no industry and no democracy.  The remark, made by the least credible President the country has ever had, left a large doubt in the minds of those who have built the economy and now find themselves to be targets of opportunity for most of the actions of the Government in correcting the problems that the ANC has created.  The rest of the debate, as expected, went nowhere, with the ANC confining their contributions to snide attacks on the Opposition, and with very little real discussion of the parlous State of the Nation, no credible plans being announced to correct the numerous problems facing the economy, other than the bald statement that ‘we have plans’, and a high degree of arrogance being displayed by the ANC in the face of glaring evidence of their incompetence and corruption.  That was followed by the presentation of the Budget, in which every opportunity to correct the high rate of unemployment was disregarded, and the levies on fuel were increased to nearly half of the retail price of petrol.  The Minister of Finance made the usual promise, without plan to cut State expenditure by R25 billion on a total of R1,3 trillion (– less than 2 %!) and to control corruption, without making any reference to the fact that the Presidency overspent by R45 million on travel.  The promises are all as hollow as they have always been, the praise as insincere, the arrogance as staggering and the divorce from reality as far as always.

The whole mess was wrapped up at Mugabe’s 91^st birthday celebration, an affair that cost as much as the gross earnings for the month of half of the population of the country, with the slaughtering of two elephants (an endangered species) and remarks that the remaining five hundred White farmers (also an endangered species, down from five thousand, with a concomitant reduction in the food production) will be displaced by new legislation to ensure that their farms are handed over to the indigenous population.  This is no surprise to the intelligent observer.  The lunacy of Mugabe’s policies have been evident for many years, with the theft of the farms from the people who built them up, to be handed to Party favourites who have no clue about farming, and the indigenisation policy, which requires that mines and other industries be owned to 60% by locals (although, in accordance with the policies of the ANC in South Africa, the ‘locals’ must be carefully selected, not for their financial strength or their ability to contribute to the business, but for their Party affiliation).  The only surprise is that investors do not see the trend.  It is clear that Zimbabwe wants the investment and the expertise, and the Party wants the profit, in the belief that the asset belongs to the Party and the foreign investors have an obligation to provide the funding, the skills, the education and the experience, for no benefit to themselves.  What is even more surprising is that so few people are able to connect the dots, to make the picture that shows South Africa heading rapidly down the path that Mugabe has committed Zimbabwe to.

The summary to the South African situation was provided by the ratings agencies, which informed the Government that they now faced a probability that their rating would decline further. 

It seems that there are some sane people in the world.

Xenophobia again!

 

An interesting and frightening development is occurring in the Black on Black race relations in South Africa.  During the recent burning and looting of foreigner-owned stores in Soweto and other areas around Johannesburg, the Police and the Government went to great lengths to explain that the targeting of foreigners was not a sign of xenophobia.  Not too many of the public believed them.  Both the Police and the Government have lost a considerable amount of the credibility and respect they once had, largely, many claim, because they are equal participants in the looting and violence of the ordinary man.  If there is doubt about that, consider the loss of an expensive watch from a collection of Oscar Pistorius, when the only persons who could have stolen it were members of the South African Police Services, or the TV footage of a uniformed Policeman stashing a pack of toilet paper in his Police van while ‘investigating’ the actions of a band of thugs who targeted innocent foreign shopkeepers.  Consider the fact that the entire parliamentary body of the ANC unanimously supported the actions of Jacob Zuma in his expenditure of a large amount of taxpayer money on his palace at Nkandla, not one of these ‘honourable’ Members having the moral courage, or perhaps decency, to stand up to the Party line in protecting the man against the findings of one of the few courageous, honest and decent leaders of a State body.

Now, another band of thugs has taken it into their heads to pour paraffin over an unfortunate shop owner and then to set him on fire, before looting his store and then setting it alight, in an action strongly reminiscent of the ANC-inspired necklacing of Black people who did not want to toe the Party line, during the time when the ANC was just another terrorist organisation.  That is a memory the ANC does not wish to have recalled.  It is a memory of the time when a large proportion of the Black people had not yet been forced to believe that the ANC were the saviours of the nation, of the time when the Party that now claims to represent the Black nation had not yet reached the position in which they could rewrite the history of the nation.  The new group of thugs proclaimed to the world that the foreigners must go.  They ignore the fact that those foreigners they so abhor provide an essential service to thousands of people, a service that those thugs, if they had the mental equipment and the dedication to work that the foreign shopkeepers display, could undertake themselves, but will not, because it is easier to destroy than to build.

One wonders where all of this will go.  South Africa has become a nation of people who disregard the law.  The minibus taxi drivers routinely drive through red traffic lights, or kill each other to grab a lucrative route.  The civil servants routinely take bribes to induce them to do their jobs.  The Police routinely stop drivers suspected of speaking on their cell phones, to extract a bribe, while the minibus taxi drivers go sailing through the red traffic lights.  The ‘investigators’ at SARS routinely impose huge fines on companies on the basis of wrongful claims of transgressions of the VAT laws, using the Reserve Bank to freeze the company’s bank accounts and appointing the company’s attorneys as collection agents, to starve the companies of the funds they need to defend these illicit actions.  The Police routinely use signal disrupters to ‘protect the President’ during speeches to legislative bodies, in a gross violation of the Constitution.  The President routinely approves the appointment of Ambassadors to important trading partners (Japan and Canada in the full knowledge that the appointee has claimed a Ph. D which she did not have, the Minister routinely approves the appointment of the Chairperson of the SABC and the CEO of that body in flagrant disregard of the same dishonesty.

When one looks at a list of the illegality and criminal behaviour of so much of our society, one can only conclude that the Rainbow Nation, the new hope that so many held under Nelson Mandela only twenty years ago, has descended into a State that so many were afraid of before that time, a State of despair, of lost hope, and of hatred.  We must thank the ANC under Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma for that.  One can only hope that the good men and true will once again triumph, to allow the nation to become what Nelson Mandela promised.