Grim news from South Africa. Just in case anyone thought that the departure of President Zuma, a corrupt man who has stripped his country (South Africa faces severe water shortages brought on by neglect of infrastructure) might lead to better things will be disappointed. The new regime has signed off on a land-grab policy of confiscating white-owned land without compensation. (About 70 per cent of South African farmland is owned by whites.) The claim made is that any white person who owns land in the country must, by definition, have stolen it. (The idea that such ownership might have come into being without theft just does not cross certain persons’ minds. That fact is simply undiscussible.)
As we have found in the seizure/collectivisation of farms in the former Soviet Union, in China, and in Zimbabwe more recently, such moves herald mass poverty and violence. South Africa has ironically seen an influx of poor Zimbabweans since the vile Mugabe regime started to attack white farmers and seize land; the country has suffered a catastrophic decline in its farmland output, which may never recover. South Africa seems keen to follow suit; it has a range of largely self-inflicted woes: the current government is deeply corrupt. The country needs inward investment – seizing white-owned property hardly encourages any investor, of any racial background. As a matter of simple common sense, taking land by brute force, without compensation, from owners and giving it to those who are political cronies and hangers-on will inevitably reduce output and wealth, not the other way round.
The unfolding of South Africa’s history is a tragedy, and it is easy to see why there is an element of “score-settling” at work here. Apartheid, let it not be forgotten, was introduced in the late 1940s at the behest to some degree of the white trade union movement, keen to bolster its bargaining power. Even if you were a private entrepreneur who wanted to hire non-whites for certain jobs, for example, you couldn’t. (Minimum wage laws operated in ways that hurt, not helped, non-whites.) The system was as absurd and vile as the Jim Crow laws of the US, or other examples of serfdom and oppression down the ages. It had to go; for anyone who supports a free market economy, apartheid and its cousins are absurd as well as wrong.
But the solution of seizing white-owned land, regardless of the honesty or provenance of it, and giving it to people via a political carve-up, turns the injustices inherited from the old regime on their head, creating a new form of racism. Two wrongs do not make a right. And further, one suspects that the land seizures are an attempt to deflect attention from the failings of the existing regime. Compare and contrast how, for example, the “Asian tigers” threw off their old colonial masters and focused on getting seriously rich, not least by respecting property rights. And wherever one looks, there does seem a pretty tight correlation between respect for property rights – indeed their very existence – with prosperity and happiness more broadly. Hernando de Soto has made something of a career pushing the point that the world needs more property rights, spread among more people. (Check out this recent lecture by Niall Ferguson on the same sort of issue.) As an aside, it also seems to be a pretty solid marker of respect for property rights to have a large and growing middle class. I suspect that one of the underlying problems in South Africa is that among the non-white population, persons who can be so described aren’t a big portion of the total.
Lest anyone pounces on the notion that what has happened proves that certain racial groups are incapable of building a civilized political order, bear in mind that here in the UK, the oh-so-white Caucasian leadership of Her Majesty’s Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, and his colleagues, want to do to the owners of privately-owned industries such as electricity, gas, and the rest what the new leadership in South Africa wants to do to white farmers. The defence of settled property rights remains a vital cause for anyone interested not just in prosperity, but liberty. As of this week, that cause took a turn for the worse in South Africa.
South Africa cannot be understood accurately if one chooses arbitrary beginning points in its history. Its systems of separate worlds for different races began with the first Dutch sailors who stopped at the Cape on their way around the horn and encountered mostly empty lands. Ever since that time, whites and blacks have behaved remarkably badly to each other, leading to the present situation. By picking starting dates, one can make either side out to be the bad guys.
In reality, they were both bad.
Bobby b, I wasn’t choosing the late 1940s deliberately. No doubt there are other, earlier episodes I could have chosen. The point is that the current land grab is driven by those playing on various grievances associated with the apartheid system, at least as it seems to me.
No, no, no, this is all part of a well thought out plan: South Africa’s government has long argued there is a problem with illegal immigration from the north. By turning themselves into Zimbabwe writ large, this will very effectively end that problem (once the economy and food production start tanking). Genius really 🙄
JP, sorry if I came off as rebuking you for choosing as a beginning the establishment of apartheid. The passage of the laws involved does provide somewhat of a brightline point in their system.
My point was only that the codification of apartheid was no more than the recognition in written law of the system of social rules that had been firmly established throughout that society for two hundred years or more. The Bantu Land Act (1910?) had already begun the establishment of the black/white land ownership rules and the exclusion of nonwhites from the cities. Separation of the races had been the rule since the 1700’s. All of the separate Acts that went into formulating the official Apartheid system of 1949 and the early 1950’s mostly just put into lawbooks what already existed.
So, like you say, there’s a huge element of score-settling going on now, but it dates back to the first Dutch massacres of the khoikhoi shepherds passing through the Cape area in the late 1600s, the first organized massacres of the Dutch by other native groups, and the hostilities engendered through the Dutch importation of so many Javanese and Indian slaves/workers.
(How much bloodshed could have been spared had no imaginative Dutchman ever decided that the covenant that god had entered into in the bible with the jews was really allegory for the white man’s proper place in a multiracial world.)
If the land grab gets fully codified and carried out, how long until the economy completely tanks? South Africa is blessed with ample mineral resources so those in power will be able to loot for quite a while. Zimbabwe did much the same with less extraction resources and the economy there tanked fairly quickly. Unless their rulers are willing to see mass starvation, the country will need to foreign exchange to buy food. Further, with property rights a dead letter, there will be little to no investment. The only foreign capital will be the sort that comes backed with guns and boats (ie China).
You would think with the examples of Venezuela and Zimbabwe the people would see reason.
Lots of people are going to die. It’s all quite sad.
A quote attributed to Mr Mandela sums it up nicely to me:
There is a problem however, as this is an appeal to reason.
‘But I don’t want freedom!‘ shouts the socialist ‘Give us starvation or give me death!’
“Lest anyone pounces on the notion that what has happened proves that certain racial groups are incapable of building a civilized political order”
Yeah. Well. Until someone comes up with a list of prosperous democratic black run states, let’s go with the simple explanation, eh?
Botswana seems to be doing alright.
BiS, there are plenty of examples of countries with different racial mixups going in for this sort of madness. Russia being arguably the greatest example of mass confiscation . Ditto parts of Asia.
Botswana seems reasonably run. But as I’ve noticed before from your comments, your disdain for black people is beyond argument, so I won’t waste further bandwidth responding to you. You’re a racist. Enjoy the Spanish sherry.
I doubt that South Africa will be allowed to turn into Zimbabwe.
As in any situation so fraught with racial overtones, there are going to be a number of competing international agendas in play. One set of agenda-holders is going to be mightily concerned with overcoming the sentiments explored by BiS above. That set holds much economic and social power.
So I would guess that SA is going to be given whatever propping-up it requires to, maybe not succeed, but persist.
I lived for 24 years in South Africa and I learnt Afrikaans and Xhosa: and I always laugh at pontifications of persons that at the best went on holiday for a couple of weeks.
It would be instructive to compare what has been done in this country to working class communities in the last 50 years, with what was done in South Africa under the Group Areas Act; and to compare the sense of loss and grief displayed by the victims at the trashing of their respective communities.
Great outrage was displayed in the 1960’s, at the District Six removals in Capetown, South Africa. On 11 February 1966, the South African Government declared District Six a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act, with removals starting in 1968. By 1982, more than 60,000 people had been relocated to the bleak Cape Flats Township some 25 kilometres away. Everything in District Six was bulldozed except a couple of churches. The people that were removed suffered incredible cultural and identity loss and were subject to the appalling violence of the Cape Flats criminal gangs.
The working classes in this country after 1950 saw their families dispersed, their towns and close knit communities destroyed and turned into murderous, vice ridden slums infinitely worse than anything they replaced, a thing that even the Luftwaffe did not achieve. Their family oriented culture came under constant and consistent attack.
The abolition of capital and corporal punishment was something they never wanted because they knew what it would mean for them.
The schools which offered a way out of poverty were debauched and an anti-learning culture fostered from within them. They were called “chavs” and made to feel that their culture and love of country was inferior and even the traditional recreations of pub smoking with a drink outlawed.
The responses to both of these events were very different. The one elicited outrage; but protests against the other were regarded with incomprehension and contempt. It was as if society regarded the working classes in Britain to be of a lower order that was unable to experience emotion and loss; a brute order of humanity with a debased culture of no value. The enormity of what the liberal elites have done to British society in the name of social engineering is now beginning to sink in. We get calls to fix our broken society by the very people who broke it in the first place. Like post-Apartheid South Africa, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission should be set up, where the enforcers are encouraged to admit that everything they have implemented in the name of social engineering in the last fifty years has been a giant, tragic, cruel, wicked and traumatic social experiment inspired by some very base motives. Those who do not come from these communities do not even begin to understand the depth of the contempt and anger. People justly feel betrayed and marginalised by the very organizations that should have protected them.
I was born in the East End of London and I saw it happen; it was my aunts, my uncles, my family and my community that was smashed. Like the Jewish poet Emanuel Litvinoff; when I return to the East End all I see are ghosts. I was also in Capetown when the removals from District Six took place; the same rejection and the same betrayal.
The difference is that the Afrikaner, unlike the English, have repented and welcomed the family members back into the fold, and I am happy to say that I still have good friends there. So I retain the right to make these comments no matter how unwelcome they may be; there is a world of difference between being there and experiencing it, and just reading about it in books.
The society and communities in Britain that were displaced were not perfect by any means, but in comparison to the violent and dysfunctional chaos that has been brought about by the activities of the liberal elites and their enforcers, it was a heaven of tolerance. That society was no accident; it was brought about after a 100 years of social reform by the Victorians and Edwardians. And our murderous and vice ridden society is no accident either; it was brought about in 50 short years by agents of a force bent on our destruction. They have managed to achieve the almost impossible; they have dragged us back into the horrors of the 18th century.
Our unwritten constitution worked very well until recently, but it afforded us no protection from an internal enemy, not based on Plato’s Will to Good, but based on Nietzsche’s Will to Power. And God help us, we let it happen. What has been done is wrong in Christian terms, in philosophical terms, in human terms and in terms of self-interest.
Normal human relations are rooted in mutual respect not in the hatreds of domination by intolerance.
But when we objected to this we were called not by the internet but by politicians and the newspapers:
Senile old farts, fruitcakes, loonies, nutters, gadflies, fascists, dullards, Nazis, blazer wearers, Colonel-Blimps in blazers, BNP in blazers, Brownshirts in blazers, anti-EU-Taliban, clowns, racists, bigots, closet racists, poor blue-collar losers, saloon-bar bores, right-wing nitwits, coffin-dodgers, golf-club bores, swivel-eyed loons, computer illiterates, little Englanders, know-nothing loudmouths, ill-educated, ill-qualified and pretty unpleasant and odd people.
Boggle-eyed collection of malcontents, vacuum-cleaner-onanists, d*kheads, knobs, grumpy old men, the disappointed elderly, rats, the lycra clad-tattooed, whinging, vile, despicable, abhorrent, whining, rabble-rousers, boors, twats, un-British, lily-livered-doormats, daft, self-pitying, xenophobic, four-ale- bar drunks, intellectually-frightened-milksops, bigot-chimps, filth, extreme nationalists, racist halfwits, protectionists, backward-looking, cultists, Euro-bores, rabid, weird people, populists, a bacillus, a rabble, English flag wavers, brutish and low-grade, friendly people waiting to die
Angry people, pariahs, Tory toxins, beer-swillers, sour-lipped populists, the Tory fifth-column, an infection, damaged goods, absurd, ignorant, neo-fascists, the septic and the geriatric, the empty-headed led by the foul-minded, cynical, corrosive, pond life, thick, pernicious, racist filth, disgruntled elderly, dog-end voters, nativists, scum-bigots, Faragebola.
And they wonder – they wonder – why we are so angry.
tph, FWIW, I wasn’t implying that the ’66 Group Areas Act was some innocuous piece of statute-amending, but that the underlying wrong – the underlying evil – long pre-existed it.
(ETA: Oops. An excellent comment bit the dust.)
Not so convinced myself. Anyone investing there would have to be insane.
If anyone wants to see the future of the west once whites are a minority… well here you go…
bobby b, I disagree that apartheid was a mere codification of existing rules. The Union of South Africa was a union between Natal and Cape Province of the British Empire, and the Orange Free State and the Transvaal created by Boer treks out of the first two to escape British jurisdiction, specifically the 1824 laws granting some legal protection to their black slaves and the 1833 laws freeing them. In Cape province the franchise was colour-blind: its conditions rewarded those who adopted European culture. By 1900, some 1 in 8 of the constituencies required the candidate to make a gesture to the coloured population if they were to have any chance of winning.
The Boer war was begun under a Tory administration. Milner’s plan was to establish the Cape franchise as the norm and thus, with help from immigration from the UK, make the unified conquered country into a majority pro-Empire unit. (Milner, Rhodes et al would be screamed at by modern woke people but they correctly calculated that coloured voters would find them preferable to anti-imperialist Boers.)
However the peace that ended the Boer war was finally negotiated by the Liberal administration who replaced the Tories. As Britain has won the war, it would have been political suicide for the Liberals to withdraw, but as they’d made a big thing (when out of power) of fighting wicked imperialist methods, they desperately needed the Boers to say they were OK with it. They quickly discovered the Boers had one key demand: no extension of the Cape’s colour-blind franchise. That was their price and the Liberals paid it.
The Afrikaaner party leaders spent the years of WWII in jail, being justly suspected of sympathy for some Nazi doctrines, but they had to be let out afterwards and won the 1948 election. By then, Cape province had a million coloured voters. Disenfranchising them was the hardest task the Africaaners faced – the constitutional crisis lasted for five years.
There was nothing inevitable about their victory or their managing to maintain it in the early years, just as there was nothing inevitable about the Boer war settlement being what it was. Apartheid was a possible outcome but not an inevitable one and very far from a mere codification of how things were.
Niall, it was only the English war against the Boers which provided a bump in the road for a completely segregated society. Certainly the support for the racially-based system was not monolithic, but it was enough so that, shortly after the end of the Boer wars, the SA Union Parliament passed the Land Act (1913, not 1910, sorry) which effectively ended black land ownership and also (as you say) revoked the franchise in Cape for nonwhites.
I’d maintain that Apartheid was the inevitable result of a system of thought that existed for hundreds of years, and that the fortuity of the English war only slowed it down.
There is no more determined and driven man than one who is convinced that God favors him, and that’s what defined the Boers and their society. God-commanded racial superiority wasn’t a belief held by some percentage of the Boers – it defined them in many ways.
Nice to see the first white farmer getting his land back in Zimbabwe just before Xmas.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/22/white-farmer-gets-land-back-under-zimbabwes-new-leader/
Seems he’s well liked by the people who are not white
Another interesting history lesson here. I confess to being largely ignorant of the history of South Africa, so thanks, gents.
I feel bad for the white farmers because they’re being mistreated. But I have no sympathy for S.A. and look forward to them “reaping what they sow”. In fact, officials should be put on trial for crimes against humanity…and hanged.
Johnathan Pearce, step up to the plate and “come up with a list of prosperous democratic black run states”. Simply yelling “you’re a racist” is not an argument and is cowardly.
It’s such an impossibility that moviemakers had to come up with a fictitious Wakanda (complete with Magic Dirt), and even Wakanda wasn’t democratic, but a monarchy.
Certainly contrary, but maybe not insane. Citi still loves SA, as of a few days ago. There’s a lot of pressure on Ramaphosa to get SA’s financial ducks in a row – and to a large extent, they already are. There’s a ton of international money parked there right now, and investors are still, today, pouring money in. There’s a strong ongoing “Ramaphosa bubble” right now – SA is up simply because he was thought to be the candidate with the most financial acumen and the person who could implement reforms, and he won.
Given that his sort of governance is going to emphasize economic growth through attracting investment, he’s going to be more amenable to pressures to quell the more egregious of his social programs (such as land reparations). But he campaigned heavily on those land grabs, so he’s going to have to at least start out grabbing.
But his reliance on international monies is the tool that will be used to keep SA from becoming Zimbabwe. Too many people would do much to avoid such a scenario, because it’s a racially disquieting one. They’d rather see Wakanda.
So, the “standard true media view” is that the whites stole the place from the “blacks”?
Those who have done even a rudimentary study of the ACTUAL history of the southern bit of Africa may beg to differ.
Let’s start with the Portuguese, who sailed past and then later, set up shop in the early 1500’s. They left a bigger “mark” in Namibia and Mozambique, but their influence on South African cooking remains to this day.
Then, there were the Dutch. Almost by accident, Dutch settlement in South Africa began in March 1647 with the shipwreck of the Dutch ship “Nieuwe Haarlem”.
Somewhat later came the English.
While all this maritime folly was proceeding, there were HUGE movements of “locals” and tribal invaders from the North. The !Kung Bushmen were pushed westwards by the arrival of Bantu and Xhosa people. The “Hottentots” were badly hit by all and sundry. There were earlier massive population moves inland, roughly about the time of the first tentative adventures by Europeans. Tribal groups coalesced and fractured, warfare was the daily norm, to such an extent that for over a century later, the countryside was littered with the bleached bones of the “losers”.
The ultimate dominant group to arise was the KwaZulu. It seems that they were influenced by both European and arab cultures on their way SOUTH into the Cape area. See the movies and get a TINY part of the story.
There were almost NO “natives” in the early, coastal, European-settled farming districts in the Southern Cape. When the Boers hit the road to escape encroaching “city life”, and particularly the British, they encountered increasingly large elements of the Zulus, who were heading south to find larger and better grazing land for their huge herds of cattle. An expanding, technologically advanced farming culture heading north collided with an aggressive, socially advanced, militarily proficient, technologically developing society heading south.
It was the making of a “turf war” that was bound to get messy.
As for the oncoming fiasco: just remember that many of the “leaders” of the ANC were trained at places like Patrice Lumumba University in the Soviet Union, or its equivalent in China or the UK.
Both the comments, and the original posts are a trove of good information. As it happens now and then in Samizdata, it all lefts me wanting to know more. I point out what it is perhaps, self-evident: the South Africa’s project of amending the country’s Constitution to allow for the confiscation of white-owned land without compensation is not only a sign of the catastrophe to come; it is eminently racial discrimination of the worst sort. It targets individuals not by their conduct, but for facts they simply cannot change, namely, their skin. It is hard not to find it repugnant.
Rhodesia is also an interesting topic: a country as vanished now as Prussia was after the end of WWII.
Johnathan, is it possible for someone to assert that different groups of people have slightly different typical patterns of behavior without being to your mind a racist? I’m just curious.
South Africa has ironically seen an influx of poor Zimbabweans since the vile Mugabe regime
Sorry but who told you the Zimbabweans who traveled to SA were/are poor? Don’t make foolish assumptions. Some of them were simply moving to protect their business interests and/or invest somewhere else with a conducive market. Stereotyping Zimbabweans as poor people is a low.
If someone is genuinely a racist on the subject of black national governance standards are they necessarily also wrong about this?
JP can speak for himself, but I imagine he takes a similar view to me on this, a bit like the fact one can in theory be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic. In theory. Yet in reality there is a close-to-perfect correlation between proclaimed anti-Zionism & actual anti-Semitism, not 100%, but damn close.
Likewise people who focus on racial rather than other factors can logically do so without being ‘racist’ as such, and within a salon with folk I know, I have heard such discussions between people who are certainly not racists. Yet in the vast majority of cases, the overwhelming number of cases, such people are indeed racists. It need not logically be so, but in reality it is.
A stopped clock is also correct twice a day.
The South African government certainly seems to think most of them are, judging by their rhetoric over the last decade.
Some, sure.
US figures has Zimbabwe’s GDP per capita (PPP) as 201st out of 229 ranked globally. So yes, the vast majority of Zimbabweans are very poor indeed by international standards, and almost unimaginably so by modern First World standards.
What Perry de Havilland said.
As I said in response to a commenter’s statement that black people cannot run decent/prosperous countries, etc, and that there’re no examples of any such countries, there is the example of Botswana, to give one case that immediately springs to mind. So I find the immediate jump to “there is a simple explanation of why Africa is shit is because it is run by blacks” to suggest a fairly obvious racist impulse and I am going to call out those who make it unless they really do their homework.
I agree that the history of post-colonial Africa is, with certain exceptions, dire. But there are exceptions, and it is worth asking what lessons can be learned from these.
Others cases of decent/prosperous black-run and/or majority black-run jurisdictions:
Mauritius – successful, multi-ethnic, former colony with close Africa ties.
Namibia and Zambia appear to be doing okay.
Nigeria (at least those bits not menaced by Islamic terrorism) It is notoriously corrupt, but again, no different from many parts of the former Soviet Union.
In ancient times, places such as Mali were highly advanced and prosperous for their time, well up there with anything in Europe.
Black-run former colonies in other parts of the world:
Trinidad & Tobago; decent place, not much crime although there are issues. No worse, certainly, than many parts of central or Eastern Europe in that regard.
Barbados – reasonably well run place, popular tourist destination. Not that much crime.
Final point: it is not just enforcement of property rights, and the build-up of a large middle class, that is important. Equally vital is abandoning the culture of learned helplessness, of low expectations (again, not something confined to Africa).
Oh, and Brexit comes into this. One of the reasons I am in favour of leaving the EU, and of unilaterally scrapping import barriers, both of the tariff and non-tariff kind, is that such a policy should, in my view, go hand in hand with scrapping state-backed overseas aid. Trade, not aid, should be a big part of the UK foreign policy message going forward. Far too much aid has down the years ended up in offshore bank accounts, or spent on pointless vanity projects, or both.
One commenter here shrewdly noted how many of the Leftist black activists and politicians in South Africa and other places were taught by Western Marxists. A lot of the old post-colonial political class in Africa learned from socialist academics in places such as the London School of Economics, with malign effects. Imagine, if you can stand it, thousands of black Jeremy Corbyns and John MacDonalds pouring out of these places, and taking their mixture of cretinous economics, political cunning and love of the smell of cordite back to Africa.
Brian: Sorry but who told you the Zimbabweans who traveled to SA were/are poor? Don’t make foolish assumptions. Some of them were simply moving to protect their business interests and/or invest somewhere else with a conducive market. Stereotyping Zimbabweans as poor people is a low.
Well if there were lots of successful Zimbabwe citizens fleeing to SA as well as much poorer folk, that only reinforces my point that the appalling decision this week will see many more of South Africa’s more enterprising people – not just whites – leave. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I wonder how many Zimbabweans in SA are voting for the same policies that ruined their own country?
As for the racism discussion, I don’t have much to add but I do think it’s worth pointing out that a racial angle is pretty unavoidable here. The ANC said they’re confiscating white land – not bourgeois/kulak/capitalist land. The comparison with Corbyn is not entirely apt. In fact, for once, a comparison to Hitler might be justified.
Indeed, just as I have heard folks in various parts of the USA lamenting that white middle class people fleeing the left in California have a tendency to vote for Democrats advocating much the same policies in the state they move to.
Up to a point, Lord Copper. Yes, the racism of the South African government is indisputable, explicit and self-proclaimed in fact. But discussing racism online is a minefield, as it brings out racists of all colours like cockroaches emerging into a room once the lights are turned off. My views on hosting such discussions are quite well know in these parts, as is my propensity to kick/ban when certain lines get crossed.
The comparison with Corbyn is not entirely apt.
The point I was making was that JC wants to seize property without compensation and I suspect much of his motive is about class – he thinks owners of shares in private rail, gas or whatever are middle class people and that he is doing this for “the workers”. So in a way he is slicing up the population into groups, and basing policy on that.
So the comparison stands. Also, the idea that a government can, for any reason, seize property without compensation undermines the benefits of it. Look, to take a slightly different case, he called for empty homes owned by “the rich” to be seized in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire of last year, which he shamelessly exploited for political ends. He whipped up “ordinary” people into a frenzy, much as is going on in South Africa. In fact the more I think about this, the more apt my example in the OP is.
Where do you get that from? It’s not in the 2017 Labour Manifesto AFAICS.
Note the spelling of ‘license’. They talked about issuing bonds to exchange for shares at the GE and after. It’s all sounding pretty Venezuelan and virtually worthless, but not ‘without compensation‘.
Mr Ed, I may be partly mistaken here, but I haven’t seen anything to suggest that owners of shares in said businesses will get a market rate, so they will, to some degree, be forced to surrender assets at less than they could be worth.
This article will not reassure investors one jot.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41318453
JP,
My understanding is that a Labour government would ‘swap’ shares for bonds, which pay a notional rate of interest, so you have some government debt in place of an asset. Of course, to their hordes of supporters, it is a little disappointing not to be expropriating the kulaks and starving them to death, but it’s a start.
Ironically, when Trump made his “shithole” remark a month or so back, lots of middle-class South Africans, including many whites, took to Twitter to post photos of beautiful beaches, mountains, and savanna to prove him wrong. Somehow I don’t think Trump was referring to how a country looks. And I wonder how many of these people calling Trump an ignorant moron will be applying for asylum in the US in a few years?
Also, let me predict something: when the massacres start and whites start fleeing for their lives, expect western countries to erect all sorts of barriers and objections which didn’t exist until the moment the first white refugee turned up on their shores pleading for asylum.
Natalie’s comment on my last post about how knowing the evil of socialism allows her to see an explanation better-correlated with the facts than racism is relevant to some of the discussion above.
(It follows from her argument that teaching young people that socialism is great and should make things better in theory has a potential to push them towards racism when they grow up and encounter certain examples of socialism in practice. If it can’t be the changeover to socialism then it’s got to be some other aspect of the changeover, right?)
The simple explanation is that Africa is shit because it is run by Africans – i.e. people from Africa, with all which that implies with regard to that continent’s history (including colonialism*, for better and worse), and the resultant culture. I simply cannot see how skin color, or the shape of nose and hair come into it, but maybe I’m missing something “scientific”.
*Both overt (Western) and covert (Soviet).
The potential upside to all this is that Anglosphere countries (I don’t think the Dutch want the Boers) might get an influx of much needed conservative voters. Maybe Trump could send them all to some of the smaller Democratic states (like Massachusetts).
I’m stocking up on my favourite Pinot Noir from SA. Either won’t exist or will taste like piss in a few years.
Racism in this context is a red herring. It enables the ruling elite to hang all of the country’s ills on a politically marginal other and has the equally beneficial effect (to said elite) of allowing them to reward their followers. The commies in the old Soviet Union had to fabricate an other out of whole cloth (kulaks). In South Africa the baddies are obvious and have discernible material wealth. The problem is that when the farmland is gone, the next logical step is to appropriate the non-farm wealth. If your economic theory does not allow for economic expansion, then the only solution to staying in power is to rob Peter to pay Paul.
The ANC is also not going to anger the membership by pointing out just how nasty the tribes were to each other before and during the Imperial period. Blaming the white man serves many purposes here.
What I truly hate about all of this is how many people who know better, or who should, are feeding this nonsense. There is a marked lack of principle in the South African leadership.
OMG, this is brilliant! Watch the usual immigration pushers scrambling to come up with excuses for opposing this immigration, and don’t forget to invest in corn futures 😆
“But as I’ve noticed before from your comments, your disdain for black people is beyond argument, so I won’t waste further bandwidth responding to you. You’re a racist. ”
Must account for the mulata girlfriend sitting opposite me at breakfast this morning. I’ll tell her.
Took me a while to work out what you meant by the last paragraph and although I agree you have to consider these pesky things called facts.
Zimbabwe was a prosperous country, what changed?
South Africa is already heading downhill, what changed?
Africa has vast resources why can’t it look after itself?
I don’t believe it is the colour of TPTB there I believe it is the culture and what is the biggest influencer of culture?
” expect western countries to erect all sorts of barriers and objections which didn’t exist until the moment the first white refugee turned up on their shores pleading for asylum.”
Well of course – they have the same planned for us.
Now run by kleptocratic tribal racist kinda-sorta-socialists, rather that the previous far more successful and far less corrupt kinda-sorta-market economics.
Now run by kleptocratic racist kinda-sorta-socialists, rather that previous far more successful and less corrupt but still explicitly racist kinda-sorta-market economics.
Mostly run by kleptocratic tribal kinda-sorta-socialists of various ilks. But actually some bits can look after themselves, either due to oil or being somewhat less kleptocratic. Shitholes have varying degrees of shittiness. Also, natural resources do not always lead to economic success (‘the Devil’s Excrement’), and not just in Africa: compare Japan (not over burdened with resources) with, say, Russia or Venezuela. Indeed, oil can finance a governmental elite and thereby obviate any need for them to seek a reasonable form of governance.
History.
Must account for the mulata girlfriend sitting opposite me at breakfast this morning. I’ll tell her.
Do so. Have you told her about your view that black people cannot run a decent country? I am sure that’ll go over really well.
Why do you assume she wouldn’t agree?
Why do you assume she wouldn’t agree?
In my experience, most people of mixed race or a racial group of any kind don’t take kindly to being told by someone they aren’t up to running anything very complicated. It is one thing to be a racist, another to actually accept it. Your experience may be different to mine and that you come across people who have this sort of racial self-esteem deficiency who believe they ought to be run by those from other, supposedly superior racial groups.
In any event, BiS’s stating that he has a girlfriend of a certain background hardly even begins to get him off the hook for stating that there are no countries in the world, ever, that have been run by blacks that are any good. “I have a mixed-race girlfriend….” So bloody what?
Ok so if someone having a girlfriend or wife of a certain background has no bearing on whether this person is a racist then by the same token someone who has a policy of not dating girls of a certain background likewise also has no bearing on whether or not that person is racist, right? Logical consistency demands an absurd position to adopt another absurd position.
If not then why not? Why does a personal policy of not dating, for example blacks, contribute to the case to be made that said person is racist against blacks while if the same person dates a black woman that has no bearing on whether he is racist against blacks?
@tph That’s a fantastic rant.
I recently ranted to some visiting French academics that the Cockneys are probably the only English victims of ethnic cleansing. I was amazed to have a professor from Education chime in to say he was one of them (and he thoroughly agreed)!
@everyone else
Can we get off the racism kick (Perry’s rules?) and stick to (recent) culture?
It only takes three generations to ruin a culture and a thousand years (perhaps I exaggerate a little) to build one.
That asymmetry is, I would argue, the greatest source of agony and immiseration in the world.
Most African nations are currently (lightly!) genocidal kleptocracies (even Botswana, despite it’s wonderful PR in The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency series, has a shit record in how it treats the San/Bushmen/!Kung) or mindbogglingly inefficient and corrupt bureaucracies.
I don’t think that was always true- one might mention several early church fathers such as Augustine of Hippo, Origen and Athanasius as indicative that this was not always so.
To what extent Marxist sh*theads from the West are to blame I do not know. But given their power-seeking racist history, I would suspect their influence is substantial.
Jonathan, BiS girlfriend has nothing to do with black Africans being able or unable to run a decent government – she is his girlfriend, not a minister in his cabinet. But then his thinking that black Africans can’t run a decent government has nothing to do with racism – and he may well be correct, although I have no idea whether he is. My understanding is that the nation-state model was not native on that continent, and was more or less implanted, if not imposed on it by the West. Maybe that is the reason it doesn’t work, and maybe it is not. But it has nothing to do with complexity: tribal societies are no less complex than nation states, it’s just the complexity is different due to different dynamics.
In any case, BiS never struck me as racist. But even if he is, and even though I think racism is a sign of a rather primitive thinking, I am a bit tired of the general hysteria over it (even when it is real, let alone made-up as is often the case). Just my two cents.
Oh, and yes, I’ve heard Arabs (although not blacks) say that they are unable to run a decent country, and they seem to be correct. Nothing wrong with some healthy self-criticism.
Ethiopia. A country that has been around for a long time. They are a relatively well-run country, but have suffered from ‘bad luck’: Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, a marxist, took over in 1974. He and the marxist government were replaced in 1992 by the Ethiopian Revolutionary People’s Democratic Front (EPRDF). The EPRDF is not marxist, merely socialist or rather, soft-socialist; the CIA Factbook states “is a one-party state with a planned economy.” None of the other political parties seem to get enough mp’s to be more than a junior partner to the EPRDF. The EPDRF is facing a lot more opposition now, but the country most likely will not go the way of Zimbabwe or Venezuela. Or S. A.
“Bad luck” in the Heinlein sense. The EPRDF is not a transition to good luck, but is better than they were.
You mention this, and tph spoke of the same sort of thing occurring (or beginning) in 1950.
For the benefit of those of us not well versed in England’s history, what are you talking about?
ns,
Not those splitters, the Ethiopian Revolutionary People’s Democratic Front! The true path is the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, the EPRDF.
I can quite clearly recall the triumph of the Front, I was watching Channel 4 news with the Sage, and when it was announced that they had taken power, he chuckled, saying ‘Now there’s a name that inspires confidence.’.
Oh Noes!! I typed the wrong name!! Please note, though, that I did get the acronym right! Some of the time: EPRDF and EPDRF at different places. We all know who the true enemy is: The Ethiopian People’s Democratic Revolutionary Front.
I’ve heard Italians say pretty much the same thing — but only when not too many foreigners are present. But that was before the recent wave of (mostly Arab+Black) immigration: now Italians probably feel better about themselves, by comparison.
I also read somewhere that Whites visiting sub-Saharan Africa are often surprised to hear Black Africans talk openly about Whites being more intelligent than them. That must be quite embarrassing.
Somewhat OT: my personal fave is the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico. Is it an oxymoron, revolution and institution don’t really go together, or is it truth in advertising – once they’re in, you’ll never be rid of them…
Another bit of Monty Python wisdom seems relevant to the issue of ability to run a decent country:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9NAiMBRBGg
Snorri, there is only one country run by Italians, but several run by both African blacks and Arabs.
One of the reasons that President Zuma fell is that his free university education plan was clearly unaffordable – but what has the new President done? The new President is going to KEEP the free university education plan – he is just going to shove up taxes in a futile effort to try and pay for it.
As for land. Yes there were people in most of South Africa before the Europeans came from the sea, but these people were the Hottentots and the Bushmen, NOT the Bantu tribes (they came from the north). In short the entire land confiscation plan is based upon a LIE. Contrary to the lies being taught, most of this land did NOT belong to the Bantu tribes.
The Wobbly Guy:
How very dare you! Movie makers did NOT create Wakanda! It’s existed (in comics) for decades!
And the comics version seems a heck of a lot more interesting & complex than what’s in the MCU.
@bobby b
(Takes deep breath and feels quite self-conscious. Respectfully asks other English Samizdatistas to correct and amplify what he says).
I suppose you could start with the policy of transportation. A large proportion of those transported to Australia were Cockneys (born within the sound of Bow Bells).
If you’ve seen Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins, then Bert the chimney sweep (played by Dick van Dyke with an execrable accent) and the pearly Kings and Queens are Cockneys. The connection with Australia can be heard in the Australian accent(s) which has/have many similarities with Cockney accent (but not Cockney pronunciation: dropped “h”, glottal stop (butter becomes “bu-er”), dark L (“Wallsall” is something like “Wa-w-saw”), a version of the “English r” and “th-fronting”: the substitution of “f” for “th” so “three” becomes something like “fwee” or French pronunciation “fouille”. There are also some elements of Yiddish (because settlers from Eastern Europe and later refugees from Germany etc would fetch up in the cheap East End (see below))).
In modern-ish usage (prior to being cast out) and self-identification, Cockney essentially is East-Ender: the traditional core districts of the East End (of London) are Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Spitalfields, Stepney, Wapping, Limehouse, Poplar, Clerkenwell, Aldgate, Shoreditch, Millwall, Cubitt Town, Hackney, Hoxton, Bow and Mile End.
And now one can see the ethnic cleansing bit (in a bit).
The East End was hammered in WW2. It was official (but secret, for obvious reasons) policy to mislead German rocketeers about where the V1 and V2 rockets were landing in London to encourage them to undershoot central London. The East End was so badly hit that the Queen Mother (mother of the current Queen) said after Buckingham Palace was hit, “I’m glad we’ve been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.”
Mass evacuation, with significant numbers of children moving from the East End was tried at least twice in WW2 and there was substantial destruction of housing and infrastructure in German bombing raids. This evacuation process also meant that many middle-class provincial English people met working-class Cockneys for the first time (and were often quite shocked).
So after the Labour landslide in 1945 and amid plans for a massive rebuilding of London, Government at national and local level started to move the Cockneys out. Massive demolition and rebuilding of “social housing” started from 1946. This link bears extensive study. If you read it with the most jaundiced possible eye, I don’t think you’ll be going too far wrong. What is said here is what the bien-pensant leftists want you to believe. The truth is rather different IMHO. So ” As ever after a period of destruction, architects and planners saw the opportunity for re-modelling at the same time. And while all this was going on, the population re-organised and rejuvenated itself.” should be read as “socialist architects and planners saw a Luftwaffe-sent opportunity to remodel London in a socialist-realist reworking”. The “ducking and diving“, self-reliant, anti-authoritarian Cockney was not what was wanted in a post-armageddon, socialist utopia. “In fact, many Londoners moved out to the eight ‘New Towns’ such as Stevenage and Harlow [in Essex] after the war.”, mainly because their council-houses and rental property, when not already destroyed by German bombs, was razed by British planners.
Then “Within just a few years of the end of the War, the cultural landscape of London started to change too. On 21 June 1948 a ship called the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury with almost 500 Jamaicans on board. They were the first of waves of African and Asian immigrants over the next few years. Some were coming to join or rejoin the RAF, while others were escaping unemployment at home or simply wanted to visit ‘the mother country’.” Loyal members of the Commonwealth/Empire and pro-British immigrants, these people initially provided some competition for housing. Then (in my opinion) they exhibited key characteristics which made them infinitely preferable to the Cockneys-they were “natural” Labour voters (partly because they were in favour of social benefits and partly because they experienced some antipathy/racial animus which the Labour Party and voters sincerely opposed).
I believe that the original phenomenon was accidental, but the left rapidly realised that ousting the Cockneys paid substantial electoral rewards. “Some of those arriving on the Windrush were given temporary accommodation at Clapham Common and eventually formed a community in nearby Brixton. Others settled in Notting Hill, now home of the annual Carnival celebrating the cultures and traditions of London’s Afro-Caribbean communities.”
Subsequent waves of immigration from other former Imperial possessions ousted more and more tranches of Cockneys, with perhaps the last wave being the Bangladeshis of Tower Hamlets.
The last portion of cleansing was the repurposing of Stratford East and West Ham with the building of the 2012 Olympic stadium and surrounding Olympic infrastructure. This resulted in many evictions, including (I believe ) the last grouping of Cockneys in East London.
@bobby b
Oh dear! “Your comment is awaiting moderation”.
Aha. Just like tph’s comment yesterday, which appeared (long enough for me to read it and comment about it), and then disappeared. And then re-appeared.
Thanks! That’s a chapter of history I was completely unfamiliar with (and now tph’s post makes more sense to me, too.)
Now I have to go read some links, and then read your comment again . . . .
It is a bit disingenuous to defend present property holdings as a matter of philosophical principles when those holdings were achieved in large part by flagrant violation of those principles.
Whatever may be said of the original land claims estabished during settlement, there is no doubt that for three generations or more, black South Africans were subject to slow-motion confiscation of their property,
Also: In 1953, Robert Heinlein visited South Africa. He heard this joke (from whites):
White housewife says to her black servant: “Sixpence, you wouldn’t cut my throat?”
“Oh, no – I cut throat of lady next door. Her boy cut your throat.”
There was a joke from the early 1980s about South Africa. The government scientists invented a machine that could see into the future. The Cabinet assembled for its test. The President asked it ‘Will Whites still run South Africa in the year 2000?‘. They held their breath as the machine whirred, clicked and computed, before sputtering out its answer…
”Yes”.
A huge cheer went up amid much embracing. As the euphoria turned to bubbling confidence, the Minister of Agriculture asked if he could have a go, as the Boers were farmers after all. He walked up to the machine and asked ‘Boy, how much will a tonne of wheat cost in the year 2000?‘.
Again the machine whirred, clicked and computed, and then spat out its answer.
‘253 rubles.’.
Clovis, many thanks for that informative comment. Question: what is the explanation for the 1945 Labor landslide? I can imagine they promised voters the moon and a chicken in every pot and all that – but still, a landslide?
@Alisa
(Apologies, been at work and only just got back to Samizdata.)
I am not a historian and wasn’t alive then but I think that for once Wikipedia is not far off on a political issue (stopped clock?).
I know from talking to my father-in-law that most civilians and many servicemen (both sexes and most from ranks up to colonel) believed that while Churchill was a good-to-brilliant warleader he might not be a good peacetime leader and that socialism and increased egalitarianism was the only way forward and the only possible payback to the millions who had done and suffered so much. The choice in 1939 had been “between fascism and communism” and `fascism had been defeated’.
Also, central planning, presided over by many Labour politicians, had “worked” in WW2 (and most of the British population were used to living in something which verged upon a police state), so `why not use it heavily now to rebuild an impoverished and massively damaged country?’.
There was no way that the majority of the voting population would tolerate the country reverting to the position pre-1939 and that meant the Tories could FOAD. The armed services are believed to have voted Labour overwhelmingly.
Thank you Clovis. That is the explanation I’ve heard (or read?), but although it did make sense and still does, somehow the sense is not complete. And, now that you’ve explained some of the cockney history and culture, it makes even a bit less sense. But like you I was not alive then, and I am not even British – so I am most likely missing something important.
I have no idea of the accuracy of it, but there was a scene in an episode of Foyle’s War where a boilerplate socialist says to a cracked Lord (who is living in a cottage at the bottom of his own estate after his house was requisitioned) something to the effect of:
I wish I could remember the exact quote, but it had a particular resonance for me. I think Clovis has it: Fatigue, grievance, entitlement and envy all conspired to put the biggest shower of bastards into office the UK has ever seen. One of them even gave the designs for a Rolls Royce jet engine to the Soviets, which they used to build the Mig 15 and generally terrorise the skies. He should have been hung.
Yes Jaded, I am probably underestimating the level of fatigue and grievance, while also choosing to doubt the entitlement part…
@Alisa
I honestly don’t know. I’m going to try and stress the total state bit: the country was completely controlled from top to bottom by a humourless bureaucracy.
Internment, expropriation – of houses, land and anything else which could help the war effort, (involuntary) billeting of refugees, servicemen and agricultural workers with families, rationing of everything including animal feed.
Long digression: my wife’s grandmother was living in a house with some land in Hampshire. Her husband was serving in his second world war and she was filling out a rationing form which demanded to know exactly how many animals she had. She looked up from her desk and saw two wild pigs in her garden, so added to the list “two pigs; migratory”. For the next five and a half years she received rations for two pigs.
No signposts or car lights or streetlights.
The control was so absolute that “after the war, MI5 established that just one Abwehr agent had operated [in the UK] without detection, and he had shot himself in an air raid shelter in Cambridge after running out of money and food“!
In the first three days of official evacuation, 1.5 million people were moved (about 1 in 20 of the population)! Orwell wrote 1984 based on his experiences delivering propaganda and attending meetings in room 101 in the BBC.
To get a feel for what it was like- the desperation, the common purpose and the control – I would recommend the excellent television series Foyle’s War (already mentioned by Jaded) and Blackout and All Clear, the brilliant two novel series (covering WW2 in London and sometimes the rest of the UK) by the exquisite writer, Connie Willis (she of the tragedy Doomsday Book and the brilliantly slapstick To Say Nothing of the Dog (nad yes, bonus marks if you spotted that that is the subtitle of Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat)).
@Alisa
“Your comment is awaiting moderation” again!
Too many links, obviously.
Thank you for the explanation Clovis, and for the tips – I will check out the series and the books.
I am now checking Wikipedia on the pre-WWII period, specifically Chamberlain’s term, and it seems that domestically the Tories were not all that far to the right from Labor (yes, it does ring a bell, several in fact). So I guess after the war the voters must have figured that the difference is not going to be so huge anyway.
I sure did 🙂
@Alisa
domestically the Tories were not all that far to the right from Labor
I didn’t know that.
One learns a lot here.
Bonus marks have been awarded, BTW!
Re slapstick, To Say Nothing of the Dog is, on reflection, a classic farce for the written page.
But not so absolute that Soviet agents could not operate.
@Mr Ed
But not so absolute that Soviet agents could not operate.
Absolutely right. But they were “our allies” and “socialists” too. So that was alright, wasn’t it?
It was a total state, near enough, but I didn’t say it was impartial.
Clovis,
Indeed, but they weren’t our ‘allies’ until around 3.30pm on 22nd June 1941 of course, they supplied a lot of the oil that fuelled the German rampage through Europe and the Luftwaffe for the Battle of Britain. Yet they couldn’t find a Soviet spy or agent when they were in plain sight.
WW2 was not quite a suicide mission for the UK, more like an act of self-mutilation, but the threat of Nazi murder was a worse alternative.
@Mr Ed
I should have emphasised the sarcasm more!
Many Labour politicians were (at least) fellow travellers as were a lot of civil servants. Then when the USSR switched to the Allies, covert support could become explicit. No need to track down “our friends’ agents” after all.
WW2 was not quite a suicide mission for the UK, more like an act of self-mutilation
is spot-on.
Some amplification
This excerpt from Sidney Smith’s imaginary summary of a judge’s sentence is perhaps just a little rosy 🙂 , but worth remembering: (quoted from memory)
More generally, ethnic cleansing and sentencing for crimes proven by jury trial are not quite the same thing.
The strategic decision to use intelligence to ensure that the V weapons did not hit the targets that the Germans desired them to hit, and incidentally to reduce statistically the number killed is rational and defensible. (Of course, it was tough if you were one of the statistically-fewer that was killed.) The queen mother’s statement you quote was made in the blitz, years before the V weapons. Evacuations were intended to save lives and were voluntary.
Notoriously, ‘slum clearance’ programmes here and in the USA have sometimes been about expelling the poor and at others subjected them to the dominating visions of socialists, statists and post-war architects infatuated with the idea of their buildings dominating their occupants. The cockney experience after WWII was shared by others. Your point about Labour discovering the greater political benefits of replacing those who had often voted for them with imported voters is also significant.
@ Niall K
Thank you.
I will (partially) stand by the transportation bit. You are absolutely right, but of course transportation was a penalty for some very mild crimes indeed and if you tie it in with the not very law-abiding Cockney culture the effect is the same.
I didn’t say that the V-weapon deception was indefensible, although I think you will find that the purpose was to reduce damage to vital “infrastructure” rather than to reduce the number of casualties. The point was that it had the effect that it did and set the scene and helped provide the pretext/reason for the conscious version post WW2.
You are also quite right about the Blitz/Queen Mother quote. The destruction at that point was very bad too but it was not caused by the V-weapons.
As an Australian (well, at least brought up in the UK by Australians) who is also a fan of Sidney Smith, I recommend you don’t bring up that quote in Australia- well, not unless you’re through the departure gate at the airport. Folk memory is rather different.
It’s not for nothing that Heinlein borrowed the term “new chum” from the Australians to use in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. My family’s understanding (passed down from at least my g-g-grandfather) is that you didn’t bother learning a new arrival’s name for the first few weeks because you expected not to need it after that.
And with reason I grant you, Clovis. I knew enough about “the fatal shore” to know that my characterising Smith’s quote as “perhaps just a little rosy” was an example of English understatement which deserved a smiley. Many reached the happy end described by Sidney, but only if they survived the harsh beginning.
Because the V1s were at first thought to be uninterceptable, and the V2s genuinely were throughout, the Germans launched them in the daytime, when people were working and central London was crowded. While infrastructure mattered, I believe the stats of “where would impacts cause less casualties (within the radius we could fool the Germans into targeting)” will stand up.
My mother worked in central London. She recalled days (one in particular) when it seemed the V2s were dropping like rain all over her area and she just had to ignore it and get on with her job. I wonder about the following (I haven’t checked – the idea just occurred while writing this). It took some time for the intelligence services to trick the Germans into retargeting (they were feeding them reports of adjusted impact locations, so needed many impact locations to make a valid number of misleading reports and initially some were too well reported on the news so could not be used). As the war got worse and German production fell off from the rate at which launches started, I wonder what proportion were then redirected as opposed to fired earlier and aimed where Hitler intended. Maybe the burden was not so unequally shared.
Clovis, I watched the first episode of Foyle’s War last night – it was quite good, thanks.