The End of South Africa
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by Josh Gelernter February 7, 2015 4:00 AM
White South Africans are in grave danger; there may be a solution.
Things are very bad in South Africa. When the scourge of apartheid was
finally smashed to pieces in 1994, the country seemed to have a bright
future ahead of it. Eight years later, in 2002, 60 percent of South
Africans said life had been better under apartheid. Hard to believe —
but that’s how bad things were in 2002. And now they’re even worse.
When apartheid ended, the life expectancy in South Africa was 64 — the
same as in Turkey and Russia. Now it’s 56, the same as in Somalia. There
are 132.4 rapes per 100,000 people per year, which is by far the
highest in the world: Botswana is in second with 93, Sweden in third
with 64; no other country exceeds 32.
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Before the end of apartheid, South African writer Ilana Mercer moved,
with her family, to Israel; her father was a vocal opponent of
apartheid, and was being harassed by South African security forces. A
2013 piece on World Net Daily quotes Mercer as saying, with all her
anti-apartheid chops, that “more people are murdered in one week under
African rule than died under detention of the Afrikaner government over
the course of roughly four decades.” The South African government
estimates that there are 31 murders per 100,000 people per year. Or
about 50 a day. That would make South Africa the tenth most murderous
country in the world, outpacing Rwanda, Mexico, and both Sudans. And
that’s using South Africa’s official estimates — outside groups put the
murder rate 100 percent higher. Choosing not to trust the South African
authorities is a safe bet — South Africa’s government, which has been
led by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress since the end of
apartheid, is outstandingly incompetent and corrupt.
Of course, de facto one-party rule doesn’t promote integrity.
Unemployment is 25 percent, but President Jacob Zuma, of the ANC,
recently spent $24 million of public money to add a pool and
amphitheater to his private home. Not long after the story broke, he was
elected to a second five-year term. Think-tank theorist Leon Louw, who
helped defeat apartheid, calls the crime and corruption “a simple
manifestation of the breakdown of the state. The government is just
appallingly bad at everything it does: education, healthcare,
infrastructure, security, everything that is a government function is in
shambles.”
He adds — citing “anecdotal data” — that “most people don’t bother to
report crimes.”
It appears that South Africa is about the most dangerous place you can
be outside a war zone. What’s more worrying is the chance that it might
become a war zone. Nelson Mandela was able to hold the “rainbow nation”
together, but he’s passed on. Now, according to the human-rights
organization Genocide Watch, South Africa is at pre-genocide stage 6 of
8: “Preparation.”
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With the country skidding toward anarchy, naturally, the people want to
know whom they should blame. In 2010, a prominent member of the African
National Congress named Julius Malema revived an old anti-apartheid song
whose lyrics — says Genocide Watch — call for genocide: “Shoot the
Boer, shoot, shoot.” “Boer” means “farmer” in Afrikaans; colloquially,
it means “white South African.” Malema was ejected from the ANC and
convicted of hate speech; he has since formed a new opposition party,
the Economic Freedom Fighters, which is currently the third largest
party in parliament. Seven months after Malema’s conviction, President
Zuma sang the genocide song himself, leading a crowd in a musical chant:
“We are going to shoot them with machine guns, they are going to run . .
. The cabinet will shoot them, with the machine gun . . . Shoot the
Boer, we are going to hit them, they are going to run.” Watch the video
on YouTube — it is surreal. Nelson Mandela’s successor, the president of
South Africa, addresses a crowd of — according to the Guardian — tens
of thousands, in a giant stadium, and calls for the murder of what
amounts to about 10 percent of his constituents. Among the audience,
uniformed members of the military dance.
According to Genocide Watch, the murder rate among South African white
farmers is four times higher than among South Africans en masse. That
rate increased every month after President Zuma sang his song, for as
long as accurate records are available: The police have been ordered to
stop reporting murders by race. The police have also disarmed and
disbanded groups of farmer-minutemen, organized to provide mutual
security. Consequently, says Genocide Watch, “their families” have been
“subjected to murder, rape, mutilation and torture.” Meanwhile,
“high-ranking ANC government officials . . . continuously refer to
Whites as ‘settlers.’”
White South Africans have been native for more than 350 years; whites
were farming South Africa before Newton discovered gravity. If, however,
no length of time erases the stain of colonization, it should be noted
that the dominant Bantu peoples of today’s South Africa displaced the
Khoisan peoples who lived in South Africa before them. The
archaeological record, evidently, is unclear — but it seems that the
first Bantu appeared in what is now South Africa about 400 years before
the first European. A long time, but not time immemorial.
Obviously, this weekend, there are other groups at greater risk of
genocide than white South Africans — the Yazidis, for instance, who are
in the direst conceivable circumstance, surrounded by ISIS. Who, without
Western help, may not survive the month. As disinclined as the West is
to help the Yazidis, imagine how uninterested it will be in helping
white South Africans, a group still suffused with the stench of
apartheid. Four thousand white farmers have already been killed,
according to The Times of London. Maybe the British will help, or the
Dutch. In the meantime, endangered South Africans might try this:
They could take advantage of their geography and set up a
Singapore-style city-state. With foreign investment, they could purchase
a city-sized portion of coastal land and assert independence from the
national government. First they’ll want to hire some sympathetic
military as a temporary security force. They can set up a low-tax,
low-interference economic zone that can compete with Durban for its
tremendously large volume of shipping traffic. As South Africa has
fallen apart, Durban has slipped off the list of the world’s 50 largest
container ports. But whatever happens to South Africa, the south of
Africa will remain a vital point in world shipping. In fact, it’s only
going to become vital-er, as trade between Brazil and Asia increases.
Singapore, at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, built itself as a site of
entrepĂ´t trade — exporting imports. It has parlayed that into one of the
world’s most advanced economies, a global center of innovation and free
enterprise.
A new South African city-state could join Singapore and Hong Kong as
centers of trade and investment — starting with the investment that
would be necessary to build a brand new city-state out of thin air. But
one has only to look at Abu Dhabi, Dubai, or any number of Chinese
cities to see how fast a city can be built with some will and capital. A
South African enclave could attempt its own “Taiwan miracle.”
And as this new city-state developed, it would necessarily boost the
surrounding economy, and provide jobs for tens of thousands. It might be
a fantastical idea. But it might be able to help South Africa back from
the brink.
And, like Singapore, it could develop a serious self-defense force,
modeled, like Singapore’s, on the Israel Defense Forces. So, if
necessary, it could help prevent a genocide. As a bonus.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398136/end-south-africa-josh-gelernter
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398136/end-south-africa-josh-gelernter
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