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Wednesday, 21 August 2019

South Africa – Pretend Marxist Neo-Chiefs Practice Destructive Capitalism

August 17, 2019
Let’s set the social scene with a video from Vesti News:
People are getting accustomed to living this way. The Neo-Chiefs in the Ruling Party do not care for the minorities, and neither do they care for their own. In the final section, we will return to social issues.
Mentioning a second introductory point may be timely for a watch list. If real trouble strikes in the Persian Gulf and with Iran, the route around the Horn of Africa passing South Africa, may become of strategic significance.
The recent May elections.
48 political parties contested the 2019 elections The results were:
– The governing African National Congress (ANC) won its smallest percentage of votes for national office ever, reflecting the worst performance of this party in any national election since 1994. It still won 57.51 percent of the vote.
– The DA (Democratic Alliance) won 20.76 percent.
– The EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) won 10.79 percent.
– The remaining forty-five parties together won 10.94 percent, though most of them did not win enough to earn a seat.
– The ANC won eight of the nine provincial legislatures; the EFF retained its position as Official Opposition in Limpopo and the North West, beating the DA to second place in Mpumalanga.
– The DA obtained a second place in five provinces won by the ANC.
– In KwaZulu-Natal, the Inkatha Freedom Party beat the DA to second place for the first time since 2014 and grew to 3.38% on a national level.
– In the Western Cape, the only province not won by the ANC, the DA declined from 59.38% to 55.45%.
– The ruling ANC slipped to holding 230 parliament seats, while the main opposition DA now holds 84, the EFF holds 44 seats (with some wiggling and jiggling after the elections that changed a few seats but not materially).
To make these results more understandable for the larger world, the ANC is supposed to be the centrists (but they are not, they are the neo-chiefs), the DA is supposed to be the progressives, and the EFF is clearly the challengers and very far left. The small splinter parties represent a spectrum, including the right. https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/316134/south-african-national-election-2019-final-results/
Shortly after the elections and as is customary, Cyril Ramaphosa (now the 2nd richest man in the country) was again elected President and presented his State of the Nation Address that immediately was described as underwhelming. https://www.thebricspost.com/ramaphosas-state-of-the-nation-address-underwhelms/
The Cabinet changes after the State of the Nation address were described with ‘cautious optimism.’ https://www.thebricspost.com/new-south-african-cabinet-welcomed-with-cautious-optimism/
Ramaphosa’s speech reads like a Christmas tree, all kinds of lights flickering, and will last about as long as a Christmas tree.  This is simply a grab-bag of wish-list promises. He is going to do just everything! It is a pity that the country’s internal education does not supply the people with the ability to do what Ramaphosa’s says he wants to do. Again, he links everything to land redistribution in his opening paragraph, while the problems in the country are much more serious.
“We gather here at the start of the 6th Democratic Parliament, 106 years to the day after the Natives Land Act – one of the most devastating acts of dispossession, pain and humiliation – came into force. “http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/state-nation-address-president-cyril-ramaphosa%2C-parliament%2C-cape-town 
These neo-chiefs are beginning to sound like they have taken advertising lessons from Holocaust promoters and certainly not taking cognizance of who did what in history. These people that said vile things as depicted in the image on the right, are not in the country any longer; they are long dead and so is apartheid.
In South Africa, where trucks moving goods and food traveling the main North/South Highway (N2) are being pelted with petrol bombs, Ramaphosa wants to build a new smart city, just like in China.  He wants to bring in high speed rail, save the world, cut crime only by 50% percent, redistribute land and just about destroy the ability for food production, while, as is discussed under economy, the youth unemployment rate is 50% and the educational standards are exceedingly poor. Smart cities need engineers, software engineers, people who understand math and science and a host of other skills. Needless to say, the skill-set is just not there, and nothing serious is being done to materially educate people, let alone the electricity to support this notion.  Listening to the State of the Nation, one can only smack your head against a brick wall and say: “Mr Ramaphosa, I’m very happy that you saw smart cities and fast trains in China. But this is a trailing indicator of a 40+ year program of poverty eradication and education. This program is what you should have looked at and this is what you should dream about first. The Smarts and the Speed will Follow if you create a structural base, and we don’t see any of that! All we see, is a crumbling state and infrastructure.”
The initial election of Cyril Ramaphosa as president was covered for The Saker Blog here.
And even though there was a positive feeling in some parts of the country when Ramphosa was first elected, we will soon see that there is very little positivity left.  Even Al Jazeera is listing Ramaphosa’s current problems with sheer graft.
So, let us summarize and highlight:
  • As we move from the hard election results and to discussing South Africa and BRICS, we have a Russian news report unashamedly calling the killings of white farmers “Ethnic Cleansing.” This is in the open now.
  • And then, from China, we have this from the current Chinese ambassador to South Africa.  “Ramaphosa is the “last hope of this country,” Lin Songtian, the Chinese ambassador to South Africa, said in a Reuters interview.”
And the commentary on that:
  • “When the leader of a country starts getting, from abroad, compliments and expressions of support against rival factions — especially from a Chinese diplomat schooled to be studiously even-handed in public — it’s a sure indication that they think he is buried in the political crap. ”  https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/the-timidity-of-sas-last-hope
South Africa in BRICS
Note that the previous section commenting on the recent elections contains two links, both from The BRICS post, and in each instance, not very flattering or with high enthusiasm. Is this what we can accept as the real sense from the other BRICS partners toward South Africa? Is South Africa the heavy brick that drags down BRICS? Certain forces seem to think so, as there is internal resistance against Brics – Gangsters and Banksters, the “Break the BRICS Coalition.”
As we do not have a cohesive society in the country, this gets complex. The understanding about BRICS in the country is abysmal. This, interestingly enough, illustrates the ideological schism existent for many years within South Africa where the previous dictatorial white government were aligned with the west during the cold war and in its denouement of anything USSR or Chinese at the time, but the black community saw especially the USSR style communist ideology as their only hope for their future; an important point to remember if one looks at South Africa today. This schism is still alive and appears in the strangest of places, especially if a traditional Marxist tells you how bad Russia and China is. The video below will illustrate.
“On Thursday 26 July 2018 different formations calling themselves “Break the BRICS Coalition” marched to the Sandton Convention Centre, the venue of the 10th BRICS Summit. The march was a protest against what the coalition calls the capitalist nature of the BRICS states, their anti-working class behavior, and their environmentally destructive policies.”
As can be seen from the first part of the video, the leader of this coalition displays a breathtaking ignorance of the real conditions within China and Russia today, and he carries with him old western cold war ideas. The commentary is valuable however, as it illustrates the general state of education of the population, either for or against a non-existent notion of ‘communism’, but in other circles, talking up Marxism.
The overall interesting question is: Where does South Africa really stand in the move towards a multipolar world system? This anti-Brics coalition leader has some good ideas on that, and indeed, the start of the Free Trade African wide agreement is a good idea. In contrast to the first part of the conversation, which is old cold war rhetoric, this part of the interview starts at time marker 11:38.
BRICS Leaders Are Reinforcing, Not Replacing, the Global System of Power
Patrick Bond (August 2018)
In addition to the internal pushback against BRICS, there is almost symmetrical pushback against what is called the 4th Industrial Revolution. Frequently companies cannot modernize, as modern equipment is broken by workers, set on fire and otherwise tampered with under the slogan “This 4th Industrial Revolution will Take our Jobs.” (Now think of the Ramaphosa promise of a smart city and high speed rail and you will get an idea of how far removed his inauguration speech is from reality on the ground).
What is South Africa’s real role in BRICS? The reality becomes subsumed with all kinds of promises and flowery descriptions.  This study gives an overview:  https://www.unav.edu/documents/16800098/17755721/DT-01-2019_South-Africa_ENG+%281%29.pdf
From this China Daily report, it seems to hinge around the concept of a ‘gateway to Africa.’ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-09/15/content_13689717.htm
Studying these two documents and others, it seems as if South Africa is just ballast, only present as part of the ‘Global South’ sphere in BRICS, more for the investment opportunities it offers to the other BRICS countries, instead of anything more substantial that the state may provide to the BRICS coalition itself.
One may argue that they are in BRICS to stop them from being in any other alliance.
Nevertheless, this is the formal governmental description, and we will see if it makes sense when we look at the next section on the economy; specifically, the upbeat job creation scenario envisaged in the light of active ‘Staatskaping’ or State Capture.
“Professor Wang Yong, in his 2012 Economic Diplomacy Programme paper titled: South Africa’s role in BRICS and the G20 summed up South Africa’s unique role in BRICS when he wrote: South Africa is in a position to make unique contributions, particularly in terms of development of the BRICS Africa agenda, promoting global economic governance reforms, and institution of the BRICS as a credible international organization”.
“Already, these five BRICS countries account for 40 percent of the world population, and as of this year, their combined nominal GDP amounted to US$18.6 trillion, about 23.2% of the gross world product.
Trade between the five countries has doubled in seven years, ballooning from R203 billion in 2010 to R462 billion last year.
South Africa’s membership of BRICS also gallops towards the realization of the country’s National Development Plan mandate of eliminating poverty and the reduction of inequality by 2030. This is aligned with BRICS’ five pillars of priority.
Investment deals between South Africa and the BRICS partners have reached fever pitch, with China leading the way. Several Chinese billion-dollar firms have headed south in recent times. Among them, mobile and green energy companies such as Hisense, FAW, Beijing Automobile International Corporation, Phalabora Mining Company, China Longyuan Power Group.
A PriceWaterCoopers (PwC) report recently showed that the bilateral trade between Pretoria and New Delhi has grown by 400% between 2004 and 2014. According to the report, the investment deals were in the environmental, financial services, mining, pharmaceuticals, automotive, and information technology sectors.
All this could mean one thing – the much-needed job creation. According to the PwC report, the R50 billion investments came with 18,000 jobs in tow.”  https://www.sanews.gov.za/features-south-africa/sa-worthy-member-brics
Let’s move on to the economy and see if we can find those 18,000 jobs.
The Economy is not a bright spot, BRICS, or no BRICS.
We start with a confused ideology. Black Agenda Radio in the US hit it exactly right on most points excepting two.  They say:
“South Africa is the only place in the world where the entire Black political class speaks in the language of Marxism-Leninism, even when they are in cahoots with Big Capital.”
The two points:
First – The wealth of the country is no longer centered in white hands and Black Agenda Radio presents as if the EFF are genuine Marxists. They are not.  They are instead the quasi-military wing of the ANC itself, and a violent grouping deeply involved in State Capture. They are now seeking a larger role and are disassociating themselves from the ANC, as the ‘real revolutionaries’. Yet even in this disassociation, the ideological lies are clear:
Get rich or lie trying: Why ANC millionaire Julius Malema posed as a radical.  https://libcom.org/library/get-rich-or-lie-trying-why-anc-millionaire-julius-malema-posed-radical
Second – While South Africa still claims the 2nd biggest economy in Africa (the 1st being Nigeria and the 3rd being Egypt) finding useful economic data becomes a difficult task. One of the frequently mentioned criticisms on Ramaphosa´s state of the nation speech after the May elections is that there is no vision and no expression of the real feeling on the ground. His speech indeed lacks vision and mission and precisely clear policy, paths to implementation of policy, and innovation to economically bring positive changes in the country. Is it because he is incompetent, or is it because there is no vision because vision is not required for the ruling party as their reality story is quite different from having a vision for a functioning country? I would suggest the latter.
After 25 + years of ‘democracy’ the country boasts:
  • a joblessness rate of more than 29% officially – of course, the number on the street is quoted as much higher, (2 out of 3 people not working, so where are those BRICS jobs quoted in the BRICS section?). In addition a youth joblessness rate of 50% +
  • A massive crime rate forced by joblessness, hopelessness, and despair.
  • A surge in foreign debt,
  • fairly open Northern border and a years-long surge-in of more hopeless people from Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
  • The power provider (Eskom) is so poorly managed with unmaintained infrastructure that the country regularly is in rolling electricity blackouts. Btw, even the Chinese Ambassador expressed that the problems here are not financial, but management and application of skills. (machine translation https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=af&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.afriforum.co.za%2Fafriforum-eskom-verliese-en-hoer-werkloosheid-wys-ramaphosa-se-planne-werk-nie%2F
  • the tax collector SARS has not been able administratively to handle its job and is basically falling apart and imploding. – https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/special-reports/2019-02-21-revenue-collection-dire-cost-of-sarss-implosion/
  • Trains, planes, pick your government service and they are all in financial trouble – there is no end of problems, and infrastructure that worked is now coming to the end of its life. Because of no maintenance during these 25 + years, the end is one of implosion.
  • Labor strikes are too many to count. You can search for ‘strikes in South Africa 2019′. There are national strikes, local strikes, municipality worker’s strikes, mine workers, port authority, wildcat strikes, university strikes and so on, too many to mention.
  • Hospitals are exceedingly badly managed : Go in Alive, Come out a Corpse is the slogan
  • The Police service is in crisis with reports that 41% of officers failed their annual shooting test – People are relying on private security, which increases cost of living.
  • The problem of ‘staatskaping’ or State Capture of the wealth of the country is still in full swing. The form that State Capture takes is that the ANC owns or attempts to hold all of the wealth of the State, even above State objectives. The ANC with its neo-chiefs, enriches itself first. In the last election, however, this is beginning to unravel, because even ANC members and cadres now feel they are not getting their fair share of the hijacked state economy. Basically, all the might of the state and economic affairs is captured or pirated by the ruling party and run as a private enterprise for itself, and the country is left in rack and ruin. The rulers are redirecting the wealth and economy of the country into their own pockets and into their political party.   https://www.sastatecapture.org.za/site/hearings.  This is even visible in religious and church affairs, where the President asks for prayers for the ANC, and not for the country. https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2019-04-19-pray-for-us-ramaphosa-invites-the-church-to-be-ancs-watchdog/
Summary : Generally, 25 years+ into so-called democracy, the country is falling apart, but not for the neo-chiefs, who have never partied hardier.
An Experimental Comparison
Let us make a short comparison of what Russia has accomplished since the fall of the Soviet Union 1991, with South Africa’s freedom election in 1994. You may say this is an unfair comparison as Russia is a much bigger country with many more people and massive landmass. Yet, South Africa changed materially in 1994 and has the advantage in such a comparison as the average income in Russia was statistically expressed as 0, and the country was non-functioning, whereas South Africa was a functioning country. Both countries had to deal with the international sphere equally, and Russia was again handicapped with sanctions and having to protect itself militarily. Of the BRICS members, a comparison between South Africa and Russia makes the most sense. This is what it looks like in simple percentage terms:
Consumer Prices in South Africa are 11.36% higher than in Russia
Consumer Prices Including Rent in South Africa are 17.62% higher than in Russia
Rent Prices in South Africa are 39.29% higher than in Russia
Restaurant Prices in South Africa are 4.77% higher than in Russia
Groceries Prices in South Africa are 9.71% higher than in Russia
And a few more:
  • South Africa has a 29% official unemployment rate with a 50% youth unemployment rate, and Russia is in the range of 4% yet Russia was a non-functioning country being plundered in 1991 and South Africa a functioning state in 1994.
  • Russia is a respected country, and South Africa is floundering.
  • Russia does not have laws that exclude a mostly educated workforce from the workplace because of racism.
  • South Africa has a relatively young workforce with a median age of 26.3 years whereas we all know about the Russian people’s resistance against pension age changes for its population, which is of an older median age.
  • The wealth in South Africa has changed hands, and it is now estimated that 40% of the really rich are black neo-chiefs, so the accusation that the whites hold economic power is slowly eroding.
  • South Africa, as a country, has natural resources as has Russia.
Why does the current ANC government still hold the firm belief that making all the whites poor, will enrich the rest of the 55 Million blacks?. On the face of it, it is absurd, as the white minority is slowly going through the process of being impoverished. At this stage, this is nothing more than trumped-up racial revenge to hide the shortcomings of the current management in the country.
Some of the percentage differences between the two countries in a detailed cost of living comparison are quite breathtaking, and is submitted for those with time on their hands. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Russia&country2=South+Africa
Russia clearly has an alive, growing and most importantly well-managed economy and South Africa has an economy teetering on stagnation with most public services imploding or falling apart. Just before Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation address, Moody’s made the statement that South Africa’s GDP growth will remain one of the lowest among Baa3-rated sovereigns. The debt burden is expected to rise but a brighter point is that the structure of the debt is resilient to shocks. Of course, the significant debt (as far as can be determined) is to China, and China has structured it to be resilient, very specifically the new loans to prop up South Africa’s power generation company Eskom. China works in a particular way with debt that cannot be serviced – they take over the project and infrastructure that the debt financed and run it themselves, leaving very little opportunity for state capture.
In South Africa, as you heard from Black Agenda Radio and many other studies, the inequality of people’s is the highest in the world. The rulers talk Marxism but practice extractive and exploitative capitalism.
So, high level only, what did Russia do differently from their lowest point as a country, in comparison to the steps that the new South African government took from what was a high point if one believed the Rainbow Nation advertising?
1. Russia got their oligarchs under control. In South Africa, the neo-chiefs are the oligarchs and are running the country. It is stated policy to create a black millionaire and billionaire class and that document was hastily hidden when it was first discovered.
2. Russia invested in technology, education, and food production (with sanctions accelerating and mandating this trajectory and they also needed to spend on defense). In South Africa, they are breaking down technology in protest against the so-called 4th industrial revolution, the education is liberal and weak, and the most significant agenda item is land redistribution without compensation, i.e., stealing. What a way to handle your productive food sector by threatening their lives, while saying BRICS is bringing all these jobs. All these jobs? Well, I don’t see them. South Africa is now an importer of maize and corn, and food imports are steadily increasing.
3. The most significant difference is that Russia invested in their country and their people. In South Africa, the neo-chiefs invested in themselves by capturing state income and economy for their own pockets and ideological political party.
4. Russia had an educated workforce and still to today education lacks in South Africa.
The evening before Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation speech, Moody’s dropped a severe report, warning that the country’s growth rate is in trouble and SA’s inequality of people’s is not just staying put, it’s on the increase. (Of course, it is the fault of the whites – everything is, as everything is the fault of Russia if one believes the western propaganda).
So taking a look at economic factors, what is reported is la-la land-like positive outcomes, interspersed with great speeches with promises of doing better when the la-la scenario does not manifest. The big gap, of course, is between promises for the future and how to actually get there. That piece is generally missing in the economic reporting. It is clear that economically South Africans of all colors and classes are struggling to the point of despair, not because they are not productive and good people, but because the country is managed as a ‘get rich’ piggy bank, focused on creating black millionaires and billionaires. If this makes you flash to the Ukraine in your thinking, you would be exactly right but for South Africa, even Mexico is voting Cape Town as exceedingly dangerous and in South Africa, they are even killing Ukrainians in hiding : http://www.radiofreesouthafrica.com/mexican-council-votes-cape-town-as-africas-most-dangerous-city/
Yet, the black cadres are still plotting and planning revolution : http://www.radiofreesouthafrica.com/we-foresee-a-revolution-militants-in-secret-black-power-drill/
Farm Murders and Land expropriation/re-distribution without compensation.
We have a first bright spot here with the ruling government now forced to acknowledge that farm murders are not common crimes but truly unique. These are very specific atrocities against the white farming and rural population perpetrated not only with extreme violence but exceedingly cruel torture (Kill The Boer). Bear in mind that it is difficult to defend yourself because the laws discriminate against the mainly white farming population and their employees.
63% Of the population is urban, so, that leaves us with around 47% of the people as rural. Farm murders are a type of violence in the background of land redistribution without compensation – it is the fear, torture and killing that is necessary to hide the program of state capture for the program of creating a class of black millionaires and billionaires – farm murders are not just crime, they are a project. These murders and attacks on relatively unprotected people show an increase of 60% over the past decade. One should also remember that volunteer groups kept the initial statistics as you could see from the woman killed in the first video by Vesti News. She was reporting on the murders. The hypocrisy does not even pass a first smell test. The ANC government initially stated clearly that they don’t count crimes on minorities separately from the overall crime rate. It is also generally known practice that even if dead and tortured people lay on the ground, the crime is classified as ‘burglary gone wrong’ or something similar. Yet, the rulers seem to count exactly how much land is in the hands of those minorities in a clear stance of egregious double standards. This is besides the fact that they got the numbers wrong by orders of magnitude as well.
The ANC heads of Noordwes and Gauteng have admitted that farm murders must now be given attention to as priority crime.
The Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, Ms Thoko Didiza, has spoken out strongly against Farm Murders as well as illegal land grabs. Her deputy stated that the 1.4 million hectares of land that the state owns, will be re-distributed first and the tone of this statement is less racially biased.
During July, Ramaphosa himself condemned farm murders, but with so much negative rhetoric stated toward the ones continually exposing the murders and torturous crimes, that his negative rhetoric virtually canceled his condemnation. Nobody believed the man. He has no principles, as you heard again from Black Agenda Radio regarding the Marikana massacres. Where there was some hope expressed after Ramaphosa was elected and I reported on that small hope here, that hope is also now gone.
With the relative loss of votes by the ANC, the visibility of unfair discrimination (workplace and crime rates) to educated minorities, the visibility of state capture, and the concomitant reduction of tourism and investment, the la-la land economic reporting, the service sectors of the state imploding, the balance of power is slowly beginning to change and the ANC might see the beginning of their loss of power. BRICS will not save them.
Then, the second bright spot : The internal knowledge base is slowly beginning to change as well, and reporting such as the following is becoming more common.
New world order looms amid US trade war with China, but SA seems clueless
“… the US does not want the locus of global power to shift from the West to the East. This is precisely what the trade war between China and the US is about. But where does SA stand in all this? Unfortunately, there is no evidence that either our intellectually bland president or our tired international relations minister has a clue. “  https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2019-06-24-new-world-order-looms-amid-us-trade-war-with-china-but-sa-seems-clueless/
It is hard to find bright spots in this downward trajectory of a once flourishing country, but these two, condemning farm murders and an assurance that land will be distributed from state coffers first, as well as some internationally savvy reporting, are indeed welcome. This won’t stop the process of changing the constitution to make land-grabs legal.
What can we say about the future?
Well, it looks bleak. This looks like a country on the way to being a failed state and on a similar trajectory as the Ukraine, only with neo-chiefs as oligarchs. We can only hope that the contact with Russia, China and other BRICS countries changes the level of education, knowledge and sheer intelligence to stop this slide. At least in terms of India there is a lot of interaction, with Indian channels available on the local television networks. This slow decline could continue until there is nothing left to loot and end up in a type of Mogadishu, with increasingly violent strikes, open violent faction fighting and a very poor country with exceedingly wealthy neo-chiefs.
It is a sad state of affairs overall, as South Africa can do much much better. Given government support for those that produce food in country, this sector can be repaired as the know-how is there (if somebody overcomes the fact the many white folks have the know-how). At this stage we have to say .. Get Over Apartheid Already!
We can also look at South Africa pragmatically, as the African Empire in the previous age, which is failing and falling.  So many lessons can be learned while we are all watching the current world Empire, failing and falling.
What would be really wise is to send a delegation to Venezuela to go and investigate and learn how to take a previously western centered capitalist country, to a socialist managed country and to end the State Capture.
To end the formal part of this depressing analysis, it would be best if the country is handed to China for day to day management, and the neo-chiefs maintain their positions only as ceremonial leaders to ‘learn on the job’ so to speak. At least China would have the smarts to put the 50% + unemployed youth into re-education camps and teach them math, science, language and a skill-set. Then, and only then would Ramaphosa’s dream of a smart city and fast rail have a hope.
History – when does it end?
I wrote this part as an ending because the situation is so bleak.  I wanted to find something, anything positive.
If you do not know South Africa or Africa, structurally there may be no method in your head to consider these issues. It is a strange place with a unique set of circumstances and a very unique people. To try and judge this country by what you know of other countries, will probably not be appropriate. If you have not been accused of being “the child of rapists, colonists and plunderers” by a stranger in an airplane, you are not the strange creature that is African, but white and there is only about 5 or 6 million of my kind on the earth.
One must also remember that anything that goes wrong is still blamed on the 5 Million whites and not on the 55 Million blacks. The general accusation against migrants is that migrants do not assimilate or integrate. I, and other similar creatures like me, have done the unthinkable. We assimilated and integrated, built a country and became part of the African Soul. Our feet are still profoundly stuck into the soil of South Africa, and I still cry when I hear the voice of Miriam Makeba. This video contains a short history of Miriam and a very haunting and beautiful love song.
If your skin is white in South Africa, some of your ancestors probably committed sins. These were sins of their times like traditional slavery was a sin of its time.
When does history end? What does a group of people have to do, if their forefathers committed sins? How do they clean their own slate?. Is there an international court that can announce and declare that their debt to society has been paid, and it is enough now, and this South African white minority must be freed from the sins of the ancestors? The laws that mostly prohibit these people to take part in the workplace must now be abolished. The weird race-based laws that virtually prevent any white South African from freely running a business must now be abolished. The slow killing of these people must now stop.
Each time I say these things, there is a chorus of ‘How Bad the Whites Were,’ where no attention is paid to the efforts made by this population to redress the wrongs of their forefathers. And indeed, we can question whether these were wrongs, or whether these were actions taken within the context of the times. I’ve said this before and will repeat it … there was never a conscious ‘killing of black tribes’ akin to the American slaughter of the indigenous Indians; the Trail of Tears, or outright gunning for the indigenous in bloodthirsty horse mounted regiments. There has never been conscious exploitation of South African black folks equal to the British toward the Indians where the Indians were forced to abandon their own food production and grow indigo specifically for the Crown, resulting in hunger for the local population. Where do you all think the ubiquitous blue jeans of the 60’s/70’s free love revolution came from? The cloth was made and dyed and sewed in India under British rule; the jeans were sent to Germany for adding shiny studs – remember Levy-Strauss? Well, the Indians made those, excepting the studs, and we in the west wore those jeans, as a proud emblem of our free love revolution, without knowing that those that dyed the cloth, were under a British slavery system.
But enough of that. Let’s take a more positive look when we all still hoped for the Nelson Mandela rainbow nation. The music was good and is still good, the wine is superb and the current wild flower season breathtaking.
A famous and idiosyncratic South African musician, David Kramer penned these lyrics, in a song to the world:
“You’ve got da money but we’ve got da beat!  Everybody born here Mister got the rhythm in their feet!”
This is unique music and old now, but perhaps the equivalent of US country music, yet a very unique west-coast storytelling style. This is happy music, and crying in your beer music and foot-stomping music that everybody knows and everybody enjoys.
This is what South Africans thought they had voted for, when the ANC took over the country and the rainbow nation and Truth and Reconciliation was a word on everyone’s lips.
This is what we got:
Miriam Makeba eventually returned to her homeland after many years in exile, after suppression by both the Americans and the local South African government, and everyone else following. The US wanted to nail the Russians and the Chinese, and South Africa suffered and what has changed?
It is time that this strange creature, an African that is White, could return, without fear of Kill the Boer, because we did the unthinkable, we assimilated and integrated. The blame game toward the whites is slowly unraveling. I don’t have a clue what the Dutch do or what the French do, because we assimilated and created a country. We should be lauded for that, and our skills should be used freely to create a new version of this country.
A moment of silence for Johnny Clegg, who united through music.
We are the scatterlings of Africa
And finally, for those that always ask me What About Da Joos?
Da Joos still own much of the mining, now only sharing with black leadership. They do what they do in other countries, and of course many have left South Africa, so, they manage their holdings from afar, well integrated with the neo-chiefs. Those that are still there, still protest BDS and work for Israeli causes. But the Jews were inherently racist and the word ‘schwartzes’ was used frequently, so, the ordinary rank and file to a large measure left the country.

Additional reading
The nature of farm murders described here
Paul Craig Roberts with a desperate question …. are whites too stupid to survive
and Is White Genocide in our Future, where Roberts reports on South Africa
Seeing poor white people makes me happy. This was immediately censored, but it still exists in the internet archive
Added for interest : Trump’s Vision for Africa: the 1960s
History Reading
AmaBhulu (which means Afrikaners)
In 1797 the British Royal Navy feared South Africa would become a “Second America” for Britain, while, in the 20th century, the country was to Africa what the United States was to the world. AmaBhulu describes the developing crisis in the Second America that will inevitably entangle the First America. It is a study in the death of Civilization by its own collective hand; a severe warning for the West.
AmaBhulu is a view of South Africa through eyes different from those employed in fifty years of media reporting, social science, and politics. The author walks the reader from the 1652 landing of the Dutch to the present by following his own family bloodlines as example through the documented history of the country, supported by copious evidence. As settlers, soldiers, slaves, and indigenes, they farm, they fight, they triumph, and they lose. They are mercilessly impaled and massacred by savage African tyrants. They are hanged and fusilladed by an imperial overlord, and herded into concentration camps. Yet, they persevere to create a key Western Christian country; the envy of all Africa and a Cold War bulwark of the West. Eventually it falls to the author to describe the loss of his country through forces beyond his control.

 River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
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