This is a question that has been asked countless times before. It was even asked during the years prior to 1994, long before the country was handed over on a platter to the communists. Millions of white people decided they were not going to hang around to see whether they have a future in the country, or not. They made a wise choice, because if they had stayed in the country the odds are pretty high that many of them would probably have ended up dead at the hands of murdering savages.
With the same question in mind BBC News editor
John Simpson decided to visit South Africa to find the answer. On his return he compiled a report, published on 19 May 2013.
I was immediately offended by the very first sentence in Simpson’s report, because it is the same old lie, repeated so often by the BBC and other large media groups that it has become accepted as truth. I know it to be a lie because I am a white South African - born in the year 1960 and who has lived 34 years of my life in
Apartheid South Africa. It is only the brainwashed liberal fools and those who were born sometime in the mid-and late 1980’s who will believe the falsehood in Simpson’s opening sentence that - “Apartheid South Africa looked after white people and nobody else.”
Nevertheless, I believe the article is worthwhile republishing here as it does deal with a few pertinent issues related to the general theme of this blog.
Do white people have a future in South Africa?
By John Simpson World Affairs Editor, BBC News
19 May 2013
Apartheid South Africa looked after white people and nobody else (a lie). Now some of its white communities face a level of deprivation, or of violence, which threatens their future in the country.
Everyone here, regardless of colour, tells you that white people are still riding high.
They run the economy. They have a disproportionate amount of influence in politics and the media. They still have the best houses and most of the best jobs.
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Many whites feel like
strangers in their
own country"
|
All of this is true but it is not the only picture.
Look below the surface and you will find poverty and a sense of growing vulnerability.
The question I have come to South Africa to answer is whether white people genuinely have a future here.
The answer, as with so many similar existential questions, is "Yes - but…"
It seems to me that only certain parts of the white community really have a genuine future here: the better-off, more adaptable parts.
Working-class white people, most of them Afrikaans-speakers, are going through an intense crisis. But you will not read about it in the newspapers or see it reported on television because their plight seems to be something arising out of South Africa's bad old past - a past which everyone, black and white, would like to forget.
According to one leading political activist, Mandla Nyaqela, this is the after-effect of the huge degree of selfishness and brutality which was shown towards the black population under apartheid.
"It is having its effect on whites today, even though they still own a share of South Africa's wealth which is entirely disproportionate," he said.
That may all be true. But the people who are suffering now are the weakest and most vulnerable members of the white community.
Ernst Roets, a leading Afrikaans campaigner from the AfriForum organisation, took me to a squatter camp outside the country's capital, Pretoria. A white squatter camp.
It has been set up on the property of a sympathetic white farmer and is called, optimistically, Sonskyn Hoekie - Sunshine Corner.
There are broken-down cars and bits of discarded furniture everywhere. Beyond the wooden shacks lie ditches and pools of dirty, stagnant water where mosquitoes breed. Two basic toilets serve the whole camp.
According to Roets there are 80 white squatter camps - many of them bigger than this - in the Pretoria area alone. Across South Africa as a whole he believes there could be as many as 400,000 poor whites in conditions like these.
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| The Sunshine Corner squatter camp has no running water or electricity |
Sonskyn Hoekie has no water and no electricity. The inhabitants live on two hand-out meals of maize porridge a day, which is provided by local volunteers. There is no social security for them, no lifeline - any more than there was for non-whites when apartheid ruled.
"I don't want to live in a place like this," said Frans de Jaeger, a former bricklayer, who with his beard and wrinkled face looks like one of the old Voortrekkers.
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You are twice as
likely to be murdered
if you are a white
farmer than if you
are a police officer"
|
"But I can't get out."
His wife died suddenly of cancer a few years ago and it sent him into a downward spiral of binge drinking and destitution.
Semi-skilled white people have little chance of getting a job when so many black South Africans are unemployed.
There is another group of white Afrikaners, far higher up the social scale, who are deeply threatened - in this case, literally. Virtually every week the press here report the murders of white farmers, though you will not hear much about it in the media outside South Africa.
In South Africa you are twice as likely to be murdered if you are a white farmer than if you are a police officer - and the police here have a particularly dangerous life. The killings of farmers are often particularly brutal.
Ernst Roets's organisation has published the names of more than 2,000 people who have died over the last two decades. The government has so far been unwilling to make solving and preventing these murders a priority.
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There used to be
60,000 white farmers
in South Africa -
in 20 years that
number has halved"
|
I went to a little town called Geluik - happiness. A few weeks ago gunmen burst into the farm shop there and opened fire, killing one farmer outright and injuring one of his sons and a shopworker.
They stole next to nothing. It seemed to be a deliberate, targeted killing. Soon afterwards the son died of his injuries.
Belinda van Nord, the daughter and sister of the men who died, told me how dangerous the lives of white people in the countryside have become. The police, she said, had seemed to show little interest in this case.
In the little graveyard where her father and brother are buried there are two other graves of farmers murdered recently. The wonderful landscape which surrounds it has become a killing ground.
There used to be 60,000 white farmers in South Africa. In 20 years that number has halved.
In the old days, the apartheid system looked after whites and did very little for anyone else. Nowadays white people here are on their own.
Those who fit in and succeed will certainly have a future. As for the rest, there are no guarantees whatsoever.
Sourced from: www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine
PS: The
BBC article also has a video embedded (which cannot be shared) but which is worthwhile viewing.
And while I’m logged into blogger I may as well also make a special announcement:
I have recently pumped my last few rands into a new project in a desperate attempt to keep my head above water. The project can only succeed if I give it my undivided attention - 24/7. It is also the reason why postings on this blog have not been all that frequent lately. I realize this comes at a bad time, considering that Mike Smith has also temporary ceased delivering excellent political commentary on his blog, but bear in mind there are a few other blogs and forums that are actively involved in delivering excellent commentary as well. Some are listed in the left sidebar of this blog (Blogs of Interest), but there are others… Search and you shall find them!
I’d also like to make use of this opportunity to wish Mike all the best with the completion of his book -
Opening Pandora’s Apartheid Box. May his book finally expose the numerous lies about South Africa’s so called
apartheid era, and the traitors who facilitated the process of handing over this beautiful country to a bunch of communist-gangsters.
Many may ask - what is the purpose of publishing such a book? The answer: If we want to define our future in this country and if we really want to survive and prosper in this country, then it is vital that we study past truths and make it known for the entire world to see. Living in falsehood will only lead to our eventual destruction!
“Study the past if you would define the future.” ― Confucius
