World needs to pay attention to situation in South Africa
Not everything is hunky-dory in South Africa, and it’s been like that for a while.
I’ve been following the crisis in South Africa for a year now and things still haven’t improved. Its government elected a new leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, of the African National Congress (ANC) political party, in February. Ramaphosa, along with his newly appointed ministers in land reform and international relations, brought with him the anti-white interests of the ANC.
The government is already on its way to expropriate land from white farmers and give it to the majority black population.
I know it’s a lot of information to take in at once, but here’s a quick way to unpack all of it. Where did it all begin?
South Africa currently is the home of many ethnicities, such as the black Zulu, Swazi, Tswana and Ndebele being the most common. Then, there are the Coloureds, the official term for those of mixed ancestry. Finally, there are the Afrikaners, which are the native whites descended from Dutch, French and German ancestries.
The Boer people, which is Afrikaans for “farmer,” were part of the original Dutch settlers of South Africa. Through many invasion attempts by competing British and Zulu influences, the Boers were able to take their slice of the pie and instituted their own land, South Africa.
The Afrikaner people had a minority-led government after they were able to fight off the British in the late 20th century. Whites were in charge under a system of apartheid until 1994, when ANC party candidate Nelson Mandela took the presidency.
Again, it’s a lot of history to digest, but let’s put it this way. White Boers and Afrikaners helped develop South Africa into a functioning, well-developed, Christian society. Though there was apartheid, which was racial segregation, the country was able to flourish with a highly sophisticated agricultural sector.
As a millennial, it’s weird to step into the politics of a country that saw its eventual downfall in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. I noticed there were many initiatives from foreign countries, such as America, that were actively campaigning to end apartheid, even engaging in boycotts against doing business with South Africa.
Nowadays, you have the ANC engaging in anti-white politics, such as the land expropriation bill. The Boers of today are the heirs of their ancestor’s land in that country, yet the government wants to redistribute it to the black majority.
South Africa has a parliament where people like Julius Malema, who is black, can say things like “we are not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now,” and get away with it.
The people in power are handling the country very poorly and don’t know what they’re doing.
The current drought is being mismanaged severely and the police hardly report on criminal activity. The state is selling off important equipment for myopic financial gains and serious long-term blowbacks. Farmland attacks are becoming more common, and there’s a special kind of depravity that goes on in these black-on-white torture murders that are unfairly being treated as “botched robberies.”
In light of their former government now against them, the Boers have three choices: be slaughtered on their own farms, die penniless to the government bleeding them dry or leave the country.
Even efforts to leave are dismal. People in media are quick to point out the farm attacks and racial oppression of whites in South Africa as simply being canards.
The amount of punishment from the outside world placed on the Boers is so apparent that even giving them refugee status to Australia is considered racist. Why is a country like Australia, which is promoting mass immigration, suddenly getting cold feet for the Boers?
And now, in my young age, I get to see the results of dismantling a country that seemed to have things in check. Sure, some measures could have been made to ease racial tensions the world is concerned about, but did the Boers deserve what they are getting now?
I get to see the world still harangue South African whites for having a racist past, even well after the ANC has taken over and blacks have been in power for more than 20 years.
I get to see a world where politics even plays into humanitarian endeavors like rescuing people from atrocities. I get the message that it’s okay to let refugees in from any other country, but not if they’re white.
The idea of the “rainbow nation” the ANC wanted to create is a sham, but the world doesn’t see that. The world sees the loss of whites as being the true celebration of diversity and the empowerment of blacks.
The ignorance is deafening and the excuses for it are appalling.
-Jacob Runnels is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.