Back from South Africa

Our readers may have noticed a hiatus in my blogging activities. I have, as a matter of fact, just returned from South Africa in what was a fascinating and very enjoyable trip and one that I hope to take again some time in the near future.

David suggested that I put together my observations of the country on what was my first trip ever to the southern shores of Africa (or Africa itself for that matter).

Writing with any degree of confidence about a country that one has seen only as a tourist is almost impossible – the period of stay is far too short for any concrete opinions to form, the trouble spots are steadfastly avoided by definition and the trip aims at maximising comfort and relaxation. Therefore, everything I write here about South Africa is open to contradiction by those who know better and much of what I write will obviously have been written several times before. I do not think that I could claim novelty of argument and observation in this case.

I must first begin by suggesting that those of our readers who wish to have a thoroughly enjoyable holiday packed with varied experiences would struggle to find a better combination of astonishingly beautiful beaches, vineyards and safari in the same country. South Africa is like California, Kenya and Cyprus put together (if one were to make an attempt at a parallel). Without a shadow of doubt, the end of Apartheid has led to a phenomenal tourist boom fuelled mostly by Brits and other Europeans longing for sunshine and relaxation in the depressing Northern European winters. For me it made for an interesting change since I would usually have gone skiing and have also never ventured beyond Europe and North America as a tourist.

Anyway, enough with the Richard Branson style promotion of South Africa as a tourist destination and now some thoughts about South Africa the country, which is the purpose of this post.

The first remarkable thing I noticed about South Africa was that (not surprisingly), the most obvious signs of the coming collapse are not easily visible in the favourite tourist jaunts. Cape Town is not, by African standards, a particularly dangerous city, for example. Therefore, a tourist who avoids Johannesburg and Durban (as I did) is unlikely to see what ordinary South Africans must face every day.

The race problem appears almost absent or very manageable in the tourist jaunts. Tourism has clearly benefited a large number of white South Africans who have been able to turn their game reserves, vineyards and other properties into attractive tourist destinations. And most of these places obviously hire a large number of South African blacks as well so that the conflict that all of us are well aware of appears almost invisible on the surface. I did not venture into the large white owned farms where murder and mayhem have now become a lurking menace and was therefore unable to gauge the mood among their owners.

In my limited conversations with white South Africans, it seems that many still believe that the future will somehow work out. They do not see the Black population as a natural enemy that will bring carnage and slaughter at a theoretical point in the future. And among the young and the bright the opportunities for escape do exist. Many have taken these opportunities and moved to various parts of the English speaking world – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, America and Britain. But among those that have stayed back I didn’t sense a palpable need to run away as fast as possible.

I think part of the reason for this is the strange nature of the relations between the races in the country. For every black criminal who poses a menace to the white population, there is a black who is employed by the owners and managers of the touristy places, the owners of the farms and so on. And many black South Africans do make very loyal and diligent employees who serve their employers well. Therefore, a uniformly jaundiced view of the black majority is not easily encountered among South African whites (although I am willing to concede that if someone did hold that view, he may not be forthcoming about them when dealing with notoriously liberal Europeans). As a result, they do not automatically see South African blacks as a threat to their long term existence.

It is clear now, however, that in the years since Apartheid every sign of degeneration exists for people to see. Corruption and incompetence is rife in the police who no longer enjoy the trust of property owners. The Judiciary, which is heavily white, appears to have stayed clean for the moment but it seems to have become infected with much of the same post-modern suicidal liberal nonsense that we encounter every day in the West. There is a well entrenched view that the new South Africa is mostly anarchistic and that those who are better off than the majority (i.e. usually Whites) must protect themselves for the law is now impotent.

Therefore, in my limited interactions, it appears that the majority of White South Africans still wearily hope that the future will somehow work out. They do not think that they will be slaughtered en-masse in cold blood by the black majority and they do hope that they can continue to work and live as they have done before. As this was a tourist holiday and not a political campaign, I could not and certainly did not have the opportunity to contradict that view.

It is sad for me to say that so much delusion is to be found among men. But that would not be a novel observation.

UPDATE: I referred to Cape Town as a “not particularly dangerous city”. This may, in fact, be factually incorrect. It is, I think, safer than Johannesburg and Durban which is not saying much I suppose!

Posted by Phil Peterson on Sunday, December 4, 2005 at 11:38 AM in Race realism
Comments (14) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by John J Ray on December 04, 2005, 09:20 PM | #

I was last in SA a few years ago after having been there previously in 1979 under apartheid. I spent most of my time in Bloemfontien (Afrikaner heartland) staying in private homes on both occasions.

The change was saddening. Poorly maintained roads, museums etc that were once immaculate and shakedowns just to park your car safely.

And everybody I know there wants to get out. You did indeed see only the touristy presentation.

Posted by Mark Richardson on December 05, 2005, 05:15 AM | #

Here is an incident from Cape Town last week:

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1843536,00.html

Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on December 05, 2005, 06:05 AM | #

There are now only 25,000 white commercial farmers left as opposed to 85,000 in 1994, and agricultural productivity and output has decreased 50%. To understand how it “works”, apart from the farm murders: http://www.africancrisis.org/NewsView.asp?Rec=6673&Action=V&Sort=D&Page=1&

Each month thousands of whites become destitude because vacancies are “blacks only” even in white areas, see http://groups.msn.com/censorbugbear/afrikanercharity.msnw I would suggest you to go to a white survival camp next time you are in South Africa.

And young white nurses are intentionnally send to black areas to do their community service, where they often are raped.

etc. etc.

And finally, when you read the following, how far are we then from Ruanda yet?
http://www.africancrisis.org/NewsView.asp?Rec=6721&Action=V&Sort=D&Page=0&
and
http://www.africancrisis.org/NewsView.asp?Rec=6650&Action=V&Sort=D&Page=1&

Posted by Phil on December 05, 2005, 02:09 PM | #

John,

You may well be right that everyone wants out. And I certainly think that is absolutely true of the younger generation of South African whites who can actually flee the looming chaos. But I also think, based on my limited experience, that there are a lot of middle aged and older South African whites who cannot leave and are discinclined to leave. And they hope, perhaps out of necessity, that they will survive, somehow.

Mark,

Thanks. My update dealt with that. As I said, you cannot ever judge the conditions in a country from the safe and comfortable confines of your five star hotel.

Johan,

Thank you for all the valuable information. You should blog about South Africa more often as you are better informed than any of us here and we could do with your regular updates on the sorts of things that are happening in South Africa.

If you read my post carefully, I have never been deceived into believing that the fate of Whites in South Africa is anything other than dire in the long term (and it is already very bad).

South Africa will in a decade or so turn into another typical African story. If there is one thing that this trip has done, it has filled me with contempt for Europeans and Americans. We have it easy and we have it comfortable and we feel morally obligated to lecture whites living in dangerous places like South Africa and Zimbabwe on morality. And from the comfortable confines of our little tourist resorts we gush at all the supposedly marvellous things about Africa.

It is appalling. And if anything, I can probably conclude with some confidence now that even if South Africa descended into anarchy and chaos in a decade from now (combined with a genocide of the whites), we will still not learn a thing from it all and go on with our liberal pretensions as we have since the end of WWII. We live in a truly sick society.

It is tragic that so much natural beauty and good climate is located in parts of the world that are infested by savages.

Posted by Phil on December 05, 2005, 07:51 PM | #

Mark,

As an addendum to your comment:

Those German tourists went straight for the black ghetto (“township”). They were asking for it. The basic rule is to avoid the large black ghettos. One could say the same about many American cities too with their enormous black underclass.

As a side note, I should warn readers that my post is not to be taken to mean that South Africa is a very safe country barring some crime hot-spots. It is a safe country if as a tourist you carefully and steadfastly avoid the dangerous areas and take a luxury package holiday from a reputed retailer (I bought mine from Virgin) and not experiment or get adventerous when you’re in the country.

Perhaps, this may all change in a couple of years as violent crime spreads to the realtively “safe” tourist jaunts.

Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on December 06, 2005, 05:00 AM | #

Another risk for the whites in South Africa, in the end they could become the scapegoat, is that the ANC is currently splitting up in two factions: president Mbeki and the nouveau (black) moneybags versus Zuma, leader of the hard communists.

Posted by Carel on December 08, 2005, 07:08 AM | #

The interracial relationships of South Africa is indeed very complex and diverse. It is difficult and dangerous to draw up stereotypes.

Yet, from my experience of South Africa, I can safely say that the general state of things have taken a turn for the worse.

One can indeed write libraries of books on the subject of South Africa’s political and social matters.

One resource that I found invaluable is www.disasterafrica.blogspot.com

Not only the site self, but also other links on the site are very informative.

Posted by jason on February 09, 2006, 04:56 AM | #

Everything in life happends for a reason.if you want to blame some one blame your forefarthers for apartheid,and i think the reason for white people leaving is that they are afriad of being ecual.They are used to driving mercedes-benzes and having holiday houses,but the tables have turned.In south africa the gab between whites and blacks are the reason why now most white people cant get work.Because black people must be impowered.transformation, is a neccessery evil to bridge that gap.I love south africa,this is my country,this my coverment,i voted for this coverment that you see unfit to lead,this country hosted the rugby world cup,cricket world cup and in 2010 it will host the soccer world cup,that is just some achievements of this great country.You are etheir part of the solution or part of the problem

Posted by George Eagleton on February 09, 2006, 12:35 PM | #

Well, on the one side we have you and your king’s (Randy’s) idiocratic opinions… and on the other we have fact. You know: newspapers… logic… insight… photos… that kind of thing.

I’d take a good look at the photo’s on the “Disaster Africa” site if I were you. Do you really think economic success justifies genocide?

Really, “star blogger Randy McDonald”? Ha!

You critisize “Carel” on his statements, yet the only ‘proof’ you provide of your argument is a reference to “star blogger Randy McDonald” (I very much doubt that he has any worthwile experience of South Africa). There are an abundance of photo’s , police reports, video’s, articles, statistics and other media and supporting evidence on the internet that support Carel’s claim, yet you (through your superior intellect), claim to ‘disprove’ this person’s statement by saying: “Randy McDonald claims the opposite, so Carel MUST be wrong!”

Wow! Fred! You must really be a genius!

PS: What is the url of this proclaimed “prophet” of yours, since all I could find at www.gnxp.com is a website that looks like something created by a twelve year old.

Posted by Guessedworker on February 09, 2006, 12:43 PM | #

George,

Fred was being facetious. He would prefer to have to pull out his own teeth than to agree with Randy MacDonald.

Posted by Matra on February 09, 2006, 02:27 PM | #

Randy McDonald is only in his early 20s and I seem to recall him saying on his blog he’d never even been to Europe - the continent he pontificates about more than any other! That said, because he writes about ethnic issues his site can be useful especially for the links to articles about obscure ethnic groups.

Posted by Phil Peterson on February 09, 2006, 02:48 PM | #

Matra,

Randy M is a cosmopolitan Homosexual with the prejudices that are common to that species.

Posted by George Eagleton on February 10, 2006, 01:30 PM | #

My apologies for being a bit of a dimwit myself!

Posted by John on September 22, 2006, 07:01 AM | #

Hi All, I’m white South African and have tried to keep an open mind - even optimistic, having returned from a long stay abroad. I have to tell you that the mindset, IQ, motivation, logic and cultural differences between white and black is mind-boggling. Whites have been thrashed badly in what has now become an extremely racist society - blacks being the racists, whites being the tolerant. The white tolerance is being eroded, something is brewing - call it anger, frustration, desperation, whatever, but whites have had enough. In case after case mayhem, corruption, murder, destruction is brought to anything that is handed to/taken over by the blacks. I’ve seen the anger in the eyes of some very proud South African whites - who have used the considerable knowledge, hard-earned experience and massive IQ to improve the country, whilst the continuous reversal is being sped up by legislation which aims at keeping the populist vote.

The SA Defence Force used to be the most powerful force on the continent - speculation was that the SADF could’ve wiped out every other army in Africa, combined, in under a week. Now, it is in disarray, so badly disciplined, trained and prepared that it will easily be wiped out by an intelligent civilian force a fraction of it’s size.

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