by Alex Newman, New American
While most of the world refuses to acknowledge what is happening in largely communist-controlled South Africa, the non-profit group Genocide Watch declared last month that preparations for genocidal atrocities against white South African farmers were underway and that the early phases of genocide had possibly already begun. In the long run, Genocide Watch chief Dr. Gregory Stanton explained, powerful communist forces also hope to abolish private-property ownership and crush all potential resistance.
According to experts and official figures, at least 3,000 white farmers in South Africa, known as Boers, have been brutally massacred over the last decade. Many more, including children and even infants, have also been raped or tortured so savagely that mere words could not possibly convey the horror. And the problem is growing worse, international human rights monitors and South African exiles say.
The South African government, dominated by the communist-backed African National Congress (ANC), has responded to the surging wave of racist murders by denying the phenomenon, implausibly claiming that many of the attacks are simply regular crimes. Despite fierce criticism, authorities also stopped tracking statistics that would provide a more accurate picture of what is truly going on in the so-called “Rainbow Nation.”
In many cases, the murders are simply classified as “burglaries” and ignored, so the true murder figures are certainly much higher than officials admit. The police, meanwhile, are often involved in the murders or at least the cover-ups, multiple sources report. A white South African exile living in the United States told The New American that when victims are able to defend themselves or apprehend the would-be perpetrators, many of the perpetrators are found to be affiliated with the ruling ANC or its youth wing.
Experts are not buying the government’s cover-up. “The farm murders, we have become convinced, are not accidental,” said Dr. Stanton of Genocide Watch during a fact-finding mission to South Africa last month. It was very clear that the massacres were not common crimes, he added — especially because of the absolute barbarity used against the victims. “We don’t know exactly who is planning them yet, but what we are calling for is an international investigation that will try and determine who is planning these murders.”
Indeed, most honest analysts concede that the thousands of brutal killings and tens of thousands of attacks are part of a broader pattern. And according to Dr. Stanton, who was also involved in the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa and has decades of experience examining genocide and communist terror, the trend points toward a troubled future for the nation.
“Things of this sort are what I have seen before in other genocides,” he said of the murdered white farmers, pointing to several examples including a victim’s body that was left with an open Bible on top and other murder victims who were tortured, disemboweled, raped, or worse. “This is what has happened in Burundi, it’s what happened in Rwanda. It has happened in many other places in the world.”
Speaking in Pretoria at an event organized by the anti-communist Transvaal Agricultural Union, Dr. Stanton also slammed the effort to dehumanize whites in South Africa by portraying them as “settlers.” The label is meant to paint Afrikaner white farmers — descendants of Northern Europeans who arrived centuries ago — as people who do not belong there.
It is the same process that happened prior to the infamous genocide against Christian Armenians in Turkey, Stanton explained. The dehumanization phenomenon also occurred against the Jewish people in Germany under the National Socialist (Nazi) regime of mass-murderer Adolf Hitler, well before the Nazi tyrant began implementing his monstrous “final solution.”
Unfortunately, South Africa might be next in line, experts believe. “Whenever you have that kind of dehumanization … you have the beginning of that downward spiral into genocide,” Stanton noted, adding that the situation in South Africa had already moved beyond that stage. The next phase before extermination, which began years ago in South Africa, is organizing to actually carry it out.
“We are worried that there are organized groups that are in fact doing that planning,” Stanton continued during his speech. “It became clear to us that the [ANC] Youth League was this kind of organization — it was planning this kind of genocidal massacre and also the forced displacement of whites from South Africa.”
Genocide Watch raised its alert level for South Africa from stage five to stage six — the eighth and final stage is denial after the fact — when then-ANC Youth League boss Julius Malema began openly singing a racist song aimed at inciting murder against white South African farmers: “Shoot the Boer” and “Kill the Boer.” Described by the anti-genocide group as a “racist Marxist-Leninist,” Malema has also been quoted as saying that “all whites are criminals” and threatening to steal white farmers’ land by force.
“This is the kind of talk that of course is not only pre-genocidal, it also comes before crimes against humanity,” Dr. Stanton said, urging everyone to remember that they are all members of the human race. “Those who would be deniers, and who would try to ignore the warning signs in this country, I think are ignoring the facts.”
There is also increasing “polarization,” where the target population — white farmers in this case — and even moderates are portrayed as an “enemy,” Stanton explained about the march to genocide. And that phenomenon is ever-more apparent in South Africa, leading Genocide Watch to classify South Africa as being close to the final stages of genocide in July of this year.
The issue of land distribution, which has become one of the key drivers of the downward spiral, is also among the greatest concerns. The white minority in South Africa still owns much of the land despite ANC promises to redistribute it to blacks. But the re-distribution that has occurred — like in neighboring Zimbabwe — has largely resulted in failure.
Despite the atrocious track record so far, extremists including elements of the ANC-dominated government are now hoping to expropriate land from white farmers quicker, with some factions even arguing that it should be done with no compensation at all. And the communist agenda, like virtually everywhere else where forcible land redistribution has been adopted, has even broader goals.
“Whatever system of land tenure is adopted in South Africa, the communists — in the long run — have in mind to take away all private property. That should never be forgotten,” Stanton warned, noting that he had lived in communist-run countries before. “Every place you go where communists have taken over, they take away private ownership because private ownership gives people the power — the economic power — to oppose their government. Once you have taken that away, there is no basis on which you can have the economic power to oppose the government.”
Meanwhile, the South African government is stepping up efforts to disarm the struggling white farms, too — stripping them of their final line of defense. As has consistently been the case throughout history, of course, disarmament is always a necessary precursor to totalitarianism and the eventual mass slaughter of target groups. In fact, arms in the hands of citizens are often the final barrier to complete enslavement and even extermination.
“The government has disbanded the commando units of white farmers that once protected their farms, and has passed laws to confiscate the farmers’ weapons,” Genocide Watch noted on its website in an update about South Africa posted last month. “Disarmament of a targeted group is one of the surest early warning signs of future genocidal killings.”
The exile who spoke with TNA said that many of the guns confiscated from whites by officials have later been found at the gruesome murder scenes of white farmers. Even mere possession of an “unregistered” or “unlicensed” weapon — licenses have become extraordinarily difficult to obtain, if not impossible — can result in jail time. And in South Africa, especially for white farmers, that is a virtual death sentence, with widespread rape and HIV infections being the norm.
Dr. Stanton promised the Afrikaners that he would be visiting the U.S. Embassy and bringing the issue to the attention of world leaders. However, he also urged them not to give up their guns and to continue resisting against the communist “ideology” espoused by so many of the political and party leaders that now dominate the nation’s coercive government apparatus.
The United Nations defines genocide as “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.” The term also includes actions other than simply wholesale slaughter, though. According to the UN, among the crimes that can constitute genocide are causing serious harm to members of a specific minority group, deliberately inflicting conditions on the minority aimed at bringing about its destruction in whole or in part, seeking to prevent births among the targeted population, and forcibly transferring minority children to others.
Activists and exiles argue that many of those conditions have already been met — and any single one can technically constitute genocide if it is part of a systematic attempt to destroy a particular group. Meanwhile, experts say that the government is encouraging the problem, actively discriminating against whites, and in many cases even facilitating the on-going atrocities.
Not all South Africans — especially city dwellers — are convinced that there is an on-going genocide in their country, or even that one may be coming. Indeed, the vast majority of blacks and whites would simply like to live in peace with each other, and there are plenty of other problems facing South Africa at the same time. However, virtually everyone agrees that without solutions, the precarious situation in the “Rainbow Nation” will continue to deteriorate, going from bad to worse.
Many activists seeking to draw attention to the issue are calling on European governments and the United States to immediately begin accepting especially vulnerable white refugees from South Africa as a high priority. There are less than five million whites in the country, about 10 percent of the population, down from almost a quarter decades ago. Analysts say that giving them asylum, however, may prove tough politically — partly because it could expose the precious establishment myths of Nelson Mandela and his ANC as being “heroic” so-called “freedom fighters.”
Unsurprisingly, the establishment press has barely reported a word about the looming potential calamity. And by the time the world media finally catches on, many analysts worry that it might be too late.
This is a shortened version of the original article.