by Dan Roodt
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This week on Twitter a former UKZN student representative council member, Sfiso “Mabhiza” Mbatha, tweeted: “We gonna kill every white cockcroach that breath(es) SA’s air”, while adding, “Would rape every 13yr old white girl after Mandela finally kick that bucket. Just for control.”
These tweets caused a lot of reaction, but no official complaints were laid. If any such statement were made about blacks, it would have provoked a far larger furore. The tweeter would have been charged with hate speech at the SA Human Rights Commission and MSM journalists would have “shamed” him with negative publicity about his “racism”.
As Mbatha explained afterwards, he thought it was something of a joke: “It was just a joke at the end of the day. But now I realise that they were uncalled for, they went overboard and pushed the limit. I did say that I was joking, but people responded by insulting me, so I insulted them back.”
A large number of whites did not react at all. This is typical of so-called “advanced groups” all over the world who almost expect to be resented and even hated by the less successful groups. The well-known ethnic expert and author of the book, Ethnic goups in conflict, David Horowitz, distinguishes between “advanced groups” and “backward groups”. I think it would be fair to say that South African whites fit the definition of an “advanced group” and therefore typically react like one. Advanced groups are more educated, entrepreneurial and occupy the higher social classes in an ethnically divided society. As Horowitz explains:
“Where backward groups seek proportionality in government employment, advanced groups seek only assurances of nondiscrimination. Where backward groups attempt to keep ethnic strangers from government service in their region, advanced groups affirm the principle of unrestricted mobility.”
Advanced groups are reluctant to secede if they find themselves living in diaspora in a “backward territory”. Significantly, Horowitz notes that advanced groups are “disproportionately victims of ethnic violence”. South Africa’s brutal farm murders are a case in point, targeting a specific language and racial group that is perceived to be in a better socio-economic position than the surrounding “backward” population.
If we are honest, we should admit that some form of white genocide or anti-white violence has always been at the core of the ANC’s “liberation strategy”. The ANC is essentially composed of elites identifying with the less successful ethnic groups in South Africa. It is therefore normal that, according to the laws of ethnic conflict, it should heap opprobium onto whites which it perceives as “the enemy” and responsible for the relative deprivation of South African blacks. It is also telling that the principle of proportional employment has been implemented, not only in the public sector, but also in the private sector in a clear attempt to curtail white social and economic prowess.
However, it would be too simplistic to transpose Horowitz’s theory of ethnic conflict onto South Africa as one might onto Nigeria, Sri Lanka or Malaysia. In addition to the ethnic dynamic at work in the South African conflict, there is also the ideological dimension in the form of political correctness, Western decadence and generalised anti-white attitudes to be found in the global mainstream media.
Against this backdrop, calls for a white genocide in South Africa seem almost normal or normalised. Foreign correspondents in Johannesburg from the BBC, the New York Times and the London Guardian who have been casting whites in the role of evil racists for years, are likely to report on anti-white animus among blacks with “understanding”. In the light of the aforegoing narrative, these correspondents might suggest: who can blame them?
White South African liberals and leftists who are loyal to Britain and share left-wing Anglo-American perspectives on their own countrymen, take an equally sanguine view of such manifestations of anti-white “racism”. Liberal Britons are indifferent to the killing of whites in South Africa, if not supportive of any would-be black genocidaires. I once spoke to an official from a London NGO who explained to me that we should not complain about being killed by blacks as “they were only getting their own back”, as if white leaders in the past had proceeded to similar public appeals to “exterminate the kaffirs”!
As we saw during the court case around Julius Malema’s “hate speech” against Afrikaner farmers, there was little media sympathy for white victims of ethnic and racial violence. Even though Malema was prohibited from singing the song, “Kill a Boer, kill a farmer”, the song kept on being sung all over the country. In fact, the governing ANC opposed the legal prohibition of the song, with its advocate Gilbert Marcus, brother of Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus, arguing for the party’s “freedom of speech”. Singing such songs were part of “black culture”.
It may be, therefore, that calls for white genocide in South Africa are examples of the “free speech” that Marcus and many other leftists and liberals would argue are “harmless” and “not to be taken literally”. In the words of the young black tweeter from Natal, Sfiso “Mabhiza” Mbatha, it is “just a joke at the end of the day”.
It is also true that black Africans often joke about killing. “I’m going to kill you,” is quite an everyday saying. Also, killing is invoked many a time as a universal method of meting out justice for all sorts of crimes and misdemeanours.
However, as the saying goes, “many a true word is spoken in jest”. Robert Mugabe is one of the most admired black leaders in South Africa and there is no doubt that his “final solution to the white problem” by simply confiscating their assets and expelling most of the white population, would also be wildly popular in this country. There not being another country south of South Africa towards which whites could flee, a broad desire “to get rid of whites once and for all” could lead to widespread killing, massacres or even systemic genocide of the kind hinted at in “jocular” black tweets.
How then should we answer my initial question in the title above: “How should we respond to calls for white genocide?” I think there would be at least two approaches. The one would be a kind of laissez faire approach in line with leftist white responses of “not taking it literally”. That would also constitute the most typical reaction of Horowitz’s “advanced group” that sees its salvation not in mass mobilisation and ethnic agitation, but in avoiding conflict – or at worst, moving away from it. The most common reaction of whites after escaping from an armed robbery, farm attack or other form of black-on-white violence is not to join the local chapter of the AWB’s Ystergarde (Iron Guard), but to call an Australian immigration consultant.
I have just had a visit from a friend who had recently emigrated to Australia. He misses South Africa, family and friends, especially the warmth and hospitality of Afrikaners. But he does not contemplate ever returning to South Africa, because, as he put it: “I feel safe in Australia. I would be scared to live in South Africa again.”
Many whites simply ignore ethnic slogans directed at them. I once listened to a talk show on the Afrikaans radio RSG where many of the callers stated quite frankly that they had adopted a kind of ostrich-like, head-in-the-sand approach. They would simply avoid reading newspapers and websites or even listening to the news on radio because it upsets them. They choose not to know. The average white professional woman or housewife shopping at Woolworths does not care either that the chain has an anti-white employment policy. She buys the fantasy of eating well, dressing well and decorating her home in the latest mix of white and earthy, African colours.
Ever since my Afrikaans high school days, I have often heard the typical injunction from teachers and many others: “Don’t be so negative!” Within the Afrikaner mind, every problem has a solution and “being negative” is a cardinal sin. In that sense, what can be more “negative” than imputing genocidal urges to South Africa’s black majority? Or even responding to a call for white genocide that is made every so often by some tweeter or black politician?
Among my many criticisms of the Afrikaans schooling system, although one of the best in the world for churning out straight-A students in maths and science, or good writers, artists, actors and so on, is that it does not teach one the art of critical thinking. Disagreeing with someone, especially publicly, is often seen as “bad manners” or even worse, as displaying that nefarious “negative” attitude. Often I have sat in meetings with especially elderly Afrikaners who used to occupy positions of authority in the old system and, upon voicing my disagreement on some point, they would simply ignore me as if they had not heard me!
Similarly, many Afrikaners out there, including the editors of newspapers, radio stations and pay-TV channels, are “simply not hearing” any call for white genocide. Call it denial or what you will, but just as their culture predisposes blacks to easily talking about killing, local white culture tends to make them hard of hearing.
We have been educated and programmed to be decent, cooperative, “positive” in Afrikaans parlance, so behave like a typical “advanced” ethnic group, eschewing ethnic solidarity in the face of danger.
However, there is one “advanced” group, probably due to past experience, that does not take calls for genocide lying down. Here I am referring, of course, to Jews. South African Jews enjoy arguably the highest standard of living of any ethnic group in the world and a perusal of the weekly South African Jewish Report will tell you about their huge socio-economic success, as well as media and political influence.
Unlike such dreadful appeals directed against Afrikaners and Boers, no-one in South Africa has ever called for the extermination of Jews. In fact, South Africa’s much-maligned National Party government was probably responsible for the good relations not only between Jews and the rest of the white population, but also between Jews and South African Muslims.
To my surprise, I recently discovered the construction site of Johannesburg’s Holocaust Centre, with another one having been in existence in Cape Town for some years already. These centres, apart from educating the public about the history of Jewish persecution, tend to preach tolerance towards Jews and between ethnic groups generally.
There is also the international Anti-Defamation League which, according to one of its own documents, “fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all,” doing so through “information, education, legislation, and advocacy”.
I can only imagine the international outcry, notably from Germany, that would ensue if any South African black leader had to start singing “freedom songs” about “Kill a Jew, kill a plutocrat”. Charges of hate speech would immediately be laid against the offender and he would become persona non grata in many quarters. I doubt very much whether anyone at the Johannesburg Bar, least of all Gilbert Marcus SC, would defend his “freedom of speech” and colourful metaphors.
The so-called South African Human Rights Commission is a suspect body, in itself prone to anti-white sentiment. It was created to harass whites, not to uphold their rights. As far as I know, it has never responded to complaints about anti-white hate speech, apart from acknowledging the receipt of such a complaint. For that reason, many Afrikaner groups do not even comtemplate complaining to the SAHRC about calls for white genocide.
But if we are looking for models to deal with the growing chorus calling for a white genocide in South Africa, we could do worse than to imitate the Jewish community. Either one lets these comments and invocations to kill whites slide, like the ostriches that we are, or one should draw a line and respond to each and every one of them. Even if the SA Human Rights Commission will do nothing to stop hate speech against whites, the mere fact of documenting such complaints might come in handy at some later point when our struggle for survival gets even more intense than it already is.
The current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, made a bizarre statement in 1992 when he said: “Gays are the next Jews of fundraising.” Many people have recently quoted this.phrase to point out the vast support for Obama’s Democrats among US gays.
But in a more fundamental sense, I think we could say that Afrikaners – and by extension white South Africans – are “the next Jews”. We are already subject to vicious propaganda campaigns, vilification, hostile media reports, legal and official discrimination, stereotyping and random ethnic attacks, even pogroms.
Our famous Afrikaner poet, N.P. van Wyk Louw, once wrote: “If the Afrikaner had to lose political power in South Africa, he would be as helpless as the Jew in Nazi Germany.”
Recent history has vindicated Louw. It is high time that, while we are being treated like Jews in Czarist Russia, we should respond like modern Jews who not only react vehemently against any suggestion of genocide, but also preempt it through, in the words of the Anti-Defamation League: “information, education, legislation, and advocacy”.
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