South Africa - is the dream over?

For over thirty years liberals mounted a hate campaign against a society that had achieved enormous prosperity through hard work in the face of considerable adversity. The people involved were white South Africans, who created the Dark Continent’s only functioning western developed state. This was clearly an unequal society and the native population was routinely and systematically denied the civil rights enjoyed by the white minority. In this respect South Africa was no different to the many British colonies to the north, or to those under the colonial rule of other European countries such as France and Portugal. The white authorities in South Africa undoubtedly carried out many shameful acts to maintain their rule and to keep order, but so too did the other colonial powers, for example the British in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising.

With the ending of colonial rule in most African countries by the end of the sixties South Africa became increasingly isolated. The white population in the African colonies was very small and after independence most chose to emigrate. This option was not available to the nearly 4.5 million whites living in South Africa. They had a choice to either surrender to black majority rule under the ANC and a likely descent into chaos, or to maintain the status quo to protect the prosperous civilisation which their industry and enterprise had created. They chose the latter much to the fury of Western liberals.

South Africa was an easy target for vociferous liberals anxious to hawk around their elevated consciences, since they would not be the ones to suffer the consequences of their white guilt trip. After several decades coming under attack from international sanctions and internal terrorism, eventually the whites under De Klerk agreed, after a referendum, to enter into negotiations with the ANC. As a result De Klerk handed power to the ANC in 1994, without the whites being given a second referendum to decide whether the terms he agreed were acceptable.

An interesting book, South Africa’s Brave New World by S. W Johnson, gives a wide ranging account of what has happened in South Africa since the ANC came to power. It is not an easy read due to the exceptionally detailed, but necessary, recitation of events, and the fact that most of the main participants are largely unknown in Britain. Johnson is himself a South African liberal who opposed apartheid. With the experience of living in the country his views on this were absurdly naïve. He is clearly disappointed and disillusioned with the turn of events since 1994, but he really should not be surprised since, as he acknowledges, they were predicted by the overwhelming majority of white people who broadly supported the apartheid system.

For most of the period covered by Johnson’s book Thabo Mbeki ran the country, first as vice president and then as president from 1999 to 2008. Although diligent he was a control freak who sought to dispense patronage on a grand scale. Most of the main political offices were filled with his ANC cronies, few of whom possessed the necessary administrative skills required for running their government departments. To compound the problem experienced white public officials were quickly shunted out and replaced, under the guise of affirmative action, by unskilled and unqualified blacks. Corruption was rife, resulting in a significant proportion of public funds finding their way into the bank accounts of a new seriously rich black political elite. As a result public services such as hospitals, roads and water supply quickly began to deteriorate. The surplus of electricity generation facilities which the ANC inherited was so mismanaged that regular power cuts eventually became routine.

Administrative incompetence and corruption was not the only problem. Crime skyrocketed, with South Africa becoming the murder and rape capital of the world. An additional self inflicted wound was Mbeki’s denial over the cause of Aids which resulted in an estimated 300,000 unnecessary deaths. Most disturbingly, over 1200 white farmers have been brutally murdered, proportionally much more than in neighbouring Zimbabwe. The vast majority of blacks are just as impoverished as they were under apartheid. Over one million whites have fled the country, mostly the young and enterprising. With the exception of the Aids scandal these developments were long predicted by the white population living in the country.

White liberals in Britain have moved on to other dubious causes such as tackling 'homophobia' or promoting the global warming hoax. They have never given any thought to the disorder, with worse to follow, that they have visited upon the people of South Africa. On this matter they are guilt free, as they continue to bathe in their sense of moral self righteous superiority, regardless of where this blinkered and, in this case, destructive outlook can lead to.