Credit Image: GovernmentZA/Flickr

Whites arrived in South Africa in 1652, not long after the Mayflower arrival in America. They had as much right to be there as any other new-world settlers. They built a wonderful country against daunting odds. The British were their first real antagonists. During the Anglo-Boer War, Britain built the world’s first concentration camps; more than 26,000 Afrikaans women and children died.

We survived, despite Britain’s greed for our gold, diamonds, and minerals. For 350 years, we toiled to sow the seeds of Western Civilization. Millions of Africans moved to South Africa from other parts of the continent seeking work and security from wars and conflict.

South Africa’s whites are the only substantial white population left in sub-Saharan Africa. There are only about four million of us in a country with a population of some 60 million. No one knows the real population of our country because millions of Africans have streamed across our borders since the African National Congress (ANC) came to power in 1994. Since then, there has been no border control.

Nelson Mandela voting in the 1994 election. (Credit Image: Paul Weinberg via Wikimedia)

Our country was handed over by the previous white government to a revolutionary gang. This happened because of enormous pressure from the West, especially from the United States. The ANC’s first president was Nelson Mandela, and the ANC’s path to power has been well documented. Whatever the world press has said about the “struggle for freedom,” the party took power through terror and the barrel of a gun. Nelson Mandela refused to renounce violence as a condition of his release, and violence continued well after he took power in 1994. It is his party, the ANC, that is destroying what was once a thriving first-world country. It was one of only six in the world that exported food; many neighboring African countries depended on us for jobs, security, and food.

Many of us knew that the dream of a non-racial democracy would end up as a black dictatorship. Many of us fought desperately to stop the takeover, but the West had a bizarre need to see black rule in this part of the world, whatever the consequences. Being right doesn’t mean you win. Giving “democracy” a chance here was a death sentence for our country. Whites voted for “negotiations,” bamboozled by the promise of power-sharing, world approbation, and acceptance into the “community of nations.” Nelson Mandela was never the icon portrayed by the world and especially by American liberals. South Africa today is his legacy.

A giant portrait of Nelson Mandela on a wall of Camden, London. The mural has been made to mark 99 years since Nelson Mandela was born. Since 2009, the former South African President and Nobel Peace Prize winner’s birthday has been celebrated as Mandela Day. (Credit Image: © Alberto Pezzali / NurPhoto via ZUMA Press)

What we see now in America follows the same pattern. The system is evil; it discriminates. There is no justice. It’s always someone else’s fault. Black Lives Matter has led to increased demands, and once these demands are met, there are always more. But you still have the wherewithal to resist.

In South Africa, conservatives were called far right, fascists, divisive, haters, intolerant. By nature, conservatives are not wild men in the streets, but you must act. The “progressive” philosophy sounds good, but it takes you into quicksand. We know. We saw it here. We lost. Don’t let your country slip through your fingers.

What follows is adopted from an article published by TLU SA — the Transvaal Agricultural Union South Africa. TLU SA is the oldest agricultural organization in South Africa, established at the end of the 19th century.

This is what you can expect if you fail to act.

* * *

Many people have now seen a black Boksburg resident’s WhatsApp video of a crumbling Boksburg East railway station.

He laments the “apocalyptic” ruin of a once beautiful concourse in an eastern suburb of Johannesburg. The rails are “on air” because the wooden ties have been stolen, while on a nearby line, the rails have been plundered, leaving the ties to rot in the sun.

Missing rails

Railway tracks have been stolen all over the country, and there is virtually nothing left of the six miles between Brakpan and Springs, on this line. Rails and ties have disappeared. Overhead power lines have been stolen, supporting poles are bent or broken, security fencing has been carted off in trucks and wheelbarrows. The Springs railway police, responsible for this corridor, doesn’t have a single patrol vehicle. Throughout South Africa, our once world-class railway system is being plundered piece by piece.

Most of our secondary roads have become like the rest of Africa: potholes, no shoulder, grass growing into the center of the road. There are small forests, with trees as tall as a man growing out of sidewalks and right up to roadsides. Everyone sees the decay, but the ANC doesn’t seem to care. Someone said they see nothing ugly, and they see nothing beautiful. Years ago, I heard a former Transkei official tell a visiting American that “we don’t care if the roads turn to dust, as long as we get rid of the whites.” Their roads turned to dust.

Pillage is part of the ANC way of life. President Cyril Ramaphosa pumps up fairy stories about new projects and exciting investments, but dissipation has taken over.

Cyril Ramaphosa at the Davos Conference Hall as leaders attend the final days of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (Credit Image: © Jeff Widener / ZUMA Wire)

What a tragedy it is to watch our country disintegrate. Those responsible — British, American, and European governments — now avert their eyes. The press is silent. There is no call to get rid of this ANC plague, unlike the world’s cacophony to defeat “white minority rule.” Our citizens of all races pay the price for international cowardice and political correctness.

Dying

Political commentator Gareth van Onselen writes of a dying city, Johannesburg, once the star of Africa:

You can map Johannesburg’s decay, using official numbers and statistics . . . . But off the record and between the lines, there are no numbers. They are too big. . . . You can no longer properly quantify the degradation. It has spiraled past the point of control. Managing the city is no longer an exercise in damage control so much as it is an exercise in uncontrolled damage. Age and disrepair mean the city’s infrastructure has turned in on itself — the more it is fixed, the more it breaks.

Mr. van Onselen continues:

Take load shedding [power outages]. Cut the electricity and fuses blow, sub-stations explode and cell phone reception dies. . . . All the while, residents are asked to “play their part,” to watch consumption for, as [the utility] Rand Water puts it, the system might “collapse.” It’s a kind of polite blackmail, but the blackmailer never keeps up his end of the bargain. The more citizens play their part, the worse things seem to get. . . .

If it rains, the city turns into a series of tributaries as blocked or broken drains overflow and the roads become rivers. The torrents sweep away more infrastructure with them. . . . Those places people meet and pass each other by — train stations, bus stops, bridges, public swimming pools and parks — are falling apart. . . . You can watch the paint peel, or a wall crumble. It happens in real time.

Wholesale fraud

Behind this rot are ANC political pals who get jobs for which they were hopelessly unqualified. But they don’t care, and neither does the ANC government. Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policy is embedded in all government jobs. Whites need not apply. We have something called the South African Qualifications Authority, but it’s hard to know what it does. Political friends get the jobs without regard to qualifications.

After the ANC takeover in 1994, a friend who worked for the Johannesburg municipality saw ANC cadres walk into offices and tell him and others that the ANC was now running the show “and if you don’t like it you can go.” The ANC was in charge and that was that. It drove out competent people, replaced them with comrades with inflated salaries — they started at five times the salary of the experienced white officials. A black South African writes: “Looking at ANC comrades who should never have aspired to public service, the rot and malfeasance oozes from every pore . . . . They have benefactors who fund their life of luxury . . . . Acting on principle and in the interest of the nation is a fool’s pastime, they believe.”

There is now media coverage of ANC mayors and managers very publicly filling in potholes, suddenly aware that they not only damage vehicles but can cause death.

pot hole south africa

Here is my translation of the text:

Jacob Mamabolo, Gauteng’s Member of the Executive Council for Roads and Transport yesterday sent Beeld this photo as proof of the size of the enormous pothole on the corner of Beyers Naude Ave. and Lewisham Street in Randburg which has now been repaired. [Subtitle:] “Reporter motivates him.” “Mamabolo thanks Dennis Delport, Beeld reporter for bringing the question of potholes to his attention. “It was his self-confidence and his motivation concerning the pothole question which prompted me to give this problem my attention.”

So what usually takes the attention of the Member of the Executive Council for Roads and Transport?

The public has stepped in to repair roads, sewage plants, electrical substations, and water pumps. Those in power do not apologize. What drives these ANC people? Jobs for pals and hanging on to power is the mentality we find in African countries. This is not to say that there are no pockets of first-world competence, cleanliness, and infrastructure in South Africa, but they are not courtesy of the ANC. Millions of South Africans just do their best.

Volunteers collect rubbish near a river in Pretoria

Volunteers collect rubbish near a river in Pretoria, South Africa, April 22, 2021. (Credit Image: © Chen Cheng / Xinhua via ZUMA Press)

Cape Town is still one of the world’s most beautiful cities but of late it has suffered terrible fires allegedly started by homeless people who live on the streets. One Tanzanian man charged first with arson and then damaging the environment said he had been living without papers in Cape Town for 10 years. There are millions like him all over South Africa.

Crime

The International Crime Index 2021 reports that six South African cities are among the 20 most dangerous in the world out of no fewer than 432 cities. After Caracas, Venezuela and Port Moresby, New Guinea, Pretoria comes third, Durban is fourth, and Johannesburg fifth. Baghdad is 55th, Damascus 31, and Bogota, Columbia 58.

Johannesburg, South Africa – Night shift at the trauma unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. Victims of assault and violent crime account for about 50 percent of the patients. (Credit Image: © Jacob Zocherman / Kontinent / zReportage / ZUMA)

South Africa’s cities became hell holes only after blacks started running the country. I note that the “white-run” United States is well represented among the world’s most dangerous cities: Memphis is 17th, Baltimore is 18th, and Detroit is 20th. We all know why. The evidence is there for anyone not deliberately blind. Americans: Open your eyes.