StephanZA

Wrote this some years ago describing how we dealt with South Africa when I was in the US Foreign Service. It was pathetic. South Africa. Complicated place with a complicated history which few outside of the Boers and the Zulus seem to understand or appreciate. When I was at the UN in the 1980's I had to deal with the South African "Issue." Israel and South Africa, of course, were the greatest evils facing mankind, and the UN spared no effort to crush them both. I would, on occasion meet, quite discreetly, the harried and tired-looking South African diplomats assigned to New York and Geneva. I remember their Mission in NY had no identifying flag or symbol; you knew you were entering South African property only because the door handle read "Trek." A giveaway, that. The British, Israelis, and we were about the only ones who argued for a more moderate treatment of South Africa. In the end, of course, our policy likely would have produced the same thing that eventually happened, to wit, the death of Africa's richest and most productive country. In dealing with South Africa back then, we viewed it as some sort of replay of our own civil rights struggle and fight against Jim Crow. That, of course, was nonsense, but few of us had the knowledge or courage to say so. The Boers, especially, had about as much claim to South Africa as did the Zulus. Both were conquering tribes. Traditional enemies of the British, the Boers and the Zulus, in fact, had reached a sort of accommodation and seemed tacitly united against the massive influx of outsiders that finally did alter irrevocably the demographics of South Africa. Immigration did the place in. Yes, evil South Africa under the evil Boers was a net recipient of immigrants and refugees, almost all black and Asian from other parts of Africa. For a time, of course, big business such as in the diamond, gold, and agricultural sectors welcomed these migrants as a source of cheap labor. Well, as we can see at home and in Europe, cheap labor can get very expensive very quickly especially once it gets politicized by "progressive" forces. So, evil apartheid was destroyed; Mandela and his ANC took power, and--Surprise!--South Africa has become a hellish place for everybody, black, white, Zulu, Boer, Anglo, Asian, etc. We now see the South African parliament declaring that white-owned property (about ¾'s of the most productive agricultural land) can and should be seized without compensation, in the style of Zimbabwe. We have prominent South African politicians calling for the murder of whites. The world reaction seems, to say the least, muted. I see no calls for a meeting of the UNSC, or emergency human rights meetings in NY or Geneva. Silence in the face of genocide. White Lives Don't Matter!