The Price of Liberty

Recently MSM reported (and oddly enough, seemed to condemn) black South African politicians and government leaders urging that white South African children be preyed upon. Including just plain killing the white women and children.

(While this is apparently condemned even by MSM, we find that in the States, most MSM applaud and encourage government agencies and various groups to prey on American children, regardless of color or race. But that is a subject for a different commentary.) (And we won’t even talk (now) about how many American children are still being killed before they can actually draw a breath.)

It is not just women and children in South Africa who are threatened by black South Africans, of course. It is all minorities: white, Asian, mixed race, and the odd “other” – as well as anyone who is politically opposed to the madmen (and madwomen) in control. Which of course does include some black South Africans, especially those of (or whose ancestors were) of various tribes not currently in power. And we should point out there are actually at least three distinct groups of whites in South Africa: descendants of the original Dutch settlers (called Boer, or “farmer” in Dutch), the English who conquered and colonized the Dutch colonies, and then the usual mish-mash of European and European-descent whites. Just as we should point out that the Dutch settlers came to the Cape originally when there were few black Africans in the country: the Zulu and other dominant black tribes actually invaded the Cape region after the Dutch and British had established a society there.

Apartheid South Africa was an evil place, and its policies against its own people worse than average for mandatory human government. The Dutch and English and Brits made some serious mistakes: greater perhaps than the average 19th and 20th Century European and British systems.

But a tyranny by a majority is just as evil as a tyranny by a minority. Tyranny is tyranny regardless of the color of the skin of rulers and ruled. Regardless of their ancestry.

As in the Fifty States today, there is a growing movement for reparations. But this is Africa, and the ever-smaller Dutch, English, and mixed European-descent population is a convenient target. Although apartheid was not slavery, perhaps we can compare it to slavery in some ways. Or at least the racial-based slavery which most modern Westerners (as in “Western Civilization” and not Western States) believe to be the standard. To a large degree, since the end of apartheid, this population has been paying reparations – those who have not fled the country to seek prosperity (or even just survival) elsewhere. That is clearly not enough: more and more black South Africans (particularly those in power) have made it clear that the reparations to be paid to them are measured in blood.

Multi-cultural political entities have existed in human history: even multi-racial ones. It seems as though the only ones that have succeeded for any length of time (measured in generations, not years) are empires, in which all groups are in servitude, or religiously-based societies in which shared beliefs and practices overcome these other differences. South Africa in 2023 is neither.

The South African dilemma in 2023 is not too much different, if already far more bloody and subject to violent flare-up, than what we see in the Fifty States, Western and even Northern Europe: can a free and peaceful society be established in which people are recognized as individuals and not lumped together in groups – without first tearing society and economy apart in a massive bloodbath? And for lovers of liberty who do not want to flee their homeland, can they get their liberty, peace, and prosperity without first totally destroying the tyrants who prevent all of that?