The news has been all over South African media for months
Trump last night:
I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2018
Bruce Gorton emailed me about it this morning and I requested and got permission to share what he wrote.
The point on farm deaths, according to AgriSA farm murders are at a 19 year low.Even before that claims of “white genocide” have been considered largely the ramblings of a lunatic fringe within South Africa, considering how high the murder rate is generally.
Anyway it looks like it is in response to a report by Tucker, the man whose only expression is ‘confused’, Carlson which otherwise I would have written off as being from a man who doesn’t know what the words “exclusive” or “investigative” mean. The news has been all over South African media for months, I don’t think typing “Ramaphosa” into Google news quite cuts it as investigative work.This report is wrong. The constitution has not been amended, and land seizures have not begun yet. What has happened is that some farms have been identified for expropriation without compensation as test cases to see if the constitution even needs to be amended to allow for that.
I suspect a lot of what I’m feeling right now is the sort of thing you Americans have to deal with on a daily basis. I don’t know where it is a sort of tired “No, that is not what is going on” or a sinking dread that this is what is leading the world’s largest nuclear power.
Yes, both of those – weary disgust mixed with terror.
So nothing has happened yet, the European farmers have nothing to worry about….. So far.
The second last paragraph is particularly omininous.
I really dislike everyone falling in line with their side. This massive polarization is unhealthy.
In this case, if Trump says it, it’s automatically wrong and ridiculous. Farm seizures? What’s the dotard even talking about?
See, no seizures. Ridiculous talk!
Large scale killing of farmers? What a moron. The farm attacks, defined by the article linked in the rebuttal as “violent crimes such as murder‚ rape‚ robbery and bodily harm‚ and violence that destroys farm infrastructure to disrupt farming”, have resulted in a death rate that’s at a 19 year low. See, they’ve been tracking these farm attacks for at least 19 years, and they’re currently down, so obviously speaking of large scale farm attacks is ridiculous.
Wikipedia on this non-issue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_farm_attacks
An article calling into question the recent numbers by linking to individual murder news stories for more murders than were recorded: http://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/news24s-dodgy-farm-murder-report
Dropping the sarcasm, I agree it’s idiotic that this beame a priority for the U.S. president and after he saw a report on a TV show that’s not known for its accuracy. But the only thing apparently wrong in his tweet is the seizures have not happened…yet (although Newsweek says they “reportedly” have begun). But they almost certainly will.
And, yes, it’s unnerving that this an issue the Daily Stormer and its ilk have been hyping and now our president is on it, while he doesn’t seem concerned about police shooting black people, etc. No doubt he’s a terrible person and a racist. But that does mot mean every time he says “up” the answer is “down”.
Skeletor…Bruce Gorton is a South African journalist. I don’t think you are.
Trump (through ignorance and knee-jerk racism) and Skeletor, (possibly being disingenuous) are conflating two issues. The violence directed at white farmers and landowners was (and here I am grossly simplifying) an almost inevitable result of the end of Apartheid, with some black South Africans, no longer shackled by that evil system, striking back at those who had stolen their lands and subjugated their people. Illegal, yes, but totally understandable to anybody who can be bothered to learn a little about the history. It is, in a way, a fate that could have but rarely befell white Americans in the slave states after the ending of slavery. In fact, had the Native Americans not been largely wiped out it is a fate that could have befallen White Americans more than a century ago.
The current potential expropriations will be a government-led initiative to take the stolen land out of the private ownership of white Europeans and place it back into the hands of the nation. I’m sure that no murders will be involved, though I’m equally sure that some landowners will resort to the ‘philosophy’ of the American Bundys, etc, and resort to armed barricades.
OK, was I hallucinating? I’m sure I saw a long-ish comment from Skeletor and pithy response from Ophelia before I wrote that.
No hallucination…I hit peak exasperation with Skeletor and binned both of them, but now they’re back.
Phew! Cancelling the doctor straight away. (-:
A of S @5
How smug you are, we will see what happens. How lucky you are to, as I presume, to live in a country that nearly annihilated its rightful owners. Some people must suffer of course, in order to right history’s wrongs. I was taught French by a European ‘pied noir’ whose people had settled in Algeria generations before and been effectively expelled. It was of course, his fault that French settlers had invaded the country.
What a very big virtue-signalling flag you have.
RJW, I don’t think anyone from a colony should ever accuse anyone else of being smug on such matters. That applies to both you and I.
In Australia the estimates of Aboriginal peoples population ranged from 300,000-1,000,000 in pre-european times to just 60,000-70,000 in the 1920’s. A decline of between roughly 80-95%.
In New Zealand, the estimate of pre-european population generally considered most reliable was 100,000. In 1896 this bottomed out at 42,000. A decline of around 60%. In 1856 physician and politician Dr Isaac Featherston said it was the duty of Europeans to ‘smooth down … [the] dying pillow’ of the Māori race. (that last quoted from teara.govt.nz)
Hardly something for either Australia or New Zealand to feel pride in and pretty sound evidence that in both cases ‘we’ came close to annihilating our indigenous peoples too.
RJW, what the Hell was smug about my comment? I was merely pointing out, in a very simplified way, the two issues that Trump and Skeletor were conflating.
I will, however, slightly smugly ask who the rightful owners of England were, and when near-annihilation befell them?
Celts, Romans
Celts and Romans, Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxons, Vikings
Anglo-Saxons again, Normans
Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Scots, Danes, Irish and anyone else who wanted to pile in…
Ok, so not strictly all annihilations, but there are distinctly fewer Celts in what is now England than there used to be. My Scots and Pictish ancestors feel most aggrieved.
Rob, you’ve missed the point completely. Which was, those of us in settler societies where the indigenous people were effectively nearly annihilated shouldn’t assume the moral high ground in regard to white South Africans. We’re lucky. Also the invasion, genocide and land theft were the result of decisions made in Europe from the 15th century to the 20th, “The Guns, Germs and Steel”.
South Africa like many other regions, has been subject to invasions and migrations. I wonder when the San will get their land back, not soon I’d bet.
Genetic studies can be inconclusive, one suggests that Celtic men lost their ‘breeding rights’ to the Germanic invaders. Also some Celts adopted the Anglo Saxon language and culture as a kind of camouflage. To further complicate matters ‘Celtic’ is a cultural designate as well.
The thing with the farm attacks is that they are not particularly out of line with the general level of criminality within South Africa. The murder rate is very high no matter who you are, so it is actually more to do with the gross incompetence of our government than anything intentional.
It isn’t a matter of black people rising up against a past oppressor, it is a matter of criminals targeting the places where there is stuff to steal. The same level of brutality is unfortunately present within crime that hits informal settlements, business and suchlike.
With regards to the land expropriation debate – it isn’t entirely clear what is going to happen with it. Ramaphosa claims that the constitutional amendment he’s after is going to strengthen property rights, which it might due to provision 8 in section 25 of the South African constitution reading as follows:
Which essentially means so long as the government justifies it by saying it is to correct the imbalances brought about by the long history of South African racism, it can do what it likes right now. The amendment might restrict them further.
The big scary thing in South African politics is Julius Malema, who has stood up in Parliament and declared whites should be grateful that he isn’t calling for genocide yet. The whole land expropriation debate is essentially aimed at taking the wind out of his sails,
The post Apartheid government more or less took after the US on the economy. One of the first things they did was lower taxes, followed by adopting a policy of pursuing foreign direct investment, and pushing a reserve bank policy of inflation targeting.
This is a policy set which favours the asset holders, who, due to apartheid, are mostly white. Our economy has lost diversity with larger businesses slowly taking over smaller ones, and we’ve seen an overall increase in the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, which were mostly already rich in 1994.
The whole expropriation debate essentially is a thing because of this. With regards to our farms for example, about 50% of our new farmers, who got farms under the post Mandela policy of land reform failed due to a lack of training and finance, and their farms went on the market and got bought by larger farming concerns because that’s who had the money to buy them.
A lot of these large concerns then started evicting farm workers and shutting down the schools that operated on those farms, creating a lot of the tension you see now.
Our issues have been further compounded by massive corruption in our government. During the Jacob Zuma era, despite his rise being in part on the basis of “radical economic transformation”, land reform essentially stopped as funds that were supposed to aid black farmers get off the ground were diverted to his homestead, or his corrupt cronies.
Now during Apartheid and the era before that, nobody paid black farmers who lost their land. At best a tribal authority might have gotten some compensation, but black South Africans didn’t get to pick their tribal authorities so it was a bit like you lost your house, and some random dude got paid a few hundred bucks compensation. One of the sore points of the new dispensation is the maintenance of these authorities who will quite happily evict people from their homes if Anglo American wants to build a mine under them.
Part of the land reform debate was actually about this problem, Kgalema Mothlanthe’s report on the Ingyoma Trust was essentially that it should be dissolved and the land under it given to individual Zulus with title deeds, rather than have it all belong to the Zulu king, because he wasn’t serving his people he was serving himself. The ANC and the EFF both wussed out on tribal lands however when the Zulu king threatened to start a civil war.
The upshot of all of this being economically we’re not all that different now to how we were under Apartheid even though there is no active policy of maintaining our inequalities. The land redistribution debate is born of the frustration that this has caused within our country.
Malema has been tapping into the general dissatisfaction this has caused to call for the nationalisation of all South African land, mines and banks. Malema’s racism goes beyond whites of course, he is also noted for his anti-Indian sentiment, and his party isn’t above feeding into general xenophobia either.
Though the EFF is only the third largest political party in South Africa, there is the risk that they use that general anger in South Africa to grow. Nobody who doesn’t wear a red beret wants that.
TLDR: You’ve got a bunch of people who were essentially robbed under apartheid and colonialism, who, once those systems ended, still didn’t get their stuff back, and a major political party pushing for taking that stuff back, and the ruling party more or less trying to figure out a way to do that in a way which won’t end up with the whole country going up in flames.
Misrepresenting what is already an alarming situation doesn’t help.
Sorry RJW, I didn’t find that point obvious at all.
#9 #13 RJW
But AS was not expressing moral superiority towards white S Africans, nor gloating over living in a nation with a secure majority demographic; he was describing the motivations of those that the actions being taken against them, without necessarily taking either side.
[…] a comment by Bruce Gorton on The news has been all over South African media for […]
Holms, thank you.
Rob, a beautiful concise history of Britain there.