It is one of the
many bitter ironies about South Africa that the policy of apartheid—to which
Afrikaners clung for decades as their only hope and salvation from Third World
domination—was in fact an impracticable and unworkable system which led
directly to the Afrikaners’ demise as a political force in that country.
The politicians—the National Party—who
fostered apartheid are the primary criminals in this tragedy, holding out a
false illusory hope to the Afrikaners, and then when the inevitable became just
that, changed track and gave in, abandoning their followers to African National
Congress (ANC) rule as callously as they had earlier lied to them.
For apartheid—in reality forced social
segregation—was nothing but an illusion, a twisted distortion of the
demographic reality of South Africa, not to mention the truth that it was
ultimately, morally repugnant as well. The conservative white South African
politicians never understood what the driving force of political power is:
namely, physical occupation. Political power comes from physical occupation:
not historical rights, not title deeds, not moral rights—only occupation. Those
people who occupy a territory determine the nature of the society in that
region.
Two examples, familiar to all, illustrate
this point well:
* Example 1:
North America. On that continent, the American Indian (Amerind) people lived
for thousands of years, creating a culture which dominated that continent. The
culture of North America reflected the fact that the Amerinds lived and formed
the majority population there.
After 1500 AD, however, that continent
filled up with white immigrants from Europe. These white immigrants displaced
the Amerinds by squeezing them out of possession of North America. The Amerind
culture had dominated for thousands of years, because they were the majority
population. Within one hundred years, this had changed. This shift reflected
the fact that the majority of inhabitants of North America had become white
Europeans. The Amerind civilization “fell” because the population of North
America changed.
This effect—the displacement of peoples
and the subsequent disappearance of their civilization—has direct implications
in racial terms. The rise and fall of any particular civilization can therefore
be traced, not by the economics, politics, morals, etc., of a particular
civilization, but rather by the actual racial presence of the people
themselves.
If the society which has produced a
particular civilization stays intact as a racially homogeneous unit, then that
civilization remains active. If, however, the society within any particular
given area changes its racial makeup—through invasion, immigration, or any
decline in numbers—then the civilization which that society has produced will
disappear with them, to be replaced by a new civilization reflecting the new
inhabitants of that territory.
* Example 2:
Israel. The state of Israel is today a political reality, not because the Bible
says Jews belong there (although many Jews and Christians might think so) but
simply because the Zionist movement has ensured that Jews are a majority in
that territory. This was done through a deliberate policy of settlement and
immigration, coordinated over decades.
This also forms the rationale behind the
current Israeli government’s plans to build up Jewish settlements in the West
Bank: by physically occupying the territory, they hope to change the makeup of
that region to the point where it becomes de facto part of Israel.
History teaches us that there are two main
reasons for a change in the racial makeup of any society: either military
occupation, or the use of alien labor. The American Indians serve as a textbook
example of the “military occupation” case study, as detailed above, while South
Africa serves as a textbook example of the “use of alien labor” case study.
When a change occurs through the use of alien labor, the following process
occurs:
- The dominant
society imports (usually racially) foreign labor to do the menial work in that
society.
- These racial
aliens then become established, and settle down and multiply in numbers by
drawing upon the society’s structures (in white countries, their science,
healthcare, technology, etc.).
- They finally
dominate that society by their sheer numbers.
It is, simply put, a demographic reality:
those who occupy a land determine the nature of that society. And so it was—and
is—with South Africa, where population figures reveal precisely how the use of
alien labor by the Afrikaners dispossessed them of their fatherland.
Consider the following: in 1904, the first
population census of the old Transvaal revealed that there were 297,277 whites,
and 937,127 nonwhites in that region (Transvaal, 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica).
Importantly, the 1904 census also tells us
that of these nonwhites, some 135,042 were not from the Transvaal, and were
only in the “Witwatersrand to work in the gold and other mines,” and that only
77 percent of all blacks in the Transvaal in 1904 were actually born there
(Ibid.).
With transient migrant laborers removed
from the equation, this means that there were 297,277 whites and 802,085
locally born blacks in the Transvaal.
According to the 1960 census, the
population of the Transvaal numbered 6,225,052, of which only 1,455,372 were
whites (Transvaal, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1966, Volume 22, page 423).
These were only the figures for the
Transvaal, it needs to be noted. For the entire country, the figures were even
more frightening: 4.5 million whites to anywhere between 30 and 35 million
nonwhites.
What caused this population imbalance to
swing from 802,000 blacks in the Boer homeland in 1904, to 4,769,680 in
1960—just fifty-six years? The answer: the blacks multiplied because they were
drawn to the Transvaal by the offer of work. Once settled there, they used the
benefits of white society (healthcare, technology, etc.) to exponentially
increase their numbers.
The formalization of apartheid by the
National Party after 1948 did not address the real issue which has faced every
minority trying to rule over a majority country throughout history. This
inherent contradiction of allowing huge numbers of racial aliens into a
territory whilst trying to prevent that majority population from dominating that
society has never been solved.
The truth is that it cannot be done.
In South Africa, almost every white
household had (and still has) one or more black servants.
Afrikaner farmers—who are subject to a
viciously high rate of attacks and murders—generally have hundreds of black
laborers working their huge farmlands.
In the mines, the economic heart of the
country, the vast majority of common laborers, numbering many hundreds of
thousands, are black.
All over the country the overwhelming
majority of laborers doing almost everything, from factory work to driving,
from road building to house building, from restaurant workers to shop clerks,
are black.
Over this mass of economic integration,
the apartheid government attempted to enforce social segregation and still
maintain a white government: it was a plan which was doomed from the start.
Apartheid was based on a fallacy: the
fallacy that nonwhites could be used as labor to drive society; that nonwhites
could physically form a majority inside South Africa, but that they could not
determine the nature of South African society.
This then, was the lie of apartheid: that
it was possible, through strict segregation, to ensure that blacks could not
rule over a country in which they were the majority.
The historical record is clear: there has
never been a society in which the majority of the population has not determined
the nature of that society.
White South Africans, it must be said,
more or less believed the lie. They were happy to have black domestic servants
cleaning their homes, ironing their clothes, making up the very beds in which
they slept—and were prepared to believe that this mass of established black
labor inside their territory would never have any effect upon the political
power structure of their country.
It is said, in fact, that the definition
of a white South African is “someone who would rather be murdered in their bed
than make it.”
Amusing? To be honest, not really—consider
these true examples:
* Under
apartheid, blacks could not use white public toilets, but they were used to
clean those same toilets each day. One can only wonder at the naiveté of such
an arrangement.
* Under
apartheid, blacks could work in restaurant kitchens, prepare the food, put it
on the plates, and deliver it to the white patrons’ tables, but they could not
eat that food at the same table in the same restaurant. What hypocrisy is that?
Surely if one was going to be consistent, one would have forbidden blacks from
working in restaurants completely. But no, apartheid didn’t go that far; it was
built upon the premise that blacks did the work.
Cynical observers talked about the “grass
mower” syndrome amongst South African whites. They regarded black labor as akin
to lawn mowers. A lawn mower sits quietly in its shed or garage until you need
it, then it mows the grass, and then you put it back in the shed where it stays
quietly, not causing any trouble, until the next time it is needed.
Somehow, white South Africans believed
that black labor was like a lawn mower: you could have it around, and when you
didn’t need it, you could hide it in its little shed where it would be good and
quiet—until you needed it again.
The reality is, of course, dramatically
different.
Another important part of the apartheid
lie was that military force could keep the system intact. The demographic
reality once again belied this: the South African white population totaled
about five million at its height, while the black population at that time was
around thirty million.
Of the five million whites, less than
eight hundred thousand were of military serviceable age, and not all of these
could be called up at any one time. The state had to rely on no more than a few
hundred thousand military personnel to try and control a black population of
millions.
Given that demographic reality, it can be
seen that apartheid was unsustainable by military means. Yet the lie continued,
and young white South Africans were conscripted into the army and police to
fight and die for a system which was doomed from the very beginning.
At the same time, white Western healthcare
and technology were made available on a massive scale. The largest hospital in
the Southern Hemisphere was erected in the black township of Soweto, outside
Johannesburg, specifically for the black population.
Infant mortality rates for blacks fell
dramatically (and were way below that of the rest of black ruled Africa). This
rapid population growth put additional pressure on the demographic makeup of
the country.
As the demographic balloon swelled further
and further, the apartheid government was forced to think out ever more
stringent and oppressive laws to protect the whites as the black population
continued to leapfrog in number year after year.
Laws such as detention without trial and
the banning of books and people were bad enough by themselves, but as the
conflict intensified, both sides started using methods which would be shunned
by any decent society. The apartheid state used officially funded death squads
and police torture became routine. The ANC placed bombs in restaurants, and
encouraged mobs to necklace murder collaborators, amongst other outrages.
In the name of a lie—that apartheid could
be sustained—the state caused morally repugnant acts to take place on both
sides of the political divide. The black resistance movements adopted a
guerrilla hit and run policy of attacks on strategic targets. To combat this
unconventional war, the South African Police were given extended powers of
detention and other draconian measures. These could only be short-term
firefighting measures, as the main issue: that of preventing majority black
occupation of the country, was never addressed by any apartheid law.
The white government tried to give
practical application to the policy of “Grand Apartheid.” Independence was
given to a number of traditional black tribal homelands, the first in the mid
1970s.
In this way, the apartheid government
deluded itself into thinking that black political aspirations could be
satisfied with the right to vote only in these tribal homelands—despite massive
numbers of blacks living outside of these territories in the white urban areas.
(These so-called “white” areas were not majority European once all the black
domestic servants, laborers, and farm workers were counted.)
The white government also refused to
adjust the size of these traditional tribal areas to fit the changed
demographics, stubbornly insisting that the black homelands—some 13 percent of
the country’s surface area—could accommodate what was rapidly becoming over 80
percent of the total population, even if it contained much of the prime
agricultural land, as was the case.
In a nutshell, the apartheid government
refused to accept the basic truth of racial dynamics: those who occupy a space
determine the nature of the society in that space, irrelevant of to whom that
space originally belonged.
White South Africa’s fate was sealed when
the territorial division was not adjusted to fit in with the demographic
realities, when all the effort was put into creating black homelands and none
put into creating a white homeland, and with the continued insistence upon the
use of black labor.
The partial reforms of the mid
1980s—repealing of the laws forbidding mixed racial marriages and mixed racial
political parties, and limited constitutional reforms which gave Indians and
Coloureds their own parliamentary chambers—did little to stop the increasing
violence.
In fact, racial violence increased
dramatically. The reforms created an unfulfilled “revolution of rising
expectations,” and it was precisely during this cycle of black violence and
white counter violence that the racial war taking place inside the country
exacted its highest death tolls ever.
In 1990, the white government finally
faced the truth that it could no longer effectively control the ballooning
black population, so it unbanned the ANC and released Nelson Mandela from
prison. By 1994 power had been handed over to the ANC in a one-man, one-vote
election. Although strict apartheid had ended in the 1980s, it is from 1994
that the policy is considered to have been laid to rest.
It was an inevitable result: apartheid could
not be maintained. It was in practical terms, unenforceable due to the
demographic reality, and it was morally unacceptable as well, based as it was
upon violent suppression.
White South Africans, therefore, sowed the
seeds of their own downfall with apartheid, a system of segregation that could
never be maintained in the face of their own use of black labor.
Apartheid had to fall: the only question
was when, not if. The politicians, who sold it to white South Africans as their
only hope and salvation, lied: either deliberately, or out of ignorance of the
reality of the relationship between demographics and power.
Can the
Afrikaners be Saved?
From the above, it is clear that the use
of nonwhite labor was the direct cause of the downfall of apartheid and white
rule in South Africa. Afrikaners lost control of the country because of their
lack of understanding of demographics, and not due to farfetched “conspiracies”
or “betrayals,” as many would like to believe.
This occupation took place because white
South Africa failed to understand that if they employed black labor, those
blacks would inevitably form the majority in that society, and ultimately—and
rightly—demand political power.
The question therefore arises: given the
current situation, can the Afrikaners be saved?
The answer is relatively simple:
* In a united
South Africa, in which they are the perpetual minority, the answer is no.
* In a smaller
region where Afrikaners form the majority population, the answer is yes.
No minority has every survived
indefinitely in the face of a growing hostile majority, particularly one in
South Africa where the material discrepancy between white and black is so vast.
There is only one way in which Afrikaners
can be saved. This would be if firstly they came to an understanding of the
relationship between demographics and political power; and secondly, if they
then adjust their expectations and political behavior in accordance with their
actual numbers and their ability to majority occupy territory.
Only once a majority of Afrikaners
understand this truth, can there even begin to be talk of a practical plan for
saving them from ultimate long-term extermination at the hands of the Third
World.
Theoretically, if a majority of Afrikaners
should come to this understanding, then it would be possible for Afrikaners to
save themselves—as no one else is going to save them.
Let us be positive and say that
theoretically, Afrikaners did come to an understanding of the relationship
between demographics and power politics.
Then they would stop wasting time blaming
crackpot conspiracies for their downfall, and stop dancing around wasting time
playing party politics in a majority rule system in which they are just as
doomed to failure as they were under apartheid. Instead, they would start
practically working toward creating a territory or region in which they became
the demographic majority.
This would, as a result of their small
numbers, be a much smaller territory than the current area of South Africa. Its
exact location can be decided when and if that time ever comes. However, it
must be majority occupied by Afrikaners (like Israel was created by being
majority occupied by Jews), and those who settle there must be prepared to do
their own labor. (There are immense problems in this, and this writer would be
pleasantly surprised if the majority of Afrikaner farmers could be persuaded to
dispense with their hundreds of farm laborers and mechanize like their American
counterparts; or if the majority of white South African households could be
persuaded to make their own beds and wash their own dishes instead of using the
plentiful “maids,” but that is another story.)
Yes, this means gathering together the
stock Afrikaner nation into a defined area. For example (and this is just a
theoretical example), if 500,000 Afrikaners had to settle in the old Eastern
Transvaal, and physically occupy it, then this territory would de facto, and
later even de jure, become an Afrikaner state.
The only way that Afrikaners can be spared
the fate of all First World minorities in Africa, is for them to abandon their
dependence on nonwhite labor, accept that their salvation lies in a smaller
territory, and congregate in that smaller territory where they will form an
outright demographic majority.
There is no other way: all else is chaff
in the wind. History will tell if the Afrikaners have it within them to
undertake this second Great Trek.
