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Nelson's 90th is strictly South African affair
Made Popular Jul 18 2008
His birthday has been the party that much of the world wanted to attend. But, in the end, Nelson Mandela turns 90 today with only friends and family to mark the occasion, far from the frenzy of Hyde Park concerts, in his birthplace of Qunu, a village in...
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Nelson Mandela is not a saint, as Arafat was not. However, it became a symbol of the fight by the end of apartheid.
With respect to what happens with the whites in Africa, I have had the opportunity to meet some people that reported serious problems in Zimbabwe and I imagine that this can be happening in other countries too.
With respect to what happens with the whites in Africa, I have had the opportunity to meet some people that reported serious problems in Zimbabwe and I imagine that this can be happening in other countries too.
(Global Perspectives)
I can tell you that the racism experienced by the white minority under black rule is far worse than the blacks experienced during Apartheid.
Apartheid was a policy of segregation and seperate development. While blacks were excluded to a degree from the civilization whites built up (in areas previously unpopulated by blacks) and so denied its more immediate advantages, they none the less benefited immensely in terms of health care, education, provision of infrastructure, job opportunities and so on. These benefits have been substantially eroded under the misrule of the ANC.
The racism applied to whites under the ANC government is by contrast a matter of direct violence, victimisation and parasitism. Leaving aside the racial policies that see completely unqualified people being hired and promoted over qualified ones solely due to skin colour, leaving aside the blame and degradation continually heaped upon whites for the past and the ANC’s failure at maintaining their 1st world standards, the most telling example of this racism is in the insidious campaign of genocide being conducted against whites.
Simply put, whites are being slaughtered under the cloak of ”crime.” What seperates these murders however is the rape and physical and psychological torture inflicted upon white victims. International body, Genocide Watch has warned that this represents only the early stages of a more aggressive campaign of ethnic cleansing.
In particular, white farmers are being slaughtered, as many as 3000 so far. This is severely impacting the nation’s ability to feed itself and we are now having to import food. Further, the governmnent is enacting legislation to ”redistribute” white-owned farmland, and in almost all cases this goes to people who have no farming experience.
This pattern is disturbingly similar to Zimbabwe, and the ANC’s continued support of Mugabe does nothing to allay the fear that South Africa is headed the same road.
In the interests of fairness, I must point out that whites are not the only victims of racism under the predominantly Xhosa ANC. Not only they, but coloureds, Indians, Chinese, the minority black tribes and many others, will likely lose land, wealth and even their lives as the South African situation deteriorates. Should the World Cup still be allowed to take place in this dangerous and unstable country, many international tourists will also get to experience the savagery of crime-ridden South Africa.
It is my hope that this looming tragedy, as inevitable as the tragedies played out across the rest of Africa, will at least go some way towards highlighting the reality of Africa and Africans.
Apartheid was a policy of segregation and seperate development. While blacks were excluded to a degree from the civilization whites built up (in areas previously unpopulated by blacks) and so denied its more immediate advantages, they none the less benefited immensely in terms of health care, education, provision of infrastructure, job opportunities and so on. These benefits have been substantially eroded under the misrule of the ANC.
The racism applied to whites under the ANC government is by contrast a matter of direct violence, victimisation and parasitism. Leaving aside the racial policies that see completely unqualified people being hired and promoted over qualified ones solely due to skin colour, leaving aside the blame and degradation continually heaped upon whites for the past and the ANC’s failure at maintaining their 1st world standards, the most telling example of this racism is in the insidious campaign of genocide being conducted against whites.
Simply put, whites are being slaughtered under the cloak of ”crime.” What seperates these murders however is the rape and physical and psychological torture inflicted upon white victims. International body, Genocide Watch has warned that this represents only the early stages of a more aggressive campaign of ethnic cleansing.
In particular, white farmers are being slaughtered, as many as 3000 so far. This is severely impacting the nation’s ability to feed itself and we are now having to import food. Further, the governmnent is enacting legislation to ”redistribute” white-owned farmland, and in almost all cases this goes to people who have no farming experience.
This pattern is disturbingly similar to Zimbabwe, and the ANC’s continued support of Mugabe does nothing to allay the fear that South Africa is headed the same road.
In the interests of fairness, I must point out that whites are not the only victims of racism under the predominantly Xhosa ANC. Not only they, but coloureds, Indians, Chinese, the minority black tribes and many others, will likely lose land, wealth and even their lives as the South African situation deteriorates. Should the World Cup still be allowed to take place in this dangerous and unstable country, many international tourists will also get to experience the savagery of crime-ridden South Africa.
It is my hope that this looming tragedy, as inevitable as the tragedies played out across the rest of Africa, will at least go some way towards highlighting the reality of Africa and Africans.
(Local Perspectives)
Philippe, I’m really curious about one thing. I’ve been trying to analyze this for a long time now.
What is it in the psychological and sociological make-up of people in Africa that makes segregation and racism (both sides) rather predominant?
What is it in the psychological and sociological make-up of people in Africa that makes segregation and racism (both sides) rather predominant?
(Global Perspectives)
That is a very deep question indeed. If you want a truthful answer, I would advise you to ask the question of a scientist rather than someone who would use the answer as a vehicle for their political agenda. Unless I miss my guess, there will be a number of books and articles on the unique South African situation by respected sociologists, anthropologist and historians.
My personal views on the subject (and here brace for bias) are largely informed by evolutionary biology and genetic theory. What I’ve gleaned from this field is that discrimination between groups is the natural way of things, certainly the only way extant in the animal and plant kingdoms.
Up until relative ”split seconds” ago if the timeline of human development is represented as an hour, this has likewise been the unquestioned structure of human society. Further, it remains the de facto situation in the majority of human interactions.
It is worth bearing in mind that this survival strategy, hardwired into our neural circuitry in the form of emotions like tribal loyalty, a natural distrust of strangers and even affection for family members, has aided our survival over hundreds of thousands of years. Any new cultural, as opposed to evolutionary, strategy remains unproven as a means of effecting long-term species survival. All evidence I’ve seen suggests that deviation from this strategy leads to more harm than good in the short term as well.
No matter your take on his recent activism for the atheist movement, Richard Dawkin’s grounbreaking work ”The Selfish Gene” is an excellent, a-political starting point for a deeper understanding of such concepts.
In it he states all organisms are but vehicles for their genes, and organisms are best understood from this perspective. Admittedly, some allowance for sentience is made in the case of humans, given that it allows us a degree of choice in following our genetically-programmed instincts and inclinations.
Dawkins posits cooperation exists between individuals (of whichever species you like) in direct proportion to their degree of genetic ”relatedness.” If you consider the lengths the average person would go to save their child or identical twin (self-sacrifice is common) compared to the extent to which they’d risk their life for a stranger, it all starts to fall into place, reinforced by statistical evidence...
The development of theories of racial equality (to interject the reductio ad absurdum: ”we are all equally related genetically as we are all humans, thus Philippe and Grace are as closely related to each other as to their own parents”) are without scientific basis in reality. Similar to Marxism, they are noble in concept but ultimately unworkable in reality. They seldom arise from situations of mutual self-interest and thus can only be imposed upon a population by a powerful group dedicated to such ideals.
It is worth noting that the cultures where such ideas or memes (a concept of Dawkin’s) ”infect” most tenaciously are frequently the safest and richest of countries. The practical effect of such ideas, at least insofar as they are extended to races of lesser natural intelligence and cultural sophistication than the nation’s majority inhabitants, are invariably to make those well-intentioned countries poorer and more dangerous.
As South Africa is today neither safe nor, for the most part, rich, it follows that genetic tendencies are that much more exposed. Further, the more competition exists between racial groups in a society, the more rewarding becomes our species’ default strategy of being ”nice to insiders, nasty to outsiders.”
Ultimately, everything people do is done out of genetic self-interest, excepting when our instinct for altruism becomes over-emphasised and starts to extend to those who don’t share our genetic profile. Those instances are, at least from the perspective of the singlemindedly survival-oriented genes, self-defeating. Such altruism-motivated interactions are thus unlikely and uncommon in regions where survival is tenuous - and there is no place on earth where life is cheaper than Africa. This is my best explanation for why South Africa is like it is.
My personal views on the subject (and here brace for bias) are largely informed by evolutionary biology and genetic theory. What I’ve gleaned from this field is that discrimination between groups is the natural way of things, certainly the only way extant in the animal and plant kingdoms.
Up until relative ”split seconds” ago if the timeline of human development is represented as an hour, this has likewise been the unquestioned structure of human society. Further, it remains the de facto situation in the majority of human interactions.
It is worth bearing in mind that this survival strategy, hardwired into our neural circuitry in the form of emotions like tribal loyalty, a natural distrust of strangers and even affection for family members, has aided our survival over hundreds of thousands of years. Any new cultural, as opposed to evolutionary, strategy remains unproven as a means of effecting long-term species survival. All evidence I’ve seen suggests that deviation from this strategy leads to more harm than good in the short term as well.
No matter your take on his recent activism for the atheist movement, Richard Dawkin’s grounbreaking work ”The Selfish Gene” is an excellent, a-political starting point for a deeper understanding of such concepts.
In it he states all organisms are but vehicles for their genes, and organisms are best understood from this perspective. Admittedly, some allowance for sentience is made in the case of humans, given that it allows us a degree of choice in following our genetically-programmed instincts and inclinations.
Dawkins posits cooperation exists between individuals (of whichever species you like) in direct proportion to their degree of genetic ”relatedness.” If you consider the lengths the average person would go to save their child or identical twin (self-sacrifice is common) compared to the extent to which they’d risk their life for a stranger, it all starts to fall into place, reinforced by statistical evidence...
The development of theories of racial equality (to interject the reductio ad absurdum: ”we are all equally related genetically as we are all humans, thus Philippe and Grace are as closely related to each other as to their own parents”) are without scientific basis in reality. Similar to Marxism, they are noble in concept but ultimately unworkable in reality. They seldom arise from situations of mutual self-interest and thus can only be imposed upon a population by a powerful group dedicated to such ideals.
It is worth noting that the cultures where such ideas or memes (a concept of Dawkin’s) ”infect” most tenaciously are frequently the safest and richest of countries. The practical effect of such ideas, at least insofar as they are extended to races of lesser natural intelligence and cultural sophistication than the nation’s majority inhabitants, are invariably to make those well-intentioned countries poorer and more dangerous.
As South Africa is today neither safe nor, for the most part, rich, it follows that genetic tendencies are that much more exposed. Further, the more competition exists between racial groups in a society, the more rewarding becomes our species’ default strategy of being ”nice to insiders, nasty to outsiders.”
Ultimately, everything people do is done out of genetic self-interest, excepting when our instinct for altruism becomes over-emphasised and starts to extend to those who don’t share our genetic profile. Those instances are, at least from the perspective of the singlemindedly survival-oriented genes, self-defeating. Such altruism-motivated interactions are thus unlikely and uncommon in regions where survival is tenuous - and there is no place on earth where life is cheaper than Africa. This is my best explanation for why South Africa is like it is.
(Local Perspectives)
Two insights there:
(1) Wars are fiercer and longer when the environment is harsher. (That probably explains the years of conflict in places like Sudan, against the backdrop of desertification.)
(2) The controlling forces are those of superior intelligence and cultural sophistication. (That probably explains why Zimbabweans have resigned to their fate. There is no educated middle class in Zimbabwe, at least not a significant volume as to be called a class.)
What about such external, intrusive, and invasive factors such as colonizers and neo-colonizers. Haven’t these factors altered the movements of culture, sense of survival, and ’intelligence’ in Africa?
It seems that, over there, things haven’t changed, in spite of time.
(1) Wars are fiercer and longer when the environment is harsher. (That probably explains the years of conflict in places like Sudan, against the backdrop of desertification.)
(2) The controlling forces are those of superior intelligence and cultural sophistication. (That probably explains why Zimbabweans have resigned to their fate. There is no educated middle class in Zimbabwe, at least not a significant volume as to be called a class.)
What about such external, intrusive, and invasive factors such as colonizers and neo-colonizers. Haven’t these factors altered the movements of culture, sense of survival, and ’intelligence’ in Africa?
It seems that, over there, things haven’t changed, in spite of time.
(Global Perspectives)
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Before choosing to do so, I suggest you consult the blood-stained history of the terrorist ANC organisation he led. Also, there’s this video of Mandela leading a song about killing Whites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC8qQE4Y2Js