For several months now I have been contemplating a post on the imminent demise of the African continent. For once, however, my ignorance held me back - and yes, I know it doesn't hold me back on other subjects! But somehow the sheer cataclysmic misery of the coming apocalypse which I think is looming over the entire continent stayed my typing fingers until I had something authoritative on which to base my gloomy prognostications. Now I have it, or some of it, in the form of an article by Josh Gelernter at The National Review entitled The End of South Africa.
Before I deal with Mr. Gelernter's essay let me remind you, because of course you already know - sort of - from the fact that this, that or the other disaster somewhere in Africa always, but always, forms part of every news bulletin you ever see on TV, that there does not appear to be any country in Africa that is free from war, disease and massive corruption. Of course, the reason why most of these stories are usually low down the list of the news schedules is that most of the countries are themselves unimportant. I mean, who gives a stuff about Gabon or Benin, except the poor wretches who live exist there. But South Africa is one of the exceptions.
South Africa is - or rather was - one of the rich countries of the world with huge mineral resources and a highly successful agriculture sector as well as a range of other industries. Alas, "the times they are a-changin'", as Mr. Gelernter's essay makes clear:
Things are very bad in South Africa. When the scourge of apartheid was finally smashed to pieces in 1994, the country seemed to have a bright future ahead of it. Eight years later, in 2002, 60 percent of South Africans said life had been better under apartheid. Hard to believe — but that’s how bad things were in 2002. And now they’re even worse.
When apartheid ended, the life expectancy in South Africa was 64 — the same as in Turkey and Russia. Now it’s 56, the same as in Somalia. There are 132.4 rapes per 100,000 people per year, which is by far the highest in the world.
A Jewish observer whose family was forced to flee to Israel during the apartheid era wrote, "more people are murdered in one week under African rule than died under detention of the Afrikaner government over the course of roughly four decades." Gelernter reckons:
The South African government estimates that there are 31 murders per 100,000 people per year. Or about 50 a day. That would make South Africa the tenth most murderous country in the world, outpacing Rwanda, Mexico, and both Sudans. And that’s using South Africa’s official estimates — outside groups put the murder rate 100 percent higher. [My emphasis]
Why am I not surprised to learn that it is whites, particularly white farmers, who are suffering disproportionately under this murderous rampage which is encouraged by the government:
In 2010, a prominent member of the African National Congress named Julius Malema revived an old anti-apartheid song whose lyrics — says Genocide Watch — call for genocide: “Shoot the Boer, shoot, shoot.” “Boer” means “farmer” in Afrikaans; colloquially, it means “white South African.” Malema was ejected from the ANC and convicted of hate speech; he has since formed a new opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, which is currently the third largest party in parliament. Seven months after Malema’s conviction, President Zuma sang the genocide song himself, leading a crowd in a musical chant: “We are going to shoot them with machine guns, they are going to run . . . The cabinet will shoot them, with the machine gun . . . Shoot the Boer, we are going to hit them, they are going to run.” Watch the video on YouTube — it is surreal. Nelson Mandela’s successor, the president of South Africa, addresses a crowd of — according to the Guardian — tens of thousands, in a giant stadium, and calls for the murder of what amounts to about 10 percent of his constituents. Among the audience, uniformed members of the military dance.
And if that gives you an idea of what life - and death - is like in a relatively sophisticated state like South Africa, imagine what the rest of the continent is like!
