Ernst Roets: Attacks on Whites in South Africa, Attempts to Hide It, and Trump’s Plan to End It

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Speaker 2 So, I think for most Americans,

Speaker 2 news about South Africa ended in 1994, both literally we stopped getting a lot of news from the country, but also

Speaker 2 people's views about it stopped evolving then. That was the year that

Speaker 2 apartheid ended, I guess, officially. You had elections.

Speaker 2 Nelson Mandela is still a hero in the United States, often referred to by politicians.

Speaker 2 And it's only been, I think, in American media in the past couple of months that stories have come out of South Africa that a lot of Americans have read that actually

Speaker 2 the country seems to be falling apart and that the government is kind of genocidally racist.

Speaker 2 And then President Trump in the past month has basically said the same thing.

Speaker 2 And it's shocking to a lot of people, I think,

Speaker 2 how bad it is and just how racist it is,

Speaker 2 far more than apartheid ever was.

Speaker 2 And so I'm wondering, since you've just landed from South Africa, you live there,

Speaker 2 describe the state of the country right now, if you would.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, perhaps I can start with your reference about the 90s, because it's absolutely true.

Speaker 3 South Africa and america was very involved with the setting up of the political system that we have in south africa during the 90s and it was of course the end of history era everyone is excited about the fall of the berlin wall and the whole world's going to be liberal and democratic including african countries yes and samuel huntington actually cautioned against this in 1996 saying you know when he wrote the clash of civilizations and he said don't expect of African leaders and African liberation movements to suddenly become Western when you give them Western constitutions because they are still African.

Speaker 3 So they will use it's the democratic paradox. They will use democratic institutions to promote non-democratic ends.
And that's what we see in South Africa.

Speaker 3 We have a parliament, we have a very liberal constitution, but if you read the constitution and you compare that to reality in South Africa, it's two completely different worlds.

Speaker 3 The de facto and the de ure reality in South Africa is is irreconcilable.

Speaker 3 And so what has been happening in South Africa is, firstly, there was this major excitement about the new South African El Samandela, Samandela the miracle story you know Oprah spoke about this and Charlie's Tehran everyone and and but the reality on ground level was in many ways the opposite and I think a lot from the beginning

Speaker 3 gradually so so they started for example with these BEE as they call it it's black economic empowerment which of course has nothing to do with economic empowerment they started with that in 1996 And so they actually said initially in the 90s that that's the ruling party's strategy.

Speaker 3 They still call it that, the national democratic revolution, which is about using democracy to promote socialist ends. And so the revolution, they say, goes in two phases.

Speaker 3 The first phase is present yourself as being liberal and democratic and get support, especially international support and local.

Speaker 3 And then use multi-party democracy as a way of promoting the goals, of taking the country down the road to socialism.

Speaker 3 And so recently, they even went as far as publishing a document saying, we are now ready for the second phase of the revolution. We now have power.
We have control of the state.

Speaker 3 We now need to use this to become much more aggressive in our socialist policies.

Speaker 3 And we're seeing this in a plethora of new laws all of a sudden in South Africa, which I think has gotten to the point where it's just not possible to maintain the view that people have had of South Africa for the last few decades and look at what's currently happening in South Africa.

Speaker 3 It's two completely different worlds. And hopefully, or happily, at least, a lot of people are starting to wake up to this.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 you said Samuel Huntington wrote that in 1996, two years after the election.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 kind of thought that from day one simply because I knew people there

Speaker 2 and I was more familiar with the details of the Mandelas. Yes.

Speaker 2 So, but I think most Americans I don't think had any idea, like, what was Nelson Mandela on Robin Island for? What was he in prison for?

Speaker 2 For being black, or was there another reason?

Speaker 3 Well, literally, so I have children and they are taught in schools, and the government prescribes what children should learn in history.

Speaker 3 And so, the official version is he went to prison because he was a good leader, and the government didn't like that. I should say that he certainly was the best that the ANC has ever had to offer.

Speaker 3 But the reason why he went to prison is because they started Mkantui Sizwe, which was the military wing of the ANC,

Speaker 3 which became involved with military actions in South Africa with an attempt to overthrow the government.

Speaker 3 And they actually, and this is, this is, I'm quoting from the ANC's own policy documents that's on their own website.

Speaker 3 So they had this operation when they started, which was used in the Rivonia trial against Nelson Mandela.

Speaker 3 It was a strategy called Operation Mai Bouye.

Speaker 3 And the slogan of this operation was, shamelessly we shall attack the weak and shamelessly we shall flee from the strong. So those were the circumstances in the 1960s.

Speaker 2 Pretty noble policy statement. There will attack the weak and flee from the strong.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and it's still on their website. You can find it there.
So, that was

Speaker 3 an attempt at an armed uprising. Now, we can talk about everything that was wrong with the previous political system in South Africa, and there was a lot wrong.

Speaker 3 But it's simply not the case that he went to prison for being a good leader.

Speaker 2 Well, I think that most people would acknowledge a distinction between military action, which is

Speaker 2 a fight, a war, a battle between militaries and attacks on civilians, which is something we call terrorism.

Speaker 3 Yes. So in 1985, the ANC had a conference in Kabwe in Zambia, and they took a formal decision that in their so-called military operations, they would not differentiate between hard and soft targets.

Speaker 3 So it was officially a policy that says we can kill innocent people. And a lot of innocent people died in the political violence in the run-up to 1994.

Speaker 3 And 90% of the people who died were black South Africans.

Speaker 2 Right. It was.
But non-combatants, women, children.

Speaker 3 Yeah, women and children.

Speaker 2 Passers-by. You know, people had nothing to do with anything.

Speaker 3 Yes, yes, especially.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 during that time that Mandela was in prison, I'm 55, so I remember this very, very well. His wife was effectively his spokesman, Winnie Mandela.

Speaker 2 And she was lionized in the United States. She was a hero.
She was the mother of an emerging nation,

Speaker 2 you know, a woman of peace and decency, really a transcendent figure, a holy figure.

Speaker 2 And then it turned out that actually she was a murderer who had

Speaker 2 burned to death or supervised the murder of a bunch of different people. Tell us about that.

Speaker 3 Yes, so let me firstly say that I have a lot of respect for Nelson Mandela. I think in terms of his efforts and as I say, I think he's the best the ANC has ever had to offer.

Speaker 3 Winnie Mandela, his wife, not so much. So she famous, I mean, she's been involved with a lot of things,

Speaker 3 including what was called the Mandela Football Club,

Speaker 3 which was a gang that was involved with violence and killings of innocent people. And she famously said at a political rally, with our necklaces and our matches, we will liberate this country.
Yes.

Speaker 3 Which, of course, is a reference to the necklace murders, which was very popular in South Africa and still happens in South Africa.

Speaker 3 That's when you take a rubber tire, you fill it with petrol or gasoline and you put it around someone's necks so that it's bound around their arms and you set it on fire.

Speaker 3 And then you stone that that person while he's burning to death. And that happened.
There were, I think, five or 700 people were killed like that during political violence in South Africa.

Speaker 3 And she encouraged this. Initially, she denied it, and then it came out that it was recorded of her saying this.

Speaker 3 So yes, it's very bizarre that someone like Mandela is a hero today.

Speaker 2 And was a hero then. And so that, to me, was a sign that these are

Speaker 2 these are not liberators, that they're oppressors.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so, but no one in the west wanted to think that it was like a really simple tale of white oppression of noble black people and by definition the black people and i'm i mean there were oppressed black people of course um

Speaker 3 and there were noble black people but the leadership always struck me as evil yes so so there were some better and some worse people in in the leadership i i think an important component here that is very well documented it's not a secret but a lot of people don't seem to want to know this or recognize this is the very strong alliance that the ANC has always had and still has with the South African Communist Party and the extent to which they were supported not just by the Soviet Union, also by the Vietnamese and by Mao Tzetung as well, implementing what they call the People's War Strategy that they got from Mao Tzetung.

Speaker 3 So, yes, it was very much the ANC saw themselves as being the African or South African frontier of promoting a socialist or communist revolution.

Speaker 2 So, how did it turn out?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 you mean in terms of where we are?

Speaker 2 Let's just

Speaker 2 follow different threads. So, let's just start with, I don't know, technology and infrastructure.

Speaker 2 In 1993, South Africa was famously the most prosperous society in Africa by far, right? And

Speaker 2 among the most prosperous in the world, correct? They have nuclear weapons in South Africa.

Speaker 2 What is it like now, 30 years later?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 the reality is that

Speaker 3 virtually every sphere of society is collapsing, with the exception of taxation, of course, and tax collection. That's still very, very efficient.
Maybe I can explain it this way. So

Speaker 3 America has a somewhat skewed tax system, with, if my information is correct, about 85% of tax... income tax in America is paid by about 10% of the people.

Speaker 2 I think that's correct.

Speaker 3 So one in 10. In South Africa, 85% of income tax is paid by one in 30 people.

Speaker 3 So it's a very small number of people, a very small

Speaker 3 portion of society that pays tax, that is heavily taxed. And then about almost half of the population in South Africa get money from the government in the form of social grants.

Speaker 3 If you add government employees, conservative estimates say that 50% of people in South Africa get money from the government.

Speaker 3 Some estimates say it's up to 60% of adults, voting-age adults, get money from the government each year. So then

Speaker 3 this money, of course, is then used. It's given out as social grants, but what's left is used to set up these programs that are actively discriminating against taxpayers.

Speaker 3 Like, I mean, there are so many examples. One of the most recent ones is this blacks-only fund that the government has set up, whereby they give money to black entrepreneurs exclusively.

Speaker 3 So this is happening.

Speaker 3 And then, on top of that, so after you spend your tax money to fund these government programs that are discriminating against you, you have to spend what is left to do the things that the government was supposed to be doing.

Speaker 3 So the classical definition of a government is that it should protect life, liberty, and property.

Speaker 3 The classical liberal view, we're a bit Ciceronian, so we think a government has to do more than that.

Speaker 3 But if we use those three things, the government's not protecting our lives. There's about,

Speaker 3 if this interview that we're about to have is two hours, there will be about seven murders in South Africa in this time.

Speaker 3 Government does not protect liberty. It's actively targeting schools of minority communities, actively denying the identity and the rights of minority communities.

Speaker 3 And it's certainly not protecting property. It's actively involved with the program to empower the government to expropriate private property without compensation.

Speaker 3 And then we have to use the money that is left to pay for our own private security, to become involved with organizations, to fulfill the things that the government was supposed to be doing with the tax money that we paid paid in the first place.

Speaker 2 One of the reasons that I find this story so fascinating is not simply because, you know, it's like the classical, you know, irony of history.

Speaker 2 This group comes in with one aim and then achieves exactly the opposite.

Speaker 2 We're going to have a, you know, we're going to end racism and then make racism much worse, but also because they have gone about it in a way that's almost like American.

Speaker 2 with the same language, the same diversity as our strength, kind of sloganeering. And it's had the same result, which is to basically kill whites.
And I, I mean, that's just true.

Speaker 2 And I, I, I wonder if you see that. It's almost like you imported our kind of

Speaker 2 intellectual class framework for this project.

Speaker 3 That's absolutely the case. So, so there's a theory.
There was this video that just went viral on social media of this guy talking about how white people are subhuman and all of that.

Speaker 3 And they get the, well, this is taught at universities in South Africa. There's a theory called Azania critical theory.
Azania is a pan-African word for South Africa.

Speaker 3 And they actually get this from Americans like Robin DiAngelo, who's this, Ibrahim X-Kendi, Tanaisi, Coates, these people. They get it from them.

Speaker 3 And then they put an African flavor on it, which essentially boils down to a theory that justifies. the targeting and extermination of the white minority.

Speaker 3 And so the theory, to summarize, goes more or less like this. There's an African term called Ubuntu, which means brotherliness or it's about your internal humanity.
It's a Zulu term.

Speaker 3 And the theory goes that white people are incapable of having Ubuntu. But Ubuntu is the essence of humanity.
So if you don't have it, you're not truly human.

Speaker 3 So it boils down that the logical conclusion is that if you kill a white person, then you did not actually commit murder.

Speaker 3 So this is not widely believed in South Africa, but this is taught at universities, by university professors, and it's certainly believed by radical elements.

Speaker 2 It's a predicate for genocide. I mean, it's always the same in every, I mean, we're watching in parts of the world now.
They're not fully human, right? So we can kill them.

Speaker 2 Because they're fully human, then it's, of course, a grave sin to kill them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, we've always been saying that there's not a genocide in South Africa, looking at what happened in Rwanda and so forth. It's not the same thing.

Speaker 3 But it is very alarming to look at some of these claims that are being made and to compare that to what was made in Rwanda.

Speaker 2 And well, every country, and, you know, genocide broadly defined,

Speaker 2 an attempt to eliminate a group of people on the basis of their race or ethnicity.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and we have these political parties chanting. I mean, you've seen this, you've reported on this, chanting kill the boer, kill the farmer to a stadium filled with people.

Speaker 3 And it's not just rhetoric. So they would say, no, it's just a metaphor.

Speaker 3 But it's preceded by a speech about how white people are criminals and should be treated like criminals, how everything they have is illegitimate and stolen, in which people are encouraged to go and invade their farms and so forth.

Speaker 3 And then they chant, kill the boer, kill the farmer. And they make these hand gestures.
Of course, the boer is a reference to the Afrikaner people.

Speaker 3 But the reality is also that the farmers are being attacked and killed on their farms. So it's not just a metaphor.

Speaker 3 And our attempts at researching this has found that there's an increase in farm attacks.

Speaker 3 Obviously, when the political climate becomes heated or warmer, and these type of statements are made in a way that's highly publicized, you do get an increase in farm attacks.

Speaker 3 And it's very brutal and very horrific farm attacks that we see.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 the farm attacks are attacks against white farmers,

Speaker 3 not exclusively white farmers, but it's attacks against farmers in South Africa, of which the majority is white.

Speaker 2 Right. Okay.
So this has been going on a long time. I think it's been well documented.
I believe you wrote a book about it,

Speaker 2 which has become very

Speaker 2 sold a lot of copies on Amazon, I noticed. Yes.

Speaker 2 And so none of this is like a secret, and all of it's verifiable because, you know, dead people are pretty easy to track because they're dead.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so we have the names of the people who've been murdered. Exactly.

Speaker 2 But in the United States, the country that inspired the revolution that you're living through, our media have ignored that and then gone beyond ignoring it to attack anyone who brings it up as a, quote, white supremacist.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well,

Speaker 3 I can tell you so many stories about this. Please do.

Speaker 3 For example, I was on your show a few years ago to talk about the farm murders and the extent to which we were attacked by American media as a result of that.

Speaker 3 I had someone from CNN come see me in my office in Pretoria and to interview me about farm attacks. And the entire interview was about you.

Speaker 3 So you would put things to me and say, Did you know Tucker Carlson said the following? Do you agree with this statement? And did you know that Donald Trump said this?

Speaker 3 And are you comfortable with this? And so I paused him at one stage and I said, what are we doing? I thought we were here to talk about farm murders and what's happening in South Africa.

Speaker 3 But the only, so the argument was that because Trump made that comment about farm murders in 2018,

Speaker 3 it has to be a non-existing issue because Trump is a liar and everything he says is false. And the same with you, because you spoke about it, that means that the problem doesn't exist.

Speaker 3 And we have to prove that it doesn't exist in order to get to you.

Speaker 2 Well, not only doesn't it exist,

Speaker 2 you're not allowed to complain about it existing. Yes.
Yes. Somehow, it's somehow a moral crime to notice and to not like it when people are murdered for the color of their skin.

Speaker 3 It's bizarre. It's well, it's not bizarre.

Speaker 2 It's, it's a, they're telegraphing genocidal intent when they're telling you,

Speaker 2 no, you're not getting killed, and yes, it's a good thing that you are. Yes.

Speaker 3 And no, you're not getting killed. What are they saying? Yeah, it's, it's, no, you're not getting killed.
And if you are, you deserve it. Right.

Speaker 3 Because of a variety of things, because the attackers are poor, or because remember all the horrible things that white people have done in South Africa and outside of South Africa.

Speaker 3 So there's always a justification.

Speaker 3 And so another example, just in 2018, again, after you spoke about this and after Trump spoke about this, the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaposa, came to America and he spoke at an event in New York.

Speaker 3 And he said, there are no killings of farmers in South Africa. And he just flat out denied the existence of the problem.
And he said this on an international platform. He said, it's not happening.

Speaker 3 It's not true. And the worst of it all was how the media knew this was wrong, especially mainstream media in South Africa.
They knew that it's not true.

Speaker 3 And so they immediately rushed to his defense, writing articles like, this is what he actually meant to say. And then they sort of justify what's happening.

Speaker 3 And so it's, it's, we really do sometimes feel that our biggest battle is not primarily against what the government is doing, but against how the media is reporting.

Speaker 2 But just consider this. I mean, if,

Speaker 2 you know, if Tutsis in Kilgali in 1994 said, boy, I, you know, I, a lot of us seem to be getting hacked to death by machetes.

Speaker 2 And reporters or political figures said, shut up.

Speaker 2 You know, you're a Tutsi supremacist for saying so.

Speaker 2 I think we could fairly say the people shouting them down are pro-genocide of Tutsis. I mean, what's the other explanation? I don't really get it.
I mean, honestly, what's the other explanation?

Speaker 3 Well, the explanation that is used in court cases, so by the way, the skill debuer chant was found in court not to be hate speech, according to South African law.

Speaker 2 It's not hate speech. Killing people is not hate speech.

Speaker 3 Yeah, chanting about killing people.

Speaker 3 You know why it's not hate speech?

Speaker 2 Because it's not speech they hate. That's why.

Speaker 3 Well, maybe that's speech they approve of. So the arguments that

Speaker 3 is used

Speaker 3 or are used to defend.

Speaker 2 this type of rhetoric would always be something like you need to see it in context you need to remember the apartheid system you need to remember what these people went through that they deserve to be killed you need to remember that yeah that's well so the argument is that they're actually commemorating the historic struggle and that's why they are still chanting this i would disagree with you i think what they're saying is the people getting murdered deserve to be murdered so stop complaining about it yeah well i i a few people are saying that out loud but that does seem to be i mean look at some point you know i don't need you to explain your motive if i have a clear glimpse of your actions if i know what you're doing i don't have to hear you explain why you're doing it i already know because the motive is displayed in the action.

Speaker 2 Do you know what I mean? Yep.

Speaker 2 So in other words, if I pull out a a gun and shoot you, and somebody said, Did you not like Ernst? Yeah. I can say whatever I want, but I just shot you.

Speaker 2 So, I think it's kind of fair to infer that I didn't like you. Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but the motive is also explained in the words. So, they're trying to defend the words.
It's the famous story of Chamberlain and Churchill.

Speaker 3 You know, when Chamberlain came back from meeting Hitler and he said, No, well, I met him and, you know, I think we're going to find peace.

Speaker 3 And then Churchill said, no, well, I read what he said and I believed him. Yeah.
And so you can just read what they're saying.

Speaker 3 If you read the policy documents of the ruling party, they say they want to convert South Africa into a communist society. They want to have a revolution in South Africa.

Speaker 3 And if you listen to the more radical parties to the left of them, they openly chant about killing white people.

Speaker 3 So they say these things out loud.

Speaker 3 Now they are obviously more to the fringe. You find the more extreme rhetoric in South Africa, but...
But it's very alarming and how people just rush to their defense all the time.

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Speaker 2 So that's the part that bothers me. Like I'm not surprised.
I'll just say it. I'm not surprised at all.
I watched what happened in Rhodesia when it became a Zimbabwe in 1980 and

Speaker 2 something identical happened. There was a lot of killing.
And they drove it to the bottom rank of nations, the poorest country in the world.

Speaker 2 And following exactly the same script, I always thought that would happen in South Africa. I wanted to be wrong.
Turns out it wasn't.

Speaker 2 What really bothers me is that the West has allowed this and cheered it on because I live in the West. I live in the United States.

Speaker 2 So like, I don't want to think that my leaders are for killing people on the basis of race, but watching how they've stood by and applauded, Barack Obama's applauded all this stuff, it tells you everything about Barack Obama and other American leaders, doesn't it?

Speaker 3 Yes. And this brings us back to the 90s.

Speaker 3 So during the 90s, it was, again, after the Cold War, and the world, and especially the West, was high on ideology and this idea that the world will become liberal and everyone's going to become like us.

Speaker 3 and everyone in the world is just an American waiting to be liberated and we just need to go and liberate them from their own traditional beliefs and so forth.

Speaker 3 And so it really is the case that America and many Western countries played a very significant role in creating the South Africa that we have.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm aware. I'm aware.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 we don't want other people to fix our problems on our behalf. We want to solve our own problems.

Speaker 3 But you can certainly make the case that the West has a moral responsibility towards the people in South Africa.

Speaker 2 Of course,

Speaker 2 The West forced through sanctions and boycotts the change of government that put the ANC in power. So absolutely.
In the same way the West has armed Ukraine. So they have an obligation to make sure

Speaker 2 to at least know what's happening and to be honest about it, not to hide their own

Speaker 2 responsibility for the crime.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and so there's this false dichotomy. in South Africa or with regard to South Africa that if you are against what's happening in South Africa now, that means you want the apartheid system.

Speaker 3 So you have a choice. And there's one former judge recently said this, who's retired.

Speaker 3 He said that we have a choice in South Africa between a moral system that is dysfunctional, which is the current system, or an immoral system that is a functional one, which is the former system.

Speaker 3 And so the problem is if you criticize what's happening in South Africa now, you get accused of wanting to return to the apartheid system. But the truth is, you can reject both.

Speaker 3 You can say we don't want the apartheid system and we don't want what's happening in South Africa at the moment. We want to govern ourselves.
We want freedom.

Speaker 3 But it seems that a lot of people are incapable of making that conclusion or leaving any room for saying that both these systems are wrong and we need a better system, a system that is much more decentralized, a system in which the various nations who live in South Africa, because South Africa is very big, it's almost as big as Europe, the various nations living in South Africa should just govern themselves.

Speaker 3 And that's not what's happening in South Africa. And I think it's a worthy cause to pursue.

Speaker 2 So So can I

Speaker 2 think I'm hardly an expert on South Africa at all, but I am American.

Speaker 2 So if I can I just give my overview of what of the different groups in South Africa and you correct me, but just so people follow along because I think it matters for the reasons I'll explain.

Speaker 2 So South Africa, there are basically two big white populations in South Africa historically. They're what we're called the Boers, the Afrikaners, who were

Speaker 2 basically religious refugees, a mixture of Dutch and French Huguenots, Protestant, Dutch, Protestant, French,

Speaker 2 who moved to southern Africa for reasons of religious liberty.

Speaker 2 And then you had the English, who I think were after the Boer War in power,

Speaker 2 who mostly were there for economic reasons and had, in many cases, passports back to Great Britain.

Speaker 2 And then you had a couple of different African black groups, the largest of which I think is to this day are the Zulus. Yes.

Speaker 2 Who, like the Afrikaners, the Boers and the English, were not native to the area at all. They were newcomers who arrived, I think, just right before the Boers did.

Speaker 3 Yeah, not long before.

Speaker 2 Okay, this is all true.

Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes. And they,

Speaker 2 you know, as invading groups often usually do, kind of exterminated the native population who were the what we would call the bushmen or yeah, the koi and the sand as they're also called.

Speaker 2 Thanks to yes. Okay, so that that's my like dumb foreigner overview.

Speaker 3 Is that roughly true? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So just

Speaker 3 can I tell you a story from our history?

Speaker 2 I hope you will. Yes.

Speaker 3 It's some people call it the origin story of the Afrikaner people. And it explains a lot about who we are today.

Speaker 3 So we were settled in the Cape, the proto-Afrikaners, who were still the Dutch, the French, and the Germans. We were then colonized the Cape in, I think, 1810 by the British.

Speaker 3 It was during the Napoleonic Wars.

Speaker 2 When did the Afrikaners for the Boers first get there?

Speaker 3 1652.

Speaker 3 1652. What? 150 years before the Declaration of Independence or something.
Wow. Something like that.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That was a long time ago.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 So my great-great-great-grandfather, Nicolas Roots, who was the first Roots who came to South Africa, came

Speaker 3 more or less the time when George Washington was a teenager. So he was eight years older than George Washington.

Speaker 3 So my family has been in Africa since, you could say, since George Washington, since the time of George Washington.

Speaker 2 So Before the United States was a country. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 So the Cape... Do you have another passport?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 No, no.

Speaker 3 I don't. And I don't really want one.

Speaker 2 Right. And do most Afrikaners have other passports?

Speaker 3 No, most don't.

Speaker 3 But this goes to the story I want to tell you. So we were colonized by the British.
And you can call them the proto-Afrikaners then said, you know, we don't want to be governed by anyone else.

Speaker 3 We want to govern ourselves. And so they opted to move into the interior of South Africa, which was called the Great Track.
And they didn't know what they would expect.

Speaker 3 They said they reject slavery, they want to foster good relations with local tribes, which they did. There were many treaties signed and agreements and so forth.

Speaker 2 And they did not hold slaves.

Speaker 3 There was slavery in the Cape Colony before that, but when the Great Track, that was around the time of the abolition of slavery, and they also rejected slavery. They explicitly said so.

Speaker 3 So they then went into the interior, and the leader of the Great Track was a guy called Peter Tief, who went to negotiate with the Zulu king, Dengan.

Speaker 3 And so he said, what can we do to buy land from you for our people to live? The agreement was they had to return cattle that was stolen by another tribe with a king called Sikoniella.

Speaker 3 So they went, they retrieved the cattle, they brought it to the Zulu king. The Zulu king, Dangan, King Dengan, said to them that we have to celebrate.

Speaker 3 So leave your weapons outside the lager, come inside, and we'll have a celebration. During the celebration, at one stage, he chanted Bulalani Abatakati, which means kill the wizards.

Speaker 3 So they took Ratif and his commando, his group, to a nearby hill and they slaughtered him.

Speaker 3 They slaughtered him last because they wanted him to see, they wanted to make sure that he sees his people and his son murdered. A few months later,

Speaker 3 before, so after that, they went on an extermination mission. They killed women and children in the lagers and so forth.
A few months later.

Speaker 2 A lager is a group of wagons pulled into a circle.

Speaker 3 Yes, correct, yes. And so a few months later, his body was found with the treaty on which the Zulu king signed, giving them some land.
So they then started a,

Speaker 3 initiated a punishment commando, a group of three to four hundred men to counter-attack the Zulus, which eventually led to the Battle of Blood River, one of the most significant battles in our history, where they found themselves completely surrounded.

Speaker 3 There were about, let's say, 400.

Speaker 2 But four Naboors.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 Surrounded by 12,000 Zulus And so they had this wagon and my great great great great grandfather was was in that lager and he was the religious leader His name is Saarul Salia So Saarul Saliyas and what was their religion Christian Dutch reformed Dutch Reformed, yes, so he said to them listen We need to make a vow to God and so he wrote a vow which they all made and the vow said that we're standing here in front of the God in heaven and earth to make a vow to him that if he protects us us in the battle that lies ahead, we will commemorate this day in the years to come as a day of thanksgiving and a Sabbath.

Speaker 3 And we will also tell our children this story and we will build a church and we will make sure that the honor of the victory goes to God and not to us. So they made this vow and the battle took place.

Speaker 3 And the result was that not one of the Afrikaners were killed. 3,000 Zulus died in that battle.

Speaker 2 Not one was killed?

Speaker 3 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And so the reason why I'm telling this story is not because, not to point to the Zulu people. We have good relations with the Zulu and we've worked with them.

Speaker 3 This was, of course, the one major battle, but we've had good relations with them over the years. But it just

Speaker 3 says something about, firstly, why the Afrikaner people are so patriotic. It says something about why we are so attached to African soil and why we are still...
religious.

Speaker 3 We're a very religious community. We have some problems in terms of belief and so forth.

Speaker 3 But broadly speaking, the Afrikaners are, compared to Europe and compared to some parts of America, still a very religious people.

Speaker 3 And it also says something about why we are so attached to the country and why we don't want to leave.

Speaker 3 We want to stay there because our ancestors have been there for hundreds of years and we've fought and died for our space there and we've gotten used to it to a certain extent.

Speaker 2 Well, it's the only country that you have, isn't it?

Speaker 3 Exactly. We don't have any other country.

Speaker 3 We can't go back to England. We're not Dutch anymore.

Speaker 3 There's this slogan in South Africa that says go back to Holland. But I mean I've been to Holland, I've been to Amsterdam, it's a beautiful city, but I don't feel like I'm at home when I go there.

Speaker 3 It's a beautiful foreign city that I'm attending. We became a people in Africa, which is why we are called the Afrikaners.

Speaker 3 We named ourselves after the continent and our language, Afrikaans, is named after the continent.

Speaker 2 But you're being called invaders by people whose ancestors were also invaders.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, who came from the north of Africa, yes, from where Cameroon is and so forth, who came down firstly towards the east of Africa Africa and then along the Great Lakes, eventually ending in South Africa.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 I think it's what you said is really important because I think from the American or the Western perspective, there's this idea that

Speaker 2 the Afrikaners, the Boers, are worse. They're the worst whites there, worse than the English.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 The English, who, by the way, created the concentration camp during the Boer War. Yes.
Yep. Yep.
That's true. Winston Churchill was there.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 kind of behaved pretty dishonorably, I would say, on many, many levels for hundreds of years in South Africa. But that's just my opinion.

Speaker 2 But that the Boers are somehow the worst and that they have no right to be there.

Speaker 2 And I think history suggests something different.

Speaker 3 Well, absolutely. So on my mother's side, I descend from the British.
My great-grandfather fought. in the First World War for the British.

Speaker 3 And so in many ways, culturally, we've become very close to the British because of the influence over the years.

Speaker 3 And I don't think there's friction today between the Afrikaners and the British, but it certainly is the case. I mean the concentration camps were horrible.

Speaker 3 I recently read the Gulak Archipelago and Solzhenitsyn writes in there that the first concentration camps were invented by the Soviets, but that's actually wrong.

Speaker 3 The first concentration camps that we know of, of at least this type of concentration camps, were during the first, during the Anglo-Boer War, where about 30,000 women and children died.

Speaker 3 But there was a lot of that. The great thing about the Anglo-Boer War was that it was in many ways a first

Speaker 3 for the world. It was, some people call it the first international propaganda war because it was in a time when newspapers became popular.

Speaker 3 So there was this propaganda war in Europe with regard to the Boers

Speaker 3 or the Boer War with a lot of people saying the Boers are Boerish. That's where the word comes from.

Speaker 3 Evidently, if someone told me that's where the word Boerish comes from, it's to be sort of, you know, very old style and, you know, not very sophisticated. Rough.
Yeah, rough around the edges.

Speaker 3 and so there was a lot of propaganda like the boers being compared to to wild hogs and and things like that um but that's okay as the word boa was actually used for a long time as an insult almost like jew like calling someone a jew it's like oh you're a boer typical boer but i mean we're very proud of that word it's it's it's something that we take pride in um

Speaker 3 it's in many ways there's some debate about the difference between boer and afrikana but it's broadly speaking synonymous uh but i mean we're very proud of our history in south africa and we've become a very sophisticated community with a an immense treasure chest of literature of poetry of philosophy all of it in our own language that we did over the last especially the last hundred years which of course is under threat now your language not spoken by anyone else in the world no it's some it's it descends from dutch yes um and so if you spend some time as an afrikaans person with some dutch friends eventually you you start to follow but it's not dutch anymore uh there's been influences by other languages and so forth.

Speaker 3 There are people who speak it all over the world, but that's only because people who have left from, so many people have left from South Africa.

Speaker 3 Some estimates say it's about a million people, white people who have left South Africa over the last few decades.

Speaker 2 How many are left? How many whites overall in South Africa, and how many of them are Afrikaners?

Speaker 3 So it's more or less about 5 million. who are left.
The Afrikaner community is about 2.7 million. And the total population is about 60, just over 60 million.

Speaker 2 um and now

Speaker 2 it looks like you're as you said entering some kind of final stage where they'll be i mean they've been expelled from a bunch of different african countries as you know

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 3 but it sounds like the the plan is to force them to leave or kill them or what is the plan exactly so so Jan Schmutz, the famous Boer general who worked with Churchill, also famously said that South Africa is a country where the best never happens and the worst never happens.

Speaker 3 And so we sort of believe that and we hope that the worst outcome is an unrealistic outcome.

Speaker 3 We do know that the most important thing that we need to do now is to be very well organized in terms of our own communities, to be very well connected to each other.

Speaker 3 You know, there's this whole debate about the individual and the community in philosophy. And we've realized that if you're just an individual, you are completely helpless.

Speaker 3 If you're not part of a community, if you don't have, if you're not given meaning by the community of which you are a member,

Speaker 3 you're completely helpless against this Leviathan, the state.

Speaker 3 So we need to be well organized. We need to be armed.

Speaker 3 We need to have well-functioning communities who look after each other, look after the poor, do all the things that the government's supposed to be doing, but also look after our safety.

Speaker 3 So we drive patrols at night. We're involved with tens of thousands of volunteers involved with patrols looking after our own safety and so forth.

Speaker 3 question here is the future of South Africa. And this is a controversial thing to say, but but it's so obvious that it's not sustainable.
It's not going to work and it's just getting worse.

Speaker 3 So the only possible solution is not simply to say we need a different party in power because the underlying foundations is still problematic.

Speaker 3 The only possible solution is to move toward a system with subsidiary authorities, which could imply something like a republic for the Afrikaner people. It could imply a kingdom for the Zulu people.

Speaker 3 It could imply different types of authority depending on the community. But South Africa is a country made up of a long list of minorities.

Speaker 3 Unless if you look at it from a racial perspective, you can say there's a black minority, a black majority.

Speaker 3 But the black majority also consists of a variety, as you mentioned, a variety of nations and tribes and so forth.

Speaker 2 Plus massive immigration into your country. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 3 it's a very serious problem. Yeah, we virtually don't have borders in South Africa.
Right.

Speaker 2 A problem, of course, for the country, but also a demographic fact that it's not as if there's this like monolithic black majority.

Speaker 2 There are all kinds of different components of the black majority, right? Yes. Yes.
Don't necessarily get along. Yeah, yeah.
But a lot of Zimbabweans murdered in South Africa. Yeah,

Speaker 3 it's xenophobic violence. Every now and then there's this upsurge in violence against foreigners.
So they get accused.

Speaker 3 What typically happens is people come in from the north, the north of South Africa, like Malawi, Zimbabwe and so forth, Zambia and so forth. And then they work and they accept jobs for lower wages.

Speaker 3 And a lot of them work really hard.

Speaker 3 So that leads to friction because there's very high unemployment in south africa already and so it leads to friction within

Speaker 3 among the local communities and and then every now and then we have this upsurge in very very brutal xenophobic violence and so yes the border is it's virtually non-existent the border to the north of south africa if you've been paying attention you know that alp is not just another nicotine pouch it is literally the best nicotine pouch in the world and we know because we use it all day long we've used all of them.

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Speaker 2 So what would it look like to have autonomous republics? And is that allowed under your 94 Constitution? I thought there was some provision for that.

Speaker 3 Well, it's interesting that you know this. Yes.
So there's a section in the South African Constitution, Section 235, that provides for self-determination for communities.

Speaker 3 Now, there's some ambiguity in terms of how to interpret that section, but it is, there's some constitutional provision for that.

Speaker 3 And so during the 90s, the negotiations for a new South Africa, the more conservative groups who were white and black, who were arguing for self-determination, were made fun of by the ruling party at the time, the National Party and the ANC, of course, and also some Westerners.

Speaker 3 This is just backwards. This idea of governing yourself is somehow an old, ancient thing that we should move away from.

Speaker 3 And part of the problem, part of the reason why they were made fun of is the question is, how do you do that practically?

Speaker 3 And the only way to practically do that is to have areas where people live concentrated, where people form a de facto majority.

Speaker 3 And there are such areas, like, for example, when you talk about the Zulus and so forth, the Afrikaner people are pretty much dispersed, although there are some areas where we live more concentrated.

Speaker 3 But there's, for example, there are some initiatives to get Afrikaners to move closer together. And

Speaker 3 I think that's a solution we need to really focus on: getting the Afrikaners to move closer together.

Speaker 2 They're clustered in Pretoria, was my understanding.

Speaker 3 The majority, yes. Pretoria, and then the Western Cape

Speaker 3 and the south of the country. And then there's this Orania initiative in the Northern Cape.

Speaker 2 So, tell us about that. What is Orania?

Speaker 3 So, Orania is a cultural community. It's an Afrikaner cultural community.
It's fairly small. It's about 3,000 people, but it's growing rapidly.
It's growing by about 12 to 15 percent per year.

Speaker 3 And the idea is that it's a culture, it's privately owned, it's a community where the Afrikaner culture can survive and flourish.

Speaker 3 And it has been growing at quite a pace, even though it's from a small base. But the idea is to say this is an area where we are the majority and we make our own decisions.
We make our own laws.

Speaker 3 We govern ourselves. We make our own decisions in terms of what happens with our tax money, what happens with our streets, what type of money.

Speaker 2 Do you murder other people or oppress other people?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Then, why? Maybe you have an answer to this.

Speaker 2 A neighborhood, a community of 3,000 people, which is tiny, even by South African standards, has received unrelenting negative media attention in the West. Why

Speaker 2 is that such a moral crime, such an outrage to have a community like that?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's bizarre the extent to which Irania has been attacked, especially in the international media.

Speaker 3 So I spoke with a friend in Europe recently who said to me, I've only read negative things about Irania, but that's why I like it.

Speaker 3 Because I know who's lying.

Speaker 2 A lot of us have reached that conclusion.

Speaker 3 And so in South Africa, there are many traditional...

Speaker 2 Lying is just, can I just pause and just say, the lying is unsustainable. When, you know, you

Speaker 2 open up the New York Times and it's a safe bet that whatever they're telling you is the opposite of the truth, then you've reached a point where it's like, why even have media coverage at that point?

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 Yeah. So in South Africa, there are many cultural communities, like Zulu communities, different.
Let's say there are many black cultural communities.

Speaker 3 And when they are reported on by the media they would say this uh zulu cultural community so-and-so or this Kawaza cultural community is doing this but when it's Urania they'd say it's a whites only enclave that's that's the term they use even though it's a cultural community so so black communities what is that what is that why why why the hostility and that's true globally by the way there's no any white majority country there are very few left um

Speaker 2 very few left but there's just suspect because they exist. What is that?

Speaker 3 I think it's underpinned by oikophobia, this idea of just hating your own people and wanting your own people to.

Speaker 2 It is strange. I'm not mad at China for being 99% Chinese or

Speaker 2 whatever.

Speaker 2 I'm not mad at Burundi for being all black. It just never even enters my mind.
What is that?

Speaker 2 Why is that? I mean, honestly, I guess now we can ask questions like this. Yeah.
Do you have any idea?

Speaker 3 i honestly think it's underpinned by by an enormous sense of guilt within western society or the western world not knowing how to make sense of the second world war um and being influenced over decades and centuries by enlightened philosophy uh that talks about how you are the problem and how you know you should have a sense of guilt for who you are and the idea that that community and identity is a bad thing um but it's not a bad thing if it's someone else.

Speaker 2 Well, not only is it not a bad thing, it's required by law. Community and identity, I mean, those are like the buzzwords of the moment.
Yes.

Speaker 2 But those are, I mean, basically, it's just like everyone hates whites, including a lot of whites. And I just don't understand that.

Speaker 2 I am white, but I'm kind of

Speaker 2 agnostic on the question. I kind of like all people.
I think they're all created by God.

Speaker 2 But they're... We're required to pretend this isn't happening, but it is happening.
Everybody hates the whites and wants them to die.

Speaker 2 where does that come from i think it's primarily a waste 10 thing it's it but what's the what's the root of it i think it's the weirdest thing i've ever seen yes by the way if everyone wanted malaysians to die or something i would say whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa

Speaker 2 you know whatever malaysia has done through the years like you can't attack people on the basis of their malaysianness that's just wrong i would say that and i would mean it too yes but it's considered a crime to say that about whites like

Speaker 3 i i where does that come from i i'm honestly baffled do you have any idea well no i can only speculate i think some part of this oikophobia i i honestly think enlightenment philosophy has played a big role in this um i think the the influence of you know

Speaker 3 ideas about power structures and and you know all this stuff that's coming from america it used to be

Speaker 2 the chinese have an awful lot of power in asia and i never heard anybody say you should like you know it's outrageous that you know china is 95 han or something it's not even a thing it's something about what well as they say in in our universities, whiteness is uniquely offensive.

Speaker 2 It's uniquely, and I don't think that's a product of Enlightenment philosophy because, I mean, that was, this is a new thing. This is post-war.

Speaker 2 The Second World War did this in some way that I don't fully understand. I don't understand at all.
I think.

Speaker 3 I think, so, so Alice Day McIntyre has

Speaker 3 an explanation of how to make sense of what, how, how we, how we're derailed in trying to make sense of the Second World War. I mean, obviously, you know, Hitler was evil and all of that.

Speaker 3 I mean, no one disagrees with that. Obviously.
But so

Speaker 3 the wrong lesson from the Second World War is that nationalism is evil, or a sense of pride in your identity is evil.

Speaker 3 And there are a lot of people who would really like us to believe this, that we need to abolish communal identities.

Speaker 3 McIntyre's line.

Speaker 2 Only when they're white.

Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 It's actually, I don't think anyone thought the lesson of the war was that nationalism is evil, only that nationalism when whites do it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, when whites do it, yeah. So McIntyre's line is that

Speaker 3 a sense of communal identity and pursuing what is good for your people is a good.

Speaker 3 And what went wrong with the Second World War was that Hitler was trying to pursue this good at the expense of all other goods. He was detaching this one thing from everything else.

Speaker 3 And you cannot do that without committing evil and inflicting evil.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 I think it's a bizarre situation where we are in currently.

Speaker 2 So I thought and think that the lesson of the Second World War was that targeting people for violence and discrimination, but especially violence on the basis of their immutable genetic characteristics was wrong.

Speaker 2 Like that's what I was taught.

Speaker 3 I was inherent then.

Speaker 2 I believe that now as much as I've ever believed it.

Speaker 2 But it's just crazy to see people say that on the one hand, and then

Speaker 2 for a lot of people, a lot of our leaders, the lesson of the Second World War was, no, that's good.

Speaker 2 Actually, you need to target more people on the basis of their immutable ethnic characteristics, their whiteness,

Speaker 2 and kill them.

Speaker 2 Like, that's the lesson? Now, that's the opposite lesson, right? Yeah, of course.

Speaker 3 Well, so in South Africa, and this is part of the bizarre part of it, is the ruling party in South Africa, they would write

Speaker 3 in their own policy documents. They say our ideology is a blend of race, nationalism, and socialism.
That's literally what Nazi means.

Speaker 3 Now, I'm not saying they're Nazis, but in some sense, they're calling themselves Nazis. If they say we promote a combination of race, nationalism, and sexuality.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't think people can hear themselves. I mean, I think even this conversation will be like, oh, that's a Nazi conversation.
It's like, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 We're arguing, well, I'll speak for myself. I'm arguing against what I thought the core idea was

Speaker 2 or the core bad idea in the Second World War, which is that you should attack people, hurt people because of how they were born.

Speaker 3 I'm just based on who they are.

Speaker 2 Always been opposed to that. I will always be opposed to that.
But now it's like complaining about it makes I don't know. It's all so you're not even allowed to say this aspect.
It's also fake.

Speaker 2 It's also fake. Like it's actually, this is all a cover for something much more sinister that is not really related to the Second World War.
Like, I just don't think because it doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 As an intellectual exercise, you just like immediately hit a brick wall. Yep.
Like what you're saying is nonsensical, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, well,

Speaker 3 it's difficult to make sense of it because it's completely irrational.

Speaker 2 It's completely irrational. Therefore, I think it's a lie because it doesn't even, like, you don't even, I don't have a specially high IQ and it's super obvious to me that it doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 So, like, what really, I guess there's no answer.

Speaker 2 I don't know the answer, but there's something very deep going on here where the leaders of every country in the world all of a sudden decide this one ethnic group needs to be killed. Like,

Speaker 3 I think one part of it is something that you've said before, which is affluence.

Speaker 3 People in the Western world have become very affluent and unfortunately, as a result of that, very self-centered.

Speaker 3 And in many ways, they've become disconnected from their communities, disconnected from their tradition and so forth.

Speaker 2 There's no doubt about that. But I mean, I just spent a lot of time in the in the Gulf, in the Persian Gulf, the most affluent countries in the world per capita, I think.

Speaker 2 I mean, they are.

Speaker 2 And, you know, whatever you think of them, you don't see a lot of Arab leaders being like, we really, we're too Arab. That's the problem.
Where I hate myself for my Arabness.

Speaker 2 Like, that doesn't even occur to them. To their great credit, by the way.

Speaker 2 I don't think self-hatred's ever good. I don't think hating anybody in the base of race is ever good.

Speaker 2 It's only this one group

Speaker 3 that does it. I'd like to believe, and I hope that I'm right, that it's a minority within the Western world that really believes this stuff, I think.
But they have significant power and influence.

Speaker 3 Why do they? They are the editors of newspapers. They are the prime ministers.
They are professors at universities and so forth. And those are the people who's promoting this type of idea.

Speaker 2 When I think most hardworking, ordinary people don't fall for this i think well certainly most authentic christians reject it out of hand immediately as it's essentially anti-christian in many ways well it is the definition of anti-christian i i think i mean that's my look what do i know don't take theology device from me but that's certainly my truest deepest belief

Speaker 2 that it's this is immoral you know no matter who it's done to yep so one i should have said this is the asset but

Speaker 2 One of the reasons there's been this real change in people's willingness in the West to talk about what's happening in South Africa in an honest way, not with the false pieties of Desmond Tutu is so great.

Speaker 2 Whatever Desmond Tututu, you know, you think of Desmond Tutu, not much.

Speaker 2 But we were required to talk about South Africa in a very specific way and to repeat certain clichés at really a gunpoint. And that's changed.
in the past couple of months.

Speaker 2 And it's really changed due to a South African émigré called Elon Musk. This is my perspective.
You tell me yours.

Speaker 2 But he has made it possible through X, but also through statements he's made on X, to say the obvious, which is this is a crime against a beleaguered minority and that, you know, this is racism against human beings and it's wrong.

Speaker 2 Do you feel that? Yes.

Speaker 3 So I don't know how much of what is in his biography by Isaacson is true, but it does seem from his biography that he's had some bad experiences growing up in South Africa,

Speaker 3 which is unfortunate.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we're still not sure quite how attached he still is to South Africa as a country. But looking at his ex and his comments, it's very clear that he's interested.

Speaker 3 And the strange thing is, even though some people are very angry with him for speaking about South Africa, the only thing that he's really doing is he's picking up a mirror and he's saying, look at what's happening in South Africa.

Speaker 3 And he's just, he's retweeting videos from... rallies in South Africa.

Speaker 3 Exactly.

Speaker 3 He's literally just saying to people, look at this stuff that's happening in South Africa.

Speaker 2 What do you think of this? Are you okay with this? Yeah, you defend this.

Speaker 3 Well, a lot of people, I think,

Speaker 3 I can speak for a lot of people in saying that we're really, really grateful for what Elon Musk is doing to shed light on what is happening in South Africa.

Speaker 2 It must be so weird to live in a country that has received so much attention from Western media, so much attention.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's no other country in Africa where your average American knows the name of three famous people.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? There's not even close. Name three famous people from, you know, Congo.
No.

Speaker 2 You know?

Speaker 2 But every American knows about Nels Mandela, probably Woody Mandela, Desmond Tutu.

Speaker 3 Jan Schmitz was also very big,

Speaker 3 who became this Boer general who was a

Speaker 3 surprise to Churchill.

Speaker 2 And joined the English in the, I think, in the First World War, like right, you know.

Speaker 3 Yes, First and Second World War.

Speaker 2 Right, but the First World was, you know, not even 15 years after the Boer War. So that was a pretty remarkable decision that he made.

Speaker 2 I don't think most people are that in tune, but they know the big outlines, but of what happened post-94, and they know all about apartheid and all that.

Speaker 2 But it must be so weird to be living in this country where all this stuff is happening and nobody is saying anything about it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's it's crazy. It really is.

Speaker 3 And I have to say, the last few months has been quite a ride in terms of what we, you know, the executive order signed by President Trump and statements coming from the U.S.

Speaker 2 Tell us about that executive order, if you don't mind.

Speaker 3 So the executive order is a very strong reprimanding of what the south african government is doing it says that the south african government is well as trump said is treating certain sections of society very badly and

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 and that the u.s

Speaker 2 that's that's the trumpiest thing that ever is

Speaker 3 and ever said and and the us will not stand for this and so it it boils down to to sanctions in in an important way which is not on one part of it says that that they will grant refugee status to afrikaners uh if they want to go to the U.S.

Speaker 3 Which I don't think, in all fairness, we're really grateful for the public stance taken by the U.S. And in a certain sense, they haven't gone far enough.

Speaker 3 But in a certain sense, I don't think the granting of refugee status is much of a solution. Some people will take that up.
But that's why I told you the story of the Battle of Blood River and the Vow.

Speaker 3 We are culturally very, very attached to South Africa. And so most of the time.

Speaker 2 I think your family got to South Africa around the time my family got to the United States. This is my country.
Hundreds of years. This is my country.

Speaker 3 I think I'm ninth generation.

Speaker 3 And so.

Speaker 2 I also have a mother of English descent, and I'm also unlike you, I'm ashamed of it.

Speaker 2 Sorry, just kidding. Sort of, not really.

Speaker 2 But yeah, no, of course. I mean, it's your country.
I mean, what at that point, what, you know.

Speaker 3 So I think what... A better response from the U.S.
could be is to take a firm stance against what is happening in terms of what the South African government is doing. But then

Speaker 3 to say how can the U.S. support minority groups in South Africa who are really working for some form of self-determination? I think America should recognize that it does have

Speaker 3 part in the problem in terms of what happened historically.

Speaker 2 Are you kidding? Yes, it does. Big time.

Speaker 3 Yes, and therefore it's reasonable and I think it's fair and I'm hesitant to say this because I'm not an American, but I think it's reasonable to say that America has some form of a moral responsibility.

Speaker 3 not to fix South Africa, but at least to

Speaker 3 try to rework this mess that has been created, because it was involved in creating this mess.

Speaker 2 We've mobilized our State Department to defend, quote, trans rights in the Donbass. Okay.
We've weighed into every sectarian conflict in this world for the past 80 years.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think we can certainly say that a minority group targeted for genocide in a country we've been involved in really intimately for my entire life, that that group has a right not to be killed and to have some measure of self-determination.

Speaker 2 I think we can do that. That's not too big answer.
Absolutely. Right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 And the solution, I would say the most sustainable solution is to help such communities to govern themselves, to have self-determination.

Speaker 3 And it's not only, obviously, it would be in our interest, but I think it's also in the interest of the West and of America.

Speaker 2 But just on principle, like every other group in the world has the right to its own homeland except white people? Like what? Yeah. Like, tell me, just explain to me how that makes sense.

Speaker 2 Either no group has the right or every group has a right. It's really that simple.
And if you want to say no group has a right, okay.

Speaker 2 You might even convince me. I don't know.
I'm not a race guy, actually, by my temperament at all. I'd kind of like to ignore it.

Speaker 2 But as long as some groups have a right to self-determination, then every group has a right. It's that simple.

Speaker 2 And if there's a special carve-out where one group doesn't have a right, you have to explain to me why that group doesn't have that right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Is that fair? No, it's absolutely fair. Well, I think South Africa is a...

Speaker 2 What? I mean, what the hell is... Why are we playing along with this nonsense?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's this this narrative has become this massive stream that is turned into rapids on a river that just pulls everyone along and this narrative just says if you're white then there's inherently something wrong with you it doesn't make any sense and it's leading toward a really bad conclusion obviously as it as it has for every other group targeted in this way has really suffered in a bit and there are a lot of them okay it's not you know there are a lot of them yep and it never ends up well and i just don't know why we're playing along where you're not even allowed to say, oh, you haven't been.

Speaker 2 I don't care anymore, obviously.

Speaker 2 But again, either every group has a right to self-determination or no group does. You can't have this system where, you know, some groups do or all groups do, but one.
No, no, no.

Speaker 2 It's all or nothing on this. Yeah.
Well, I can guarantee. Tell me how I'm wrong.
No.

Speaker 3 Well, I can guarantee you that when I get back home, I'm going to be in a lot of trouble for this interview.

Speaker 2 Well, I don't know why, though. I mean, like, what's the counter argument? I don't, I don't really get it.
Like, what is the counter-argument?

Speaker 2 There's only one group on the entire face of the planet that doesn't have the right that every other group has. Like, tell me how.

Speaker 2 I mean, like, maybe there's a good answer. I'm waiting for it.

Speaker 3 No, well, we don't know what the answer is.

Speaker 2 So, there is no answer. And so, because there is no answer, the way that uniformity

Speaker 2 is maintained is just through threats. Like, shut up.

Speaker 2 You're a bad person for saying that. You're a Nazi.
It's like, no, no, no. I hate the Nazis.
I'm going to speak for myself. I hate the Nazis.
Of course.

Speaker 2 I hate hate the idea that people are attacked for something they can't control, like how they're born, their genetics. I just don't believe in that.
I never will. I'm a Christian.

Speaker 2 I don't believe in it. So you can call me whatever you want.
I'm actually making the opposite case. And I haven't done anything to be ashamed of.

Speaker 2 And if defending the right of people not to be murdered because of how they were born is a crime, then I'll plead to it. Yep.

Speaker 2 But I actually think that the only thing the people currently in charge of most of the world, certainly of the West, are good at is seizing the moral high ground.

Speaker 2 And they don't deserve it. They haven't earned it.
They're rotten. Their ideas are rotten.

Speaker 2 And they don't deserve to lecture the rest of us about our moral inferiority while they're endorsing the murder of people for how they were born.

Speaker 3 Sorry. It's a house of cards.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 What is a house of cards? That's exactly right.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's built and it's a very shining house of cards and it's very proud of its accomplishments, but it's not sustainable.

Speaker 3 So South Africa has been a victim of Western imperialism

Speaker 3 in many ways, ideologically, currently,

Speaker 3 ideological imperialism, but also,

Speaker 3 and this is interesting, the ANC that's governing South Africa today was founded just after the unionization of South Africa in 1910.

Speaker 3 And they said that this was one of the major triggers that sparked us to start this movement.

Speaker 3 And the unionization was after the Boer War, before the Union, South Africa was a variety of different republics and colonies governing themselves.

Speaker 3 And unionization effectively meant that all of these different subsidiary authorities were combined into one big South Africa.

Speaker 3 As we know it today, the borders of South Africa were actually drawn pretty much by the British in 1910. And the ANC were vehemently opposed.

Speaker 2 There's a long history of border drawing, you notice. You see this when you have these completely straight borders.

Speaker 3 You know, that's artificial.

Speaker 3 And so the borders we have for South Africa today was... a product of Western imperialism.
And now those in power would very much like to maintain these borders because they have control.

Speaker 3 And so if we are truly anti-colonialism and anti-imperialist,

Speaker 3 we should return to a position where people govern themselves. We should rethink the borders.

Speaker 2 You'll never be allowed to do that. I mean, let's just cut right to the no BS part of this.
That will not be allowed. It's never been allowed.

Speaker 2 You will need either to get to force, which I pray you don't because I hate that. I hate killing,

Speaker 2 or you will need the assistance of a powerful outside force that makes makes it happen.

Speaker 2 That's just a fact. Is that fair to say?

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I think it's fair to say.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 So anyone who says, I want to kill you,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 kill the boar, you're subhuman.

Speaker 2 Those are not people who are going to say, yeah, yeah, go ahead and create your own independent state and not bother anybody because you're going to be way more successful and prosperous than they are.

Speaker 2 And they're going to hate you on the basis of envy, of course. That's already happening.

Speaker 3 And we have to ask them nicely to make certain concessions towards.

Speaker 2 No, I get it. It's not going to happen.
So,

Speaker 2 what is your plan?

Speaker 3 Well, I think the plan is to firstly to be well-organized communities,

Speaker 3 to have a very strong sense of community, a sense of pride in who we are, to remain Christian and have a strong faith,

Speaker 3 strong family ties and so forth. That's where it starts.
And then other than that, the second step, you might say, the plan is to... to just create certain realities on ground level.

Speaker 3 So it's one thing to say, you know, we want more authority or more self-determination, but you have to, in a sense, create that so that what you have created can be recognized.

Speaker 3 There's no point in saying, well, you guys can have your own place, but that place doesn't exist. So

Speaker 3 I think what the Afrikaner people need to do is, in a large, to a large extent, build their own self-determination. And I think that that's what we intend to do.

Speaker 3 But it would help a lot if we can get recognition for this pursuit as a legitimate pursuit.

Speaker 2 So you don't think, I sort of just didn't ask you to pause and I should have. You began this segment of the conversation by saying the current scheme, the current arrangement is not going to work.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 2 I think most people, certainly I as an outsider, instinctively kind of want it to work.

Speaker 3 Well, it's a good story. It sounds like a good story.

Speaker 2 It's a good story. Yeah, it is.
I mean, I'll admit to being kind of a dopey liberal in some ways. I really

Speaker 2 prefer the idea of, you know, people living together in harmony. It's just, I just feel that way.
I can't help it. Maybe that's my

Speaker 2 enlightenment legacy or something.

Speaker 2 I also think you should deal with reality. And I definitely don't think you should be allowed to kill people because of the way they look, period.

Speaker 2 So by the way,

Speaker 2 how did these people, why did they go on TV like they're on the right side? They're like endorsing genocide. Like I don't understand.

Speaker 2 I don't understand how they've been allowed to get away with being on Winnie Mandela's side and feeling self-righteous. I just don't get that.
I think it's disgusting. But whatever.

Speaker 2 I said that five times. I can't say it enough.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 how do you know it won't work? Like, ANC obviously isn't a criminal gang, totally incompetent. You don't have electricity a lot of the time.
Like, it's not working. They're just stealing everything.

Speaker 2 Got it. Stealing the copper out of the wires.
But there's not another political coalition that could run it effectively? No.

Speaker 3 So you mentioned electricity. In Johannesburg, the mayor just a few days ago announced that people should just wait seven days and then they will have water.

Speaker 3 So it's not just an electricity problem.

Speaker 2 There's a water problem. No, there's a water problem.
You're going to have a food problem at some point.

Speaker 3 well if the farmers are targeted yes so so there are many reasons why it's not working and why it won't work and well everything you can think of points to that direction one is just the data as i said like into you can look at the levels of how crime is increasing how unemployment is increasing how government service delivery is increasingly failing everything everything um i honestly health how health is is deteriorating everything except tax collection um that's one aspect of it the another aspect of it is just the the extent to which people in South Africa are turning their back on politics.

Speaker 3 There's this political vacuum in South Africa. And you can see it, for example, with the extent to which people have stopped voting, how

Speaker 3 voter turnout has dropped significantly in elections. People just don't

Speaker 3 interest it. They vote reluctantly, those who do.
So that's one aspect of it. Interesting.

Speaker 2 Why do you think they because they feel hopeless?

Speaker 3 Because they feel the political establishment is completely disconnected.

Speaker 3 It doesn't resonate with them.

Speaker 3 People vote for parties even though they don't really like them, but they think this is, of all the parties, I don't like any of them, but this one is the least bad, so I'll vote for that one.

Speaker 3 So there's a complete disconnect between the politicians or the political elite in South Africa, even the opposition parties and the people. And so there's this political vacuum that has developed.

Speaker 3 And this vacuum is filled, as my friend Aaron Stansell in South Africa says, either by the good guys or the bad guys. It's filled by the bad guys in terms of organized crime.

Speaker 3 So we have these mafias and gangs coming to the fore with significant power and to such an extent that the government is afraid of them. Or it can be filled with...

Speaker 2 That is the story globally, isn't it?

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, I think it is.

Speaker 2 The drug cartels are one of the most powerful governments in the world and they're not even in government.

Speaker 3 It's incredible. So we have a construction mafia, for example.

Speaker 3 If you build a shopping center, the construction mafia turns up and they tell you, you need to employ our people or else we're going to sabotage your building and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 And it's a regular thing.

Speaker 2 And you can't fight them.

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 you can't fight them.

Speaker 3 But the vacuum can be filled by the good guys, and that's well-organized communities who take control of what is important to them.

Speaker 3 And so the future is very, and that's what analysts and scenario analysts and so forth have been saying, that the future is one of deterioration, where you will have communities who will be much worse off than they are today because of the bad guys filling the void.

Speaker 3 And you might have flourishing communities because of good guys filling the void.

Speaker 3 And so that's another reason, but I think the most important fundamental underlying reason why it's not sustainable is it's a political system that is detached from the reality in South Africa.

Speaker 3 The reality is the distance from Cape Town, the south to the north of South Africa is the distance from Rome to London. So it's a big country,

Speaker 3 number one, but it's not homogenous by any means. It's very diverse.
There's 11 official languages. Right.

Speaker 2 It's not just, just to restate this, not just black and white at all.

Speaker 3 No, no, no, no, no, it's certainly not. There's this Indian community.
There's what we call colored community in South Africa.

Speaker 3 And there are various different tribes, you could say, or cultural communities within, among black South Africans and among white South Africans.

Speaker 3 So it's very diverse, different languages, different cultures.

Speaker 3 And now we have this political system that just says you have individual rights.

Speaker 3 And in some ways, the Constitution, even though it was very much celebrated when it was adopted, it was called the best constitution in the world and the most liberal, most democratic, and so forth.

Speaker 2 The constitution says it guarantees everything, but you get nothing.

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it.
So we have what they call third-generation rights, first, second, and third. It's a very vast network of rights that you have in theory.

Speaker 3 But then the question is: so, there's this idea that the highest authority is the constitution. But it's not possible for a written document to have the highest authority.

Speaker 3 The highest authority is with the person who gets to interpret it.

Speaker 2 So, so

Speaker 2 boy, is that true?

Speaker 3 So for example, section 25 of the Constitution in South Africa, which the government is trying to change, it's a private property rights clause. They want to change it.

Speaker 3 But currently it says the government can expropriate your property if it's in the public interest. Now, if you ask me as a Westerner, when is it in public interest to expropriate property?

Speaker 3 It would be something like they have to build a big highway or maybe there's a military emergency or something like that.

Speaker 3 If you ask one of, if you ask a judge who is founded in this ideology we've just spoken of, of, they would say it's in the public interest for white people not to own land.

Speaker 3 So it's a question of interpretation. You can have a wonderful document, but it boils down to how do you interpret it.

Speaker 3 And so, and that's why I'm saying it's not compatible with realities on ground level. And, you know, we can, and there have been many law fair in South Africa, many, many, many.

Speaker 3 South Africa is a very good example of political court cases. And we've won many and we've lost many, but it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a ship that is sinking.

Speaker 2 That's the fact. Well, and it all seems fake.
I mean, it seems like, and I,

Speaker 2 again, one of the reasons I'm so fascinated by your country is I think

Speaker 2 it's on a trajectory that I recognize as an American. So you have these legacy institutions that sort of go through the kabuki of dispensing justice, but it's not justice, actually.

Speaker 2 It's totally disconnected from justice. It doesn't mean anything.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 And you have this constitution, which is beautiful, which is

Speaker 2 ignored. The only power resides in the people who interpret it, as you said.

Speaker 2 And so then you reach kind of the end point or the most recent endpoint, which is the idea that whites can't own land. Can you explain this?

Speaker 3 Yes, so they have been trying to change the South African constitution, the property rights clause, to empower the government to expropriate private property without compensation. That's the buzzword.

Speaker 2 Just steal the land.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's well, they call it EWC. It's expropriation without compensation, but it's confiscation of property.
That's what it is.

Speaker 2 Well, how is expropriation without compensation different from stealing?

Speaker 3 No, exactly. But it's just shoplifting.

Speaker 3 it's flabbergasting to see the extent to which, again, academics and analysts and journalists are rushing to the defense of the South African government.

Speaker 2 In South Africa, then? Yes.

Speaker 3 So here's one of the many bizarre things that they would say. They would say, this is all a lie.
You guys are lying. It's not expropriation without compensation.

Speaker 3 It's expropriation with compensation, but compensation can be null. So it can be zero compensation.

Speaker 2 So it's not happening, but it's a good thing that it is. Yeah, that's it.
That's it. As always, as always.

Speaker 3 And so the president has just signed the expropriation bill in South Africa, which is now, which they're now all.

Speaker 2 He signed it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, um,

Speaker 3 and and and so there's still an attempt to change the constitution. And there's now a new bill in in

Speaker 3 process.

Speaker 3 It was just announced, I think, a week ago, that they want to pass through parliament that says that 80% of, that's what it boils down to, that 80% of land or property in South Africa must be owned by black people.

Speaker 3 So, because it says it must be racially representative. And so, I want to tell you a a quick story about this because it sort of highlights the ideology.

Speaker 3 I was at a land summit in South Africa, and a spokesperson for the Department of Land Reform spoke. And it was very clear from his speech that the problem is white people owning land.

Speaker 3 It was a racial thing. It was very clear.
But it's colored with words like restitution and correcting historic injustices and so forth.

Speaker 3 And so, I asked him at this summit, I said, so give, here's an example. And what would the government's position be on this? The example is a white guy owns a farm.

Speaker 3 The government takes it from him to correct historic injustices. And they give it to a black guy.
And it's a black farmer.

Speaker 3 And maybe a year or two down the line, this black farmer decides he doesn't want to be a farmer anymore. He wants to sell his land.
And the buyer is white. And now there's a white farmer again.

Speaker 3 What's the government's position on this? And the spokesperson for the department says, in that case, the correction of the injustice has been reversed.

Speaker 3 It's completely bizarre.

Speaker 2 And what's interesting is we've seen this exact movie frame by frame right next door in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, which was one of the most prosperous countries in Africa, one of the big tobacco producers in Africa.

Speaker 3 It's very sad what happened to that country.

Speaker 2 Well, it's shocking. But it's again, it's, you know, like...
Organized government-sponsored racism doesn't work. And I don't care how often the New York Times defends it, it's always the same.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that is like right next door to you. And you have a refugee crisis in your country because of it.

Speaker 2 Well, our government, our ruling.

Speaker 3 So what do they say to that? No, they say that Robert Mugabe is a hero and that ZANU PF, the party,

Speaker 3 Yaya, is a good party, and it's a liberation force, and we respect them.

Speaker 2 Okay, so again, no one wants to use the term,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 this is genocide. I mean, that's what that is.
It's like targeting a group of people for extinction, elimination, on the basis of immutable characteristics.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't know what, is there another genocide, a genocide definition I'm not aware of?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 I think you can say there are threats of that happening. There's not a genocide happening in San Francisco.

Speaker 2 No, no, I'm not saying there is. I'm saying that's where it's going.
Like, what's the other end point here?

Speaker 2 Well, yes. If you're not human, you can't own land.
You should be killed.

Speaker 3 What am I saying?

Speaker 3 And yeah, if you own land, by definition, that's illegitimate, regardless of whether you bought the land. It doesn't matter how you got the land.

Speaker 2 Because of your race.

Speaker 3 Because of your race, yes. Okay.

Speaker 2 If we can't say that's wrong,

Speaker 2 then

Speaker 2 anyone who can't say that's wrong, anyone who makes excuses for that is a dangerous person. I don't know what else to say.
Put another group in there. I don't care what group it is.

Speaker 3 So the ANC in South Africa wanted to, they have this process of name changes. And by the way, this targeting of statues came from South Africa.
It's happening in America.

Speaker 3 It started in South Africa, burning down statues and so forth. So, and they've had this long process of name changes.
And one thing they wanted to

Speaker 3 change the street in which the u.s embassy is in south africa to fidelcastro avenue and that's one story the other one is they wanted to change one of the main streets in pretoria to name it after mao zetung and then some of the opposition party said are you crazy do you know what mao zetung did and the response was remember mao was never convicted of any crime so

Speaker 2 gotta say

Speaker 2 it does seem not only like one of the worst governments in the world but one of the dumbest also

Speaker 3 well so I think I think there's part there's some explanation as to why the South African government has gone so off the rails, and it's that they've gotten a free pass for decades.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 Because of this narrative, they could do and say whatever they want. They got no criticism or very little criticism or very careful criticism.

Speaker 3 And that's why I think they've gone so ballistic after the recent comments by Trump and people like Elon Musk and so on. Oh, have they?

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, I don't follow it that closely. Have they those comments were noticed in South Africa?

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah,

Speaker 3 it's the biggest story in South Africa at the moment. Really?

Speaker 2 And what are they saying?

Speaker 3 Well, they're saying that

Speaker 3 the organizations that I was involved with at the time have committed treason. We've been charged for treason.

Speaker 2 You've been charged with treason? Yeah. For what?

Speaker 3 For speaking, well, among others, for me speaking with you about what's happening. That's treason? Yeah, because it's bad-mouthing your country.

Speaker 3 That's the argument.

Speaker 2 Damn.

Speaker 3 So I don't know if it was this

Speaker 3 one of the opposition parties who found it.

Speaker 2 I wanted to go to Cape Town for Christmas just on vacation. I didn't have time in the end.

Speaker 3 You'll have to put it on.

Speaker 2 Probably shouldn't go. Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 3 No, no, you should come to South Africa. No, you should definitely come.

Speaker 3 I don't know if much will come from the treason charges, but that's certainly the end.

Speaker 2 But you've been charged with treason.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there were official complaints filed at the police. Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 What's the penalty for treason in South Africa?

Speaker 3 It would be imprisonment.

Speaker 3 We don't have the death penalty.

Speaker 2 No, they just necklace you. It's informal.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 I'm honestly, seriously, I'm more concerned if the question is about safety, about mob justice in South Africa than the actual government coming after you.

Speaker 2 Of course. So what does that look like?

Speaker 3 Well, we have...

Speaker 3 I think you reported on this in 2021, I think when there was this massive riots in South Africa.

Speaker 3 When they just... In Durban.
In Durban, and then it remember that. Yeah, it sort of spilled out to Khauteng, to Johannesburg to a lesser extent.

Speaker 3 And it's just people, it's almost like, you know, smelling blood and becoming extremely violent and so forth. And then people join in by the thousands.

Speaker 2 I've seen that with my own eyes a couple of times.

Speaker 2 It's really scary.

Speaker 3 So someone, a friend from Europe once asked me, are you not afraid that the government's going to come to your house and take your stuff? And my honest answer is not that much.

Speaker 3 I'm more concerned about a mob showing up.

Speaker 2 So then what do you do?

Speaker 3 Well, if you are alone, you can't do anything. If you're a well-functioning, well-organized community, then the community, you can call people on the radio,

Speaker 3 you can get the community to take a stance.

Speaker 3 And I think that's one of the... So you don't get lynched.
Yes.

Speaker 2 You got a lot of lynchings and stuff. I mean, that's, again, add it to the irony file.
I mean, South Africa is like the world capital of lynching. Yes.
Oh, I noticed. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's not so much white people who are targeted.

Speaker 2 I'm aware. No, of blacks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 That certainly. It has happened in the previous dispensation.
It's still happening to an extent, not as much as in the past, but people don't know that it's still happening.

Speaker 3 To people accused of crimes, and yeah, and it's partly due to the fact that the police is absent, right?

Speaker 3 So, especially in townships, someone is a rapist and the police doesn't show up, doesn't do anything, and then the local community just deals with him.

Speaker 3 That type of thing happens in some ways in a very brutal way.

Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it does happen in a brutal way.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I've noticed. Like, pretty shocking, like, almost like I wouldn't want to describe it.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah, I mentioned the necklace murders before.
So we have that. And it's the same with the xenophobic violence.

Speaker 3 It's very unfortunate. And if we had a well-functioning police service, maybe that would have helped.
But we don't. So in South Africa,

Speaker 3 we can check the numbers. I'm pretty sure the private security sphere in South Africa is almost as big as private security in America.
But America is much larger.

Speaker 3 Private security in South Africa is more than double the police and the army combined.

Speaker 3 If you add the police and the army up together and you multiply it by two, private security is the amount of private security officers in South Africa or security guards is

Speaker 2 do you have the right of self-defense, the right to defend yourself and your family and South Africa?

Speaker 3 We do have the right to self-defense. We can own firearms, although it's not as easy as in America.
Yes. But

Speaker 3 you can do that. And you can get arms, especially through a private security company.

Speaker 3 There's some room to make sure that you can protect yourself.

Speaker 2 And does it work?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 In terms of the farm murders, we've seen seen that statistically, that in communities where areas or communities where people are well organized, where they have radios, where they drive patrols, where they are trained, there's a decrease in farm murders.

Speaker 3 You can clearly see that. Actually, in the last few years, the farm murder numbers have come down a bit.
And it's not because

Speaker 3 the incitement has gotten better. It's not because the police is more efficient.
It's because local communities have become much more involved with their own safety.

Speaker 3 And so that's certainly one of the most important building blocks of this.

Speaker 2 So what now that the president, I'm using air quotes again, president, I mean, the whole system is fake, obviously. It doesn't affect justice.
It doesn't improve the lives of its citizens.

Speaker 2 It's in no sense a legitimate government. And by the way, it's not the only illegitimate government in the world.

Speaker 2 But anyway, what happens when

Speaker 2 They try, the government tries to put this law into effect, to try and act on it?

Speaker 2 You know, the government shows up your house says you can't you know you've lived in the same plot for a hundred years you can't have it because you're white we're taking it like what happened do people comply

Speaker 3 no no people won't comply no we i mean that's partly why i told this story at the beginning is the afrikaner people and the farmers are very stubborn this in afrikans we say hardkopach or hard-headed so this idea well farmers you have to be stubborn to be a farmer in the first place yes and especially if you're not sure

Speaker 3 i mean it's easier yes exactly so it's it's it's a common trope among farmers to say that I would rather die on my farm than to hand it over to the government.

Speaker 3 And so I think if they really try to act on it, which they haven't tried, there are land invasions in South Africa, but it's not so much the government.

Speaker 3 It's mobs and gangs and so forth invading people's land. But if they really try to act on these attempts at expropriation, there's going to be a massive backlash.
And

Speaker 3 there's no doubt. So what they would say is, this is actually what the government says,

Speaker 3 that we need to do what happened in Zimbabwe, but without violence. But that's how they would argue it.

Speaker 2 They actually say we need to do what happened in Zimbabwe? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 But this time without violence.

Speaker 2 That's one of the worst crimes of my lifetime.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, they say it publicly. Yeah, you can find it online.
And so the argument is, but we're going to do it a bit better. We're going to do it without violence.

Speaker 3 But what that means is we're going to do what happened in Zimbabwe and you are not going to resist. That's what it means.
But obviously people will resist when when they try to do that.

Speaker 3 There's no doubt about it.

Speaker 3 But I do think the government is very incompetent. They have these very radical ideas.
I don't know if they have the

Speaker 3 competency to actually go through that.

Speaker 2 That's the upside. I lived in Washington, D.C., almost my whole life, and that was absolutely true there.

Speaker 2 You know, the government make all these, local government make all these threatening noises, do this, do that, do the other thing. It's against the law to do this, whatever.

Speaker 2 And you just kind of ignore, people just ignored it. And

Speaker 3 so there are some business organizations in south africa who now use the term maximum appropriate non-compliance that's what they encourage private companies to do so it's it's a form of civil disobedience it's with all these b ee that's these black empowerment laws to just say we're just not going to comply i know someone who had a thriving business he built himself in south africa and the government showed up and said you're handing half your business to your new partner who didn't do anything just show up and collect the money and it's just they stole half his business because it's all theft i mean it doesn't I mean, like black South Africans haven't gotten richer in the last 30 years.

Speaker 2 No, no, no.

Speaker 3 And the government owns the land, most of the land that they expropriate. They don't give it to people.
It goes to the government.

Speaker 2 So would the government say no? Like, how about no? Like, you have no legitimacy, and you haven't been here any longer than I've been here.

Speaker 2 And you have, I mean, and I have guns too, so like, I'm not participating. How's that? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, civil disobedience can be a wonderful thing. And we've had some examples of successful civil disobedience campaigns in South Africa where the government had this, they call it the e-toll system.

Speaker 3 It's like a big tax system on the highways that just, it's an electronic tax toll system that, but people just build the thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, just refused to comply to get the tags and so forth.

Speaker 3 And eventually they had to stop it because even though it was law, people just didn't do it. And the same with COVID.
COVID was a good example.

Speaker 3 We've had a bizarre COVID. I mean, everyone has had a bizarre COVID.
So we had these strange laws like you can't buy flip-flops during COVID. Yeah, those are deadly.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah and you cannot buy shorts all the and stuff you cannot buy cooked chicken we had these really really bizarre covert laws um it's a crime to buy cooked chicken or to sell cooked chicken during covert and and so people just people just said well we don't care we're just going to do what we want um and and so there was a massive civil disobedience um

Speaker 3 phenomenon in South Africa during the COVID lockdown. And so I think people have learned, and the government couldn't do anything about it.
I think people have learned that

Speaker 3 you can actually do a lot if you just don't comply with these completely ridiculous, irrational laws.

Speaker 2 That sounds, I mean, I'm delivered in South Africa, but again, I have lived in Washington, D.C., so that sounds totally right to me.

Speaker 2 I wonder, though, about what you said when we first started talking about this about the mob justice.

Speaker 2 That does sound scary to me.

Speaker 3 I think that's a bigger threat.

Speaker 2 What do you do about that?

Speaker 2 How do you live in a country where

Speaker 2 your neighbors could rise up against you? Yeah,

Speaker 3 so we've had some examples of this. It started with the Rhodes Must Fall movement.

Speaker 2 It was a. Oh, the Rhodes.
Oh, Ciccill Roads. Sistle John Rhodes.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 So this one guy defecated on Sicil John Rhodes' statue at, was it UCT? What university was it?

Speaker 3 In Cape Town.

Speaker 3 And then they started this movement.

Speaker 2 He defecated on it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 That's attractive. Well, that's kind of

Speaker 2 like the level, actually, that you're dealing with. Yeah.
And so

Speaker 3 they started this movement of tearing down statues, which eventually boiled over to America, and that's how it got to America. It started in, and it boiled over to Europe and so forth.

Speaker 3 But it started with that, this targeting of statues. I think it was 2012 or something.
It was maybe before that even.

Speaker 3 And it became a mob.

Speaker 3 And they wore t-shirts with slogans like kill the whites on the t-shirt.

Speaker 3 And it became very violent and very overtly racist. And it was students running around, just

Speaker 3 setting things on fire, burning down buildings and stuff like that. So that is a real threat.

Speaker 3 And then later we had the fees must-fall movement that was university students demanding that education must be free.

Speaker 3 You shouldn't pay to go to university. And it was the same thing.
And now we've had these, more recently, we've had political parties sort of taking up that thing, this kill the booer and so forth.

Speaker 3 And so I honestly think in South Africa, the threat of mob violence is a bigger threat than the government.

Speaker 2 Of course it is.

Speaker 2 Of course it is. And

Speaker 2 that's where you get killed in situations like that, I think.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 what do you, I mean, you have to be pretty well organized, pretty well armed.

Speaker 3 Well, the thing is, there's no silver bullet. There's no one thing that we can do to make sure that we're equipped to withstand that.

Speaker 3 But if there is a silver bullet, it would be, or the closest to it, it would be what I mentioned earlier, is well-organized communities, communities that have a sense of community, that recognize that you have a sense of responsibility, not just towards yourself and your own family, but towards your community, and that you have some form of a communal identity that is under threat, that is being targeted.

Speaker 3 And you have to protect yourself. You have to fulfill a bunch of functions that the government is not fulfilling.
Even though you're paying them to do it, they're not doing it.

Speaker 3 So you have to look after your own safety. You need to have a gun.

Speaker 3 You need to have a bulletproof vest you need to have or if you don't then at least a significant amount of people in your in your community must especially those who are more interested in this type of thing you need to be well organized you need to be prepared if something bad happens in your community if the mob comes if they set the shopping mall on fire or if they come for people's houses that in a very short

Speaker 3 time frame you can get a whole bunch of people mobilized to protect their community and and with these riots in 2021 that was a good case study because some communities were completely unprepared and they were virtually destroyed.

Speaker 3 And some communities were very well prepared. And when the mobs arrived, there was a bunch of people with guns waiting for them.

Speaker 2 Well, I saw a video of the South Asian communities in Taliban. They're big, South Asian, big Indians

Speaker 2 community there. And

Speaker 2 I don't know if this is represented, but the videos I saw, man, they were not putting up with it at all.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they were very well armed.

Speaker 2 Yes. Yeah.
There's like some heroic Indians out there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there was one, I think, some guy with something that looked like a minigun on the back of a pickup truck.

Speaker 3 I don't know where they got that, but

Speaker 3 that's that's an example. There was another example.
Is that true?

Speaker 2 You know, these videos are all out of context. I'm not interrupting this.
No, no, no, that's not.

Speaker 2 We have some brave Indians.

Speaker 3 Yes, yes, we do. We have some brave Indians.

Speaker 2 We do.

Speaker 3 And there were other examples. One was the mob was approaching a town and the people were waiting for them on a bridge.

Speaker 3 And then they got there, they just couldn't enter because the people had just cordoned off their own town, their own village or community, and they weren't able to enter.

Speaker 3 So, we've had some case studies of this. South Africa is a fascinating case study for a lot of things.
It certainly is.

Speaker 2 It certainly is.

Speaker 2 Can I just ask a dumb question, a child-ish question?

Speaker 2 Why, if I'm the government of South Africa, it's like, why are you going after productive people for one thing?

Speaker 2 The most productive,

Speaker 2 and that would include the Indians, the Afrikaners, by the way, some of the black African immigrants, the Zimbabweans,

Speaker 2 these are like are some of the most productive people.

Speaker 2 Why not just live in harmony, actually?

Speaker 2 So wouldn't it be better for everybody?

Speaker 3 Of course. Of course it would be better.

Speaker 3 I think it's because they have, when they took power in 1994, they explicitly said, we are not a political party. We are not a government in terms of what people think a government should be.

Speaker 3 We are a liberation movement committed to the promotion of socialism and committed to the promotion of black nationalism. And that's their ideology.

Speaker 2 They said that in 94.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they even said that before 94. They published it.

Speaker 2 So it's just, I know I'm going back to the same themes. I'm getting older, sorry.

Speaker 2 But like, no, but I mean, I actually did know that because, as I said, I've always been interested and I knew people there. But nobody in the American press mentioned that.
Not one person.

Speaker 3 There's a well-known book that was an international bestseller, My Traitor's Heart, by a guy called Rian Malan.

Speaker 2 It's sort of his autobiography. I've read it.
Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 And so there's one section in that book. I know Rian, I know the author.
He's a great guy. But in the book, he writes about...

Speaker 2 He's in English. I don't know if he wrote an Afrikaans originally, but it's a beautifully written book.

Speaker 3 It's very well written. It's very nicely written.
He speaks like he writes. Oh, he does?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 So there's one part in the book where he talks about picking up the New York Times. And I'm sort of saying this from memory from reading the book.

Speaker 3 But broadly speaking, what he says is he picks up the New York Times in, I don't know, 1992 or something in New York or wherever. And there's two stories next on the same page.
The one is about

Speaker 3 the ANC and Nelson Mandela coming to save South Africa.

Speaker 3 And then the other story is a somewhat smaller story about a guy being necklaced in a local community, a guy being viciously attacked and killed. And so he writes in that book that

Speaker 3 what concerned him was that the New York Times was not able to connect these two stories to each other. They didn't recognize that it's part of the same story.

Speaker 3 It's presented as two completely different stories.

Speaker 2 I think they knew exactly. I think it was very obvious.
So I was 25 in 1994, and it was very obvious to me. And

Speaker 2 I don't think I have any special powers of insight. I think you would have to be

Speaker 2 lying to yourself or lying to your audience not to acknowledge it.

Speaker 2 And by the way, 1994, that's less than 20 years after the Camerouche took power. in Nampen in Cambodia.

Speaker 3 That was while the Rwandan genocide was happening.

Speaker 2 It was the same year as the Rwandan genocide. It was later that year.
So the Rwandan. The same month, even.

Speaker 3 The election, at least.

Speaker 2 Was in July?

Speaker 2 April, May, May. May, okay, right.

Speaker 2 Right. Yeah.
Yeah, I remember them both very well. And I knew people in both places at the time.

Speaker 2 But I remember thinking, obviously, what happened in Kogali is way worse in Rwanda is way worse than anything that's happened in South Africa, thank God.

Speaker 2 But bottom line, when bad people with bad motives stated publicly take power, it's not good so like I don't know that's not hard well there's a story from Rwanda and that one that I keep mentioning in in the same the same time

Speaker 3 I think Linda Malvern wrote a book called conspiracy to murder which is about I think she lived in Rwanda and she's a journalist and she wrote about the what happened and she writes about a meeting or it must have been a party in Washington between American diplomats and government officials from Rwanda in the run-up, I think, to the genocide.

Speaker 3 And it was just a big celebration, and everyone was happy because Rwanda was in the process of becoming a democracy.

Speaker 3 And then afterwards, someone asked one of the Americans, but did you not know what was happening in Rwanda? That they were on the verge of committing genocide?

Speaker 3 And he said, the American diplomat said, yes, we knew, but we were so excited about democracy and Rwanda becoming a democracy. We didn't want to spoil the mood by confronting them.

Speaker 2 Well, that sounds like an American diplomat. Yeah.

Speaker 3 so so that's very very alarming this idea of being so excited about a potential idea uh that you are not willing to confront the realities uh that that's happening or that could potentially unfold

Speaker 2 or being unwilling to clearly define your terms like what is democracy actually yeah well that's i think that's an underlying it's an underlying problem yeah right it's and it's a problem that's only surfaced in this country

Speaker 3 can i give you an example of that from the south african perspective so i mentioned the name changes it's a big thing in south africa i'm sure that'll fix your problems will that bring the electricity and water back no obviously so there's a town called amanzam toti which is on the the the east coast of south africa the main street was named kingsway they changed it to andrew zondu street now andrew zondu is really only known for one thing he was a member of the anc youth league and i believe it was 1985 he planted a bomb in a shopping center and he killed i think five people and injured 40.

Speaker 3 all of the people who were killed were women and children. That's the only thing he did and he was a member of the ANC Youth League.
The ANC regards that event as something that they claim as

Speaker 3 an act of heroism. So they named the main street after him.
And so there are people in that town who drive to work in a street named after the person who killed their children.

Speaker 3 And now they would say that they need to do these name changes to make sure that they get rid of offensive names. Offensive names are Afrikaans' names, names linked to South Africa's past.

Speaker 3 And so I was at an again a summit where this was discussed and I mentioned this. I said, so you say that in Pretoria, Church Street is an offensive name and has to be changed.

Speaker 3 In Amanzam Toti, you change Kingsway to Andrew Zondu. And I tell this story.
And I said, so who decides if it's offensive or not? And the guy said, oh, well, that's easy. The majority decides.

Speaker 3 And so, but it's not even the majority. It's just the government.
The government decides because they believe they are the majority.

Speaker 3 So so we have these extremely offensive things happening under the banner of well they're murderous i mean again i just yeah

Speaker 2 i i think it's the picture is really really clear

Speaker 2 you know it's it couldn't be clearer yeah yeah absolutely how do you you're staying yeah no definitely yeah we'll stay you guys must love your country Yeah, we really do.

Speaker 3 I mean, in South Africa, everyone who's been to South Africa would say it's an incredibly beautiful country, and it truly is.

Speaker 3 And it's a country that unfortunately has suffered so much under this current government and has suffered so much in the past.

Speaker 3 One of our Afrikaans philosophers, a man named N.

Speaker 3 Pierre van Week Lowe, wrote, I think in the 1930s or something, that you love a people not so much for their accomplishments as for the hardships that they've had to endure. That's right.

Speaker 3 And I think that's true for South Africa.

Speaker 3 South Africa has endured many hardships and also for our people, the Afrikaner people, as with many other peoples all over the world, have endured many hardships.

Speaker 3 And it's through these hardships and remaining, maintaining our sense of identity that we really love our history and our tradition.

Speaker 2 Well, you came in the first place because you were an oppressed minority, correct? Yep. I know the French did.

Speaker 3 Yes, the French Huguenots, yes.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 It was the fleeing the religious wars.

Speaker 2 Of course, they were getting killed.

Speaker 3 Yes, in big numbers. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah,

Speaker 3 that's part of our origin story, how we're factually true.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's part of history. I mean, it's not a myth.
It's real. Yes, yes, absolutely.
Yeah. So

Speaker 2 do you think, I don't know what the resolution will be, and I'm certainly rooting for all South Africans of every color, but fervently, but

Speaker 2 I got to think that being able to say certain obvious truths out loud helps.

Speaker 2 Yes. Do you think?

Speaker 3 Well, the problem is if you do that, you really, you get bashed quite aggressively.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but like compared to what? Yeah. No.
They just said we're taking your land land because your skin colours. Well, the alternative is worse.

Speaker 3 It's just living the lie.

Speaker 3 It's much worse than getting bashed for telling the truth.

Speaker 3 Can I tell you a quick story or a quick reference about courage?

Speaker 2 Of course.

Speaker 3 So it's somewhat philosophical, but I'll make it practical. So Odysseus is on his way back from the Trojan War.
And he has all these hardships and he's trying to get home.

Speaker 3 And he gets told that the only way for him to get home is to face Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla is this six-headed sea monster and Charybdis is a monstrous whirlpool that swallows ships whole.

Speaker 3 And the only way for him to get home is he has to navigate through these two monsters, which he eventually does. He decides it's better for him to move, to sail his ship closer to Scylla,

Speaker 3 the sea monster, than the whirlpool. And a whole lot of his people die, but he reaches his destination.
And so Aristotle writes about this in the Nicomachean Ethics.

Speaker 3 And when he talks about the golden mean, and he says, any virtue is about finding the balance between having excess of it and having a deficiency of it. And so this goes to courage.

Speaker 3 Courage is a good example. If you have excess courage, you become reckless.
Yes. And if you have a deficiency, then you're a coward.
And so

Speaker 3 the point of having courage is finding the balance between cowardice and recklessness.

Speaker 3 And what's great about the story of Odysseus is Odysseus discovers that he cannot simply go exactly in the middle between the two. He has to be closer to the one threat than to the other.

Speaker 3 Because if he goes too close to the whirlpool, his whole ship gets swallowed up.

Speaker 3 And so the point here, and Aristotle says this as well, it's not to find the exact middle point, it's to find the appropriate balance between the two extremes.

Speaker 3 And so the one extreme is recklessness, and the other extreme is cowardice. And I honestly think in the situation we are in,

Speaker 3 It's better to err on the side of being too bold than to err on the side of having not enough courage or trying to find some form of solution through appeasement.

Speaker 3 And so we make mistakes in the process. And, you know, sometimes you say something wrong or you do something wrong.

Speaker 3 But I'm very much convinced that

Speaker 3 if we're on this course and we try to pursue what we are trying to pursue, rather err on the side of having too much boldness and too much courage and facing the consequences than having to face the consequences of having a lack of courage.

Speaker 2 I love that.

Speaker 2 I got to say, in a lifetime of travel, if I could just generalize,

Speaker 2 the two most impressive groups I meet everywhere my whole life around the world, both groups living in exile in large numbers, are the South Africans and the Lebanese.

Speaker 3 Oh, really? Yes. Yes.

Speaker 2 I've never met one of either group I didn't like and didn't admire. I don't think I've met one in either group.

Speaker 2 And the thing that they have in common is they live in beautiful, volatile countries that they really love, but they're very hard to live in. Yes.

Speaker 2 And so they're caught between that tension, you know, cowardice and recklessness. And they're making that calculation every single day.

Speaker 2 And they're living so thoughtfully and so purposefully and in such a, I don't know, just an admirable, noble way. I've just noticed that.

Speaker 3 Oh, I appreciate the comment.

Speaker 2 Just an observation, but I've thought about it many times. Last question.

Speaker 2 Where can people who have made it this far into the interview and are interested in what's happening in your country and happening to

Speaker 2 your group, How can they follow it? How can they be helpful?

Speaker 2 How can they learn more and be supportive?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 I think there are many ways. The one ways is just to follow what's happening in South Africa and speak about it.
Yes. Because we've had this incredible barrier.

Speaker 3 communications coming just telling us again how wrong we are.

Speaker 3 This narrative is zeitgeist in a certain sense.

Speaker 3 It's really like a monster that you have to fight,

Speaker 3 that you're not allowed to speak certain truths, even though the truths are self-evident.

Speaker 3 so i think one thing is if people just can help spread the message help take some interest in south africa because what's happening in south africa is also of interest to the rest of the world i think it is in many ways south africa is the future of the western world i know um in terms of the problem and the solution i i think so so that's one and then the other is there really are some institutions in south africa

Speaker 3 who are really focused on building community-based solutions. And I think if people can identify these institutions and support these institutions, it really would help.

Speaker 3 And I think in terms of the U.S. government, if the U.S.

Speaker 3 government is willing to do something, as it seems that they are, I think the most important thing that they could do is a combination of pressuring the South African government from away from these destructive policies, but also supporting communities, local communities or minority communities or nations, you should say, who are committed to finding some form of self-determination.

Speaker 2 Amen. Well, Godspeed.

Speaker 2 I hope to see you again. I hope you'll you'll come back.

Speaker 3 Oh, thank you. I hope so, too.
And I have to thank you for not just for this interview, but also for the focus you've been putting on South Africa in the past.

Speaker 2 Well, it's just so interesting, and it reveals so much about us. I'm American, and it reveals a lot about our leadership class, and I think it's important to say it.

Speaker 3 Thank you. Well, thank you very much.

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