The Totally Very Real White Genocide in South Africa with Dan Corder and Eugene Khoza

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Speaker 1 Not a crime. I saw Trevor No, even Trevor No.

Speaker 1 He admitted criminal. Noah.
Used to be a criminal. In South Africa, he used to do it all the time.

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Speaker 1 For every conversation, he leans in.

Speaker 1 Eugene, I'm telling you, bro, we need to make that show. He leans in.
Come on, game.

Speaker 1 That's all.

Speaker 1 He investigates all the claims.

Speaker 1 He leans in. Eugene Cosa is

Speaker 1 local detective. How much?

Speaker 1 How many?

Speaker 2 Do we need to report these funds?

Speaker 3 I'm also sensing that Eugene only asks questions of two words.

Speaker 1 How much? Yeah, that's Eugene. How many? That's Eugene.
When last?

Speaker 1 It's just

Speaker 1 a bit in. That's when you get in.

Speaker 1 Dan, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 1 I apologize that you met me on a day that I'm with Eugene because it means anything can happen here. Good.
But I think that's the perfect setting for a conversation about genocide.

Speaker 1 About not just genocide.

Speaker 1 Not just genocide, guys. But a white genocide.

Speaker 1 A white genocide.

Speaker 3 So what is genocide?

Speaker 1 Which, as we know, is the worst genocide of all.

Speaker 2 You know, of which, how many of you committed this week? Me.

Speaker 1 Apparently, there's a lot of them in the world.

Speaker 1 So, personally,

Speaker 1 I always start my week week with a genocidal

Speaker 1 all south africans this is what we do if you know my father always used to tell me trevor must do genocides sorry your swiss father you know dan don't spoil the jokes

Speaker 1 why are you spoiling the jokes dan

Speaker 1 now i have to reveal to everyone that my father was a white man who lived in south africa and loved it damn it dan you you're spoiling the narrative dan i thought could have been like an interesting narrative

Speaker 1 and the swiss white man is also committed white genocide this guy you're revealing my backstory, Dan.

Speaker 3 Oh, no one read the book?

Speaker 1 No one.

Speaker 1 Everyone read the book. Okay, so you know what? This is what I found particularly strange about this conversation.

Speaker 1 A lot of the time I'll have a conversation with people and we're trying to like figure something out moving forwards. I feel like for this conversation, we're trying to figure something else.

Speaker 1 We're trying to figure something out backwards, right? Because

Speaker 1 I'll just put people on the timeline. So I know a lot of people in America, a lot of people in the UK, et cetera, et cetera, are going, what is happening in South Africa?

Speaker 1 A lot of people are like, we heard there's a genocide. We heard that white people are being mass slaughtered.
There's a whole thing. So then the whole world woke up.
So you guys live in South Africa.

Speaker 1 I was in New York. Then I saw the story start bubbling.
So obviously I follow South African news. But you know, there's stories where it's like, guys, they don't come.
Like ESCOM doesn't come.

Speaker 1 The story doesn't actually come to America.

Speaker 1 This story started overlapping. And slowly you started to realize that it became part of the news, like international news.

Speaker 1 Okay, then it was interesting, international journalists stepped in and said,

Speaker 1 We want to get to the bottom of what's happening because how could a genocide be happening under our noses and we don't know about it, right? So, the BBC, CNN, you name it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was even getting requests. People were emailing me, Hi, Trevor.
Are you safe?

Speaker 1 We heard there's a genocide. I didn't ask if you were safe.
No, no one asked if I was safe because they're like, We know where you live.

Speaker 3 It would be incredibly funny if Facebook asked you to check in as a white person each day about whether you were still breathing.

Speaker 3 That would be very good.

Speaker 1 But what was interesting was as quickly as it blew up internationally,

Speaker 1 it dropped off. I saw conversations everywhere.
One of them was obviously you went on Piers Morgan.

Speaker 2 I went to my house.

Speaker 1 You were in your house?

Speaker 1 And I don't know. Maybe we start with this.
Were you shocked, Dan, when you go on Piers Morgan and

Speaker 1 You're almost, you're coming there to talk about the fact that there is no genocide.

Speaker 1 There's a whole panel of other people, people, you know, who are like half of them are there to say there is a genocide, and then they go, they go, there is no genocide.

Speaker 1 So maybe that's where I want to start. Like,

Speaker 1 how is it that there's a conversation that's going all over the world about a thing that isn't actually happening? And I don't mean like isn't happening like some people feel it is, some people isn't.

Speaker 1 No, it isn't actually happening.

Speaker 1 So how did this start?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so I think that over the last 10 years,

Speaker 3 a raft of genuinely very talented grifters in in South Africa have snake oil salesmen this idea without saying it themselves on the last step. So someone like Ernst Stritz is very clever.

Speaker 3 He will twist the data and decontextualize facts to make it look like something particularly bad is happening.

Speaker 3 And then he will go on Jordan Peterson and Tucker Carlson and he'll never say there's a white genocide. He'll stop just before and then let people fill in where he's directing it to.

Speaker 3 Similarly, most of this cuck has taken place on the dark place, formerly known as Twitter, like aided and abetted by Elon Musk.

Speaker 3 And on Twitter, these big established public voices who need to have a degree of tetheredness to reality stop just short of saying this is the worst thing ever, like with these race laws.

Speaker 3 They stopped just short of saying these, there are more race laws than apartheid, therefore it's worse than apartheid.

Speaker 3 But then they let the anonymous bot troll campaigns on Twitter, which are sometimes just useful idiots, but sometimes paid for campaigners, jump to the last level.

Speaker 3 So there was this ex-account called Twitterboss, there still is, and Elon Musk reposted a lot of his stuff. Twaterbas was just lying about a bunch of things.

Speaker 3 But what happened was the public figures did the groundwork to allow the lunatics to then lie on top of what they were saying.

Speaker 3 And then it ended up being Musk repeating and sharing these kinds of nonsense ideas all the way into the White House.

Speaker 3 And then when Trump went executive order time, that's when it became around the world. Yeah, that's when it became.

Speaker 3 That's when it became because frankly, I just feel like Trump and his right wing love a white victim.

Speaker 3 All of their immigration stuff in America is about being terrified of the brown person, be terrified of the non-English-speaking person. They love a white victim.

Speaker 3 But it's hard to find white victims, guys. The history of the world makes it pretty hard to find white victims.

Speaker 3 But if somebody could come along and concoct the downtrodden, tragic, endangered white person, beleaguered in South Africa, and we can save them, then that ticks all of the boxes for that kind of campaign.

Speaker 3 And I don't know if you noticed, but it seemed like every single time for about two months Trump had a bad day, he then tweeted about South Africa.

Speaker 3 We were the punching bag to change the narrative, to distract away, to misdirect from the other stuff that was going on in his life that would look dangerous. So I think that we were useful fodder.

Speaker 3 The way that like our

Speaker 3 diplomat Ibram Rasul and then special envoy BC Jonas suddenly got covered by Breitbart News and Fox News.

Speaker 3 They were turned into these dangers because it was very useful to fit the kind of MAGA narrative.

Speaker 1 But what happened 10 years ago? What am I missing?

Speaker 1 I get that we're saying something started, but why did it start? I'm still intrigued by the why of it all. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, what is the purpose of starting a campaign to say there's a genocide where there is none? When are you, Gini? When was the first time you heard about it?

Speaker 2 Nami, I was the same.

Speaker 1 When did you get the email? No, I'm being serious.

Speaker 1 No, but I'm being serious.

Speaker 1 When was the first time you ever heard about white genocide in South Africa?

Speaker 2 It was this year. It was when everyone caught onto it.
I almost felt like I was part of living in another country because I looked outside and I was like, That's crazy. Where is this thing happening?

Speaker 2 And I checked on my neighbor. She was fine, but she hasn't been fine for a long time.

Speaker 1 Mentally.

Speaker 2 Four cats, one lady.

Speaker 1 I was like, what?

Speaker 2 If it were to happen, it would start at number 43.

Speaker 2 But it wasn't happening. But I get what Dan is saying.
I think there's a lot of victimhood that's going on.

Speaker 2 And a lot of what people don't speak about in South Africa is the minority that oppressed the majority is still playing victim 30 years later. That was the surprising thing.

Speaker 2 And I was saying to you the other time, I was like, the genius of this whole concocted plan was for the former oppressor, who still oppresses some other people, to get an apology and a guarantee of nothing will happen to you.

Speaker 2 Whereas

Speaker 2 they've never apologized. They showed me how organized they were as an Afrikaans community group.
They have universities, they have unions, they have legal aid, they have everything.

Speaker 1 They speak collectively.

Speaker 2 They speak collectively, but they've never said collectively, even after when apartheid was declared a crime against humanity, we are sorry for what our culture and our nation has contributed to the people of this country.

Speaker 2 But they could organize and say we are being killed.

Speaker 1 Can I tell you what I find interesting? Is I'll do shows

Speaker 1 like in random places, right? Some more random than others. But let's say if I'm in Australia somewhere, whatever, a lot of South Africans will come.
And it's a broad range of South Africans.

Speaker 1 But I have yet to meet a South African who left South Africa during our part date or maybe even afterwards. who says they supported it.
Yes, that's what I was about to say.

Speaker 1 I have yet, let me tell you something. I have, and i don't even mean this in like a i just go this was a system that was well run

Speaker 1 it was supported it i mean who voted for this i'm just like where are they yo like like where are all the people who have to have voters i can't find a guy i can't find 20 of them even no even even the people you're talking about who are now leading these like pro-Afrikana pro and like extreme because I mean we've got to be careful like you can be pro-Afrikana totally but not be like a heavy nationalist and so there's like a split there you you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 100%. Yeah.
But even the groups that are running far-right-leaning, if you say to them, do you support apartheid? Then they go, Let me. I never.

Speaker 1 That was a terrible, terrible time.

Speaker 1 And I never, I never, even then, I didn't. I had a picture of Mandila on my wall.

Speaker 3 What the Ravonia trial picture?

Speaker 1 Because he was in jail for 2017. I'm just like

Speaker 1 the one that you get at Robin Island in the suit and the quarry.

Speaker 3 And they're like, I would have voted for him three times.

Speaker 1 If I could have.

Speaker 1 If I could have.

Speaker 1 Mandela was a great, great man.

Speaker 2 So I like,

Speaker 1 this is the thing that gets me.

Speaker 1 And maybe, maybe that's what we need to spend our time digging into. It's going to be fun.

Speaker 2 The Afrikaans accent.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 it is a great accent, actually.

Speaker 2 100%.

Speaker 1 But it's like, you know, Dan, when you talk about white victimhood, it's been interesting seeing how this story stitches across the Atlantic Ocean, stitches across, you know, like across the top of the African continent.

Speaker 1 Everywhere in the world, people have a story of being, you know, subjugated, oppressed, something. It's the story as old as time, right?

Speaker 1 But some of them are like straight up just pillaging, as my friend Eugene likes to say. He's a big fan of pillaging.
No, there was a lot of pillaging. But then

Speaker 1 there's a few instances where people were actually like oppressed because of who they were. Systematically.
Yeah, like systematically oppressed, right?

Speaker 1 It's interesting how

Speaker 1 the label of victimhood or like the coat of victimhood gets to be worn most proudly by the people who are generally the perpetrators in these stories.

Speaker 1 So here's something I found interesting. We like to think of Trump as being an outlier because Donald Trump is the one who rescued the what is it, 49 for now?

Speaker 3 It was actually 59. I don't know why they didn't count it properly.

Speaker 1 It was 59, right? It was 59. Yeah, I always thought it was 59.
Then people started saying 49 at the airport. Maybe 10 changed their minds.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 But okay, the 49 or the 59 who were who were rescued, quote unquote. Yeah, the refugees.

Speaker 1 A lot of people in America were saying to me, like, oh my God, Trevor, it must be so strange for you seeing, I mean, like, Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 Then I was like, it's not that strange considering that Bill Clinton's administration gave thousands of visas to white South Africans only just before we had our first elections. Just think about it.

Speaker 1 Just think about it for a second. South Africa had just become a democracy.
The world stage had agreed that apartheid, apartheid

Speaker 1 was a crime against humanity. The whole world had done this.

Speaker 1 But just before the election, Bill Clinton's administration, not Donald Trump, Bill Clinton's administration rescued 2,000 white South Africans because they were like, hey, man, we know that you were the bad guys, but we've got to help you escape from this situation.

Speaker 5 Now there's about to be different blood in the bloodbath.

Speaker 1 But you see what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 The bloodbath had already happened.

Speaker 5 And now they're like, there might be white blood in this bloodbath.

Speaker 1 We have to go to the bathroom. Yes, but there's never been.
Okay, maybe I'm wrong, but there's never been.

Speaker 1 Dan, I don't want to put you on the spot. As a what? As a white.

Speaker 1 As a white.

Speaker 3 Don't worry, as part of my training.

Speaker 3 As part of my training. Two genocide.

Speaker 3 Every morning I recite the names of every white person who has ever died in South Africa.

Speaker 1 So you can ask me about any white death. So let me ask you this.
Like, maybe there's something I don't know about.

Speaker 1 Like when, when you are hanging out with white people alone, like because you live in Cape Town or you spend a lot of time there, very white there, right?

Speaker 1 Not good or bad, just very white. When you're hanging out with like a group, like when white people are alone in South Africa, do they think genuinely that they are being targeted?

Speaker 1 Like honest question. I think that's...
For being white.

Speaker 3 Yes, I think many, I think many white people do. I will say that all my friends know my politics.
So they're on, like all of my friends are pretty much my politics.

Speaker 3 So in my friendship circles, no one is saying, oh, it's so hard, it's so horrible, it's so terrible.

Speaker 3 But I know because I've run WhatsApp lines when I was on 5FM, which is a historically wide radio station,

Speaker 3 a breakfast show host there, my TV show, The Corridor Report, and everything, that a lot of people do feel that way.

Speaker 3 But it's some kind of fear of the destabilization of their privilege because the fear is as more and more black people become middle class, more and more black people become, you know, like get to the same level of wealth.

Speaker 3 And then white people think, okay, but what if I one day can't get a job? One day BEE does this, whatever. And I wanted to circle back on this actually to your question of what happened 10 years ago.

Speaker 3 I think that what happened was South Africa had the 2021 2010 World Cup. We waka-waked our way into our peak.
Yes. Jacob Zuma came to power.

Speaker 3 And finally, there was a black president who was all the bad things that white people thought black people were about. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what happened.

Speaker 3 The state capture stuff, the Zuma corruption stuff. Suddenly, the Rainbow Nation was popped.
Nobody says that anymore. Nobody says Rainbow Nation anymore.

Speaker 3 That beautiful brand thing, the Desmond Tutu, the Mandela, then the Mbeki. And then 2010 happened.
Canine's Wave Your Flag was much better than Shakira's Waka Waka. We all know this to be true.

Speaker 3 But those two songs happened. The World Cup was incredible.
We did the Dream Rainbow Nation thing. And then service livery started to collapse.
Rampant corruption started to happen.

Speaker 3 The police started to fall apart. The whole country started to go, things are not going very well.

Speaker 3 But many white South Africans had the dangerous black president they'd been terrified of since the beginning. And that opened a space.

Speaker 1 That's interesting.

Speaker 3 It opened a space for white grifters to then go, we're in trouble now. They're coming for us.
They're persecuting us.

Speaker 3 White economic empowerment, Bell Pottinger. All of this was fodder for white grifters to say, they're coming for us.
We told you. We know the blacks were nice before this.

Speaker 3 We couldn't show that Tabumbeki was bad, or Mandela was bad, or Tuto was bad. But now things are objectively getting worse for lots of South Africans.

Speaker 3 Here's the black boogeyman we were telling you is coming.

Speaker 3 And then Malema came along, and this is more black boogeyman stuff, the terrifying black boogeyman and from there it all devolved to where we are now it's interesting you say that because you and i laugh about this a lot

Speaker 1 but there's a thing that happens with people and i mean everyone can be guilty of this by the way i think any group but you know where let's say as black people you're hanging out together and you'll say something about a black person let's say who's in power So, you know, you're like, Jacob Zub, Jacob Zuma, this guy, this guy.

Speaker 1 And then you'll find someone will step into that fray

Speaker 1 and they'll say something where you're like,

Speaker 1 wait, we didn't mean it like that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know it's bad, but yes,

Speaker 1 but you know what I mean? But they'll say something, you know what I mean? You know, you'll be like, so much corruption. So they'll be like, they'll be like, yeah, but I mean, what do you expect?

Speaker 1 They like that. Yeah.
And you're like, who's they? Yes.

Speaker 1 Well, so

Speaker 3 are you saying a black person?

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, no. What I'm saying is a black company.
What I'm saying is to you, what you've revealed, which is really interesting, is

Speaker 1 black people have the ability to separate an an action that is black culturally and a person that is black that is just doing something. Right.
Okay. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I hear you.

Speaker 1 What I've noticed in a lot of these conversations is there are synonyms that are used for actions.

Speaker 1 So even when people are talking to Donald Trump in the White House, even when people are on the news or talking to Piers Morgan, even when they're going like, look, there might not be a genocide, but the crime.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Crime has become a synonym for black.

Speaker 3 Just like the community.

Speaker 1 Same as corruption. Yes, corruption is also a synonym for black the community

Speaker 3 the townships yes like it's all wink nudge it's another way to say black exactly it's like the way that black lives matter evolved into dei which they're now so obsessed with it's code word and it's usually code word for the k word or the n-word yeah like but it is though yeah but can i just say as a preference

Speaker 1 the sequel yes exactly but i will say in just as a preference thing to anyone who's listening i would prefer if you called me the crime than the n-word if you meet me in the streets and you say like,

Speaker 1 look at the crime walking across the street, I'll be less offended. Under your regime, hip-hop will be so boring.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying, what up, my crime word?

Speaker 1 We can't afford that. Already sounds better.
Already sounds better. You know what's happening?

Speaker 5 And now it sounds like you're asking for trouble.

Speaker 1 Crime, please.

Speaker 2 These crimes.

Speaker 2 You know, growing up, we always used to have this thing when people come to visit our house. We would wait for the moment when they leave.
And then we would all gossip about them.

Speaker 2 Yeah, as soon as they're gone, my mom would call, yo, we have our house back again. South Africans have never had their house back.
Damn, we've never, we've never sat as black people and said, guys,

Speaker 2 let's gossip about them. Damn, let's pray.

Speaker 2 We had to make nice very quickly.

Speaker 1 If I had thumbs, I would snap.

Speaker 2 We had to make nice very, very quickly. As soon as that ended, you had to be nice to the school governing body for your child to enter that school.

Speaker 2 You had to be nice to show that you're not like that kind of a crime in an estate, in a housing community.

Speaker 2 We had to be nice. So the ones that could played nice to be in those communities.
The ones that couldn't afford played nice to work in those communities. We never had time to gossip as a family.

Speaker 2 So when it happened with Jacob Zuma, when we all said, hey, but that guy,

Speaker 2 and then other people heard us and said, that guy, we're new, they were like, no, it's not our guy. It's just the guy who's doing wrong.

Speaker 2 And then the whole conversation got lost and muddied. And let's not also forget, if people were 15 when this conversation started in 2010, they were now 20 joining the fray.

Speaker 2 and they had no idea about, because when you try to remind kids about apartheid, you're wasting their time.

Speaker 2 But if you say, now you know, 15-year-olds struggle to tell the difference between Jacob Zuma and Nelson Mandela,

Speaker 2 Nelson Mandela is a guy

Speaker 2 on a note.

Speaker 2 Jacob Zuma is real.

Speaker 3 And then there are so many people who I talk to. One of the things that disturbs me the most in my work is how many people under the age of 25 don't know what the TRC was.

Speaker 3 So, like,

Speaker 3 if I was king for a day, number one, every South African has history to metric. Number two, we overhaul the Matric syllabus because you need, there's too much Cold War in there.
There's too much.

Speaker 3 Why do we

Speaker 1 give a fuck about the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Speaker 3 Who cares?

Speaker 1 It almost happened.

Speaker 1 But it didn't.

Speaker 1 Kennedy, this almost happened.

Speaker 1 Dan, it almost happened. Of course.
And then it's Guy.

Speaker 1 Do you know how close they were, Dan? Sometimes we put Guy Fawkes in the syllabus because it almost happened. It almost happened, Dan.
That's right. It almost happened.

Speaker 3 But like, my fundamental point is that even, like, I think a lot about how we only know the headlines of apartheid, settler colonialism,

Speaker 3 and before. But even now, younger generations don't know that stuff.

Speaker 3 And in a country which is so systemically defined even today by all of that, people who don't know that stuff have an inability to truly appreciate the dynamics that exist within our country.

Speaker 3 And the only way to help people to understand is to say, hey, we did this deal at the end of apartheid because we wanted to find out what was going on.

Speaker 3 The apartheid government was burning tens of thousands of pieces of paper, the records of their evils.

Speaker 3 Some people made a choice that we would offer amnesty in exchange for finding out what really happened and trying to get some kind of closure.

Speaker 3 Some people disagreed on that, like Bico's family, for example. Because right now,

Speaker 3 an inquiry has been opened up into why the NPA didn't pursue court cases against some people from apartheid who did not get amnesty. They were supposed to be pursued.

Speaker 1 Right, so let's just take a step back. So for those who don't know,

Speaker 1 let's just break this down for them. Because you're right, a lot of people don't know.
A lot of people will be listening to this or watching this and going, wait, what happened? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because I know

Speaker 1 a lot of the world thinks of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as the gold standard in terms of a peaceful transfer of power. It is considered the gold standard of the bloodless revolution.

Speaker 1 Right. So nowhere in the world, and this is true, nowhere in the world has there been a revolution where a minority who oppressed a majority gave up power, but then didn't see mass bloodshed.

Speaker 1 This is just, it's, it's. More retribution.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yes.
Right?

Speaker 1 And everyone looks at the TRC as the gold standard. They go, wow, what an amazing experience.

Speaker 1 A country that experienced so much trauma and so much pain came together and said, we're going to speak about this. We're going to air it on television.
The whole country is going to be privy to it.

Speaker 1 And regardless of how heinous these crimes are we're going to speak about them and the key aspect of it is those who come forward to admit to admit what they did

Speaker 1 reveal it from the shadows they will be given amnesty and that's if

Speaker 2 That's if their evidence is proven to be true. They point us to the grave.

Speaker 1 And if it is sincere. Sincere.
Since it is hand children,

Speaker 3 because Tutu was very human about it. He was like, we want to feel like this is genuine remorse.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 Because functionally, we want remorseful people, but we also, for the victims, you have to see remorse as a victim, or you're not going to feel closure or feel like this person is really sorry. Right.

Speaker 1 And so, that's how the story was, yeah, but that's how the story sort of ended for the world. 100%.
It was, what a beautiful story.

Speaker 1 These people admitted mass killings and mass tortures and all of these things, and the people they did it to forgave them, the ones who were left alive.

Speaker 2 And then, when they left those TRC meetings, the black people got into taxis again and drove to the township in their forumed houses. No, but what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 I'm saying, but you see, that story. Yes.
That's where the story.

Speaker 2 And they drove back to their suburbs and privileged.

Speaker 1 Yes, but I'm saying

Speaker 1 you're adding to the story. Yes.
I'm saying the story. No, no, 100%.

Speaker 2 I'm agreeing with you.

Speaker 1 You know, like happily ever after. Yes.
That's the end of the day. That's where it ends.

Speaker 1 And then everyone cried, everyone hugged each other. Yeah.
And then

Speaker 1 everything was perfect.

Speaker 2 I always say

Speaker 2 to make sure that the revolution doesn't continue, you have to kill the young. of the revolutionaries.

Speaker 2 The one thing that that system did, it has still had remnants of those people running private schools now and these former schools that were called model C schools.

Speaker 2 They had had to make sure that these kids that were first wave to go inside these privileged schools and model C schools have the accent of the people that they were supposed to not like and submit to the culture.

Speaker 2 It was very weird. Yeah, you now you're playing cricket, you're wearing that little cap, you're playing rugby.
Learning what Leon Schuster is, and you are at home now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Leon Schuster is amazing. Don't slander Leon Schuster on my podcast, guys.
Slander. And guys, don't

Speaker 1 let anyone

Speaker 1 let anyone step into my world and slander Leon Schuster. I saw South African slandering that man a few years ago.
I was like, yo, guys, if I was here, I would have fought for that man.

Speaker 1 I would have fought for that man. The way, can I tell you something? The way, I know there's a tangent, but the way Leon Schuster exposed racism in South Africa,

Speaker 1 I think we owe Leon Schuster almost as much as we owe the TRC.

Speaker 1 Because Leon Schuster,

Speaker 1 Leon Schuster, showed us how much was still buried in South African culture. That man could have edited out every K-word, every racist, every...
That man went as an Indian.

Speaker 2 He angered people without being a person of color. Yes.
But he chose.

Speaker 1 He went as an Indian. And then people are like, ah, it's Blackface.
No, it wasn't black. He was in disguise.
There's a difference. Blackface is mocking a person for their race.

Speaker 1 This man went in disguise. He went as an Indian person to a white person's world.
He went as a black person to a white person's world. He went as a white person.
He did everything.

Speaker 1 But what he showed me, even as a child, I won't lie, TRC was one thing. Leon Schuster for me

Speaker 1 was one of the most informative experiences I had about South Africa because I was deeply educational. Because I was like, oh, this is what's happening when no one knows.

Speaker 2 When no one's looking.

Speaker 1 This is how they speak to their workers.

Speaker 2 Petrol attendants.

Speaker 1 This is how they speak to somebody when they think something's gone wrong. That, yo, that was, sorry, but I interrupted.
But that to me, that was like...

Speaker 5 Can I add to Leon Schuster before we continue?

Speaker 5 Besides, like, I understand like the optics of it right now feels weird. But as non-white people growing up at that time, the first time we ever saw a non-white person getting one over a white person

Speaker 5 was in a Leon Schuster film.

Speaker 5 The first time we ever saw a non-white person winning a situation, whatever that situation is, was in a Leon Schuster film. And yes, later in life, Mama Bones is blackface.

Speaker 5 But the pranks, the pranks are...

Speaker 3 No, the pranks are flawless.

Speaker 5 The pranks are flawless, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 The Franks are flawless. Absolutely flawless.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So the integration and the mix happened quite quickly.

Speaker 2 And you come from that generation, you and I, where if you went to a multiracial school or a mixed school or a formal C school and your parents have a different accent than yours, but your parents, when they're moving around the world or around South Africa, their world, they could speak to more black people than you could.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so that became that generation grew up. And then that generation sang in unison to the choir of black people are corrupt, this ANC government is messing up everything, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, you know, there's many things about this government that you can say, but one thing, it is integrated and made lots of people rich who are not black.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of things that the South African government can do.

Speaker 2 And I always say, drive around in the road, on the highways, in your suburb, and see a car that is a plumber, a person that's an electrician, and see if there's a black name in that van, in that truck.

Speaker 2 There was a system that people understood very well when Apartheid ended that there'll be a lot of shortcomings when it comes to service delivery.

Speaker 2 In fact, the government itself will struggle to maintain their own infrastructure. So we will maintain their infrastructure and create businesses that make money.
I swear now,

Speaker 2 the blackouts that ASCOM caused had... caused to have many more white millionaires in business than there are black millionaires.

Speaker 1 from the solar business from the yeah yeah i don't know any from the power generation i don't know any

Speaker 1 any

Speaker 2 any black solar installer that i can call but the same people who are like this this thing is rubbish they were the ones 250 000 rand will climb on your roof will make this thing happen for you then i'm like yeah but it's the same everywhere it's it's the even the police are being helped by private security that's owned by white people Do you understand what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 And I've had this conversation so many times.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, this country is so weird that we come from, we can watch documentaries documentaries and see how black were policed by white people in the 70s and the 80s.

Speaker 2 And I'm saying, what's so different now when you move around four-ways?

Speaker 1 Which has been, it's been privatized, yeah. But what's different? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so armed response. I'm not talking about the guard at your security gate because those are not allowed to carry firearms in the first place.
So you're not as safe as you think you are.

Speaker 2 The response is armed, meaning the person that comes.

Speaker 1 So let me ask you this then. Let me ask you this.

Speaker 1 Do you

Speaker 1 think, because it's interesting to see these perspectives, right?

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 when I listen to the conversations that are being had and I see what people are discussing, I notice two very different

Speaker 1 positions that people have to take. And it's really interesting.
It sort of goes back to what you said at the beginning of the conversation.

Speaker 1 I noticed that when you went on Piers Morgan, black South Africans have to start every conversation with

Speaker 1 White people, you're not in danger. We swear we have nothing against you.
We love you. We love you very much.
We love you so much. We love you.
We want you here. We love you.
We love you.

Speaker 1 Please join us. You know, we love you.
Surah Romaposa, South Africa's president, had to go to the White House, sit with Trump, and go, Ah,

Speaker 1 we love white people.

Speaker 1 We love them. Everyone is welcome in our country.

Speaker 1 We love them. We love them.
And Trump's there. He's like, you hate the whites.
You hate them. He's like, no, we love even you.
We love you. We love you.

Speaker 2 If we had a plane, we'd give you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he even said, if we had, I wish we had a plane to give you. I wish we imagine, imagine that level that you're coming from, right?

Speaker 1 And these are people who, for the most part, I mean, you know the statistics, you know, like a lot of the numbers, but if you look at for the most part, those are the people who have less than nothing.

Speaker 1 And it was designed that way, right? But their role is still to coddle. white South Africans and say, hey, look, you're safe and you're going to be, you know?

Speaker 1 But it's interesting how,

Speaker 1 and again, we've got to be be very careful of this because there are many cool white South Africans. I mean, here's one of them.
You're sitting here with us until you do something crazy then.

Speaker 1 And your brother, and your brother, whoever he is, who has funny podcasts called Godon.

Speaker 2 What a legend.

Speaker 1 No, but like, but I, and I, you know, and this is, this is the reason I, the reason I hop on this is not to be like politically correct or anything.

Speaker 1 I think it's, I think it's because I never want to be in a position where people allow us to divide and conquer ourselves. Of course.
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 There are tons of white South Africans, tons, who are proudly South African, who stay in the country, who contribute, who integrate, who

Speaker 1 speak Zulu, dance. You know what I mean? Like things that, and people might be like, ah, dancing.
I'm like, no, no, no, guys. There was a cultural stigma that came with many of these things

Speaker 1 that is now being adopted by a different generation, which is beautiful. Do you know what I mean? 100%.
But there's still a world where white people go, the crime that happens.

Speaker 1 to them seems to be more significant than the crime that was always happening. Like people will go, you you know, crime wasn't this bad during apartheid.

Speaker 1 Then I go, guys, but the whole, the whole country was a crime. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's a crime scene.

Speaker 3 And crime wasn't bad in your area during apartheid is what you actually mean because one of for me, one of the wildest things about apartheid is they didn't do a census of black South Africans.

Speaker 3 So we only found out even how many people there were in South Africa, including people of color, in 1995.

Speaker 3 In 1995, 6 was the first census.

Speaker 1 Oh no, you're lying.

Speaker 1 For real?

Speaker 3 And I have reread that census so many times because it's the first time you find out how many South Africans had no schools, no hospitals, no search, no.

Speaker 3 Because white South Africa had no interest in finding that out. One, because they weren't going to service it, but two, because they didn't want to let anybody else find out how bad it was.

Speaker 3 So this is another thing like the TRC, as important as the TRC to finding what had happened in South Africa, was that census in 96 found out what South Africa was then for the first time.

Speaker 3 And we didn't know that before then. And so, but a lot of people don't even know what it was going on in that census.

Speaker 3 So, what I do on the show quite often is I just go, okay, white South Africa, let's just talk for a second. Guess how many white South Africans had no electricity in 1996?

Speaker 3 Guess how many black South Africans? And the stats are unrealistic.

Speaker 1 What of them?

Speaker 3 And the disparity. I'm going to try and remember some off the top of my head, but it was something like, okay, the one I can remember is there were like six million black

Speaker 3 people or black, yeah, six million black people living in informal dwellings in 1996.

Speaker 1 And there was less than that's just to be clear, when people say informal shacks. Yeah, we're not talking about like a yeah, we're talking about it is a non-house, totally.

Speaker 3 And how many white South Africans? I think there was like less than 50,000, like, and people don't know that. And that's when I say again, like, you need to understand, oh, 30 years is so long.

Speaker 3 No, it's fucking not.

Speaker 1 Yes, nothing.

Speaker 3 Not when that is what you're trying to recover from. And I know that some people think that I bat for the ANC, which I obviously don't if you look at all my material.

Speaker 2 But your shirt says otherwise.

Speaker 3 This is the spring box and nothing else.

Speaker 1 Comrade Dan.

Speaker 1 Comrade Comrade Dan, as we call it.

Speaker 1 We have revealed you. Comrade Dan, now's the time.

Speaker 3 Revolutionary greetings. Hello.

Speaker 1 We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

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Speaker 6 Hi, everyone. I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of Crime Junkie, the go-to crime podcast for the biggest cases and the stories you won't hear anywhere else.

Speaker 6 So whether on your commute, studying, or while you work, let us keep you company. With new episodes every Monday, it is truly a Crime Junkie's dream.

Speaker 6 So join me, my best friend Britt, and our entire Crime Junkie community right now by catching up on hundreds of episodes and by listening to a new case every Monday on Crime Junkie, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 3 Something that's so important to understand about even looking at today's stats of how many people live here, there, whatever, is that if you know how bad it was in South Africa in 1996, to then see how much good Mandela's ANC did, the RDP rollout of houses was one of the most record-breakingly large housing programs in human history.

Speaker 3 And if you look now, they stopped doing it. And then during Mbeki's reign, everything started to go wrong.
And then Sin Suma and even in Taramaposa, they're doing virtually nothing.

Speaker 3 And the state is decrepit and awful. And they've done terrible things that we can't forgive them for.
But consider where they got from 96 to about 2006.

Speaker 3 Unbelievable building of a country from dire inequality to giving so many South Africans things that they could have never imagined happening. And we need to know that.

Speaker 3 We all need to understand what was in that census in 1996 to get that in this Rainbow Nation cute thing while the TRC TRC was happening, that's the country that apartheid and settler colonialism left us.

Speaker 1 Well, you know what it goes to? And I think this is a conversation that a lot of people struggle with.

Speaker 1 People don't understand that there is a distinct difference between the apology and then in some way, shape, or form, the retribution or someone amending or, you know what I mean? The restitution.

Speaker 3 Where's the restitution? Exactly.

Speaker 5 Can I step in here quickly? There's a quote, and I don't know who to attribute it to, but it's,

Speaker 5 is um I'm not sure of their gender, so yeah, they is better.

Speaker 3 They they

Speaker 5 they said that South Africa is what happened

Speaker 5 when forgiveness was given before guilt was admitted. Yeah,

Speaker 5 that's why we find ourselves here. Yeah, forgiveness was given before guilt was admitted, and that like statement alone speaks to every single thing you guys have been speaking about now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no answer sorry, yeah, it's a it's it's a

Speaker 1 but it's not even just like

Speaker 1 even if you say everyone said sorry

Speaker 1 you know I think of I think of some of the lessons that you know they'll teach you you know couples therapists for instance relationship therapists one of the things they if you read the books they'll always talk about something very specific and they go in a relationship if you're with somebody and they wrong you right so they talk about like infidelity and i think like ester perel has it in some of her books and stuff they go a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the infidelity ends when the person admits to it and seeks forgiveness.

Speaker 1 But that's actually the beginning of the journey.

Speaker 1 Because now what has to happen is the person who has wronged their partner has to spend all their time, and I know this sounds crazy, spend all their time showing their partner that they haven't forgotten their

Speaker 1 transgression.

Speaker 3 It's the rebuild.

Speaker 1 You literally, and people who hear this will be like, wait, what?

Speaker 1 But think about how many times, whether it's on TV or in real life, you've heard people who've had some sort of infidelity in a relationship go, you know, like their partner brings it up and it's like, ah, this again.

Speaker 1 I already said sorry. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know why the person brought it up again? Because you don't anymore.

Speaker 1 And if the person feels like you don't, yeah, if the person feels like you have gotten over it before they have,

Speaker 1 they're going to bring it up.

Speaker 3 Your example is actually really good because something that I think about is that white South Africans have never earned black South Africans' trust. No.

Speaker 3 That is another part of the post-TRC conversation. And apology is not enough.
You guys are not.

Speaker 1 white people

Speaker 1 of Africa couldn't say Mbeki. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Guys, guys, that shit used to blow my mind.

Speaker 3 You have to work harder than that.

Speaker 1 The president of the country, his name was Tabo Mbeki.

Speaker 3 No clicks.

Speaker 1 No, nothing. Not even one challenging.
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 People without fear would go, yeah, President Mabeki. Then you'd go like, Mbeki.
Ma Beki. Then you're like, Mbeki.
They'd be like, oh, I can't say it. Of course you can.

Speaker 1 Then I go, but let some tennis player come along who's at Wimbledon. From Eastern Europe.
And they'll have a name that, yo, all consonants, no vowels. I've never seen these people struggle.

Speaker 1 You know where you're like, so you can say that name, but Mbeki, why can't you say, can you say mm? Can you say be?

Speaker 1 But it felt like, it always felt like to me, it wasn't so much that they couldn't say it. Wouldn't bother.

Speaker 1 It felt like it was like, no, it's not even wouldn't bother. It felt like...
It was a stale revolution.

Speaker 2 It was a stale protest.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it felt like they were, it felt like they were giving something up. Yeah, I want to make your sounds.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that's why, genuinely, like, when I look at my brother's generation, my brother's 20 years younger than me, my youngest brother, right?

Speaker 1 Yo, the kids that he goes to school with, they don't bat an eyelid at any of this. Becky, nothing to them.
Genuinely, nothing. Genuinely, genuinely nothing.

Speaker 1 When I look at like young white kids growing up now, I can't speak for all of them, but I know from my generation already, like when we went to school, versus the kids now, yo, bro, these kids, so many of them don't see it as a, like a,

Speaker 3 an inferior thing because they've seen rich black they've seen poor black they've seen corrupt black they've seen this you know what i mean like they've also had um famous black people in their life never thought of that which is a really really big deal it's like really really important to understand the extent to which celebrity agenda sets what we should bother to learn do and care about

Speaker 3 like like like the fact that like the fact that young white south africans know my pimpi and they know um and oxenchair

Speaker 3 and they can talk about all of those things. Robata right now at the crickets.
I don't know when this comes out.

Speaker 3 Also, Americans, you don't know what I'm talking about with this anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 Tyler's a good one.

Speaker 3 Tyler's another good one.

Speaker 1 Just that alone. You're right, actually.

Speaker 3 People make the effort for their heroes and white South Africans have black heroes now, at least some.

Speaker 3 And that makes a huge, huge, huge difference to your understanding of what is worth putting your effort into, actually learning to care about and do.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I think South Africa became

Speaker 2 a poster child for diplomacy. We almost had to, as a country, put our best foot forward.

Speaker 2 And the ones who could speak the better English had to be sent out there in the world to go and apologize on behalf of the transgressors. And two systems were adopted to make sure that that happens.

Speaker 2 So our government swapped retribution for restitution.

Speaker 2 BEE is not an ANC manufactured program. It's an apartheid system program.
It existed before for white people to benefit from government contracts. Tenders were not invented by the ANC.

Speaker 2 They were invented by the apartheid government.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, they're for every government, if we're fair. Yeah, but I'm not sure.
Every government in the world has a tender system to

Speaker 1 what you're saying is in South Africa, a lot of people think tenders were invented by the ANC. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 Because the word tendrepreneur did not exist during apartheid. Yeah, but tenders.

Speaker 3 But like, what is colonialism and apartheid, if not white economic empowerment? That's exactly what it is.

Speaker 3 And that's actually what I feel like more South Africans should start doing is using the same language to show the comparison.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 can I tell you what it is? Sorry. I'll tell you this.
Before you go forward, I'll tell you this.

Speaker 1 This is where I think a lot of these things actually start falling down.

Speaker 1 And I think it's interesting because there are parallels in the United States. For the most part, it boils down

Speaker 1 to marketing and it boils down to implementation, right? I think it was Lil Wayne who said

Speaker 1 real Gs move in silence like lasagna.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Or La Nyaza in the Eastern Cape.

Speaker 1 You know what's so profound about that when you think about it is

Speaker 1 during apartheid, right?

Speaker 1 During any of these systems in America even,

Speaker 1 they weren't as explicit as people think about saying, we are helping you because you are white.

Speaker 1 They denied people because they were black. But they didn't say to white people, we are helping you because you are white.
So what they said was, hey guys, there's a system called welfare.

Speaker 1 If you cannot afford to buy food and you cannot afford to have a house, the government will help you. There's a system called, what would a system?

Speaker 1 There's Medicare, there's Medicaid, there's healthcare, there's pension.

Speaker 1 What is pension? No, when you're old, the government will look after you because you need to be looked after. Everyone deserves to be looked after.

Speaker 1 But then what they would do is they would just exclude

Speaker 1 black people from everyone. So now people grew up in a world thinking everyone gets looked after because they deserve to be.

Speaker 1 You are a single single mother, you are a widow, a widower, you're an orphan, you're injured, you're disabled.

Speaker 2 If they're injured, you're disabled.

Speaker 1 It doesn't matter. Everyone deserves to be looked after.
And then they exclude it from everyone. Then what happens? Then what happens? Laws start to change, right? So in America, what happened?

Speaker 1 They said, okay, no, now black people can go to the school. Now black people can go swim in a swimming pool.
Immediately from that moment, you see it in American history, you see it in South African.

Speaker 1 I grew up with public pools, right?

Speaker 1 That when I was growing up, it was batshit crazy to have a swimming pool in your house, guys.

Speaker 1 I don't think you understand.

Speaker 1 Even now, when I look at people, I go like, guys, you know, when you fly, you know, when you're landing in any city in the world and you look down, people don't understand how crazy it is to have a body of water in the backyard of your house that is for your sole consumption.

Speaker 1 Just you and your family have 50,000 liters of water at your disposal. For your occasional use.

Speaker 1 Guys, when I was growing up, there was one pool in the neighborhood neighborhood and it was run by the government.

Speaker 1 And everyone went there and we swam together and then we all went home because you don't swim every day and that's life. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 But it was interesting to see when they said black people are going to come to the pool, people then said, We'll get our own pools. We're getting our own pools.
And then what happened?

Speaker 1 The pools all shut down. No business.
I don't even think there's a, there's a, yeah, you're right. I don't even think there's a public pool anywhere, anywhere that I know of.

Speaker 1 So just on what you were talking about just now,

Speaker 3 is one of the most extraordinary acts of welfare to pull people out of poverty was in the 1950s when the apartheid government dedicated nearly all of its tax revenue to pulling poor white Afrikaners out of poverty.

Speaker 3 And that was

Speaker 3 massive, massive welfare grants, unemployment grants, job seekers grants, illness and childhood and old age grants.

Speaker 3 And when I talk about white economic empowerment, and I've covered it in this way specifically, a lot of people try to like muddy the waters and gray what happened during apartheid.

Speaker 3 And so, what I do is I go, Okay, let's go and look at the apartheid government's official record of the policies that they did because you can't fight with me on that.

Speaker 3 It's on the record, it's in our government policies. That is what they did systematically from 1948 all the way through until about the mid-1960s.

Speaker 3 And if they were providing food parcels or if they were doing construction or whatever, they were only giving the tenders to white Afrikaner-owned companies.

Speaker 3 And so, if you look at some of the biggest companies in South Africa today,

Speaker 3 those are companies that the apartheid government made

Speaker 3 to gain Afrikaner wealth. But it goes further back than that, even pre-apartheid.

Speaker 3 In the 1920s, more and more big companies were hiring skilled black South African workers, particularly on the mines and to do construction in and around Johannesburg. White Afrikaner, in particular,

Speaker 3 unskilled workers protested and went on strike.

Speaker 3 And in response to keep their vote, the apartheid government created, sorry, the pre-apartheid government, the union government, made public works infrastructure programs. Like they built things,

Speaker 1 like the dam, hard to be exports, hard to be export dams, and they only hired white people. Yep.

Speaker 3 They made public works infrastructure projects to create jobs only for white people.

Speaker 1 And interesting fact,

Speaker 2 that land was donated. Yes.
Was owned by a single person who said, you guys are going to have it.

Speaker 3 So when you're talking about America, what I find fascinating in American politics, as you will know, is that very, very often if the left says a branded thing, the right will twist it on the same branding to make it seem similar.

Speaker 3 So Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter. Stop the steel, stop the whatever, right?

Speaker 3 In South Africa, if we started saying white economic empowerment is our history, people would go, oh, it's just like BEE, except BEE doesn't go nearly as far in the disempowerment of one group of people or the benefiting of another.

Speaker 3 If we all just started saying WEE over and over again, people would understand what a part its actual economic project was. Because in the history books, you do need to learn about the crimes.

Speaker 3 You do need to learn about the aberrations of justice and the violations of people's human rights. But you also need to deal with the economic superpower of creating white wealth.

Speaker 3 And if we as a country started to think about apartheid like that, we would better understand that redress laws and policies like BEE now both work, need to happen, and are helping the still disempowered.

Speaker 1 It's funny you say that. I was having a conversation with a gentleman in London who had left South Africa, South African guy.
And he was talking to me about like his journey.

Speaker 1 And he goes, he's like, yo, Trevor, you know, I left South Africa, our family, we had to leave. leave, and you know, it's just terrible.

Speaker 1 And I was like, Yeah, you know, crime is really bad, and corruption, we can't get under control, we got it, we got to work on these things.

Speaker 1 He's like, Yeah, yeah, you know, it's just really bad, and you know, and I just feel like, Look, you know, and you know, when someone starts couching comments, because look, and here's the thing: I'm not like, I just let's be honest, Trevor, like, BE, like to have black economic empowerment, like, what are you saying?

Speaker 1 And, you know, and come on, man, why don't we just say we start from scratch, everyone's equal, we just start from scratch. And he said it in a really earnest way: he said, Trevor,

Speaker 1 isn't it making it worse when a government says that black people or people who are Indian or like they should get help just because of what happened? But my kids weren't around for that.

Speaker 1 So my kid goes to school with a kid who's black. They started at the same time.
So they have the same footing.

Speaker 1 And I was like, okay,

Speaker 1 this is an interesting way to think of it. Now, let me ask you a question.

Speaker 1 Would you be willing to give your entire bank account and your housing away to a black family? So now I'm going to ask you, as a white South African, to give a black family your house

Speaker 1 and your car and your money in the bank, give it all to them. And he went,

Speaker 1 no, I would never do that. Then I said, okay, but why would you not do that? It's not because I've worked for this.
I said, okay, but now if I did take it all from you,

Speaker 1 if I took it all from you, talking from the first investment all the the way, if I took it all from you,

Speaker 1 what would your problem be? He's like, no, you've taken everything I've worked on. I said, yes, but your son is starting from scratch.
So your son will make the money for you.

Speaker 3 Should be fine.

Speaker 1 Then he's like, no, but I mean, do you know how long it took me to work for this? And I can't just give it to you. And my son, I have to pay for him to go to school.
Then I said, okay.

Speaker 1 So now, why is it?

Speaker 1 that you are able to understand the power of the compound interest and the compound wealth that you have acquired over generations, and yet you're unable to acknowledge it for every black person who has never allowed to acquire any wealth from their generations.

Speaker 1 Most of us, imagine living in a world where most of us are the first generation of our families that ever tipped the needle above one.

Speaker 1 Most black families in South Africa lived from zero and all you did was You didn't get to one.

Speaker 1 You just did this to get to the next month and then it was zero and then it went below zero and then you just tried to get above and then back below zero and then you tried to get

Speaker 1 most of us are the first generation of like excess I would call it but with and we were we're a like a mega minority

Speaker 1 one better

Speaker 1 you always want to one better

Speaker 1 what kind of friendship is this guys

Speaker 1 for the

Speaker 2 after the first elections in 94

Speaker 2 that was the first generation of black people to say and do what they like that's wild dude yeah just think about that for a second and do what you like yeah and people take that for granted and I'm always thinking to myself, I wonder who was the first black person who just like wiggled.

Speaker 2 I was like, Yay! Just

Speaker 1 okay, just like the first because, no, just okay, think about this for a sec. We take this for granted now.
We all take this for granted.

Speaker 1 There was a time in South Africa, not a time, because a time makes it sound like it was like black and white pictures,

Speaker 2 and then old standard was color, everything was good.

Speaker 1 This is when there's color pictures, yeah, there's color footage, color pictures. Black people couldn't walk in the street randomly.

Speaker 1 If you shook the wrong way, you were taken away. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 But now I want to know

Speaker 1 because obviously there's very meaningful things. I'm sure some people

Speaker 1 like going to school.

Speaker 2 Is this your

Speaker 2 purport since?

Speaker 3 I've just made it.

Speaker 1 This is very sincere. But I can see how hard you are fighting.
No, no, this is very inside of you right now. His cheeks are battling.
This is very sincere. He's praying.
This is very sincere.

Speaker 1 And I can see how hard you're working. Look, look at that.
And some people were like, I can't play with you.

Speaker 1 I like it. They don't dare.

Speaker 2 He's made many a Russian man cry.

Speaker 1 You know, some people are like, I'm going to go to school. I'm going to start a business.

Speaker 1 But I wonder, there must have been some black people who were just like,

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 I know we think of it in a meaningful way all the time. But you know how wonderful it is to be able to act a fool in life with no repercussions.
And I mean this in like a

Speaker 1 sincere way.

Speaker 2 You do that for a living.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but there was no comedy during the day. I was saying, yeah, we should know.
There was none. Yes.

Speaker 1 What is it? They had the same rule of like the Bible.

Speaker 1 If three or more are gathered,

Speaker 1 then Roman Island. Literally.
But it was, though. They said, if, like, how many people, how many black people was it? If it

Speaker 1 was once you passed a certain amount of black people, they said it was a political gathering inherently.

Speaker 5 You guys would be safe because it's one and a half black people, one and a half white people.

Speaker 1 With this guy, with this, with this shirt,

Speaker 2 with this shirt. With undercover protein.

Speaker 1 My man,

Speaker 1 actually, actually, this is a good question to ask you. This is a good question to ask you.
Why do you think white people get almost double angry with white people who speak out? Because I've seen

Speaker 1 like black people, but they'll just go, yeah, you, you, whatever. You know, they run the gamut from you're delusional to you're a monkey.
But it's the usual. Ah, whatever.

Speaker 1 Dan, when you speak, hey, my man, let me tell you something. You make, and I won't say white people.
In fact, I'll separate groups. You as a white person, when you speak, you make racists very angry.

Speaker 2 No, uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 Uncomfortable is an understatement.

Speaker 1 This guy gets death threats where I'm reading his comments, like, yo.

Speaker 1 You know where I'm like, hey, Dan. Yeah, no, here I'm a man.
Yeah, no. Okay.

Speaker 1 Probably.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So I believe that the most threatening thing to a white supremacist is not a person of color. It's a white person who disagrees with them.

Speaker 3 Because white people listen to white people instinctively more than they listen to people of other races.

Speaker 3 And I think that that is true of all different kinds of intersections. Men listen to men easily in a way they don't listen to women.

Speaker 3 Straight people listen to other straight people in a way instantly that they don't listen to queer people.

Speaker 1 So you think it's a power thing?

Speaker 3 I think that if somebody has an agenda of trying to create a world in which black people are lesser or black people are like this

Speaker 3 for white people to all agree with them with,

Speaker 3 the most threatening thing to them is a white person who goes, you're wrong. Because that white person could make other white people think, oh, maybe he is wrong.

Speaker 3 Maybe black people aren't actually like this. Maybe it's not like that.

Speaker 3 When I talk, it's a direct threat to their project of convincing white people that black people are like this and a threat and whatever. And so, I mean, yeah, lots of death threats, lots of.

Speaker 3 sometimes hilarious uh comments to be fair because most bigots online are not funny or intelligent they just say dumb shit but i was once called son of the soy and that's objectively hilarious because it's like soybeans yeah because son of the soil, son of the soy.

Speaker 3 And I was like,

Speaker 3 you thought about that. That's good.

Speaker 1 Like, you worked a little bit on that. That was nice.
That's poetic.

Speaker 1 That's poetic.

Speaker 3 I like poetic racism. You are my favorite hat.

Speaker 1 Like poetic hatred, poetic racism.

Speaker 1 That's good. Yeah.
I like that.

Speaker 3 But I think also that

Speaker 3 for white people who disagree with me, I think some of them aren't doing a project of trying to convince everybody that black people are worse.

Speaker 3 Some of them just have deep-seated, unacknowledged racism within themselves that goes like this.

Speaker 3 When I'm I'm called a race traitor, me, when I'm called a race traitor, what it shows about the person accusing me of being a race traitor is that they conceive of races as teams.

Speaker 3 My team is the white team. Dan, you're white, you're on my team.
Automatically. And teams compete in sport.

Speaker 3 So you need, as a white person, Dan, on the white team, we need to be working together to look after our team. If you say anything that criticizes white people, or heaven

Speaker 3 forgive the Democratic fucking alliance, then you are a race traitor, which means that you are harming the white project, the white team's attempt to win, and you are strengthening another team's attempt to win.

Speaker 3 That is a fundamentally, subliminally racist conception of how race should be most important in the way that you build power and protect community. That you should sacrifice truth in order to protect

Speaker 3 the white team. Exactly.
And so I think that for some white South Africans who don't like what I'm saying, you'll see in my comments, it's almost never a counterfactual or a counter-argument.

Speaker 3 It's always a personal attack.

Speaker 1 Yeah, to your person. And it's, they'll say, how can you do this to your people? Yeah, yeah.
You're gay. You're a black lover.

Speaker 3 Whatever that means.

Speaker 1 Like, like, like all of these

Speaker 1 love blacks.

Speaker 1 Love them. No, but you know what I mean? Just drive by on the street and see them on the side of the road and you're like,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 3 And the other thing that they love to say is like, yeah, of course you love Joe Bird.

Speaker 1 Which obviously means like a wink.

Speaker 3 You like black women, Dan. Or no, black men specifically, because people love accusing any man they dislike of being gay as though it's somehow a problem.

Speaker 1 You hear that, Trevor?

Speaker 1 And then. I don't even know what...
No, I don't know what I don't know. What are we talking about? You hit me with that, and I'm like, I'm still trying to figure out what that means.

Speaker 3 But sorry, just to finish, the same conversation we're talking about is the Cape Town versus Joe Bird conversation. So you said Cape Town very, very white, right?

Speaker 3 Predominantly Cape Town International is very white. Cape Town, South Africa is not.
They're completely different worlds.

Speaker 3 I have quite often, I think, very reasonably critiqued the housing crisis, the Airbnb crisis, some of the DA's decisions ruling Cape Town, even in as though they've also done a lot of really good stuff and built an in-part world-class city.

Speaker 3 If I criticize Cape Town, it's the same.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 3 it's racialized. They say, you're a race traitor.
They're saying Cape Town, but they mean white. Just like you were saying earlier, crime means black.
Joburg means black. Cape Town means white.

Speaker 3 You are criticizing us, our teams.

Speaker 1 Why are you doing that? Our home base in this game of tag.

Speaker 2 But I guess the revolution has always wanted to adopt one single white person here and there to just kind of

Speaker 2 get through to the you. And you might think it's funny, but you're actually right.
Joe Slovo was that for the ANC. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Father Chuskerson was that for

Speaker 2 Desmond Dude. So there was always one where they're like, you need to roll with this guy.
And when we started doing comedy, to get the gigs that you want to get, you must have a white agent.

Speaker 1 You had to have a white agent.

Speaker 2 There should be someone who says he will show up. He will come.
Demand the certificate.

Speaker 1 No, you have to vouch for it.

Speaker 2 Vouch, vouch, hard.

Speaker 1 People like Joe Parker. Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is a white comedian who was having to promise white companies that a black performer was worth having.

Speaker 1 Not even like trust. He would have to vouch and go, I promise you, this person is worth having at your events.

Speaker 1 Please trust me on this. And remember the handholding that we used to suffer before?

Speaker 2 The person would show up with you to make the introductions. Yeah, shake shake hands just stand

Speaker 1 just stand there make them comfortable like literally so we would go and perform no sorry i mean like i mean like act like a shopping oh yeah fully shaped casting because because

Speaker 3 because they believe that you are irresponsible and can't unhand yourself

Speaker 2 do you even own a jacket

Speaker 2 yeah yeah someone come meets you in the car and you're like

Speaker 1 where's your yeah can you do a tie you know what i'm saying can you do

Speaker 2 100 yeah 100 so there's there's always that there's always those stats that a person in 2025 can still quote fresh in their mind. We don't even need to go as far as apart it is.

Speaker 2 But I always think people get lost in the stats. There's very simple stats in this country.
White people are the minority.

Speaker 2 White people, as a minority, they're the most educated as a number of people than black people. They have gained full employment more than black people.
They outgun us. They outwealth us.

Speaker 2 They outlive us.

Speaker 3 People forget to outlive, which is really important. Yes.
In terms of medical health care, in terms of nutrition, in terms of a lack of,

Speaker 3 because early childhood malnutrition is what stunts so many young black children. It's the first five to six years where you do not have enough food.
And

Speaker 3 all of the early childhood nutrition research in the world talks about how people are physically stunted, they're mentally stunted.

Speaker 1 Mentally is the big one if you don't have enough. Totally.

Speaker 3 But I mean, the other thing that we were talking about around the Piers Morgan thing is the safest people in South Africa are white men.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 3 Because of all the infrastructure, which creates secure neighborhoods, high walls, electric fences, good,

Speaker 3 safe working environments, good cars. Firearms.
Yeah, well, sometimes firearms.

Speaker 3 Sometimes firearms.

Speaker 3 But then, and then the most vulnerable are black women, because again, the least protected in the most destitute conditions, very, very often.

Speaker 2 And most vulnerable at the same time.

Speaker 1 Yes. And in all communities as well.
Yes.

Speaker 2 So I always say to people, if you want to know what equality looks like, drive around any township, any black neighborhood, or anywhere where there's black men gathered as a group, whether they're traveling together or going to watch soccer, and tell me what size pants they wear, just as an average between all of them in townships and in squatter camps.

Speaker 2 Very small, very thin. That's malnutrition.

Speaker 2 You can't put them next to their counterpart who is of another race, especially white. And from muscle mass to the size of their pants, not being overweight, the size of their pants.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah,

Speaker 2 that's what tells you what the systematic system has been able to do and still survives and thrives under these conditions because of what they eat, what they know, how much they walk versus how much they exercise.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because if hard work was a real thing, most black women that spend most of their youth in transit from four in the morning up until six in the evening would be wealthy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so I don't buy it anywhere. And everyone tells me, you know what you work hard.
I'm like, I know plenty of people doing well that don't work hard at all.

Speaker 2 And I know enough people just be on the highway and see what's who's in a bus and a a mini bus. And even middle-class black women now are working harder.

Speaker 2 And they're still working and complaining about being underpaid and having more responsibilities and still finding themselves in these situations.

Speaker 2 When I go to self-defense classes and I'm in a group and I'm usually wild.

Speaker 1 Are you teaching or are you? No, when I'm attending

Speaker 2 and I'm one or two of 20 and I see how to identify a threat.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, hold on, you're talking about me here.

Speaker 2 I don't see a threat the same way that my other counterparts who are in this training course see a threat. When I'm driving, I'm not as paranoid.
I don't look around at a black guy crossing a car.

Speaker 1 But you know why? Yes. You know why.
Yes. It comes back to the flattening of people.

Speaker 2 Tell us more.

Speaker 2 You know what? The flattening of people is.

Speaker 1 It's as simple as this. The flattening of people.

Speaker 3 I listened to this podcast.

Speaker 1 I know. I know.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you what. So.
I remember years ago, I read a paper that was breaking down what was commonly referred to as like a racist stereotype.

Speaker 1 You know, where people go, all Asians look the same, right?

Speaker 1 And so, someone went out and actually did a study, and they found that to people who have never grown up with any Asian people around them, all Asians do look the same.

Speaker 1 True, because you are unable to differentiate the features, and you're unable, yeah, you're unable to distinguish them. So, it's an exposure problem, it's completely an exposure thing.

Speaker 1 And then they tracked it between people, and they found it's not that one race of people is inherently unable or able to identify another group. It's all just about exposure.

Speaker 1 So you come back to South Africa. Black people were forcibly exposed in a section to white people.
Right.

Speaker 1 Because they had to work for them, they had to work in the mines, they had to work in the houses, they had to work, you know what I mean? But that's still a slither of them.

Speaker 1 Many black people lived a life completely isolated from white people. And so many black people, funny enough, can't tell the difference.

Speaker 1 Like half of my family cannot tell the difference between any of my white friends. Like if I brought you, Dan, now to my house, I promise you some of them would go.
Oh, this is nice to see you again.

Speaker 1 I swear to God. Yes.
I swear to God, they'd go, oh, nice to see you again. Then I'll be like, no, this is not him.

Speaker 3 I mean, I am a redhead, so it's slightly different.

Speaker 1 Ah, my friend.

Speaker 1 My friend. They'll just think on that day in particular.
There was something... Nati Shishu, something.
Yes. Natty, Dizzy, Ben.

Speaker 1 Something to your hair. Something.
Hey. Oh, it's your jacket.

Speaker 1 No, but I used to be shocked.

Speaker 1 I'd be so shocked by how, like, half my family, then when I sat with it and I went, oh wow, these are all the people in my family who were never exposed to white people,

Speaker 1 right? And the flip happens. Now you look at it through the lens of crime, right?

Speaker 1 You live in a country where from your birth, you were kept away from black people. You were not shown black people except to say like, this is the khafar, the danger, the threat,

Speaker 1 right? You were never introduced to black people. You were never, there was no meaningful interaction with black people.
The country then becomes integrated. Now South Africa is a rainbow nation.

Speaker 1 We're all together, but we're not. We all know.
Correct. So there was white flight.
White people immediately fled to little enclaves where they're like, can we be safe here?

Speaker 1 And now there were fewer black people that they were interacting with.

Speaker 1 But now what happens? Where are the only black people they interact with?

Speaker 1 A beggar at the street corner? And somebody who's robbing them. A teller.
Somebody who's serving them. Cleaning them.
Somebody who's...

Speaker 1 But these are not human interactions where you actually study another another person's features and you look at it.

Speaker 1 It's not a space where you see the human on the other side.

Speaker 3 It's an encounter, right?

Speaker 1 Exactly. It's just like a fleeting encounter.

Speaker 1 And so the one thing I think of, and I know it's like a weird way to phrase it, but where I feel sorry or understanding for white people as I go,

Speaker 1 if your only interaction with black people is when they rob you,

Speaker 1 you will then think that crime is black

Speaker 1 because you,

Speaker 1 even apart from your actions, have been part of a system that didn't let you hang out with, you know what I mean? Because it's not like white people were allowed, you know what I mean, to be fair.

Speaker 1 White people weren't allowed to hang out with black people.

Speaker 1 And I always go like, one of the worst things that happened. It was also a crime.

Speaker 2 That association was a crime.

Speaker 1 One of the strangest things about racism that we forget is, and I think I will attribute this quote, Ryan, was Nelson Mandela who said he learned in his time in Robin Island that one of the hardest aspects of racism, and this is not the quote, but basically he was saying, isn't it?

Speaker 1 No, I'll tell you when it starts.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you when the quote starts. Because I'm giving you the context first.

Speaker 1 He spent a lot of time at Robin Island, a lot of, like, pretty much all his time.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he made friends with most of his prison guards.

Speaker 1 And it got to the point where at Robin Island, they knew that the administration knew you could not let Nelson Mandela or any of his cohorts associate with a prison guard for longer than like a a few months

Speaker 1 because the prison gods started to see them as human beings and they started to treat them differently. Right.

Speaker 1 Because Mandela would greet them. He'd ask them about their families.
He would talk about himself as a human being. He'd wish them happy birthday.
But it wasn't just him.

Speaker 1 People make it seem like Mandela was the saint guy. No, he was.

Speaker 1 He was a human. That's all he was.
He was just being a human.

Speaker 1 And the other other people who were imprisoned with him would do the same thing to the point where the prison gods went,

Speaker 1 what did you say this guy did again? Yeah, like he doesn't seem like the animal that you said he is.

Speaker 3 Because bigotry requires dehumanization.

Speaker 1 And separation is the big one.

Speaker 3 So no exposure.

Speaker 1 No exposure.

Speaker 3 Which allows for dehumanization. No exposure.

Speaker 1 And so they did that. And that's when Mandela said, in that process, he learned that in a system of oppression, you have to free not only the prisoner, but also the guard.
Correct.

Speaker 1 And that's the thing I think we

Speaker 1 never,

Speaker 1 like, we really never get into in South Africa. And I see it in the U.S.
as well.

Speaker 1 Is that

Speaker 1 white people

Speaker 1 are also suffering from a system that was created by their ancestors

Speaker 1 because now I'm like yo white people are terrified in a way that they don't have to be I know this is gonna sound crazy you're not being hijacked because you are white you're being hijacked because you have the car that the people want now you must ask yourself why you have that car i'm not saying blame yourself but i'm just saying the chances of you being robbed or hijacked are directly proportional to how much things you have.

Speaker 1 You having the things is directly proportional to how much you benefited from the system before you. But again, I'm not saying it's your fault.

Speaker 3 The effect of the system is that you experience it as a race attack. Yes.
You experience this as because of your skin colour.

Speaker 1 Because you're like, how else is this happening? It's not happening to anyone else. It's how you're seeing it.
And then the people you hang out with, they're also white. They also got robbed.

Speaker 1 They also got someone kidnapped.

Speaker 1 So you go, this happens to us.

Speaker 1 You get what I'm saying? Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, 100%. I think that's why even at that young age, I was not impressed by by Tsalti winning on Oscar.

Speaker 1 I was like, this is the movie.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the movie. Yeah.
It plays into the fantasy. It plays into the fantasy and the stereotype.

Speaker 2 And yay, they're angry and jumping walls and taking things because they are on the other side of a panel.

Speaker 3 And the miracle is that this animal brought the baby back.

Speaker 1 Like, we never thought

Speaker 1 that they do that. Oh, wow.
You see, we didn't know that person could do that.

Speaker 1 I thought that was Dan.

Speaker 1 Dan Cosplaying is a racist.

Speaker 2 Dancy symmetry.

Speaker 1 I don't know Zeke.

Speaker 1 It's the same thing.

Speaker 1 It's very safe.

Speaker 2 I bring my kids here all the time.

Speaker 1 But yeah, you're right.

Speaker 2 Yes. So

Speaker 2 there were those situations where there were more movies about that and series and the incentivization to create stereotypes is very huge in this country, in television.

Speaker 2 And I'm glad at my house we don't live everywhere.

Speaker 2 But I'm saying in this country. Everywhere.
In this country,

Speaker 1 Tina, we we live it full factor.

Speaker 2 You know, when I go to the US and watch your TV, and I'm like, you guys are not watching TV. You're watching commercials the whole day.

Speaker 2 Tina, here we watch reality shows that purport the stereotype of how black single women behave, about how taxi drivers behave, about taxi owners, and about women with taxi owners and people who are fighting for a home in the township.

Speaker 2 All those rhetorics are live and happening, and seasons get renewed. Season 10 of people fighting for a family home in the township.
You know, what about?

Speaker 1 So, you don't know, you know, it's funny when you say that. I realize sometimes when you have these conversations with people

Speaker 1 you you just do this next time you you're hanging out in a in a group of south africans who have what have three microphones and if you want okay you have them on your iphone but like

Speaker 1 if you sit around and have these conversations you'll see

Speaker 1 if you sit around and have these conversations

Speaker 1 notice how differently people respond when you include yourself in in being aggrieved right yes yes depending on the color of your skin it's it's a really crazy thing yeah so i will see a white South African say, and it doesn't always happen, but when it does, it's really funny.

Speaker 1 White South African will go, yeah, man, this crime, you know, I don't feel safe, and blah, blah, blah. Another white South African will go, yeah, me too.
I just, you know, it's just, it's terrible.

Speaker 1 And then a black South African will say, yeah, hey, you never know when they're coming.

Speaker 1 And then the white South Africans will look at them like,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 they'll look at them like, no, no, but we, but we're like afraid of them.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 They, they, sometimes they look at a black person like, no, but you can, like, it's your cousin.

Speaker 1 You can ask him not to take your car. I can't do anything.

Speaker 1 I can't do anything. Think about it, my Becky.
It's just you and me.

Speaker 1 It's you and your cousin. You're safe.

Speaker 5 White people think that black people's houses are burglar bars to keep them in.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 But you know what?

Speaker 1 And I think...

Speaker 1 I don't feel sorry for this man.

Speaker 1 No, but you know what I mean, Dan. It's like to your point,

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 that's maybe one of the greatest disservices and injustices we did in our system. And by the way, I am somebody who is actually quite for what happened with the TRC.

Speaker 1 I know a lot of people have issues, and a lot of people go, it was wrong, and this and this and this.

Speaker 1 I think it was innovative. I think it was the first time it's ever been done.
I don't think it's ever been done anywhere else.

Speaker 3 Not in that way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, people always try and propose it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I think with any system or any idea, there's going to be the implementation and you realize, oh, we could improve on that. Like a constitution.

Speaker 1 You can always improve a constitution, but its starting point.

Speaker 2 Especially that part that says South Africa belongs to everyone who lives in it.

Speaker 3 You don't like that part?

Speaker 1 No. Okay.

Speaker 1 This is a conversation for another day.

Speaker 1 That's a podcast. This is a conversation for another day.
No, so what I mean is like you can always improve a constitution. You can always improve an idea.

Speaker 1 I think the TRC, first time out, my goodness. Incredible.

Speaker 1 What an attempt to mend and to bridge the gaps in a nation where people were separated in a way that most nations have never experienced, right?

Speaker 1 But I think the one thing we have yet to do and we have never done is gone, hey, what is that exposure therapy that people need? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And like, and sort of an involuntary exposure therapy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, Dale, and we were talking about how at our school, they had a program where, because we were the first generation that was like, literally, you and I were the first generation.

Speaker 1 How old are you, Dan?

Speaker 3 31.

Speaker 1 31, yeah. So we were the first generation of kids that went to school with kids of a different race.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Literally, I sometimes think about how crazy that was when I go, like, literally, the first year in my school that there were black kids, Indian kids, colored kids, with white kids.

Speaker 2 That was the first time that had ever happened.

Speaker 1 You guys were round one.

Speaker 3 You were the first child.

Speaker 1 We were literally...

Speaker 1 Yo, our teachers so wrong our teachers had never seen a black child in front of them in a classroom before our parents had to wear their sunday best you're the first drop-off drop-off our parents didn't even know what a drop-off was i mean drop-off

Speaker 1 think but just think about that as a concept i remember being shocked that when i went to school

Speaker 1 kids were dropped off by their parents in a vehicle that they owned like one child got out of one car

Speaker 1 meanwhile when the black kids got there it looked like a circus trick We're like one car and then open a door. And then, like,

Speaker 1 you're 15.

Speaker 1 And that's how we just traveled around. The back of every bucky, the back of every van was all of us.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 But that exposure, like our school had this program where they went,

Speaker 1 we want every kid to go and stay at another kid's house who they're friends with. They weren't even like, they don't like a stranger.
Yes. But they said, hey, you guys are friends.

Speaker 1 But it was a deliberate program. Yo.

Speaker 1 It was amazing to see

Speaker 1 to talking about like exposure therapy.

Speaker 1 it was amazing to see how the black kids weren't particularly surprised by what they experienced because many of them had moms who were working for white people.

Speaker 1 So they had seen a glimpse of a white life.

Speaker 3 I had a great sense of it, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 Let me tell you something. Every single white kid who went to go and live with a black family for a weekend, every single one of them went home and said the same thing.

Speaker 1 They said, mom and dad, do you know how black people live? And not in like a righteous way, just as like a child, like a

Speaker 1 14-year-old, 15-year-old, they went, yo,

Speaker 1 do you know how they live?

Speaker 1 Do you know how they come to school every day? Do you know that they have to take three buses to get

Speaker 2 with strangers?

Speaker 1 Do you know that they don't have hot water in the morning at their house? You have to make a fire and then heat it up. And then they call it out.
And then you have to do it again for each person.

Speaker 1 And they have to, you know, they don't have their own bathrooms. You know that their toilet's outside.

Speaker 1 I go to school with this kid. I see myself as his direct competition in that way.

Speaker 1 But I'm going, how is he doing math when he woke up like that?

Speaker 2 Does it in the dark?

Speaker 1 How is he playing cricket with me? Yeah, or playing soccer with me. How does he have the energy when he ate like that?

Speaker 3 And that goes back to the conversation you had with that guy in London about starting completely equal from scratch and about BEE laws and redress laws and justice and transformation laws.

Speaker 3 It's that exact conversation.

Speaker 1 We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

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Speaker 3 Trevor,

Speaker 3 I wanted to suggest something though, because we've been talking about exposure, but there's something along with that, which is about getting South Africans to empathize with each other.

Speaker 3 So a positive example is the Spring Box. If we all feel proud of the Spring Box for like making South African

Speaker 3 cool and good to be South African, to be proud.

Speaker 3 But ironically, one thing thing that quite often doesn't perfectly cut through all classes in a capitalist society, but does further than anything else to create empathy is service delivery failure.

Speaker 3 So, one of the best ways for South Africans to empathically get together is to go fuck ESCOM

Speaker 3 and to go fuck the police.

Speaker 3 I have seen black and white South Africans.

Speaker 1 ESCOM and SCOM has brought us together.

Speaker 1 No, it has. It's a joke and it's the truth.
No, it's true, right? It's true.

Speaker 3 A common agreement that the ANC has failed us in terms of service delivery and other things that, so, you know, potholes on the road.

Speaker 1 But can I tell you what I like about SCOM more than the ANC? Yes. The ANC is politics.
So what ends up happening is people then fall into that trap of making it a synonym for black. Yes.

Speaker 1 So they go, look at what the ANC has done to South Africa. Then you go, like, then a black person will say, yeah, no,

Speaker 1 I'm going to start my own political party. Then they're like, no, no, but you might do the same thing.
I mean, look at what the ANC has done. Then you're like, oh, okay, you're using it.

Speaker 1 What I like about SCOM is it's this nameless, faceless power utility yeah yeah and what it has done

Speaker 1 and this is something that is like it's it's crazy to say but scom

Speaker 1 the power provider in south africa has done something that has never happened in south africa it has made every south african experience the same thing regardless of the color of their skin. Exactly.

Speaker 1 This is the first time in our history when a black person and a white person can sit together and go,

Speaker 1 we have the exact same problem.

Speaker 1 And to your point, we take for granted how, it's sad that it has to be a problem, but it's like, that is something that is so fundamentally powerful. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 It's for two people to go, hey man, you live in a township.

Speaker 1 I live in a suburb, but we both hate ESCOM. We get it.

Speaker 2 It's kind of amazing. And those are the small victories that as South Africans we tend to miss.

Speaker 2 I mean, the biggest victory for the TRC was not justice, which would have been great for the victims and the families of the victims, but overall for South Africans was to see these authoritarians who were backed by the state machinery to decimate black people being told to sit down and shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 Damn.

Speaker 2 That had never happened. It happened live with everyone watching.
Desmond Dutch and whoever was in the pan could say to them, you, this is not flak plus.

Speaker 2 You are going to sit down, you are going to listen, and you are going to answer these questions.

Speaker 2 That was the overall resounding victory for all South Africans watching, not the fact that they point us to the grave.

Speaker 2 So, if their protest was to bait fast and stay the course and not snitch on each other, well, that's for him and his grave to take to.

Speaker 2 But for us as South Africans, as we're all watching, and we saw this mild-mannered man, Desmond Dutu, disabling them with kindness, but subtly telling them as well to sit down and shut the fuck up for the first time ever.

Speaker 2 That was more powerful to South Africans than Mandela's fist in the air after wearing his wife's glasses, standing outside the library library in Canada. You know, those are another slashes.

Speaker 1 Good friends, Ken. Listen, he looked good.

Speaker 2 After high school, after pulling up in the Cresida. You know, so that for us, as black people sitting there all together and was repeating the new cycle, was the biggest victory.

Speaker 1 Do you think

Speaker 3 it's not the same? But we're talking about things that provide unity and agreement.

Speaker 3 Do you think that the largely black South African-led, but many different race groups in South Africa communally telling the refugees to totsense and futsack was similar it was like you guys fuck off yes we don't want you here you're completely wrong we all agree that you've benefited by going to america off of a lie that we all as a country reject

Speaker 3 we all as a country we we all as a country say farm murders are not disproportionate or more brutal than all other murders in south apartment well you see but even

Speaker 1 if you pause i think it's also this is like something that's guys branding man if there's one thing i've learned in observing american politics whew don't mess around with branding especially right-wing as you say Right-wing branding is flawless.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Left-wing branding. Try to test it.
Left-wing branding is often academic and ephemeral at best. It's like, what does that mean? You need a slogan.
You need to test that.

Speaker 1 No, just think about it for a second, guys. Farm murders.
Guys, why is a murder labeled differently than any other murder?

Speaker 3 Totally. White genocide.

Speaker 1 But I'm like, guys.

Speaker 1 There are murders happening every single day in South Africa everywhere. They've never been given a special title.

Speaker 3 Also, farm murders implies owners when most of them are laborers or people who just happen to live on the farm. Yes.

Speaker 3 But the branding is wink nudge suggestive that it is the owners who are wink nudge white.

Speaker 2 And you're right to add to that

Speaker 2 robberies in farms are actually the problem.

Speaker 1 Totally.

Speaker 2 And the same farmers are not willing to disclose what is being robbed in those farms. As we all know, farms are not cash flush businesses.

Speaker 2 There's a tractor, there's a bucky, there's equipment, but what else is there inside your game farm that is worth more than your car in a safe this big?

Speaker 1 And it's also what is it? Firearms.

Speaker 3 I don't know the stats of ownership of firearms, but they are expensive. Yeah, they are very expensive.
Firearms.

Speaker 2 The robbery is of the firearm.

Speaker 2 So if you have to think about someone who has a cachet of firearms because they cater to guests that come from overseas, that can fly in their firearms and shoot the kudos and the buffaloes.

Speaker 2 Now there's four 500,000 rands worth of firearms and ammunition in a safe.

Speaker 2 And you've got laborers that don't live or that are not registered to be in this country right next to the border of the place where they come from. Guess what they're going to take in your house?

Speaker 3 Something that's also amazing.

Speaker 1 What about your iPhone? Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 For sure. And I mean, the nature of rural South Africa is that very, very often a farm is the only place with any kind of asset value for 100 square kilometers.

Speaker 3 And everybody else living in that area are impoverished people living in townships. And that's just a crime story about class.

Speaker 3 If you only have one really successful, high-value asset business in a whole area where everyone else doesn't have food to eat, what do you think is going to happen?

Speaker 3 It's like completely a class dynamic function happening in rural areas where the farms are the only places worth robbing because that's the only places of any kind of value.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I think sometimes when we say that,

Speaker 1 we actually

Speaker 1 lose part of an argument.

Speaker 1 It muddies it. I'll tell you why.
So sometimes when we say these things, it makes people go, oh, so you're saying I'm only getting robbed because I have the money. Yeah, but I don't want to be robbed.

Speaker 1 I don't want to be killed. You get what I'm saying? No, no, and that's not what you're saying.

Speaker 1 I know this is going to sound crazier, but I think people need to understand

Speaker 1 in South Africa, I'll say there's two statements. Number one,

Speaker 1 crime affects everyone. Do you know what I mean? Crime is not going to discriminate against your race, your what.

Speaker 1 But to your point, the people who are least affected by crime in South Africa are white men. Yeah.
The same ones who are crying the most.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And by the way, you know what I mean? And this is my particular.

Speaker 1 But our crime does not discriminate. In fact, do you remember that story of

Speaker 1 who was that guy who came to South Africa on a honeymoon? Shrend Devani. Shrend Devani.
Do you remember the story? Do you remember when you loved this jacket?

Speaker 3 Wife dies in the town show.

Speaker 2 So, yes, remember when you love this jacket.

Speaker 1 I love this jacket.

Speaker 2 We love this jacket. We.

Speaker 2 I love this jacket.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Okay.
So

Speaker 1 go record and then

Speaker 1 you need to stick.

Speaker 1 So, Shrend Devani,

Speaker 1 for those who don't know, Sherendivani was a story of,

Speaker 1 I think it was an English national, and he came to South Africa for his honeymoon. His new wife.
And then he was on honeymoon with his new wife. And then she was tragically killed.

Speaker 1 And his story was that they got kidnapped by South Africans, black South Africans, kidnapped them, and then

Speaker 1 murdered her. And then he escaped somehow.
They let him go. And that was the story.
And I will never forget this till the day I die because it's

Speaker 1 one of the darkest. It's like macabre because it's dark, but it's strangely funny, especially the further you get from it time-wise.
So literally, South Africans were like, No,

Speaker 1 if they killed her, they're like, We'd kill you also.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you're the biggest threat here as a man.

Speaker 1 And he was like, No, they killed her, but then they let, they're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And in the same way, I say that, it's like the same thing.
I go like with this,

Speaker 1 you know, white genocide. It's like, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, here,

Speaker 1 our crime comes for everyone.

Speaker 1 Here we have democratic crime.

Speaker 1 Have something. Equal opportunity crime.
Indiscriminate crime. Our crime.
It's not black empowered.

Speaker 1 It's not white empowered have something someone will try and take it from you now we're not saying we're for that but we are saying that it's you know what i mean that's that's the reality of it is like we're living in a world but i i would love to go back to what you're saying about like the shared empathy

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 i mean is there actually a way that that can happen

Speaker 1 what do you mean actually So you were saying like the spring box, you know, like the national rugby team. I will say this is just, and this is just like a side opinion of mine.

Speaker 1 I personally blame Bafana Bafana.

Speaker 3 Yes, of course. Personally.

Speaker 1 Personally. If you look at South Africa's story, our worst moments,

Speaker 1 democratic South Africa, our worst moments happen when Bafana Bafana is doing its worst.

Speaker 1 You're engaging me too much on this. But I'm saying, Bafana Bafana.

Speaker 1 Look at me. But I'm saying Bafana Bafana.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Our soccer team,

Speaker 1 our football team, guys, when it's at its worst, the country, that team has an outsized weight on on its shoulders that I think they need to acknowledge.

Speaker 3 And Kezo Chiefs, guys,

Speaker 1 you look at 2010. You know what part of the reason 2010 was so good for us? Because we were in the World Cup.
We didn't have to qualify for it. We were definitely going to be in it.
Yes.

Speaker 1 1998, that whole period, that honeymoon,

Speaker 1 what were we doing as the soccer team in the country?

Speaker 1 We were winning. Do you get what I'm saying? And I think, I know this is a stretch, but I do think there's also an element in South Africa of when the rugby team wins, the whites have won.

Speaker 1 Blacks support the rugby team as well, but the apparatus of it is still seen as like, oh, the white institution did a thing right.

Speaker 1 When the cricket team wins, they go, yeah, you see the white thing won. When Bafana Bafana loses,

Speaker 1 crime. You see those crimes?

Speaker 1 Did you see how they were playing? Yeah. It's crime that thing.

Speaker 1 And I'm being serious. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And that's why I say, like, Bafana, I'm like, Bafana Bafana has an outsized influence on how the country sees itself. Many of my Brazilian friends have said the same thing.

Speaker 1 They go, they go, when the Brazilian national team is doing well, Brazil is doing well. When we're doing terribly, you'll see more protests, more violence, more everything.

Speaker 1 And it might just be confirmation bias, but I do think there's something to how the collective experiences its reality based on like a few.

Speaker 3 I think it's a consensus decision of how we're doing. expressed in a very, very small representative example that makes us feel proud.
Yes, that's true.

Speaker 3 It's like

Speaker 3 our very best are the best at the world, at a thing that the world cares about.

Speaker 3 And soccer is the most extreme version of that because soccer is bigger than any religion. It's bigger than any nation.
It's the most practiced cultural thing on the planet.

Speaker 3 And we are a football nation first and foremost, particularly amongst Black South Africans. We're a football nation first and foremost.

Speaker 3 And so if football, soccer, our best 11, the boys, Buffanath, our best stock are good, we feel good.

Speaker 3 But if our best offering is getting trashed by, or say, drawing with Lesotho, and no disrespect to Lesotho, but you know how South Africans feel about Lesotho?

Speaker 1 You see how South Africans talk about Lesotho. Especially when Lesotho is like a lot of people who are talking about the

Speaker 1 Lesotho.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying, we all saw how South Africa, even black South African talk, when Lesotho said they wanted half of the free state back.

Speaker 1 We all saw that. No, but what I'm saying is

Speaker 3 it speaks to our pride in ourselves, our own self-value, even if we are not the same players actually.

Speaker 3 The same way that, like, frankly, and this is...

Speaker 3 both funny and not a joke when Kayser Chiefs won the Netbank Cup first victory in 10 years many nine-year-old kids saw their dads happier than they had ever seen them in their whole lives that's true There were nine-year-olds who had seen their dads joyful, truly, in a childlike manner, for the first time in their whole lives.

Speaker 2 Because of that one-resounding victory.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Terrible nine-year-olds.

Speaker 5 Terrible nine-year-olds should have done better.

Speaker 1 Yeah, once they should have been,

Speaker 1 they should have made their parents happier.

Speaker 3 But what I'm trying to say is

Speaker 3 when Tyler does really well, it does have a psychic emotional effect on how we feel when you do really well. It has a psychic.
I do have a question for you. True.

Speaker 3 Sorry, I've been i've i i thought of this a bit earlier but like with your success it made so many of us feel proud not just people in the industry but south africans going our very best are at the level of the very best and so we will all very and remain deeply invested in you as a project as a successful person shalice throne is the same tyler's the same uh but what i've been thinking about with you recently is that you're almost like captain south africa to south africans you're like captain america because you are our guy who went to the world and showed America what it was like to look at America from outside of it.

Speaker 3 And you became the center of all of these massive vital discussions about race and class and world identity and stuff. And so people expect you to be our Captain America.

Speaker 3 our shield, the one who defends us in the face of everything, almost who has to do country duty, patriotic duty. People say, oh, Trevor must tell Trump that he's wrong about South Africa.

Speaker 3 Trevor must tell Elon Musk to stop doing this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I want, I've always genuinely wanted to ask what that's like for you because there's this weird thing that you need to be our greatest South African patriots because of how we as a country conceive of you.

Speaker 3 And I'm quite interested to know what that's like for you to go through.

Speaker 1 So let me start by saying this. If I meet Trump one-on-one, ha, guys, on site, hey, guys,

Speaker 1 my man, I'm telling him, eh?

Speaker 1 Telling him everything.

Speaker 1 Everything? You, hey, us, ha.

Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 1 hey, we now.

Speaker 1 Wait, are you telling me that Trump will learn what this means from you? My man, Trump. Trump knows it.
No, he knows it. He knows it.
He's halfway there.

Speaker 1 Those things will also be.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. No.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, you're very kind. I think,

Speaker 1 how do I think of it it for me? So

Speaker 1 the first and most important thing is I do not believe

Speaker 1 most of the hype, okay?

Speaker 1 Because I have friends who humble me very regularly. So, no, but

Speaker 1 on the real is I go,

Speaker 1 one of the most beautiful things I've learned throughout history is how the stories that we flattened

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 sort of like lift up individuals are oftentimes a much more complex tapestry than we think.

Speaker 1 So we say Nelson Mandela, but if we're honest, the list of names that is in and around it is so massive that you're like, oh, this guy was not really like the thing.

Speaker 3 It didn't live and die by him.

Speaker 1 No, and now I'm not saying Nelson Mandela. I'm not going to be like, oh, Nels Mandela didn't do much.
No, I'm not saying that, but I'm saying you forget that this was an apparatus.

Speaker 1 You forget that this was strategic. Martin Luther King Jr., another example, you know,

Speaker 1 everyone from his wife, and this is often the case, by the way, with many of these great men.

Speaker 1 The wife is the person who's doing like most of, if not half of the work or more, and their name doesn't live on in the exact same way, you know, writing the speeches, building the strategy, fighting when they're in prison for 27 years, etc.

Speaker 1 So I think it's easy for people to think of Captain America, but I'm like, yo, man, the Wakandans made that shield. You know what I mean? Who's that vibranium coming from? Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Who built his, because that guy doesn't know how to make a costume. Who put him in that fridge? Who pumped that medicine into into his veins? Who made him? The guy went to training.

Speaker 1 Who's training him? How did so?

Speaker 1 I think if you ever make the mistake of thinking that you, as an individual, are a superhero, you then forget every little piece of the puzzle that came together to make you who you are.

Speaker 1 So I just go, I'm just, I like, I love football. So for me, life, football isn't an analogy for life always.

Speaker 1 But I go, The thing I love about football, soccer, the sport, is you really learn very quickly. You are just in a team.
Every position on the team. Vital.
Vital. Strikers get all the credits.

Speaker 1 When they're all the time. Yo, man, strikers get all the credit.
But let me tell you something.

Speaker 1 Good luck being a striker who gets all the credits when your defender lets you down, when your midfielder lets you down, when your goalkeeper lets you down. Just good luck on that.

Speaker 1 So for me, genuinely,

Speaker 1 and it helps me alleviate some of the pressure because I go, I don't take the acclaim the same way I don't take the pressure. Totally.
Because I go, you can be grateful. I'm like, hey, thank you.

Speaker 1 I did my best. And I'm honored that anyone could think that.
But at the same time, when someone's like, ah, you must tell them. I do think it's funny.
If someone's like, Trevor, you must tell Trump.

Speaker 1 Then I'm like, my man, I would love to see the world you think I live in.

Speaker 1 I love the fact that you think I live next door to the White House. And then every morning I drive out, and Trump is there, peep, beep, hey.
I'm on.

Speaker 1 I wish that was the case.

Speaker 2 I'm not realizing that. Sorry.

Speaker 1 But you know what I'm saying? Sorry, I got.

Speaker 2 I got sorry.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 1 no,

Speaker 1 I wish that was the case, but I, but I, yeah, I think.

Speaker 3 I just think it's an interesting thing that you go through in the way that South Africans perceive of you versus what

Speaker 1 I'm with you, but I think also the truth of your career. I also find it's also semi-generational.
Oh, interesting.

Speaker 1 There are many South Africans who are a certain generation who sort of don't see me like that. They just see me as like a fun ambassador, like our kid who made it.
Right.

Speaker 1 There's people who are older than me who go like, oh, well done, Bafanas, well done. Then there's people who are my age, who are like, ah, my man,

Speaker 1 nice to see you. I've seen younger ones who are just like, I'm like a mythical figure to them.
I honestly think everyone has a role to play. And I don't mean this in like a kumbaya kind of way.

Speaker 1 I think everyone has a role to play. And we take for granted how much of an impact that role has.
We all take it for granted. But that's something that my mom left with me.

Speaker 1 Like, man, and you and I have a similar story with like our moms.

Speaker 1 Man, my mom, I I remember we'd like go somewhere, random,

Speaker 1 a school that's got a church event on a weekend. So it's a school, but it's now it's church for the weekend.
We'd walk in onto the grounds.

Speaker 1 There'd be papers lying on the ground, you know, like packets of chips that have been thrown away by the school kids. My mom would start picking them up.
Guys, these things are infinite.

Speaker 1 As the wind blows, so do they. My mom would start picking them up.
I would stand there like, what are you doing? It's a Sunday. We're here for a church.
She'd be like, hey, Wenna, help me.

Speaker 1 But I'm like, mom, first of all, it's not our school. It's a Sunday.
Come on, man. She's like, yay.
Then I'm like, yep.

Speaker 1 And then she would always say, if I'm not going to clean it, who's going to clean it then? Because everyone else is walking past here saying it's not my problem.

Speaker 1 And I think we take for granted, and this is where it's like difficult in life. And I think it's for all things.

Speaker 1 It's you and your personal relationships. It's you and your community, you and your society, you as a nation.

Speaker 1 Two things can be true at the same time. There's a duality that exists that's difficult for people to deal with because sometimes we're fighting against someone who's trying to flatten it.

Speaker 1 And so then we become flat ourselves.

Speaker 1 So someone goes, there's

Speaker 1 genocide of white people in South Africa. And then you go like, South Africa is great.

Speaker 1 Then you're like, now you can't address the things that are happening in South Africa because this person is trying to flatten it. You want to deal with the corruption in the government.

Speaker 1 But you know, when you say, yes, there's corruption, they go, yes, the blacks. Then you're like, no, you're using my acknowledgement to to empower your racism.

Speaker 1 But I'm actually trying to work on a problem that needs to be solved. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And so I think if you think of it in those small interactions, like, guys, white people take for granted, you know, you said it in the beginning, Eugene.

Speaker 1 White people take for granted how much

Speaker 1 leeway and grace black people have given them in South Africa. And not like a you're lucky thing, but like as an Ubuntu thing, like like real levels of it.

Speaker 1 Real, and some of it is, you know, internalized oppression, maybe, but some of it is just like, yo, man,

Speaker 1 we're still people. Yeah, for sure.
We're still people.

Speaker 1 And I think like a white person, the average white person takes for granted how their tone of voice, the way they interact with a black person, the way they...

Speaker 1 And I've seen the difference. I've seen some white people who think the person who cleans their house is lucky to have that job.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And then I've seen white people who go, yo, man, this person has been cleaning my family's home

Speaker 1 for maybe two generations even.

Speaker 1 This person has watched and raised my children.

Speaker 1 This person has cooked food for my entire family

Speaker 1 for decades.

Speaker 1 How is it that they still don't have a driver's license? Yeah, I hear you.

Speaker 1 How is it that this person who has watched us, they've moved houses with us.

Speaker 2 Relocated their lives.

Speaker 1 But how is it that this person hasn't moved houses?

Speaker 1 Yeah. So what has happened in our world? Because now if that person was a blood relative, I don't think you would be as proud of yourself.
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 I don't think you'd be able to look at yourself going like, oh yeah, no, my aunt has lived with us for 40 years. She raised me and

Speaker 1 my brothers and sisters.

Speaker 2 Forced their own kids and their livelihood.

Speaker 1 Every day when she goes home,

Speaker 1 she walks. for 10, 20 minutes, then catches a transport, then to another transport, to another transport that takes off three and a half hours to get home.
Yeah, for sure. That's my aunt.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No one would be proud of that.

Speaker 3 Wouldn't tolerate it either, wouldn't allow it to happen.

Speaker 1 And so that, that, sorry, sorry.

Speaker 2 No, even the safety conversation with domestic workers versus the people that other people that live in the house who are family members. Oh, man, for sure.

Speaker 2 They would know how to protect themselves, where the firearm is, where the panic button is, who to call.

Speaker 2 But the person who stays there in the house alone, apparently, according to people, they're exempt to being violated. But here's my thing.

Speaker 1 They answered to your point. Actually, to expand on that, and you do say this, Dan, and I think it's important to hit on.
Yeah, there are so many times when these farm murders are spoken about.

Speaker 1 And the same people who are going, talking to Trump, going around the world, parading the story, they completely ignore everyone else who also lost their lives in that same robbery or that same attack.

Speaker 1 A house on a farm was robbed, was raided.

Speaker 1 The people who were on it were killed.

Speaker 1 Two of them, maybe, three of them, maybe were white. The remaining people aren't even counted.

Speaker 1 And I always say to people, that's probably one of the greatest injustices that black people have suffered throughout time.

Speaker 1 Is that

Speaker 1 even in the worst atrocities?

Speaker 1 Go to the Holocaust. Germans counted Jewish people meticulously.
We've got a book and numbers.

Speaker 1 The same Germans in Namibia,

Speaker 1 estimates. How many black people were killed in those concentration camps?

Speaker 1 Estimates.

Speaker 1 We still don't know.

Speaker 1 The only reason we know numbers from even the slave trade was because of books. Yeah.
Because of stock.

Speaker 1 Accounting.

Speaker 1 But not accounting of humans. Yes.

Speaker 1 But accounting of money. Because you need to sell.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But I'm saying, like, that's, and I think that's one of the big things in South Africa is like, if, if we, if we think of it that way, it's not saying to a white person, be guilty. Don't forget guilt.

Speaker 1 No, leave it. Forget guilt for a moment.

Speaker 1 Because guilt now makes it, then it's easy for someone to be like, but I wasn't here. I wasn't here, Bru.
Yeah, it's fine, my man. Why do they.

Speaker 3 It's fine.

Speaker 2 Why do

Speaker 2 also,

Speaker 2 which part of the syllabus is it for white female teachers that teaches them these two lines?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but you see that.

Speaker 2 Where does that

Speaker 2 come from? All of that. What makes it okay for a person of authority to stand in front of a class where school fees are being paid and mines are being shaved and say those words without consequence?

Speaker 2 Ach, tula wena. Yes,

Speaker 2 it's not a shibin here.

Speaker 1 But because remember, where is a shibin? But that's my thing. Is

Speaker 1 she's right. It's not a shibin here.
And shibins are loud places. But in that instance.

Speaker 3 It's not ideal teaching environment.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but in that instance, you are using shibin as a synonym for what?

Speaker 1 This is not a place of blackness, man. Don't be black here, man.

Speaker 3 I want to,

Speaker 3 offer what you just said about the uncaringness towards black death versus the hyperfixation on white death or like victims of white crime.

Speaker 3 One of the things, the great things that frustrates me about South Africa is that overwhelming mainstream media obsesses over and cares over white suffering in a way that they don't over black suffering.

Speaker 3 So I often say, if a black person sneezes near a white person, it's a news headline. Whereas many black people will die and it won't even become a report.

Speaker 3 So that comes from during apartheid, apartheid. all of the massive media companies,

Speaker 3 their buying audience was white readers, Swat Chafan, all of the rest.

Speaker 3 But since apartheid, the capitalist incentive to continue to cater to a paying, reading, literate, highly educated audiences meant obsession over white plight without reporting on black death and black suffering and impoverished people's suffering.

Speaker 3 And then it also comes down to something that you always talk about, which is language, which is so important.

Speaker 3 Because if broadly the biggest media in the country and the hyper-commercialized media is broadcasting in English and Afrikaans, it's just less likely that anyone's ever going to think, what does the Zulu community want to read about?

Speaker 3 What does the Hossa community care about? Which often then means people dying, people really, really suffering.

Speaker 3 And so if you come to South Africa and you read our biggest news sites, 365 days of the year, something extraordinarily horrific needs to happen to a black person before it's news.

Speaker 3 Something unbelievably un tabul

Speaker 3 needs to happen

Speaker 1 to hear about that.

Speaker 1 It needs to happen.

Speaker 3 Whereas smaller infractions, and again, whenever we talk about crime, as you said earlier, we can't debase it.

Speaker 3 I'm not saying that these crimes don't matter. I'm just saying smaller, less harmful crimes when white people are the victims become explosions.

Speaker 3 And for that explosion to happen for a black victim, it needs to be horrific. Like think about how Tabor Besta never, ever, and there are are other reasons why the Oscar Bestorius case was so massive.

Speaker 3 But Tabor Besta versus Oscar Bastorius, and I know it's horrible to bean count when people have died, but Tabor Besta, all of his victims, the horrific shit that he did for such a long time

Speaker 3 versus the coverage of Oscar Bestorius, because Riva was a white victim. And again, not debasing Riva at all, the tragedy or everything.

Speaker 3 What I'm trying to talk about is how South Africa's media needs to change to care about black suffering properly.

Speaker 3 And they may actually find out that that's, in a purely capitalistic capitalistic way, really good business.

Speaker 3 Because most people in South Africa are black and want to know about their lives and their lived experience.

Speaker 2 You know, what Dan is saying is absolutely true.

Speaker 2 And I even go a step further and I say, there's a systematic way that the media has kept the white, the black majority that is influential and exposed to technology busy.

Speaker 2 and distracted because every time something happens that's big something else happens in the pipeline that kind of distracts us from this whole thing for example as black people we are forced to always take the moral high ground when things happen.

Speaker 2 Apartheid, we are being told we must be emotionally mature. It wasn't me, it was the system.
Now, you guys are in schools.

Speaker 2 Yes, but I'm like, no, now you're expecting me to cure something that was caused by a system with my emotions. So, how about a system gets created to cure what that system managed to do?

Speaker 2 So, we need a systematic problem. I mean, systematic solution for a systematic problem.

Speaker 2 And let me deal with my emotions and spend my time the way I like.

Speaker 2 But the fact that we are always distracted, and when something happens, people go to a country and purport whatever they purport, and then we look at our local economy and politics, something seismic always happens right in the middle of that.

Speaker 2 And I'm going, we're such a small country that that kind of manipulation can happen.

Speaker 3 Totally.

Speaker 3 And what I want to add to that, looping back to the TRC, looping back to the TRC, is one of the terrible things about the TRC that the country is constantly being distracted away from is that many victims were awarded financial restitution and have not got it yet.

Speaker 3 Till today,

Speaker 3 2025. I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 And every

Speaker 3 single year,

Speaker 3 the remaining people who were awarded financial compensation

Speaker 1 and they haven't received it.

Speaker 3 And many of them have died now. And every year they get together and they demand from the Justice Department, where is our money? And they're dying.

Speaker 3 And the TRC, you were talking about how first phase was beautiful, but since then, people who were not given amnesty have not been charged. Inquiries are now being opened, but it's 2025.

Speaker 3 The Craddock IV have been long dead in the ground. And only now that case is being investigated when in the early 2000s, those were the people who were supposed to be investigated first.

Speaker 3 And thousands and thousands of people who were awarded, victims who were awarded financial compensation from the TRC are still begging the government to give them the money that they should have got in like 2002.

Speaker 3 But we are so distracted as a country that that doesn't make the news. That you two who are both very informed didn't know about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I didn't know that at all.

Speaker 3 And I only found out four months ago because my brother was working at the kind of conference gathering where all of the still alive victims came and said, Where is our fucking money?

Speaker 3 And so, yes, we do need to talk about how South Africa also. I mean, I'm sure you guys saw recently, South Africa is the most online country in the world.

Speaker 3 We're the most phone-addicted country in the world.

Speaker 1 I did not see that in terms of screen time.

Speaker 3 We're like number one in the world. I did not see that.
We're number one in like corruption and that. Wow.

Speaker 1 I didn't see that.

Speaker 3 And rugby. Those are our strengths.
But despite of all of that, we are a deeply, easily distracted nation.

Speaker 3 And that means that we don't know things as basic as there are victims of the TRC who have not yet got compensation in 2025.

Speaker 1 It's crazy.

Speaker 2 We don't even know when the by-elections are. The average South African doesn't know when the by-elections are.
They're not advertised. The parties discuss amongst themselves.

Speaker 2 Then they go along, select a person, and the by-elections happen. 10 people show up.
The award is won. So there's a lot of people.
And I did say this.

Speaker 2 I said in McGee's podcast a few years ago, I said there's a systematic approach to distracting South Africans digitally. So, these I've said this, it's on record.

Speaker 2 So, these facts that you're saying make sense. I did say it.

Speaker 2 I said, if you maybe switch off your phone a little bit and maybe not look at the hashtags and not look at what videos are trending, maybe dig deeper.

Speaker 2 There's something there from every crisis that we've experienced in this country. It all starts out with something else happening, pot Bellinger style.
What was it again? Bell Pottinger.

Speaker 2 Bell Pottinger style on the side, purporting to be something else.

Speaker 2 And then all of a sudden, we don't know that the by-elections happened, or this person got annexed as a mayor, or Helen Ziller now is trying to be the mayor of Khaute.

Speaker 2 Is it all after you've just done the roast, now you're using that as a platform to launch your mayorship in the same city that you?

Speaker 2 But we, when we say this, we look like we're speaking from a place of privilege.

Speaker 2 And because we are speaking from a place of privilege, we can afford not to use technology as an escape goat, but as a vessel to get this information.

Speaker 2 So, but I think that is our problem right now in South Africa. I think it's our nature to be accepting, to be willing, to try, to forgive, to move forward.

Speaker 2 But we've never had our own house to ourselves when the visitors have left and speak the truth amongst each other as a family and decide how we're going to do this life thing with the with the neighbors and how we feel about our relatives who keep showing up and making it as if all we've done here was waste our time and not build a wall that's high enough that's what we need to be having in this country but i feel like people like you dan and i'm not saying you as a white person i'm saying you as a brave person to forsake everything that could go wrong.

Speaker 2 We live in that corporate world where calls will stop because you've said something that you are not supposed to say and you're not towing the line.

Speaker 2 But for you to say, I'm not doing this because I work for a channel. I'm not doing this because I'm white.
I'm doing this because I know. That is the ultimate sacrifice in the modern day era.

Speaker 2 It's not picking up an AK-47 and going to the trenches and trying to live in Lusaka and fight from there. It's you saying something.

Speaker 2 And people like us who want to say something, we're not going to be people's favorites. Our calls are going to dry up a little bit.

Speaker 2 People are going to be offended in some way where they make a decision. But at the end of the day, we are saying what South Africans are not privileged enough to say.

Speaker 2 And that's one way where I think the middle class and the Mandela experience or experiment can be used.

Speaker 2 When, in unison, people who come from three different backgrounds can sing with one voice and go, but are we looking carefully at what is being said?

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, I think that's incredibly kind. Thank you.
Uh, what I will, what I will,

Speaker 3 I love how every week a different political party is paying my bills, according to South Africa. I've had EFF, Soros, Putin, DA, Freedom Front Plus, like every week.
And

Speaker 3 something that I like about what is starting to happen in South Africa is people are starting to recognize that

Speaker 3 there are people who are clearly bought and paid for and spoken for to push an agenda.

Speaker 3 And you can spot it. You know the position they're going to take on everything, what they're going to talk about and not talk about.

Speaker 3 But slowly but surely, what America has, which you know better than I guess anyone else in this room, is people.

Speaker 3 America has people who you broadly know their politics, but you definitely know that they're saying what they really think. Because now and again, say, Jon Stewart will say, fuck these Democrats.

Speaker 3 They're fucking this up so badly.

Speaker 3 South Africa is slowly getting to the point now where if you, people like you, who consistently say what they think, and everyone goes, Ah, but that's not part of the agenda that I thought he was a part of.

Speaker 3 If you do that for long enough, eventually people will go, oh no, fuck Eugene's just saying what he thinks.

Speaker 3 And then they can really believe what you think because they don't think you're bought, paid for, and spoken for. And that's my project: I just need to keep talking.

Speaker 3 I just need to keep saying exactly what I think.

Speaker 3 And after long enough, people will go, Yeah, eight weeks of the year, we think he's ANC, 12 weeks of the year, we think he's DA, 20 weeks of the year, we think he's MK.

Speaker 3 He's probably just saying what he genuinely thinks.

Speaker 1 You see, people really know him. Truly, he's truly a member of the Rainbow Nation.

Speaker 1 But if people

Speaker 5 really know Dan, they know that his real money comes from collecting all the checks of coming second in Eric Tinkler lookalike competition.

Speaker 1 That's a deep cut. You see, I know a lot of butts.
You still want to call him the butts of the joke? I am.

Speaker 3 Football is my religion. I know more about Eric Tinkler than I know about some of my siblings, brother.
Like, I know. It's deep.

Speaker 1 You think this guy butt of the joke,

Speaker 1 man?

Speaker 1 Ladies and gentlemen. The only reason he's the butt is because he'll shit on you.
This one.

Speaker 1 He'll shit on you from a high height. Yo, man, Dan.
Thank you, man. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you, man.

Speaker 1 But to Eugene's point, because I think we take for granted that any issue worth discussing or fighting or moving in and around is not meant to be held by one person.

Speaker 1 You know, and that's that's where I think we've always got to come around on these issues: is if we think this is a white people thing, we've lost it.

Speaker 1 If we think it's a black people thing, we've lost it. It's like, no, no, no, it's a people thing.
And I think speaking about it from everybody's perspective just lends a little credence to it.

Speaker 1 And so that was really one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you because I loved just seeing from, and I could see in your eyes, the moment when you're sitting with people on Piers Morgan, everyone has come, the premise is like white genocide in South Africa.

Speaker 1 And immediately everyone proceeds to say there is no white genocide.

Speaker 1 Like literally, everyone calls. I was saying to you, Gene, you know what? It's the equivalent of in South Africa.

Speaker 1 It's like people have phoned the police, called the police, and they said, I'm getting murdered. Someone's murdering me right now.
And the police come to their house and they go, where's the murder?

Speaker 1 And they go, okay. There's not actually a murder.

Speaker 1 But while you're here, can we talk about?

Speaker 1 Can we just talk about how

Speaker 1 every time time I come home, she tells me to put my shoes on. And the police are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait.
Where's the crime? And

Speaker 1 you're like, well, it's not a crime per se.

Speaker 1 But can you not see how? And it could one day become a crime. And I think that's what a lot of these people did, which I'm glad you call out as BS.
They used the most heinous word they could think of.

Speaker 1 They used the word that would grab attention. Exactly.

Speaker 1 to then expose what, if we're honest, are gripes. Gripes that everyone has a right to have, by the way.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be angry about gripes equally.

Speaker 1 No, but they're gripes that we share equally. And to your point, and to what you said as well, we don't even share it equally because

Speaker 1 in South Africa, if you want to run to the White House and you want to ask them for help, talk about black women. Do you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 If you said to me, like, hey, man, Trump is coming here because what's happening to black women in South Africa is unacceptable, then I'll go, hey, man, Trump. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Get in here and do your thing. Does that make sense? But you're not.
You know what I mean? You've used your power and your access to it

Speaker 1 to go and argue about gripes. Because fundamentally, the last thing I'll say on this is,

Speaker 1 I have never in my life seen refugees with Samsonite luggage.

Speaker 1 I have never in my life seen refugees fleeing a five-bedroom house.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? And I'm not saying it just in terms of wealth, because I understand as a refugee, you can be pushed out.

Speaker 1 Optionally, evacuating just because.

Speaker 3 And crucially, I have never seen a refugee leave his mother mother behind, he'll fetch her later.

Speaker 2 Bruh, I've never seen a refugee doing viewings at their house on a Sunday afternoon. I mean, there's a dripping room.

Speaker 1 It's a lovely area. Yo, bro, have you ever seen a refugee selling their quarry before they leave?

Speaker 2 It's your turn now. You've never seen a refugee do what?

Speaker 1 These are the games we play in South Africa as kids. Okay, I'll take it.

Speaker 2 I've never seen a refugee with cholesterol before.

Speaker 3 That's good.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to be Dan. Thank you, Eugene.
Oh, man. No, man, this was great.
Dan, Eugene, this was too much fun.

Speaker 1 Quick confession, this actually wasn't the... We were actually planning to kill you when you got here.

Speaker 1 That's why I brought you gifts. You know what?

Speaker 1 You know what, Dan? You're one of the good ones, man. You're one of the good ones.
Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jodi Avigan.

Speaker 1 Our senior producer is Jess Hackle. Claire Slaughter is our producer.
Music, Mixing and Mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 1 Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now.

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