[speakeasy]

(11-02-2011 02:36 AM)All or Nothing Wrote:  

So white on black crime is automatically more hate based and black on white is automatically less?

I said nothing of the sort. You're making straw man arguments. I'll say it once more, try to follow: There is more black on white crime than white on black crime. However, most victims of black crime are black, and most black crimes against whites are not hate crimes. Because the races of the perpetrator and the victim are different does not make it a hate crime in and of itself. To be a hate crime, race must be the reason for the crime. If a black man robs you so he can buy some drugs, that's not a hate crime. That same black guy would just as soon rob another black dude if he looks like he's got some money. Have I made myself clear enough?

[Hooligan Harry]

Yes, and I agree with you 100% on that. But the fact is that many crimes where the perpetrators are white and the victims are black are automatically regarded as hate crimes when they were just crimes of opportunity too. Thats the whole point. Its very easy for a white man to be called a racist, its just never easy for a black man to be called one. Racism is predominantly regarded as a white crime in the MSM. Again, it comes down to what is more politically correct Im afraid.

We are going off topic though and I feel as if my point is being missed. As a white guy who does not speak Spanish, I dont go to Cali in Colombia for the first time wearing expensive jewellery, getting hammered and acting like a typical brash Aussie to impress the chicks in the belief that they all want the gringo dick. It would be asking for trouble. Does that mean I cant go to Cali? Of course not, I just need to be a little more careful and circumspect and make sure I plan properly while remaining respectful of the local culture and people.

Russia is high risk for black guys, more so than any other race. Just like a white guy going to Angola or Cameroon. Its the way it is, but it does not mean its off limits. You just need to plan accordingly and make sure you dont venture off the beaten track.

[Samseau]

What's also hilarious about south africa is that the universities enforce affirmative action in favor of blacks, citing "historical" reasons of racism.

The political left cannot stand to admit the truth:

All countries have racists, but Western countries are the least racist.

Wanna see real racism?

Go to china, africa, or the middle east.

[Deluge]

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But are we talking about general crime in this thread or are we talking specifically about hate-based crimes as opposed to crimes of financial gain or opportunity?

This.

[speakeasy]

(11-02-2011 04:33 AM)Hooligan Harry Wrote:  

Russia is high risk for black guys, more so than any other race. Just like a white guy going to Angola or Cameroon.

Just a little correction here. White tourists aren't targeted for beatings by racist mobs anywhere in Africa. I don't think there's much risk for whites visiting Africa beyond any normal risks that come with visiting a third world country.

[All or Nothing]

(11-03-2011 04:03 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(11-02-2011 04:33 AM)Hooligan Harry Wrote:  

Russia is high risk for black guys, more so than any other race. Just like a white guy going to Angola or Cameroon.

Just a little correction here. White tourists aren't targeted for beatings by racist mobs anywhere in Africa. I don't think there's much risk for whites visiting Africa beyond any normal risks that come with visiting a third world country.

Yeah, they're only committing mass genocide vs white farmers.

No need to worry, wealthy white travelers! They are only killing and raping the farmers that look like you.

[Excelsior]

(11-03-2011 02:45 AM)Samseau Wrote:  

What's also hilarious about south africa is that the universities enforce affirmative action in favor of blacks, citing "historical" reasons of racism.

That is hilarious, because we all know that they're exaggerating that whole racism thing down there. Apartheid wasn't that bad, really!

[/sarcasm]

Things like Affirmative Action are designed to combat systems in which certain groups were targeted and subjected to systemic discrimination, prejudice and racism for the benefit of another group.

In South Africa, we saw a system explicitly designed to enrich a white minority (Apartheid was, in many ways, affirmative action for Afrikaners) at the expense of blacks, who were essentially treated as common appliances and/or beasts of burden and given similar opportunities for advancement (read: next to none). They were made second class citizens on their own lands and given little chance to change that fact.

In the United States, we saw pretty much the same thing. Native Americans, blacks and other minorities were pushed aside or exploited for the benefit of European Americans who received land, wealth and other benefits at the expense of those groups, who had little say in the matter and few avenues through which to address their grievances. This entire nation is built on that exploitative model, which up until the end of the civil rights movement was the dominant guiding example for the governance of this country.

This is why these places are unique. They did not build these extreme systems in Canada or the UK, so you will not see affirmative action debates there to any similar extent (despite blacks, Native Americans and other minorities being present in these places in significant numbers). Japan and Korea also had no part in the construction of an exploitative economic system built upon the backs of slavery/land grabbing, so minorities here aren't going to be all that concerned with their racial politics or lack of "diversity".

Similarly, you're not seeing whites getting targeted and slaughtered in Zambia, Botswana, Madagascar, Angola or Namibia (significant white populaces in all of these countries) to the same extent that they are in South Africa. Why are black South Africans so angry at white saffies when their peers in other parts of the continent have generally left their white remnant populations alone? The exploitative system we saw in the form of apartheid in South Africa didn't exist or in these places, at least not to anywhere near the same extent.

Exploitative systems are great for building masses of wealth, but violence and discord are inherent and inevitable consequences of their existence. Shit always hits the fan with them.

You want to know why there is so much hate/anger directed at whites in SA and the USA, and why hate is consistently downplayed/glossed over when it comes from minorities (in the form of hate crimes or blatantly hateful speech)? This is why.

Samseau will roll his eyes and call out "cosmic justice"! I'll look you in the eye and tell you that there is nothing distant or mysteriously extraterrestrial about this and that it is simply reality, like it or not. History does not exist in a vacuum-people learn from and react to it, for better or worse. You only get what you put in, and you are only treated as well as you have treated others.

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All countries have racists, but Western countries are the least racist.

Historically, this isn't true. The history of South Africa and the USA is filled with some of the heaviest racial baggage, which is why these places now see some of the heaviest racial tension.

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Wanna see real racism?

Go to china, africa, or the middle east.

When any of those populations build a system exploitative and immutable enough to match the ones we've seen in the USA and South Africa (at the expense of millions of people who, because of their ethnicity, cannot assimilate, progress within the society or do anything else to combat it), let me know and we'll talk.

[Hooligan Harry]

Sorry Athlone, a lot wrong with that post.

Whites in Zambia were run out of the country in the 70's and 80's. Its already happened. They were shooting people as they were crossing the borders and in particular they would shoot one member of every family. Its seriously fucked up when you speak to people from there. It fell just before Zimbabwe did. Mozambique just came out of a 25 year civil war where the Portuguese either fled or were slaughtered. Angola has been at war for almost 30 years and whites were fighting a war there. South Africa fought their bush war there and it was their vietnam really. There was a massive drive for communism in Africa and Russia funded the west southern african armies.

Communism and trade unions were a real threat to South Africa and its why they banned the black vote. The leading party today is actually formerly a communist party and many of their leaders were educated in Russia. South Africa would have ended up like Cambodia if not for Apartheid and its why they were fighting in Angola. South Africa wanted to move right up into the Congo and Zambia again but the US and UK pulled them back to avoid conflict with Russia. The cold war took a heavy toll on South Africa bro and there is a lot more to things than most people understand or will admit to.

Affirmative action in South Africa is legislated racism. They have sections of the law where companies have to be rated on a points system so that they can be classified as a BEE company, or black economic empowered. This law states that private companies of more than 20 people need to be 26% black owned. If you cant find buyers you have to give it away just to get the ownership stakes up. Private and public companies need to be 50% black managed at board level. You cant bid for government work if you are not BEE compliant and you lose points if you dont deal with BEE companies. Fines are also issued. Imagine being forced to hand over a quarter of business or being forced to sack half your management team. That is not upliftment of people, its racism and its theft.

Its institutionalised racism that is being justified by its past. Its the biggest legal theft in the world right now and its why South Africa went from one of the top 20 economies in the world to mid 30's last I checked. I know this because all the big miners and financial institutions are pulling out, along with a massive exodus of skilled people who are predominantly white. South Africa will end up like Zimbabwe, it will just take longer.

Not only that, but South Africa does not belong to sub Saharan Africans. They invaded the place no different to the Europeans. It belongs to the Khoi and the San, many of which were killed in genocidal campaigns by Africans from the north in the 1500's. WHen Europeans brought disease, the local populations were decimated. But the people who claim ownership of that land and restitution for it are not the rightful owners of it I am afraid.

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When any of those populations build a system exploitative and immutable enough to match the ones we've seen in the USA and South Africa (at the expense of millions of people who, because of their ethnicity, cannot assimilate, progress within the society or do anything else to combat it), let me know and we'll talk.

You are blind if you think South Africa and the USA are unique. You also make out as if blacks were the only race to ever suffer racism. Europeans spent 6000 years facing perpetual genocide and slavery. DOCUMENTED. In this day and age, the only places slavery is still practised is in Africa and the Middle East. The largest slave traders in the ancient world were African. Africans sold more North and South American African slaves than anyone.

Look at the levels of black on black racism in Africa where ethnic cleansing is taken to a whole different level. Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone...I could go on and on here. What happened in the USA and South Africa pales into insignificance Im afraid. You are talking about civilian on civilian at levels so extreme it makes things like Apartheid look like the left wing democracy of Sweden.

Did you know that in South Africa the British put dutch women and children into concentration camps during the boer war? Almost a quarter of the dutch population died in those camp and the white population in South Africa would be as large as Australias if it did not happen. That was the early 1900's.

Blacks are not the only people to suffer bro and reverse discrimination under any guise is simply not acceptable or justified. Once again this proves the point I am making. The MSM conveys immense suffering from one point of view because its politically correct to do so while they all ignore the elephant in the middle of the room. Blacks are not the only victims of this crap nor are the innocent bystanders either.

[Excelsior]

(11-03-2011 09:49 PM)Hooligan Harry Wrote:  

Whites in Zambia were run out of the country in the 70's and 80's. Its already happened. They were shooting people as they were crossing the borders and in particular they would shoot one member of every family. Its seriously fucked up when you speak to people from there. It fell just before Zimbabwe did.

There are 8000 whites still remaining there and you are right, Zambia isn't the best example.

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Mozambique just came out of a 25 year civil war where the Portuguese either fled or were slaughtered. Angola has been at war for almost 30 years and whites were fighting a war there.

Angola is no longer at war, and hasn't been for about a decade now. The civil war ended in 2002.

In either case, violence naturally followed in the country(as well as Mozambique) due to the presence of an exploitative system in prior decades.
My contention is that the white populaces currently in these nations (some of the most substantial of their kind still in Africa) have been in a better position to persist due to the less extreme nature of their predecessors' exploitative system relative to apartheid. South Africa is a much more explosive powder keg of racial tension for this reason.

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South Africa fought their bush war there and it was their vietnam really. There was a massive drive for communism in Africa and Russia funded the west southern african armies.

I'm familiar with the history of the region.

Quote:

Communism and trade unions were a real threat to South Africa and its why they banned the black vote.

Which, of course, is putting the cart in front of the horse.

Communism feeds off of the challenges faced by an oppressed proletariat. The entire ideology is designed to appeal to people who are subjugated by others and are angry about it. The anger of those people is its greatest fuel.

White South African leaders fed this fuel well before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 (denial of black voting/social/economic rights goes back to the mid-19th century in SA, limits on non-white miners helped prevent spread of wealth in late 19th century SA boom towns, and the pass system's earliest predecessor was brought about in 1905-those are just a sliver of the many examples one can draw) by creating a series of racial policies designed to benefit whites at the expense of blacks, and mold the nation's black population into a group of second class citizens with no legal power whose manual labor would uplift a minority.

This, naturally, created a very large pool of downtrodden, subjugated, disenfranchised and angry people...perfect for fodder for communist ideology.

The spread of communism among non-white South Africans was a symptom, not a cause, of apartheid. By claiming to be leading an effort to stamp out communism, apartheid-era leaders were just trying to starve the very beast they'd been feeding for centuries with their own racism.

By denying the black vote and adopting a conservative approach to the erosion of segregationist policies, they just fed it a little more, and were naturally consumed by it.

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The leading party today is actually formerly a communist party and many of their leaders were educated in Russia. South Africa would have ended up like Cambodia if not for Apartheid and its why they were fighting in Angola.

Cart before the horse again. That communist party is a symptom of apartheid and its racialist legal predecessors (the oldest of which long pre-date the Bolshevik revolution), not a cause.

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South Africa wanted to move right up into the Congo and Zambia again but the US and UK pulled them back to avoid conflict with Russia. The cold war took a heavy toll on South Africa bro and there is a lot more to things than most people understand or will admit to.

White South African leaders made their own bed with the cold war. By legislating so many blatantly racialist policies for so long, they had created a fertile ground for communism right in their own back yard, which in turn made their burden during the cold war even heavier to bare.

I have no sympathy for the burden South Africa's apartheid-era leaders took on during the cold war. The toll they paid was largely one they had levied against themselves long ago.

Quote:

Affirmative action in South Africa is legislated racism. They have sections of the law where companies have to be rated on a points system so that they can be classified as a BEE company, or black economic empowered. This law states that private companies of more than 20 people need to be 26% black owned. If you cant find buyers you have to give it away just to get the ownership stakes up. Private and public companies need to be 50% black managed at board level. You cant bid for government work if you are not BEE compliant and you lose points if you dont deal with BEE companies. Fines are also issued. Imagine being forced to hand over a quarter of business or being forced to sack half your management team. That is not upliftment of people, its racism and its theft.

...just like the prior 200 years of South African history, except reversed?

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Its institutionalised racism that is being justified by its past. Its the biggest legal theft in the world right now and its why South Africa went from one of the top 20 economies in the world to mid 30's last I checked.

Biggest legal theft?

I suppose so, but then again I don't think its quite as large as what the nation saw during the prior 200 years.

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I know this because all the big miners and financial institutions are pulling out, along with a massive exodus of skilled people who are predominantly white. South Africa will end up like Zimbabwe, it will just take longer.

Perhaps so (and perhaps not), but in such a case we will certainly know why.
Create, maintain and defend a system of systematic oppression against another group, and expect the shit to hit the fan in time. Few actions have more dire consequences for all involved.

You figure people could learn from history when it comes to this, but given the sheer number alive who either do not recognize said oppression, trivialize said oppression or defend said oppression, I wonder sometimes...

I guess that's just human nature. If we could overcome it, we'd be gods, and that's just unrealistic, I suppose.

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Not only that, but South Africa does not belong to sub Saharan Africans. They invaded the place no different to the Europeans. It belongs to the Khoi and the San, many of which were killed in genocidal campaigns by Africans from the north in the 1500's. WHen Europeans brought disease, the local populations were decimated. But the people who claim ownership of that land and restitution for it are not the rightful owners of it I am afraid.

Neither white nor bantu South Africans can claim origin on South African soil. That just makes the racialist policies established by white south african leaders during the 2000 years prior to the end of apartheid seem even more ridiculous.
They had no more legitimate (one could argue less so) claim to the land than those who they were treating as second class citizens.

Yet they behaved otherwise...and in the process created a beast they could not tame.

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You are blind if you think South Africa and the USA are unique.

Name me a system in modern history that was divisive (organized upon strict, immutable caste systems of race/ethnicity), exploitative and immutable enough to match the ones we've seen in the USA and South Africa...

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In this day and age, the only places slavery is still practised is in Africa and the Middle East. The largest slave traders in the ancient world were African. Africans sold more North and South American African slaves than anyone.

...and this is a standard rebuttal.

It is faulty because it fails to take into account the nature of African slavery and how it contrasted with the Trans-Atlantic variant Europeans created during the 16th century.

The Trans-Atlantic variant was rigid and immutable, with strict racial categorization and division at its foundation and no real opportunities for advancement within it. Due to its rigidity, slaves could not simply assimilate and begin acquiring property, marry into a good family, gain significant wealth or achieve any measure of upward socio-economic mobility.

Slaves in Africa could do that, however. For this matter, so could Arab slaves and Native American slaves. Since we're talking about Europe, it is also worth noting that even Roman slaves (of all ethnic origins) could do this.

Do you know just how many Kings and Princes in recorded West/Central African history today were either the sons of slaves or former slaves themselves? It was standard enough as to not have been notable. Pick any notable West African pre-colonial society and you will notice a preponderance of former slaves or children of slaves among that nation's elite. It was common.

Why don't you name me an American president or high official prior to the end of American slavery that enjoyed a similar status (a slave or the child of a slave)?
You will be unable to do this because the American system, like its South African peer, was fundamentally different in nature. There was no hope for integration here, just division. Because of this, even the few Freedmen who existed were second class, and could do little about it.

To put it in simpler terms:

Trans-Atlantic Slavery: Chattel slavery, based on strict hierarchical racial divisions. It lasted for a lifetime and its victims had the same number of rights as cattle did: zero.

African(alongside Native American, Arab and Ancient Roman/European) Slavery: Essentially indentured servitude. They received wages and could accumulate wealth, property, and status over time.

That is the difference, and it is the reason why you don't see quite so many campaigns for justice against Arabs, Native American groups (ever read about Indian captive raiding in the southwest? Fascinating history), Italians and Africans as plenty are calling for reparations for Trans-Atlantic slavery. One system created rigid, immutable boundaries, and the others didn't, instead giving captives some opportunity. One is hated...the others are largely forgotten.

There is plenty of scholarship on this very topic if you're interested-I've already read plenty of it.

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What happened in the USA and South Africa pales into insignificance Im afraid.

No, it doesn't. Blacks and minorities are well aware of this, which is why they do not generally accept this argument and never actually will.
The systems of subjugation created in those societies were far from insignificant-they were, in reality, the most revolutionary and significant of their kind, which is precisely why they generate the most controversy.

The MSM doesn't plot to make them more notable than their cousins, because it does not need to. They're unique enough to do this on their own, which is why they draw so much attention relative to other systems.

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Did you know that in South Africa the British put dutch women and children into concentration camps during the boer war? Almost a quarter of the dutch population died in those camp and the white population in South Africa would be as large as Australias if it did not happen. That was the early 1900's.

Yes, I know all about the Boer War.

Odd that a people so familiar with unjust persecution and the misery it causes would justify the subjugation and oppression of others for their own benefit, creating, maintaining and defending a system designed for that purpose.

I suppose it goes right back to that old saying: If you fail to learn from history, you will be doomed to repeat it...and its consequences.

[Hooligan Harry]

You keep talking about putting the cart before the horse, but you are doing the exact same thing. You are suggesting there were actually alternative courses of action. There was no alternative. Apartheid or communism. Those were the choices.

Which would you have gone with?

Apartheid was instituted out of a fear of communism, NOT WHITE SUPREMACY. It was one of the worlds largest producers of gold and if it went democratic when Britain abandoned it it would have gone the same way as Cambodia. The whole reason why Apartheid came into place was because of trade unionism and communism. Communisms popularity did not grow as a result of Apartheid and its patently false to suggest that. The current ruling party had a manifesto dating back to the 20's that was outright communist and still is to this day the basis for the ruling party. Read the ANC Freedom charter. This is a fact. Communism did not grow because of white domination in South Africa, it appealed to the poor of which there were many before South Africa was even independent. That is a point that really cannot be disputed Athlone.

White South Africa had no choice and this is what people refuse to understand. You cant look at things in isolation if you wish to be impartial and fair, you have to look at the history of the place.

1 - The original inhabitants were decimated by both sub saharan invaders and europeans.
2 - The entire country was plunged into war after they discovered gold in the late 1800's
3 - The british invaded and placed local whites into concentration camps where more than a quarter of the population perished
4 - The british left in the last 40's leaving South Africa to fend for itself
5 - The trade union movement and communism had been growing since the 20's with the black majority supporting it.

Now ask yourself what choice whites in South Africa had after Britain pulled out. Ask yourself what real advantages most white south africans had when the country was only independent for a few years following destructive wars. Ask yourself what would have happened if South Africa had a democratic vote and never implemented Apartheid.

South Africa would have become a communist state and would have ended up just like Uganda or Cambodia. The largest gold producer in the world would have been a Russian ally, not European and US (why do you think they supported South Africa?). Why do you think the vast majority of whites voted for an end to Apartheid when the USSR collapsed? Why do you think they were fighting in Angola and Congo?

Look at the US investigations during the 40's and 50's regarding communism at home. People were being jailed and convicted of treason in the USA. This was a real threat to the world at the time and South Africa was a country where the majority of the population were both uneducated and communist.

People seek to justify black on white racism by looking at history and cherry picking what suits their argument best. At the end of the day things are always far more complex than most people are willing to acknowledge or admit. Apartheid was a terrible system and they knew it, but it ironically gave South Africa a slim chance. Current legislation is racist in the extreme and it is destroying the economy which was built and inherited. South Africa is quickly turning into a basket case because of the mindset that reverse racism is both justified and excusable.

Zimbabwe is starving and sitting with 80% unemployment, yet 10 years ago we were listening to politically correct justification for the farm invasions. The whites are gone or dead, the people starve and the politically correct among us completely ignore the fact that they excused the barbarism away as they sought answers that would suit their world view at the time. Liberals are quick to demand justice and fair play, yet even quicker to distance themselves from the abortion they were warned it would become.

I also cant believe you are going to try and find some merit in differences methods and forms of slavery to make a point. Fact is that Portugal and Spain were not hunting people with nets in deepest, darkest Africa. They were buying those people in slaver markets Africans themselves were running. Africans played as large a role in slavery as Europeans did and have been slavers since the dawn of time. They are hardly innocent victims here.

I also cant believe you consider the institutional racism of the USA and SA as being worse than what we see in Rwanda or Uganda. Almost a million dead in Rwanda, yet in South Africa the ANC killed more people that the National Party did! That again is a fact. America went to war to end slavery and South Africa ended Apartheid the minute the threat of communism was over. That is far more quarter than Africans give each other and that is conveniently forgotten. White Americans died to free the slaves over 150 years ago and they are still being reminded of how terrible they are. Exactly when is this shit going to stop? Is it ever going to stop or is the excuse simply too good to give up?

I also want you to think about something. How can you realistically and justifiably hold Europeans today responsible for the actions of the people of the past? The civil rights movement and personal liberty as an ideology are still new, the former of which is not even 70 years old. The belief that Europeans or anyone else should be held accountable to the point of reparations and reverse racism today is something that should not sit well with anyone. Civil rights and personal liberty were not the expectation of the time. Slavery is a part of human history since the dawn of time, yet 150 years after we decide its wrong you have people holding everyone since the dawn of time accountable for something that was as common as taking a shit.

There is no theoretical difference between Affirmative Action and Israel demanding reparations for the slavery of the Jews. If Jewish slave labour built the Egyptian monuments, and the Egyptian monuments are the reason why all the tourists go to Egypt today, then one could say that Egypt needs to make amends? After all, there is a great cultural benefit that was provided too with all the monument building. Is there a timeline in place here or what?

Maybe Spain should demand reparations from Turkey? Maybe China should demand reparations from Mongolia? What about Mexico demanding reparations from Spain? Maybe the Xhosa and Pedi should demand reparations from the Zulus because Shaka just about decimated every single tribe from the South coast to Zimbabwe?

[Excelsior]

(11-04-2011 01:19 AM)Hooligan Harry Wrote:  

You keep talking about putting the cart before the horse, but you are doing the exact same thing. You are suggesting there were actually alternative courses of action. There was no alternative. Apartheid or communism. Those were the choices.

Which would you have gone with?

No alternative? Really?

The threat of communism was only there because of racialism, which had created a fertile proletariat. Take the segregationist/racialist policies that had been promoted since the mid 19th century away(or mitigate them), and you have a much less fertile ground for communist agitation in your back yard. Blacks, having had access to some wealth, enfranchisement and opportunity would have benefited from capitalism and would have been a far less prime target for marxist promotion.

There is your alternative solution.

Instead, white South African leaders decided to continue feeding the beast they had created by further disenfranchising blacks via apartheid, giving blacks no legal way out of this situation. They just intensified the source of their own problems and eliminated all non-violent means of addressing it.
They created their own downfall in the process.

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Apartheid was instituted out of a fear of communism, NOT WHITE SUPREMACY. It was one of the worlds largest producers of gold and if it went democratic when Britain abandoned it it would have gone the same way as Cambodia.

So your argument was that white south africans had no choice but to continue maintaining a system that denigrated, subjugated and wholly disenfranchised the black majority because to be any more humanitarian would have resulted in a an instance of genocidal communism?

I don't buy it. Apartheid was a mere continuation of white supremacist policies that had been in effect for centuries in the country. They were not required to continue completely denying the humanity of an entire race of people.
They continued doing so because a) they were viciously racist and b) it was extremely profitable.

There was no nobility in Apartheid.

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The whole reason why Apartheid came into place was because of trade unionism and communism. Communisms popularity did not grow as a result of Apartheid and its patently false to suggest that.

Here is what I said:

(11-03-2011 11:47 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

Communism feeds off of the challenges faced by an oppressed proletariat. The entire ideology is designed to appeal to people who are subjugated by others and are angry about it. The anger of those people is its greatest fuel.

White South African leaders fed this fuel well before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 (denial of black voting/social/economic rights goes back to the mid-19th century in SA, limits on non-white miners helped prevent spread of wealth in late 19th century SA boom towns, and the pass system's earliest predecessor was brought about in 1905-those are just a sliver of the many examples one can draw) by creating a series of racial policies designed to benefit whites at the expense of blacks, and mold the nation's black population into a group of second class citizens with no legal power whose manual labor would uplift a minority.

This, naturally, created a very large pool of downtrodden, subjugated, disenfranchised and angry people...perfect for fodder for communist ideology.

In other words, ample fuel for communism had been accumulated by Apartheid's predecessors in the prior century of South African history. White South African leaders had already deliberately created an angry, disenfranchised class of people, and thus made communist agitation a bigger issue during the cold war.

You now come in to defend apartheid as a necessary tool with which to combat communism, using this as justification.

What you completely overlook is the fact that the same practical ideology behind apartheid (legal subjugation and disenfranchisement of blacks, segregation, etc) is what led to the growth of that communist problem in the first place.

They were trying to starve a beast they had already been feeding for at least a century, and they tried to do it by feeding it with the same fuel it had grown up on (more legalized segregation, more disenfranchisement, fewer legal means of redress, etc).
This was, of course, a poor solution, and history has proven that by showing us the results.

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The current ruling party had a manifesto dating back to the 20's that was outright communist and still is to this day the basis for the ruling party. Read the ANC Freedom charter. This is a fact. Communism did not grow because of white domination in South Africa, it appealed to the poor of which there were many before South Africa was even independent. That is a point that really cannot be disputed Athlone.

The point that cannot be disputed is this: white domination South Africa is centuries older than Apartheid, which was a mere continuance of a much longer legacy of racial oppression.

THAT was the fuel for communism. All apartheid did was stoke it further by making said oppression more extreme and denying the oppressed any legal way out. The ANC only exists because of the systemic legal disenfranchisement that had existed in South Africa since the early 19th century, and to which apartheid was a successor. The ANC only began taking up the assault rifle and communist military instruction after being completely denied any legal means of redress and finally saw that there was no legal way to defeat apartheid (after which they formed the 'Spear of the Nation').

White South African leaders had plenty of opportunities to prevent the shitstorm from flooding their land, and they allowed them all to pass by.

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White South Africa had no choice and this is what people refuse to understand.

People refuse to understand this because it is a load of manure.

The entire argument is nonsensical.

We know Marxism relies on an oppressed proletariat. It MUST HAVE angry, oppressed people in order to thrive. There were plenty of these in post-colonial Africa (thanks to colonialism), which is why so many Marxist governments popped up.

Yet here you are arguing that enfranchising blacks or, at the very least, allowing them to own land, participate in skilled trades (ever wonder why there's a skills shortage in modern SA? 80% of the populace was denied access to skill development for the prior century, that's why), vote, attain quality education, hold office, earn a decent income/move out of poverty, and actually have some frikkin opportunity and social mobility in a land that is no less theirs than it was Europeans' would have actually made communism a bigger problem (even though it would quite clearly have limited the size of that angry, disenfranchised and dirt poor proletariat that marxism depends on in the first place)?

The entire claim is absurd. There is no conspiracy against white South Africans to deny them sympathy and understanding. What people are doing is seeing a load of crap and calling it for what it is.

From the very beginning, the fathers and grandfathers of the men who would later legislate apartheid were passing laws that limited black (and other non-white) physical mobility, land ownership, enfranchisement, social mobility and academic potential. They deliberately deflated non-white wages and limited their potential for career and academic advancement.

They gave non-whites(especially blacks) no choice but to be poor and disenfranchised, to be the very people that marxism most appeals to. They then proceeded to block every single non-violent, legal pathway out of this oppression.

And then here you come trying to claim that this was the only way to prevent the spread of communism? That legislating a continuation of this behavior (which apartheid was) was the only option? That denying blacks and other non-whites basic human rights and any non-violent means of obtaining them would actually help stop the flow of communism?

This is patently absurd.

Quote:

You cant look at things in isolation if you wish to be impartial and fair, you have to look at the history of the place.

1 - The original inhabitants were decimated by both sub saharan invaders and europeans.
2 - The entire country was plunged into war after they discovered gold in the late 1800's
3 - The british invaded and placed local whites into concentration camps where more than a quarter of the population perished
4 - The british left in the last 40's leaving South Africa to fend for itself
5 - The trade union movement and communism had been growing since the 20's with the black majority supporting it.

Now ask yourself what choice whites in South Africa had after Britain pulled out. Ask yourself what real advantages most white south africans had when the country was only independent for a few years following destructive wars. Ask yourself what would have happened if South Africa had a democratic vote and never implemented Apartheid.

You wouldn't have had a bunch of gun toting militants agitating in your back yard for the next 30, 40, 50 years, and the proletariat they relied on for support would not have been nearly as large.

Their entire philosophy is based on hearkening back to oppression, reminding blacks of how they weren't allowed to vote, weren't allowed to accumulate wealth, and weren't allowed any opportunity for advancement. Where on Earth do you think the genocidal rage you see directed at whites now comes from? It did not exist in a vacuum-it came as a direct result of apartheid (and prior) era legislation.

When you treat people like crap and deny them any opportunity to change this, they come to hate you.

You can prevent this from leading to open militancy/violence by opening up a legal pathway for them to redress their grievances. This is what happened in the United States, and it is the reason why the actions of more militant African American groups like the Black Panthers are not only out of existence (much less running the nation and/or leading the formerly oppressed population as is the case in SA), but also were a footnote compared to the size and scope of the accomplishments made by the NAACP's protests and legal work.

American leaders, to their credit, realized the expediency of doing this and preventing instability. When you respect a group's humanity enough to give them a fair legal shake, they'll usually take it, with fewer instances of violence resulting. Blacks here are not openly advocating the slaughter of whites as they are elsewhere for this very reason-when presented with a non-violent way to enfranchise themselves, they took it. Plenty of racial tension still exists, but this beats the alternative.

Apartheid South African leaders, on the other hand, made a concerted effort to deny blacks any legal avenue through which to address their concerns. They were left with two options: remain broke, or fight. Blacks fought, and now you have the tensions you see today.

With apartheid, white South Africans handed the ANC and other militants ammunition on a silver platter by taking these conditions of oppression and not only continuing them, but making them worse, and giving them no other way out.

The ANC is not filled with geniuses and master politicians. All it needs to do is load the ammunition it has been handed and fire.

Jan Smuts saw this entire shit storm coming, which is why he advocated for the gradual opening of legal pathways for blacks to enfranchise themselves and actually attain a few basic human rights. This was not done merely out of the goodness of his heart (the man was no super liberal anti-racist crusader by any means), but he knew that continuing or strengthening segregationist/racialist policies would, in the long term, cause a lot of problems for South Africa, domestically and internationally.

The country did not listen. Hence, consequences.

Quote:

South Africa would have become a communist state and would have ended up just like Uganda or Cambodia.

I still do not see how allowing blacks basic human rights automatically equates to genocidal communism.
Usually, it is the other way around.

Giving blacks a taste of the benefits of capitalism (which was not done prior to 1990) would probably have helped things. Instead, the material benefits of capitalism were kept strictly in non-black hands by legal and martial force.
Is it surprising that many blacks began to see communism as their natural friend, and capitalism as their enemy and/or ally of the oppressor?

Quote:

Look at the US investigations during the 40's and 50's regarding communism at home. People were being jailed and convicted of treason in the USA. This was a real threat to the world at the time and South Africa was a country where the majority of the population were both uneducated and communist.

Ask yourself why the majority of the population was uneducated and communist.

Quote:

I also cant believe you are going to try and find some merit in differences methods and forms of slavery to make a point.

I don't really have to try. Those merits/differences are blatantly obvious to anyone who seriously studies the subject of history, which I actually do.

People with far more credibility, resources and mental horsepower than myself have been pointing those things out for decades. This isn't a secret.

Quote:

Fact is that Portugal and Spain were not hunting people with nets in deepest, darkest Africa. They were buying those people in slaver markets Africans themselves were running. Africans played as large a role in slavery as Europeans did and have been slavers since the dawn of time. They are hardly innocent victims here.

Chattel Slavery vs. Indentured Servitude.

Africans were operating on the latter systems. Europeans tied into it in order to feed the other.

That's the difference. Ignore it if it makes you feel better, but it isn't going away.

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I also cant believe you consider the institutional racism of the USA and SA as being worse than what we see in Rwanda or Uganda. Almost a million dead in Rwanda, yet in South Africa the ANC killed more people that the National Party did!

I am going to introduce you to a new term, and I'm going to quote my own work (derived from research done on the topic for a seminar) for the purpose:

Cultural Genocide:

Quote:

In 1944 Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish heritage known as the originator of the term “genocide”, provided an outline for the definition of his neologism in a work entitled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress. He stated that genocide was designed “to signify a coordinated plan of different actions”, with the ultimate aim involving “the destruction of the essential foundation of the life of national groups”.

Objectives of such a plan would involve the systematic erosion of the “political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion” and the “personal security, liberty, health, dignity and even the lives” of individuals within the group. Physical extermination, therefore, was an important but merely partial component of genocide, and far from an essential feature of the act.

At the 1947 meeting of the UN Economic and Security Council, Lemkin would argue that the explicit definition of cultural genocide included “all policies aimed at destroying the specific characteristics by which a target group is defined or defines itself”.

Though not all of Lemkin’s proposal would see inclusion in the final resolution, his work proved the most crucial progenitor to the later legal articulation of the crime of genocide in 1948, eighty percent of which would consist of nonlethal actions. In defining the acts of physical, biological and cultural genocide, Lemkin attaches no hierarchy to them, having coined the term ethnocide (now often used as an alternative description to separate cultural and physical genocide) as a synonym to his earlier innovation, genocide. Lemkin’s work makes clear that the destruction of a culture is every bit as egregious as the physical destruction and murder of a people, and should not be set aside as a lesser offense. An understanding of the cultural aspect of genocide as articulated by Lemkin is therefore crucially central to understanding the wider perpetration of genocide upon any given populace, as well as the true extent of the challenges they faced.

Citations:

Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), p. 79.

Ward Churchill, Kill The Indian, Save The Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2004), p. 3.

There is a sample.

If you do not come to understand this now, then you will sooner or later: you are never going to be able to use equivocation ("look! that was worse!") to try and justify or minimize the impact of institutional racism to non-whites. Cultural Genocide (to which black south Africans, Native Americans, African Americans, and many others were subjected in modern times) is not considered a lesser offense than physical genocide. Legal and scholarly definitions of genocide do not make this distinction, and neither do the people themselves. All forms are considered equally evil to them.

As you have seen in your country, people will lay their lives on the line to end cultural genocide (often embodied in the form of institutional racism) just as surely as they will any other kind. For them, there is no hierarchy between physical genocide and cultural genocide. One denies your life, the other forces you to live as an animal and not a human (and can in many cases also deny your life). This is a lose-lose.

For this reason when you try to justify institutional racism using equivocation in a discussion with peoples who are related to populations subject to it, you usually won't succeed in getting your point across. You are just going to piss them off a little more, like you're doing now.

That, in turn, will ensure that tensions do not disappear anytime soon.

Quote:

White Americans died to free the slaves over 150 years ago and they are still being reminded of how terrible they are.

Institutional racism in America ended with slavery?

I didn't know that...

Quote:

Exactly when is this shit going to stop? Is it ever going to stop or is the excuse simply too good to give up?

When you try to take actions of cultural genocide (again, embodied in the form of institutional racism) and paint them as mere "excuses", you contribute to the persistence of racial tension.

When institutional racism, the effects of institutional racism (which still persist in the US and SA), the arguments defending/justifying/legitimizing institutional racism and the people that make them disappear, the tension will stop.

As long as those things persist, so will the anger.

Multiracial societies with lower levels of racial tension than SA and the USA exist, so it can be done, but it will take time and understanding.

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I also want you to think about something. How can you realistically and justifiably hold Europeans today responsible for the actions of the people of the past?

1. Many still benefit immensely from those actions (ex: redlining, the G.I. Bill, FHA discrimination, etc). The actions of a past do not exist in a vacuum, and have a large impact even today.

2. Many, like yourself, still defend and/or attempt to imbue nobility into systems of institutional racism which, as far as I'm concerned, makes you a proponent.

Those who fit either of those categories are responsible, in my opinion.

Quote:

Slavery is a part of human history since the dawn of time, yet 150 years after we decide its wrong you have people holding everyone since the dawn of time accountable for something that was as common as taking a shit.

Do I need to go into the differences between different systems of enslavement/labor again and why people react differently to the American/South African variants, or are you going to take the time to read my prior post?

Those other societies you listed are not being hit up for reparations for the same reason nobody is bothering Italians in order to secure reparations for slavery in ancient Rome. They were fundamentally different systems and thus engender fundamentally different responses.

These distinctions are substantive and real. Nobody (not the Jews, not the blacks, and not the "MSM") is making them up as part of some daft conspiracy and nobody has to. They are obvious.

[speakeasy]

HH, just throw in the towel already. It's rather obvious that you are out-classed here.

[Steven Lurkel]

Apropos de the original topic:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...=142020078

Russia Today also mentions the ultranationalists and neo-nazis (in a brief blurb at the bottom of the page) in their overall coverage of the various National Day of Unity events in Moscow:

http://rt.com/news/prime-time/russia-day...unity-585/

[Hooligan Harry]

(11-04-2011 05:32 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

HH, just throw in the towel already. It's rather obvious that you are out-classed here.

You would hope so Speakeasy, my views present a rather uncomfortable truth that is hard for people to accept. Its easy to believe in utopian alternatives that were never a possibility to begin with because they do not assault your sensibilities. Fact of the matter is you are hoping in your heart of hearts here that I may not have a point and you have a preconceived intention of siding with the view that supports your existing belief system. You dont want me to be right, even if I am.

The bottom line is that South Africa in the early 50's had a choice:

Communism or Apartheid.

Those were their options. There were no alternatives. They had to make a clear and pragmatic choice. Go democratic for a few years and they would see the country become a communist state. The worlds largest gold producer at the time a USSR ally during the cold war. Or they could segregate and survive.

You can discuss 300 years of history prior to that and 300 years of history following that, those were their options at that time. Those were your options. There were no alternatives.

So Ill put it to you both now. Which one would you choose? This is not a South African question alone, its a world question. Largest producer of gold in the world, gold was standard currency.

So, Speakeasy and Athlone, which would you choose given the two options:

1) Communism in South Africa
2) Apartheid in South Africa

Pick one.

The reasons for communisms popularity are completely and utterly irrelevant. How ugly Apartheid is as a system is completely and utterly irrelevant. You have to pick one. Both are terrible, but you have to pick one. No one cares what if you agree with either system either, that too is irrelevant. Most whites did not agree with the system either, but they did it anyway.

Please let me know which one you would choose.

Apartheid or Communism?

Athlone is pretty much suggesting that South Africa should have just handed over power to the majority right after independence and become a communist state. A Cambodia. Instead of the 17th largest economy in the world, massive existing infrastructure and highly skilled people, 1990 South Africa would have been better off as a Cambodia type failed communist state which had nothing but abject poverty.

Like I said, and this is completely ignored by Athlone, the civil rights movement is only 70 years old. Slavery in the west ended 150 years ago. Athlone is suggesting that in 1870, whites in South Africa should have known that in 80 years time they would be staring down the barrel. Not only was the ideological belief of social equality in its infancy, the fact that South Africa had no borders either is completely irrelevant to him. The fact that homeland borders existed prior to the formation of official borders means nothing to him. Lets hold people in the past responsible for failing to uphold the virtues of modern day liberties that did not even exist then.

This is what happens when you only study the countries history from one point of view. Race. You end up forming a lop sided view.

I doubt either of you will be prepared to make the hard choice in front of you like South Africans did. The real truth here is that liberals around the world prefer to exist in the "what if", simply because it allows you to form the opinions you wish were a true representation of reality. Its why this debate is becoming completely pointless. You have too much invested to acknowledge that the alternative, while horrible, was pretty much a forced choice and the only option

Heaven forbid we understand that white South Africa may not have been driven by racist ideology and a belief of supremacy, but by pragmatic survival instead. Perish the thought. Lose one of our best examples of systematic racism, white on black, that we have? Cant let that happen can we?

I can accept that Apartheid was a terrible system. I can accept that it was abused by a small minority of whites who were extremists. But given the circumstances of the time, it actually gave the country a chance.

You clearly both cannot accept that unfortunate truth. You tarnish and slander an entire nation of people without having even a basic understanding of what they faced and what options and choices they had.

For all the talk of white racism, the country voted in a landslide to end Apartheid when the USSR collapsed.

You know which people voted for that? The white racists whose ancestors:

- Fled life threatening religious persecution in Holland and France in the 1800's
- Were the same people who could not settle in the Cape and had to move to the interior because they would face the same persecution in the Cape
- Were the people who had their states invaded when they discovered gold and saw a quarter of their population decimated in concentration camps. They suffered genocide not 110 years ago.
- After 50 years of British rule and subjugation, Britain abandons those people to the very likely prospect of communism.

Those are your bad South African racists. Those people had to make the choice I asked you to make. Communism or Apartheid. Pick one, just like they did.

Of course, thats not exactly the sort of "privileged" ride we want to represent when we discuss the whites mans history in South Africa, is it? After all, what would they know about suffering persecution or genocide? I mean heaven forbid these evil bastards be shown to act out of necessity and limited choice rather than ignorant racism.

Ill bow out. I doubt either of you will make that choice presented to you, and the history is far more complex than either of you give it credit for. Cherry picking history like you are doing is no different to white nationalists in the USA cherry picking crime and social statistics to prove black inferiority. You are resorting to the same thing and its shameful.

[Excelsior]

(11-04-2011 11:28 PM)Hooligan Harry Wrote:  

Fact of the matter is you are hoping in your heart of hearts here that I may not have a point and you have a preconceived intention of siding with the view that supports your existing belief system. You dont want me to be right, even if I am.

I'm not hoping, and I don't think anyone else is. That would require me to actually assign your argument some form of legitimacy and/or am compelled by it in some meaningful way...which I am not. Your point of view really and truly does not compel me, and I do not doubt its falsehood for a second. Really, I cannot take it seriously. That is how absurd I consider the argument you are making to be.

If believing that everyone else is in denial makes you feel better, though, then go ahead.

Quote:

The bottom line is that South Africa in the early 50's had a choice:

Communism or Apartheid.

Those were their options. There were no alternatives.

Right. No middle ground, no room for even basic, fundamental human rights. Just complete systematic legal oppression. That's it.

Because lord knows communists are made when you allow people basic, fundamental human rights. That's Marxism 101 right there-the more enfranchised people are, the more they see the appeal of Marxism! That's just what the reds would want-a populace with actual earning potential, upward socio-economic mobility(making them a large consumer base), economic opportunity, access to lucrative career fields, wealth accumulation and advanced degrees. Stalin would have hardly been able to contain himself.

Like I said before: Those who cannot learn from history are just doomed to repeat it.

Quote:

Athlone is pretty much suggesting that South Africa should have just handed over power to the majority right after independence and become a communist state. A Cambodia.

The mind of an apartheid apologist, ladies and gentlemen.

Provision of basic, fundamental human rights = genocidal communism.

Allowing blacks basic rights along with some social and physical mobility on their own frikkin land? Allowing them to learn skilled trades and go to school, and actually enjoy a status above the damn poverty line? Can't do that, then we'd be Cambodia! We'd all die if blacks could go to school, accumulate wealth and live in nice areas, never mind (*gasp*) vote and/or enjoy a more equal status under the law!

No, we need to ensure that blacks have no access at all to the massive material benefits we reap from capitalism, guaranteeing that they remain a poor underclass and...uh...preventing marxist ideas from...err...uh, appealing to them at all...because clearly then they won't see the benefits of communism then...because we'll be so rich (thanks capitalism!) and they, uh, won't...at all...which means they'll love capitalism and hate marxism! They won't be free...so they'll love freedom, like us! I mean, poor, disenfranchised folks with zero legal/social/economic opportunity hate communists...sort of...uh...herp derp derp?

It'll all work out, trust me, we have no choice!!!!111!!!one!

Quote:

A Cambodia. Instead of the 17th largest economy in the world, massive existing infrastructure and highly skilled people, 1990 South Africa would have been better off as a Cambodia type failed communist state which had nothing but abject poverty.

Allowing blacks the chance to enjoy some economic opportunity (ability to advance in skilled careers as more than mere manual laborers, live in nice areas closer to work and generally enjoy the fruits of capitalism just as whites did)...clearly leads to the creation of more abject poverty among them...somehow.

Giving 80% of the population some sort of access social/economic/academic mobility (instead of steadfastly denying them any form of wealth creation and/or academic/career advancement and guaranteeing their continued status as an underclass) would clearly have made them...poorer? Because enfranchised people who can go to school, accumulate wealth, move around freely and own land are...poorer than disenfranchised people who can do none of these things...and a nation with fewer of the former and more of the latter would clearly be richer?

...or is it just whites who wouldn't have been as wealthy under a more egalitarian state (having to live and divide the South African pie right alongside blacks instead of just sending them away to ghettos like Soweto or impoverished reserves with next to nothing)?

I mean, there is no real question that South Africa's non-white populace (that is to say, 88% of the nation's population) would have been far better off socially, economically and politically under such a system, what with the chance to own land, vote, etc. That isn't even debatable, but whites? Well, they would have had to share the wealth then, compete for well-paying jobs (reserved just for them under Apartheid), live next to non-whites...I wonder if that is the real concern behind Apartheid apologism like what we're seeing here? When they say "the nation would have been impoverished", perhaps they mean the White South African one?

Either way, if that type of logic makes you feel better, what can I say? Who am I to deny you the ability to sleep at night?

Quote:

Like I said, and this is completely ignored by Athlone, the civil rights movement is only 70 years old. Slavery in the west ended 150 years ago. Athlone is suggesting that in 1870, whites in South Africa should have known that in 80 years time they would be staring down the barrel.

Jan Smuts saw it all coming in 1948...and he wasn't even a liberal.

Quote:

Lets hold people in the past responsible for failing to uphold the virtues of modern day liberties that did not even exist then.

Golly-gee, how silly of me!

All of these naive ideas of mine (the provision of basic property rites, legal enfranchisement, ability to freely move within the country, fair access to academic and economic opportunity with hard work, equality under god/state) are out of place in this discussion.

After all, nobody had thought of any of these things during the 19th centur-

...wait a second...

...that's, right, nevermind. They hadn't originated these basic concepts during the 19th century.

Those ideas actually came out about over two centuries prior to 1870.

Have you ever heard of the Englihtenment?

Of course you haven't, you wouldn't be spouting such blatant falsehoods if you had. I'll just break it down shortly for you:

The concepts I'm outlining here (basic legal equality under the law, right to property, right to economic and physical mobility, religious and social tolerance, etc) were outlined by many enlightenment thinkers long before 1870. Even Thomas Jefferson echoed some of these concepts with regards to American Indians and US policy on the frontier, and he was no Indian lover.
The many philosophies that arose during the enlightened age gave rise to abolition and minor little events like...you know...the French and American Revolutions?

I am not holding them to any standard they could not have known of and met accordingly. The idea that the complete denial of basic, fundamental human rights is immoral and entirely avoidable (and should be avoided at all costs by any civilized state) is not new. Men like Jefferson and Richard Pratt were talking about the fundamental equality of non-white races (Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, etc) since well before the age of Apartheid. These philosophies existed then, and had been created by the very Europeans we're talking about.

That they failed to adhere to their own philosophies (which, again, they had already clearly put into existence) is an indictment upon them, and them alone.

Quote:

Heaven forbid we understand that white South Africa may not have been driven by racist ideology and a belief of supremacy, but by pragmatic survival instead. Perish the thought. Lose one of our best examples of systematic racism, white on black, that we have? Cant let that happen can we?

We can't give blacks basic fundamental rights. We must segregate them, ban interracial unions, ban their learning trades, and impoverish them...or...we'll all die?

Yeah, because if they become enfranchised, they'll certainly have more reason to hate us...wait...

Quote:

I can accept that Apartheid was a terrible system.

...and yet you defend it.

Quote:

So Ill put it to you both now. Which one would you choose? This is not a South African question alone, its a world question. Largest producer of gold in the world, gold was standard currency.

So, Speakeasy and Athlone, which would you choose given the two options:

1) Communism in South Africa
2) Apartheid in South Africa

Pick one.

Neither, this is a false dichotomy. You've proven stubbornly driven to maintain it even in the face of rather substantial evidence to the contrary, so there is clearly no point in continuing a discussion.

Good talk, bro.

[Hooligan Harry]

Athlone, the shaming language and the general tone you have resorted to are completely offside now. You have decided to get personal and its not on. You continue to illogically skirt around the options that were available to the people of the time because you refuse to accept that maybe it was the only realistic option they had. You completely discount the global picture, the history of white South Africa up until that point and continue along this line of trying to lecture me on how evil the system was.

You are preaching to the converted. Not once have I said that it was a good system or one I agree with. Not once have I apologised for it and you you have continued to completely ignore the reasons why it was adopted in the first place. You cant accept that the alternative was far worse because that would mean you would need to admit that maybe whites in South Africa were not all the racist bigots you want everyone to think they are. No one is going to say that it was a great solution, but it does not change the fact that it was genuinely one of the only options the people had. A system the people voted to end en masse the minute communism was no longer a threat. South Africa never had a war, it voted its way into freedom when the USSR collapsed.

Your views are racist, ignorant and completely one sided. You label and slander an entire nation of people and you try to justify white genocide, legislated racism and legalised theft and one of the worst crime rates in the world. Your hate for white people must run pretty deep if you are going to continue to ignore entire periods of history and recognise the situation for what it was at the time. You clearly know nothing of the history of the place other than the studies on race relations and it just shows what sort of preconceived mindset you took

You are no better than the ignorant ideological dreamers who would condemn the USA for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki yet cant understand the damage would have been far worse had they not fallen. In the real world sometimes hard decisions have to be made. Sometimes there is no right answer, only the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, we have simple minded, agenda driven fools who will exploit this when it suits them.

I hope I am wrong about your racism and your complete ignorance, but when you seek to justify genocide and one of the most hate driven, violent crime rates in the world I battle to take you seriously.

Some interesting facts for you to ignore. Maybe even rejoice over?

1. South Africa's white population would have been close to the majority if not for the Boer Wars, the genocide of their concentration camps and the South African participation in both World Wars which saw casualties under Britain.

2. In the 40 years of Apartheid, about 7000 black South Africans died as a result of political deaths. Please note the URL of the source, its a South African government website run by the ruling party. Since 1990, over 270 000 people have been murdered.

3. Total murders under Mandela, in only 6 years, was about 175 000 people across all races.

4. More than a quarter of the white population has left South Africa. Those are South African passport holders, it does not include British, Australian, Canadian and other European immigrants who held dual nationality.

You have yourself a nice day.

[Arado]

In terms of the mechanics of how not implementing apartheid would have led to communism, check out Chua's World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_on_Fire

Quote:

She believes that democratization can increase ethnic conflicts when an ethnic minority is disproportionately wealthy. "When free market democracy is pursued in the presence of a market-dominant minority, the almost invariable result is backlash. This backlash typically takes one of three forms. The first is a backlash against markets, targeting the market-dominant minority's wealth. The second is a backlash against democracy by forces favorable to the market-dominant minority. The third is violence, sometimes genocidal, directed against the market-dominant minority itself.".[1] Also, "overnight democracy will empower the poor, indigenous majority. What happens is that under those circumstances, democracy doesn't do what we expect it to do – that is, reinforce markets. [Instead,] democracy leads to the emergence of manipulative politicians and demagogues who find that the best way to get votes is by scapegoating the minorities."[2]

This mechanism has played itself out in various countries, from Southeast Asia, to Latin America, to Africa.

Not to say though that it was necessarily an either-or and absolute causality. With proper regulation to ensure equal opportunity it would have been possible to politically empower the majority in South Africa while maintaining a capitalist economy.

[Excelsior]

(11-05-2011 05:34 AM)Hooligan Harry Wrote:  

Athlone, the shaming language and the general tone you have resorted to are completely offside now. You have decided to get personal and its not on.

1. You are getting a less serious tone because you are promoting an argument that cannot be taken seriously.

2. I've addressed your arguments point-by-point. You, on the other hand, have largely ignored mine (you completely failed to address anything I said in post 36, instead choosing in post 39 to just repeat what you said earlier as if it were established fact). Instead of taking my rebuttals individually and thoroughly deconstructing them logically or casting serious doubt upon their legitimacy (as I have done to you and as any debater claiming to be so firmly in the right should be able to do), you simply ignore them and just stubbornly repeat your thesis, while completely failing to provide any substantiation in the form of academic backup or historical precedent.

You cannot debate like that and expect people to assign you legitimacy.

3. You defend apartheid and in this argument have attempted to assign a sense of nobility/legitimacy to it. That's as good as championing it, in my view.

4. Labelled an entire nation of people? I've labelled supporters and defenders of apartheid. Nothing I've said applies to more than 8-10% of the South African populace (not even the entire white populace there). How is that an entire nation?

Unless, of course, white South Africa is the only real South Africa to you and the only South Africa we're really talking about?

5. Hate for white people? And I'm the one accused of using shaming language?

I am anti-racist, not anti-white. Of course, there are plenty of conservatives out there (you're sounding a lot like one of them) who consider both designations to be one and the same, since in their mind some racism is necessary to white survival (as necessary as you are trying to claim Apartheid was), and, ergo, to be against racism is to hinder white survival. Since I do not believe this, we'll never agree.

6.

Quote:

I hope I am wrong about your racism and your complete ignorance, but when you seek to justify genocide and one of the most hate driven, violent crime rates in the world I battle to take you seriously.

I know I'm not wrong about your racism and complete ignorance. When you seek to justify cultural genocide and one of the most discriminatory and racist systems of government in modern history, I battle to take you seriously.

The feeling is totally mutual, bro. You can rest completely assured of that.

[All or Nothing]

(11-05-2011 02:19 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

5. Hate for white people? And I'm the one accused of using shaming language?

I am anti-racist, not anti-white. Of course, there are plenty of conservatives out there (you're sounding a lot like one of them) who consider both designations to be one and the same, since in their mind some racism is necessary to white survival (as necessary as you are trying to claim Apartheid was), and, ergo, to be against racism is to hinder white survival. Since I do not believe this, we'll never agree.

I'm sure you don't hate white people, but you must admit that you spent the vast majority of your time explaining why the blacks are doing what they are doing now. By doing so, you seem to make an indirect attempt to justify their actions.

If you couldn't even muster up the time to allude to the fact that killing white farmers en masse and raping their women is amoral than you are no better than Harry Hooligan in this case. To say you are anti-racist is merely hypocritical.

[Hooligan Harry]

You have not addressed anything Athlone. All you have done is continue to discuss, in great detail, completely and utterly irrelevant points that make no sense and completely ignore the context of the time. You are clutching at straws and basing your entire argument all off the hypothetical.

Thats the whole point. Some of what you have said, along with the context in which you have said it, has me questioning your basic levels of intelligence now. You are basically saying that South Africa would not have had a problem with communism if it had a civil rights movement in, oh, I dunno, 1850? And because they did not take a modern day liberal stance in the mid 1850's, before it was common anywhere in the world let alone a frontier country, you have used that ridiculous position to continue to skirt around the dilemma I posed to you. No matter how utterly illogical your position is, you cling to it while you resort to shaming tactics to try and attack the validity of my views.

To say your position is weak would be an understatement.

Just like South Africans, you are in a corner. Unlike them, you dont have the balls to make a call. Even if basic human liberties were common place in the mid 1800's (they were not), it still does not change the fact that they only had two only two choices because of those mistakes. It was still either apartheid or communism, there is no hypothetical and there was no alternative. Those were their choices. You just refuse to make the choice because you know as well as I do that the alternative to apartheid was far worse. Yet the thought of having to admit that maybe the system was imposed not out of racism and bigotry alone is something you cannot stomach. You dont want to give up the white monster under your bed. Apartheid is to you what the burka is to a feminist.

You have now resorted to labelling me racist because I do not agree with you. You have resorted to shaming tactics in an attempt to attack my credibility and prop up your own weak, ignorant argument based on a completely faulty premise. You dont get to take the moral high ground by default here bro. Not this time. If anything, you owe me a fucking apology.

I dont apologise for Apartheid, I understand and accept the reasons for it. Just like I understand and accept the reasons for the USA dropping bombs on Japan. Again, this is a very simple concept that you have outright ignored Athlone. You dont need to like or agree with the outcome or process to understand why it happened.

Crime statistics and hate crimes in particular are well documented in South Africa. Over 270,000 people have died violently since 1990, a quarter of whites have fled, white farmers have been added to Genocide Watch as they are executed in their homes and the political party has passed racist laws that demand ownership and management of private companies determined by race.

You have sought to justify these racist atrocities, and this to me makes you a hypocrite and a racist. Your views are racist Athlone.

The violence of the last 20 years has made apartheid look like a honeymoon. I gave you official statistics from the South African government with regards to political deaths. The country is starting to collapse as violent crime, disease, infrastructure collapse, corruption and racist legislation has taken hold and every single statistical index will support that claim.

7000 political deaths in 50 years. In Mandelas first 6 years alone, he presided over the violent murders of 175,000 people.

The former offends you deeply, the latter is a by product and gets a shrug of your shoulders. You are clearly only a humanitarian under certain conditions.

Ironically, this supports my earlier claim. White on black racism receives heavy publicity. Black on white racism is often ignored, and when its not, its justified as being the result of previous white on black racism. Either which way, blacks will be painted as the victim even when they are the perpetrator. South Africa and our discussion proves that point quite well dont you think?

This thread has been derailed completely now. The only reason I participated in the first place is because I have a great deal of experience in Russia and wanted to share my views with regards to Russia. I try to be impartial when it comes to history and current affairs because the one thing travel has taught me is that issues are far more complex than most are willing to understand. At the same time, 99.9% of people are good people with good intentions, they are just often misguided. Nothing pisses me off more than hearing people slander and criticise entire groups of people or periods of history when they know little of it or wish to impose their values and belief systems on those people

The last thing I was looking for was a detailed discussion on race as a whole, no good ever comes from it. I made my views on Russia clear and maybe its of use, maybe its not. This is a great forum, but the obsession with race really does detract from the place a bit. Its not something Roosh can really control and nor should he have to, but it does get tired after a while.

[Excelsior]

(11-05-2011 06:46 PM)All or Nothing Wrote:  

I'm sure you don't hate white people, but you must admit that you spent the vast majority of your time explaining why the blacks are doing what they are doing now. By doing so, you seem to make an indirect attempt to justify their actions.

If you couldn't even muster up the time to allude to the fact that killing white farmers en masse and raping their women is amoral than you are no better than Harry Hooligan in this case. To say you are anti-racist is merely hypocritical.

Great, another strawman.

I do not hate white people, nor have I cheered for farm murders (or murders of whites anywhere else, for that matter). I have spent this entire debate arguing against racism and its institutionalized forms by pointing out alternatives to it and its specific consequences (which are almost always horrible). I've spent an inordinate amount of time in here trying to use the consequences of these exploitative systems (as I called them) as further reason NOT to justify them (as HH has been doing with apartheid), because I have never questioned the fact that these consequences are inherently bad.

I have said absolutely nothing to question the amorality of the consequences of institutionalized racism (ex: farm murders, violent crime rise, black-on-white crime increase, hate speech, etc) in any post I have made in this thread. I have said absolutely nothing to question the amorality of hate crime/murder. I have not advocated for their consideration as just actions, nor have I once characterized or phrased these consequences as positives (rather, terms like "shitstorm" were used more commonly instead). To suggest that I have in any way claimed these consequences to be moral or implied as much is pure conjecture on your part.

You're welcome to continue with that if you wish, but I'm not going to entertain it. You are building a strawman I do not plan to fight.

[Excelsior]

(11-05-2011 11:37 PM)Hooligan Harry Wrote:  

Thats the whole point. Some of what you have said, along with the context in which you have said it, has me questioning your basic levels of intelligence now. You are basically saying that South Africa would not have had a problem with communism if it had a civil rights movement in, oh, I dunno, 1850? And because they did not take a modern day liberal stance in the mid 1850's, before it was common anywhere in the world let alone a frontier country, you have used that ridiculous position to continue to skirt around the dilemma I posed to you.

You make everything far too easy.

Here I am claiming that you don't read, and here you are proving that you, in fact, do not.

I won't even bother writing a wall of text in response-I'll just quote myself.

(11-04-2011 02:55 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

Jan Smuts saw this entire shit storm coming, which is why he advocated for the gradual opening of legal pathways for blacks to enfranchise themselves and actually attain a few basic human rights. This was not done merely out of the goodness of his heart (the man was no super liberal anti-racist crusader by any means), but he knew that continuing or strengthening segregationist/racialist policies would, in the long term, cause a lot of problems for South Africa, domestically and internationally.

The country did not listen. Hence, consequences.

A simple google search will reveal that what I alluded to here in post #36 of this thread (the one you completely ignored earlier) was a matter that came up a full century after the era you claim i am focusing on(1948, not 1850).

I am suggesting here that following a policy similar to the one Smuts advocated for provided a legitimate and wiser alternative to Apartheid, one that could have saved South Africa a lot of future trouble. Once again, this could have been done in 1948, not 1850. Smuts agreed, and the fact that his party won a majority of the popular vote during that subsequent election (in spite of ultimately losing it) suggests that many others did as well.

Here is another quote from me you ignored:

(11-05-2011 02:28 AM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

Quote:

Like I said, and this is completely ignored by Athlone, the civil rights movement is only 70 years old. Slavery in the west ended 150 years ago. Athlone is suggesting that in 1870, whites in South Africa should have known that in 80 years time they would be staring down the barrel.

Jan Smuts saw it all coming in 1948...and he wasn't even a liberal.

And another:

(11-04-2011 02:55 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

Instead, white South African leaders decided to continue feeding the beast they had created by further disenfranchising blacks via apartheid, giving blacks no legal way out of this situation. They just intensified the source of their own problems and eliminated all non-violent means of addressing it.
They created their own downfall in the process.

(11-04-2011 02:55 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

The ANC only began taking up the assault rifle and communist military instruction after being completely denied any legal means of redress and finally saw that there was no legal way to defeat apartheid (after which they formed the 'Spear of the Nation').

(11-04-2011 02:55 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

Quote:

Ask yourself what would have happened if South Africa had a democratic vote and never implemented Apartheid.

You wouldn't have had a bunch of gun toting militants agitating in your back yard for the next 30, 40, 50 years, and the proletariat they relied on for support would not have been nearly as large.

Their entire philosophy is based on hearkening back to oppression, reminding blacks of how they weren't allowed to vote, weren't allowed to accumulate wealth, and weren't allowed any opportunity for advancement. Where on Earth do you think the genocidal rage you see directed at whites now comes from? It did not exist in a vacuum-it came as a direct result of apartheid (and prior) era legislation.

When you treat people like crap and deny them any opportunity to change this, they come to hate you.

You can prevent this from leading to open militancy/violence by opening up a legal pathway for them to redress their grievances. This is what happened in the United States, and it is the reason why the actions of more militant African American groups like the Black Panthers are not only out of existence (much less running the nation and/or leading the formerly oppressed population as is the case in SA), but also were a footnote compared to the size and scope of the accomplishments made by the NAACP's protests and legal work.

American leaders, to their credit, realized the expediency of doing this and preventing instability. When you respect a group's humanity enough to give them a fair legal shake, they'll usually take it, with fewer instances of violence resulting. Blacks here are not openly advocating the slaughter of whites as they are elsewhere for this very reason-when presented with a non-violent way to enfranchise themselves, they took it. Plenty of racial tension still exists, but this beats the alternative.

Apartheid South African leaders, on the other hand, made a concerted effort to deny blacks any legal avenue through which to address their concerns. They were left with two options: remain broke, or fight. Blacks fought, and now you have the tensions you see today.

With apartheid, white South Africans handed the ANC and other militants ammunition on a silver platter by taking these conditions of oppression and not only continuing them, but making them worse, and giving them no other way out.

Those last quotes (all from the post you ignored earlier) suggest that something could have been done to mitigate concerns in 1948 (just prior to the legislation of apartheid), not just 1850. In fact, they could have applied these solutions even later than that (during the 1950's, for example) and still had some effect. I suggest that the failing of white South African leaders was not that they failed to squash racialism in 1850(the root of communism in their country), but that by legislating apartheid, they elected to continue and strengthen it (and, by proxy, strengthen communism). This was not a necessary solution-there were valid alternatives available to them during the middle of the 20th century, and they did not all involve giving the full vote immediately or echoing modern day American/European liberalism, though even without those things they would still have undoubtedly provided a better outcome.

You have decided to portray my argument (without even reading it) as this:

"South Africa needed to become liberal during the mid 19th century to prevent communism, as racial oppression during this era is the root of communist development in the country."
From here, you've railed on about my naivete, ignorance, etc, and concluded that I have "no balls".
The reality is that you do not even have my argument properly characterized, which makes sense since you probably did not read it.

What I have actually been saying this whole time (as the quotes and posts above establish) is this:

"The roots of communism in South Africa stem from historic racial oppression that originated during the 19th century and prior. South Africa could best have mitigated the continued spread of this communism by adopting a slightly more egalitarian path (Jan Smuts advocated for this, and he was not a "modern day liberal", nor did he do it out of the goodness of his heart) during the middle of the 20th century, providing non-whites with a few basic, fundamental human rights(again, as Smuts had suggested[though he did not suggest the vote]). By adopting apartheid instead, they only intensified the object that had been fueling the growth of communism to begin with (racialism, segregation, etc), thus making their burden during the cold war harder to bare".

If you read my last quote closely there, I also suggest that White South African leaders' failure to provide clear, legal means with which to challenge and change apartheid during the middle of the 20th century (not the 19th, as you so ignorantly suggested) as Americans had done for African-American activists also created problems, and that doing that could have prevented the ANC from becoming as violent and Marxist as it did (when given a non-violent option, oppressed groups usually take it). This was an option White South African leaders could have exercised well after 1948, even.

Read the quotes above closely again (better yet, read the actual posts I made earlier), and you will see that this is indeed the real implication of my actual words.

Until you're actually capable of understanding and deconstructing an opposing argument, I will continue to regard you (and every argument you make) as nothing to be taken seriously.

[Hooligan Harry]

Your views are not impartial and you only see this from one perspective. The entire premise of your argument, as I have already stated, is based on nothing more than wishy washy hypothetical bullshit that outright ignores the reality of the situation or the history of the country as a whole. There is nothing to deconstruct when its based on a foundation of quicksand

It is selective and its a manipulation of fact. Im hoping its through ignorance, because if its not, then the alternative is that you are quite simply an outright racist. Your selective reasoning would be a rationalisation of epic proportions if its not coming from a point of ignorance, and I really do hope its not the case.

Example:

Althlon Wrote:

White South African leaders fed this fuel well before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 (denial of black voting/social/economic rights goes back to the mid-19th century in SA, limits on non-white miners helped prevent spread of wealth in late 19th century SA boom towns, and the pass system's earliest predecessor was brought about in 1905-those are just a sliver of the many examples one can draw) by creating a series of racial policies designed to benefit whites at the expense of blacks, and mold the nation's black population into a group of second class citizens with no legal power whose manual labor would uplift a minority.

Right there, your own words in this thread. The completely unrealistic expectation that a frontier country without borders and central governance provide civil liberties in a time where they were simply not the way of world. Yes, communisms popularity was fuelled by that, that is not being disputed. It does not change the fact though that South Africas independence came with the problem of dealing with that legacy and the legacy of 50 years of British Commonwealth rule on top.

HOW CAN YOU LOGICALLY TRY AND DISPUTE THAT POINT?

South Africa gained independence in the late 40's, but it was subject to British rule and commonwealth law for over 50 years at that stage. They fought a civil war over that remember? The one where over a quarter of the white Afrikaans population was decimated in concentration camps (predominantly female and children)? The red carpet of white privilege in South Africa is wonderful indeed, I must say.

What you are refusing to accept is that they never even had the political power to make the hypothetical choices you are proposing. They walked into a shit storm

You continue to lump all white South Africans into one big group. They were not a collective, politically, socially or economically. It was a British colony and many of the laws and race related policy were standard across the Commonwealth. It was the same in Australia and New Zealand. South Africa was abandoned in the late 40's when the English empire receded. Much like India and the Middle East. And much like those countries, the locals inherited many of the problems the previous occupiers left them with. Unlike Australia and New Zealand, the whites were a minority in South Africa, not a majority. They had been decimated by wars and genocide To make matters worse, the black majority had taken to full blown Marxism and the country was staring down the barrel.

This is such a crucial and important fact in South Africas history and it clearly needs to be spelled out for you constantly. Again, you say you are anti racism, but you completely ignore the racism and persecution white Afrikaans people endured that led them to that point in history! A quarter of the black population was not exterminated in the 40 years of apartheid or the 50 years of British rule previous to that. They were not conscripted into world wars and counted towards British casualties. The local Afrikaans population had a quarter of its population die in concentration camps at the hand of the British. Mostly women and children, destroying any chance of a sizable population developing.

Fuck, the one sided view you have is absolutely disgusting. Its like inter-cultural and ethnic discrimination between whites does not even matter or should not even be considered as important, relevant or decisive? You ignore it completely and utterly, then try to claim the moral high ground.

When looked at impartially, the only options facing the people after independence, not white South Africa alone, THE PEOPLE, was either communism or Apartheid. There was absolutely no way a gradual transition could be made like Smuts proposed because unlike the USA which you have compared it to, blacks were the majority. Political power would have led to communism, no ifs or buts. And under communistic rule, South Africans of all colours would have suffered, blacks being far worse off than they would have been under Apartheid. Again, and its why I keep talking about the white genocide and the white participation in world wars. If that had not happened, the white population would have been large enough to sustain a gradual transition and there would have been no need for Apartheid in the first place. Communism would not have been the only possible outcome and Apartheid would not have been the only possible alternative. But just like you cant wipe away the social injustices that led a rise in communism among poor blacks, you cannot wipe away the social injustices of white genocide and conscription that decimated the population either.

There had to be a complete hand over of power, like we saw them do following a whites only vote in the early 90's. It could not be done in the 50's, it would have become a communist state. They VOTED to abolish Apartheid after the USSR collapsed. It was voted for in the majority. There was no civil war or shots fired. They knew that voting yes was handing over political power, but once the threat of communism had subsided they did it.

And when you learn to view South Africas history for what it is, you see Apartheid for it really was. A political system imposed to counter the threat of marxism, not an excuse for white supremacists to subjugate millions of people for nothing more than personal benefit like everyone suggests it was. Yes, individuals exploited the system, but that is typical of every system and its typical of South Africa now under African leadership.

When over 70% of the white population votes for an end to a system, knowing full well they would lose all political and judicial power, it says quite a lot about the character of the people as a whole and how perhaps they were motivated less by race than you are willing to admit.

They were faced with a choice so horrible you dont even like to contemplate the idea of having to pick one. You skirt around it completely, insisting that its an irrefutable fact that there were alternatives when there really were none. Instead, you hop onto your unicorn and head for a land of fairy dust and rainbows where practical alternatives exist only in this wonderful alternative universe you have created for yourself and them.

Like a burka to a feminist.

[Arado]

Quote:

There was absolutely no way a gradual transition could be made like Smuts proposed because unlike the USA which you have compared it to, blacks were the majority. Political power would have led to communism, no ifs or buts. And under communistic rule, South Africans of all colours would have suffered, blacks being far worse off than they would have been under Apartheid.

This is the essential difference between market dominant majority and minority countries. In the former, the less advantaged group can be empowered without major economic consequences. In the latter, the result is a backlash against markets which led to the initial unequal redistribution.

[Excelsior]

This is getting old. Time to get to the meat of the matter and wrap it up soon...

(11-06-2011 03:15 AM)Hooligan Harry Wrote:  

What you are refusing to accept is that they never even had the political power to make the hypothetical choices you are proposing.

White South Africans absolutely had the political power to have adopted a less extreme segregationinst approach during the middle of the 20th century. If we look at the popular votes following Smuts' defeat, we'll see that they nearly exercised such power. That isn't debatable.

Quote:

When looked at impartially, the only options facing the people after independence, not white South Africa alone, THE PEOPLE, was either communism or Apartheid. There was absolutely no way a gradual transition could be made like Smuts proposed because unlike the USA which you have compared it to, blacks were the majority. Political power would have led to communism, no ifs or buts.

There is no evidence that Smuts supported the provision of equal political rights to blacks at that point in time, so your scenario was not in play. Blacks would have received many other fundamental rights that would have bettered their condition significantly, but the full vote is not one of them. Your genocidal communist nightmare would still not have come about.

A gradual transition could have been accomplished without instant communism (a scenario that only would have come about if Smuts had advocated for the immediate provision of equal political rights, which he did not). To do it, however, you would have had to have shown blacks the full benefits of capitalism (as Smuts proposed, allowing them to live in nicer areas and become a proper consumer base over time with more in the way of human rights). Apartheid leaders were unwilling to do this, because the vast majority of them (not the least of which was Verwoerd) shared a fundamental belief in black animalism and inferiority. Living next to them and sharing wealth was not an option.

Now, it appears as though we've gotten to the meat of the matter.

I think the interesting question here is this: how come blacks, being a majority, don't get a chance to determine their own future in their own land (which, as we've discussed, belonged as much if not more so to them than any European)?

Why the implicit assumption that only whites had the right to decide what was really right for South Africa politically (even if it meant Apartheid for blacks or the rise of other legislation at black expense)? You say "blacks were the majority" as if it were a mere mitigating factor/frustration, and as if that fact entitled them to no agency of their own in determining South Africa's direction.

Don't you think that perhaps, as residents of the South African nation (in fact, as 80% of the South African nation), they should have gotten a say in their own future? Even if it was a say whites(or yourself) did not agree with, their opinion wouldn't matter less, would it? Why not count it?

Quote:

And under communistic rule, South Africans of all colours would have suffered, blacks being far worse off than they would have been under Apartheid.

1. Prove it. I'd like some substantiation (academic or otherwise) for this one. Apartheid was an act of cultural genocide which, as I've already shown earlier, is not looked upon favorably in any academic or legal circles.
Show me conclusively that self-determination would have been substantively worse.

2. Again, how come only whites got to have a say in this decision? What about black agency? Doesn't 80% of the population get to have an opinion counted?

Quote:

If that had not happened, the white population would have been large enough to sustain a gradual transition and there would have been no need for Apartheid in the first place.

Hold on here.

Why is it that the white population is the only pivotal factor? Why don't blacks get to decide if there is a "need" for them to deal with apartheid on their own lands? These decisions will affect them too, right? They're more numerous than whites and have an even longer legitimate claim to the land, so shouldn't they be heard as well(even if you do not like what they have to say)?