It seems that once again all us white folks have missed a great
opportunity...
While the Black people attended Zuma's inauguration and parades, we
should have broken into their homes and gotten all our shit back.
By Dr. Dan Roodt, Afrikaner Action Group (PRAAG)
February 2005
During the time of National Party reforms in the seventies and eighties,
the cliché "adapt or die" used to do the rounds. Nowadays, given the
highest murder rate in the world, this should be modified slightly to
read, "adapt _and_ die". For the endemic social violence in South Africa
is probably incurable.
Optimists think that violent crime can be solved through better
policing, more efficient courts and more secure prisons. Even assuming
that such improvements were possible under conditions of hard-core
affirmative action, it must be admitted that criminal justice treats the
symptom and not the cause of social violence. The Department of
Correctional Services, for one, has lost 496 out of 500 former Deputy
Directors since 1994, representing most of the intellectual capital in
the department. Newcomers may learn their job properly, or they may not,
but they have to be flown to overseas countries to find out how prisons
work as most of those previously involved in managing our prisons are no
longer there.
South Africa used to have a problem of political violence. It was not as
bad as elsewhere in Africa, but for some reason elicited hysterical
international condemnation. However, actors in political violence are
mostly driven by some sort of creed or belief system. Whether such a
person is a communist, an anarchist, a neo-Nazi or an ethnic or
religious guerilla fighter, he is usually amenable to persuasion or
compromise. Even a group of Muslim suicide bombers might declare peace
if they were given a territory in which to set up an Islamic theocracy,
governed only by themselves and not subject to any outside influence.
In the same way, South Africa's so-called liberation movements who were
at one time fanatically convinced of the need for violent and bloody
revolution, laid down arms and bombs upon being told that F.W. de Klerk
would surrender power unconditionally. Solving political violence is
often intractable, but not impossible.
Not so social violence. Endemic crime, the breakdown of the social
fabric, a sense of drift regarding norms of good conduct, point to a far
deeper problem. The freedom fighter or urban terrorist is ultimately
rational, despite a value system that normal society might find
idiosyncratic.
But what is "normal society"? It is only the sum-total of behaviours
prevalent in any given society at any given time. The Aztecs,
infamously, practised daily human sacrifice to appease their sun god. It
might revolt many of us today, but to them it was entirely normal. South
Africa currently sacrifices about 87 humans per day to violent crime, or
32 000 per year. Those are only the ones who actually die. Scores of
others are injured, maimed, traumatised, robbed, raped, burgled and so on.
In any suburb today an entire history of murders, hijackings, and other
violent events can be written, if only the locals were narcissistic
enough to consider their own history worth recording for posterity. On
the other hand, social violence lacks the charm and grandeur of
political violence as it is usually not committed in the interest of
some glamorous cause like national liberation or world revolution but
simply to acquire some hapless person's BMW or rape his wife because she
happened to be inside.
However, some time ago a Johannesburg newspaper engaged in chronicling
some local history in the suburbs of Westdene and Lakefield in Benoni.
Nearly every resident had a story to tell, an entire litany of mayhem.
Mr. John Gee miraculously survived a shot through the eye, but now feels
traumatised. His wife says, "One lives in fear in one's own home. One
does not sleep. One prays for protection, yet only more fears come."
But who are the authors of South Africa's social violence? Even asking
this question presents one with a sense of discomfort, because most
violent criminals in South Africa are young black men between the ages
of 16 and 36. As one surgeon who had stitched together at least three
child rape victims, two of whom were infants, said recently, "Probably
white men commit such acts too; it is just that no-one in South Africa
has come across such a case."
Of course, it would be preposterous to say that all young black men are
prone to violence. Judging from our daily experiences in crime-torn
South Africa, however, a sub-section of that population, large enough to
cause more havoc than even a well-equipped guerilla army of a few
thousand men, has taken up practices such as heists, hold-ups, murders,
sexual violence exacted upon women and children, and so on.
Explanations for such deviancy are manifold. The ubiquitous answer of it
being due to apartheid might have been satisfying if other African
societies never subject to group areas and a homeland system did not
display similar traits. The Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone come to mind.
There is a whole nature/nurture debate around black violence, except
that no adherent of the "nature" side would publicly admit to being one,
for fear of being branded a racist. Even though mainstream American
cancer research has conclusively shown that black men have higher levels
of testosterone than their white counterparts, few would hazard the
notion that this might be linked to their greater propensity for violent
crime.
America has a gargantuan prison population of two million, over half of
which consists of African-Americans. This is despite their minority
status in the USA, comprising only 12% of an overall population
amounting to 290 million. South Africa could neither afford nor succeed,
given the dire state of our criminal justice system, in jailing a
similar number of black male offenders. Currently, only 10% of murderers
in South Africa get arrested and only 6% are convicted. Any murderer
therefore has a 94% chance of getting away with it.
If by some miracle all serious criminals in the country had to be caught
and imprisoned, the prison population would surely treble or quadruple
from the present 200 000, which is already high by world standards. Not
only is such an improvement inconceivable under current conditions, but
it would also be politically unpopular with the ruling ANC who would be
incarcerating large numbers of young black males who are mostly its own
supporters at the polls. Few whites, if any, commit violent crime and
there are only 3 900 of them in prison, mostly for white-collar offences
such as fraud or insider trading on the stock exchange.
All that remains in the world's most violent society, is precisely to
adapt and die. Twice as many South Africans of all races now die of
murder than of road accidents - even though the road accident rate is
also the highest in the world, surpassing that of Turkey. Crime extends
to trade in driver's licences, so that a large number of drivers use
so-called "bought licences", hardly a contribution to road safety.
There are some people naive enough to think that "something can be done
about crime" in South Africa, mostly opposition politicians who dream
about diverting funds from arms procurement to policing, but this would
be futile. There are already three times as many private security
personnel as state-employed policemen, and even they do not succeed in
containing what has become Africa's only peacetime killing field.
"I killed them because they were white." These famous words were spoken
last year by William Kekana, who participated in one of the most
horrendous incidents in which the entire family of Mr. Clifford
Rawstorne was wiped out, consisting of his fiancée, baby, as well as his
own mother. Even this massacre of an entire family would not have made
headlines, were it not for the fact that one year-old Kayla was executed
on her very first birthday with a shot in the head. Needless to say, the
two adult women were first raped before being killed. Both William
Kekana and his accomplice, Charles Fido Baloyi, fell into the high-risk
group of young black (and Coloured) males who commit almost all violent
crime in the country.
South Africa actually has a Minister of Safety and Security, which to
some might seem like an example of absurd humour. His Excellency Mr.
Charles Nqakula, whose official résumé proudly states that he was once
"a waiter and wine steward", has immortalised himself by euphemistically
stating that there was no real crime problem in South Africa, except
that it was "a little on the high side".
All in all, South Africa has got remarkably used to its new-found status
as the crime capital of the world. The high-rise districts of Hillbrow
and Berea in Johannesburg have been officially designated by Interpol as
having the highest murder rate in the world, that is, 600 people per 100
000 population members per annum. Consider for a moment that such a
figure represents 12 times the rate found in inner-city ghettoes in the
United States, often seen as no-go zones by many Americans.
One British immigrant to South Africa who has survived three car
hijackings, refuses to emigrate, stating that he is now accustomed to
having Kalachnikovs pointed at him from point-blank range. Everyone
knows a relative or friend who has been killed or at least subjected to
some form of violent crime, and no South African can remotely imagine a
society where people do not live behind razor wire, electrified fences,
high walls, burglar bars and similar decorative props.
Outsiders might find our lifestyle bizarre, but many pundits in South
Africa consider our society to be much more "normal" now than at any
time in the past, which was tarnished by ethnic separation albeit
without the present large-scale violence. At the height of segregation
and apartheid under Hendrik Verwoerd, South Africa was almost as
peaceful as Switzerland but she was immoral. Today we are the apotheosis
of racial morality and political correctness, yet as violent as the
Congo or Liberia. Surprisingly, however, our economy continues to
function amid the carnage. No economist has ever studied this as far as
I know, but not only is crime our biggest industry - bigger than
gold-mining or manufacturing - it also stimulates consumption as stolen
goods are replaced; it is a boon to the insurance and security
industries and ultimately makes surgeons and undertakers rich. The
government earns billions of rands in Value-Added Tax on stolent goods
being replaced with new ones. So crime pays.
News about killings or shoot-outs no longer elicits the slightest
surprise. It is part of our daily existence, and one assumes the lethal
risks attending to something as simple as going shopping or driving to
work. My wife, for example, has twice been to the local shopping centre
where in the one instance a shoot-out was taking place in the parking
area so that she had to hide between the cars with our 18 month-old son
in her arms; in the second case an armed robbery had just taken place
with the robbers casually strolling by with their guns and their loot.
Everyone knows someone who has been killed, raped or maimed. Just this
week, the wife of a friend and former literary editor of Die Burger,
François Smith, was stabbed to death with a screwdriver in their home in
Wellington, near Cape Town. Her murderer was a 16-year-old squatter camp
resident whose race was omitted by the press but presumably few, if any
whites, reside in his particular squatter camp which is dedicated to
black Africans. Lisbé Smuts-Smith was a well-known academic and head of
the Afrikaans literature department at the University of Cape Town. Just
two weeks ago, another UCT academic, mathematician Brian Hahn, was
attacked by a former student, dr. Maleafisha Steve Tladi (35). Hahn died
in hospital a week later, while Tladi was released on bail of R500
(about $80).
Two years ago Louw Rabie, a brilliant albeit reclusive geologist and
brother of author Jan Rabie, was beaten to death with a fence pole by
two Coloured men to whom he had lent some money a week earlier. Police
in the small Cape town of Montagu readily caught his murderers because
they happened to have drinking money during the week, taken from his
home. He was 80 years old, but in good health. He is reputed to have
been one of the most brilliant geologists and intellectuals this country
has ever produced, writing copiously throughout his life but disdaining
publication and public esteem. Africans with their oral tradition are
fond of saying that "when an old person dies, a library burns down".
What strikes me about the relentless killings of educated whites, is
that the criminals are indeed "burning down the libraries" of this
country and physically exterminating the intellectual class, much like
Pol Pot did in Cambodia. The media are celebrating youth, dance, colour,
being black and exuberant - as opposed to the quiet studiousness of
middle-aged and elderly whites, the bearers of knowledge and
understanding. Are these learned whites who are being killed in
exuberant, paradisiacal outbreaks of violence simply the remnants of a
civilisation that is being eradicated in the name of decolonisation? No
government spokesman has ever condemned such killings; so we may assume
that the present regime is completely indifferent to them, where such
killings do not enjoy their tacit support.
Around our local school in the past week there have been two car
hijackings, as well as one murder. It is not really considered to be an
exceptionally violent area. Most of this is not even reported in the
press, because there really is not enough space and ordinary crime is no
longer newsworthy. It needs some further sadistic element to make the
front page, such as babies getting killed or raped, or elderly farmers
being tortured to death. Farming in South Africa is now arguably the
most dangerous profession in the world with more than 1600 farmers
murdered since 1994, often in macabre and dehumanising ways.
To the outside world, white South Africans are congenitally evil. If our
murderers and rapists had been white and their victims black, Europe or
the United States would long ago have sent an expeditionary force to put
a stop to it. At present, news of white suffering in South Africa
inspires the occasional yawn in Western capitals. This is why a recent
article in The Despatch, detailing the rape of a dog by three black men,
gave me some hope that a chord will be struck somewhere in the coolly
indifferent breasts of our fellow-Westerners. Even if the lives of Louw
Rabie, Brian Hahn, Lisbé Smuts-Smith, Kayla Rawstorne and tens of
thousands of others are of no value to them, perhaps they will take pity
on the mongrel bitch in Grahamstown that was recently raped by three
black men. Or perhaps two black men, as the third one protested his
innocence upon being dragged out of the shack by screaming, "I came here
to relieve myself. These two were raping the dog when I arrived!"
Cruelty to humans, especially white humans, is today a normal feature of
our society, just like human sacrifice used to be in the culture of the
Aztecs. Cruelty to animals, or non-consensual sex with dogs, may still
evoke some sympathy, not only locally, but also internationally. I
therefore feel sorry for Masganda - the name of the dog concerned - who
was rescued with a bleeding vagina and in need of veterinary attention,
but perhaps this lowly creature of uncertain lineage could become a
martyr for our cause in alerting opinion-makers and political leaders of
our plight.
Cycling has become a popular sport in South Africa. However, its
practitioners regularly get shot at by gangs of black youths in the
street, so that many of them carry guns and knives for self-defence on
their bicycles. Members of the Johannesburg mountain-bike club were
outraged a while ago when two cyclists, Scott and Lloyd Griffith, were
charged with murder after an armed battle with their four black
assailants, one of whom succumbed to his wounds.
Most of the time, however, whites are helpless victims of crime. The
government has recently passed a new gun law which makes it difficult,
if not impossible, to own a fire-arm. They have also abolished rural
commandos of military reservists entrusted with crime-prevention in the
country, without any police units replacing them. Occasionally the
newspapers carry stories of crime victims successfully defending
themselves against attacks, offering armed resistance. As a result of
the new gun law, this will soon end and we shall simply be able to hide
or flee from our assailants. Defending oneself against a marauding
robber or rapist might be a manifestation of racism, and is therefore
frowned upon as being a kind of "right-wing" response.
Being robbed of one's vehicle or household belongings is now considered
quite normal, and often people ascribe escaping with their lives to
their own astuteness, such as being friendly to the robber, helping him
load the effects into a vehicle, not looking him in the face so as not
to recognise him afterwards, et cetera. A friend of mine in Kempton Park
kept up a reasonable conversation with the thieves emptying his house,
tied up as he was with a gun pointed at him. He survived, although his
elderly mother was badly roughed up and had to be hospitalised. In other
instances, of course, people are not so lucky and they become just
another murder statistic. Then they simply adapt and die.
*
The first draft of this article was submitted to the British Spectator,
who turned it down about a year ago. I have now updated it with
references to more recent incidents. Probably no mainstream newspaper in
South Africa will publish it, because it refers to the race and gender
of violent criminals, which is taboo here as elsewhere in the Western
world. As George Orwell said, however, "during times of universal
deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act".
In the interest of drawing attention to the anarchy that exists in South
Africa, the author qualifies his copyright on this article and invites
everyone to post it on his or her website, copy it and mail it to
friends and mailing lists, translate it into other languages and to
distribute it far and wide. The only condition is that no element must
be changed or censored.
A PDF-version of the article which can be printed out, photocopied and
distributed otherwise than on the internet, is available for download on
the home page of www.praag.org.
Dan Roodt is an Afrikaner author and activist.
What do you call...
1. A doctor that does circumcisions? Dr. P.P. Snyman
2. An Afrikaner Gynaecologist? Dr.Koekemoer
3. An Afrikaner who doesn't go to church? Van NieKerk
4. The Afrikaner that's always high? POTgieter
5. An Afrikaner that trips and falls in the mountains? Van der Berg
6. The Afrikaner that votes in EVERY election? WOUTER
7. The Afrikaner that drives the loud Datsun Stanza? BASSon
8. The Afrikaner that is very well endowed? De LANGE
9. A male Afrikaner that prefers other male species? De KOCK
10. An Afrikaner moffie? Sakkie De Kock.
Aan almal wat in verre, vreemde lande sit en smag na Afrikaans, en vir
almal by die "huis" Geniet dit! Die pennevrug van prof. Johan Combrinck,
voormalige Voorsitter van die Taalkommissie van die S.A. Akademie vir
Wetenskap en Kuns:
DIE UNIEKE AFRIKAANSE "FOK"
Een van die interessantste, kleurvolste woorde in Afrikaans, is die
leenwoord fok en sy familie. Dis 'n towerwoord wat, bloot deur sy klank,
vreugde of pyn, liefde of haat, ontdekking of frustrasie kan weergee.
Fok is een van die min woorde wat die funksie van byna alle woordsoorte
kan vervul.
Dit word as oorganklike werkwoord gebruik (Fok die hele spul), en as
onoorganklike werkwoord (Ag fok), as bevel (Fok dit!), in die bedrywende
vorm (Dit het my gefok), sowel as die lydende vorm (Nou is jy heeltemal
gefok), as die hoofelement in 'n hele reeks skeibare werkwoorde
(aanfok,opfok, uitfok, toefok, voortfok, byfok, agteroorfok,
agternafok), ens of as stam van 'n werkwoord (Nou het jy die hele ding
befok).
As abstrakte selfstandige naamwoord (Ek gee nie 'n fok om nie), of as
persoonsnaam (Het jy gesien wat die fokker probeer doen?), as nabepaling
by 'n vraagwoord (Hoe de fok, wie de fok, hoekom de fok, wanneer de
fok,ens.), as byvoeglike naamwoord (Waar moet ek die fokken tyd
vandaankry?), as bywoord (Dis nou 'n fokken mooi grap), en as uitroep (O
fok!).
Selfs ook as invoegsel (Onge-fokken-looflik). Dit kan ook in homself
ingevoeg word (Nou is jy be-fokken-fok).
Hierdie Afrikaanse woord kan gebruik word om wyd uiteenlopende situasies
te beskryf:
Verrassing: Hoe de fok gaan dit met jou?
Bedrog: Die motorhawe het my befok.
Ontsteltenis: Ag fokkit!
Moeilikheid: Nou is ek in my moer in gefok.
Aggressie: Fok jou!
Meer Aggressie: Ek gaan jou opfok!
Moedeloosheid: Hoe de fok moet ek dit regkry?
Walging: Fok my!
Plesier: Fok my nog!
Wanbegrip: Ek fokken verstaan nie.
Inkompetensie: Hy fok alles op.
Gesag: Wat de fok dink jy doen jy?
Verdwaal: Nou weet ek not 'n fok waar ek is nie.
Oortuiging: Onge-fokken-twyfeld.
Dit kan horlosietyd beskryf (Presies half-fokken-vyf), of omstandighede
(Hoe het ek in hierdie fokken job beland?), of persone (Jan Fokken
Smuts), of dinge (Kyk hoe lyk jou fokken skoene!), of plekke (Tot in
fokken Durban ), of dit kan die siel van 'n uitnodiging wees wat van
hartlikheid drup (Fok u!).
Fok is in Afrikaans onge-fokken-ewenaard!
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