Posted on 12/09/2013 2:01:02 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Lettie Nel’s face told a story. She’d been repeatedly pistol-whiped with a Magnum revolver, then punched in the face and then hit over the back of the head as she lay on her floor, wrists tightly bound by electrical cable. You can pick out the individual finger and knuckle marks in the photographs on the old lady’s cheeks.
Lettie Nel is an 86-years-old widow who lives alone on the 1,800 hectare family cattle farm she still manages – with the help of a few local farm hands. She was attacked in her own home early on Tuesday 11 November, when intruders burst in as she powered off her eight-foot-high electric perimiter fence.
“They threw me down on the ground and they tried to pull my pants down and I started screaming and the next thing, they took out their knife and put it next to my throat,” she told me. “When I screamed, the one hit me on my face and they hit me with a revolver on my head.
“They told me they were going to kill me. I was sure it was going to happen. I knew they would do it because they would do it with other people without any reason whatever.”
“They” certainly have. Across South Africa, more than 10 farms are attacked every week. Afrikaner farmers are being killed at four times the national murder rate - which is already one of the highest in the world. Over the two decades since Nelson Mandela was elected this country’s first black preseident, around 3,500 have been killed. On the very day he died, an 84-year-old Afrikaner woman was murdered in her own home, held down and drowned in her bath.
He can’t control the people any more’
Now that Nelson Mandela’s dead too, many Afrikaners fear a Boer bloodbath.
I asked Lettie Nel whether she felt less safe since his passing. “Definitely,” she said. ”He had contol over the whole country,” she explained, “and people respected him. And now he’s not there, he can’t contol the people any more.”
About a million whites are said to have upped and left South Africa for good over the past two decades, many believing the country was going to the dogs. About 4.5 million remain, just over half of them Afrikaners.
Today, they feel about as unloved and vulnerable as their voortrekker ancestors must have done in the mid-19th century. At the vast monument to the voortrekker “heroes” built with black labour by the apartheid regime just outside Pretoria, I met a man who believes farm attacks are an orchestrated, racially motivated attempt to drive whites from the land.
Like many Afrikaners I’ve talked to, Willie Cloete uses terms like “genocide” and “extinction” - but offers no evidence at all that there are any dastardly plans afoot to dispatch the Boers. Last weekend Mr Cloete set up a new party, the Front Nationaal, which already claims 66,000 members. They want to address Afrikaner concerns constitutionally and get MPs into parliament.
The FN’s manifesto is predicated on apartheid of a new-old variety: they want to establish a separate Boer republic so they can live in peace. “Would black people be allowed to live there?” I asked. “They’d be welcome,” he said. “We are not racists.”
Isolated farmsteads
But the fears articulated by Afrikaner conservatives are not borne out by the facts. Independent studies have concluded that 90 per cent of attacks on white farms are just robberies.
Dr Johan Burger, of Pretoria’s Institute of Security Studies, is South Africa’s former commissioner of police. An Afrikaner himself, he disparages any notion that racism underpins the attacks on white farms. Isolated farmsteads are soft targets and offer rich pickings for thieves, he says, and because the vast majority of South Africa’s 32,000 commercial farmers are white, that’s why they’re the victims.
He says that when you delve deeper, it turns out that most of the victims of violence and rape are actually the black farm workers themselves.
“People are murdered and families destroyed,” Dr Burger says. “A lot of emotions are invoked and this creates the opportunity for those who wish to project for political purposes.”
Resentment runs deep
Among those accused of the sort of incendiary rhetoric which fuels the perception that the Afrikaners are under attack is Julius Malema, a firebrand populist politician who was expelled from the ruling African National Congress. Today, his Economic Freedom Fighters advocate the sorts of land repossession, redistribution and nationalisation policies advocated by his self-proclaimed hero, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
One of his policy strategists is the radical writer Andile Mngxitama, who says resentment of rich whites runs deep among those who believe they’re entitled to reclaim what was stolen from them in the first place. He laughs when I tell him that Afrikaners fear genocide.
“There has been genocide and violence against black people, created by white people,” he says. ”South Africa was created on blood, mass murder, and dispossesion of farms or of mines.
“You are going to have to go back to the original programme: land redistribution, nationalisation of the mineral resources, democratisation of the economy. You have to take from white people to distribute to the black majority.”
I said he sounded like Robert Mugabe.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Robert Mugabe is a great example of what you must do, with some lessons of course.
With South Africa’s Great Reconciliator, Nelson Mandela, now gone, there are those who say the honeymoon’s over for South Africa’s Afrikaners. Today racial fault-lines lie exposed again, but the spectre of a Mugabe-style future is actually the stuff of both black and white nightmares.
Not that crap again. If the candidate cannot attract their vote, it is the fault of the candidate. He/she is not entitled to those votes.
Unfortunately Romney was a LEFT person
That’d be the best deal we’ve made as a country, in a long time.
Mr. Romneycare was a fudge packing, Constitution hating, leftard. So is New Jersey’s gun grabbing, Bruce Springstein worshipping fatso.
You’re probably right about that.
Our current immigration policy only favors illegals with a 3rd grade education and h1b techies so our Silicon companies can pay them sub-standard wages.
The Australians have a much more intelligent immigration policy. The lucky Canadians have us as a buffer zone, so they usually get better educated immigrants also.
“But the fears articulated by Afrikaner conservatives are not borne out by the facts. Independent studies have concluded that 90 per cent of attacks on white farms are just robberies. “
How does the author of this piece not see the gross contradiction in what he is writing? If these are “just robberies”, why are the victims murdered??
I have done my part. Others need to do theirs.
One thing would help for sure. If the rinos behaved more like Americans, I think they would get more support.
Most people realize that you do not get 100% agreement, but they do expect to get most of what they want and they want republicans to put America first. We have some core beliefs that these rino elitists have been disregarding.
Smaller, more frugal Federal Government
More power to the states and individuals
Less taxation
Strong defense
Strong border security
Pro guns
etc.
If the rinos don’t support these items, they will lose our support.
Raping and mutilating victims because you hate their skin color is not just robberies”.
The Boers should move here. Since they are African, when they come here they are African-American, and are entitled to a free job or welfare, free phone, free college, and the right to cry “hate crime” any time they want.
No, wait...
I said he sounded like Robert Mugabe.
Hmmm. He sounds kind of like another politician we have closer to home.
But the fears articulated by Afrikaner conservatives are not borne out by the facts. Independent studies have concluded that 90 per cent of attacks on white farms are just robberies.
The "expert" who says it's not genocide also says: "“People are murdered and families destroyed,”. . Destroying whole families is certainly a pretty good indicator that something like genocide is happening.
Genocide Watch the international organization that monitors conditions leading up to genocide, has South Africa on their watch list at level 5 "polarization". Level 6 is "preparation" and they were listed there until the high courts took actions against Julius Malema and the ANC removed him. But he is still a extremely popular leader, as the article points out.
So you have:
To use the classic example, it sounds a lot like the period of the Nazi rise to power in Germany. The Jews were threatened, harassed and key political leaders demonized them, positioned them as different from other citizens, and made plans to suppress them. Those plans didn't end merely with the Nueremburg Laws (which addressed the "inequalities" in Germany that made many Jews relatively more wealthy and sought to "fix" them using various mechanisms such as exclusion from some fields).
It ended with them being put on railroad cars.
As I said, the author refutes his own assertions, and while saying "hey, it's just crime" actually makes a pretty good case that White South Africans need to be very concerned about their possible future genocide.
Here are the descriptions of Levels 5 and 6, the levels that precede Level 7 - Mass Killing, from Genocide Watch's 2012 Annual Report on Countries at Risk. (SA was moved down to level 5 from level 6 in late 2011) .
5. POLARIZATION: Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction. Extremist terrorism targets moderates, intimidating and silencing the center. Moderates from the perpetrators’ own group are most able to stop genocide, so are the first to be arrested and killed. Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or assistance to human rights groups. Assets of extremists may be seized, and visas for international travel denied to them. Coups d’état by extremists should be opposed by international sanctions.
6. PREPARATION: Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. Members of victim groups are forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is expropriated. They are often segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved. At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared. If the political will of the great powers, regional alliances, or the U.N. Security Council can be mobilized, armed international intervention should be prepared, or heavy assistance provided to the victim group to prepare for its self-defense. Otherwise, at least humanitarian assistance should be offered.
Actually many of them are here and they know how to work! Custom wheat harvesters that come through our area hire many SA. They work hard and care for the equipment. They should be welcomed with open arms. For anyone with property or money getting it out of SA is a problem I believe because they limit severely what can be taken out. We had contact with a family in the 1990’s and they raised their children and have a great life here. I am sure they miss family still there. I have to admire the courage of up and leaving a bad situation.
I know 2 guys who own a car wash and they came here in about 1993. They told me that they had to live in houses with high walls around them and their wives were afraid to close their eyes in the shower for fear somebody would be breaking in the house. The white joke is that BMW means break my windows. Pretty sad.
I pray that the next US president allows these racial refugees to resettle in the US - like the Somalis.
The Wall Street Journal has a real estate section on weekends. A couple of weeks ago there was an article on some Johannesburg condos. Security was a very big feature, as you can well imagine. No amount of indoor amenities could convince me to relax and enjoy living there.
I know several that moved here and joined the military. Great people. I think most of the emigrants are going to Australia though. I hope more of them come here in the future.
Our gain, South Africa’s loss for sure.
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