Racism thrives in America, now he’s attempting to foment racial conflict overseas in a country that’s still trying to come to terms with its racist past.
If for one reason or another you missed, or have forgotten about, that long period of dehumanization of Black people in South Africa – a slice of one of the most mineral-rich and most beautiful parts of Africa – here’s an excerpt from an online article that sums up the dawn of white minority (supremacy, reign of terror and) lording over South Africa’s majority Black and other nonwhite peoples.
“[…] After the National Party gained power in South Africa in 1948, its all-white government immediately began enforcing existing policies of racial segregation under a system of legislation that it called apartheid. Under apartheid, nonwhite South Africans would be forced to live in separate areas from whites and use separate public facilities, and contact between the two groups would be limited. Despite strong and consistent opposition to apartheid within and outside of South Africa, its laws remained in effect for the better part of 50 years. In 1991, the government of President F.W. de Klerk began to repeal most of the legislation that provided the basis for apartheid. Racial segregation and white supremacy had become central aspects of South African policy long before apartheid began. The controversial 1913 Land Act, passed three years after South Africa gained its independence, marked the beginning of territorial segregation by forcing black Africans to live in reserves and making it illegal for them to work as sharecroppers. Opponents of the Land Act formed the South African National Native Congress, which would become the African National Congress (ANC)…”
Many years ago, I began to take a greater interest in Africa by learning about what was happening on the continent – its socio-political upheavals, natural disasters, anti-colonial and [civil?] wars… as countries were pushing for independence, I made a point of watching as many news stories and documentaries, as well as reading about the conditions impacting people in different countries. Change was palpable.
I saw it all as a slow then rapid north-south decolonization drive. With time, once a stubborn Rhodesia and Ian Smith were forced to accede to people who were hungry for their independence, it was inevitable that South Africa would be next. A majority of people in their little part of Africa was watching, been motivated and inspired…
I was one of those Black people in the African-Black Diaspora who was predicting a ‘doom-and-gloom’ blood bath if white South Africa did not rapidly come to terms with their inevitability – if their inhumane system of racial supremacy and its impact on the majority wasn’t seriously addressed.
With every mass slaughter of protesting Black people, who had become increasingly frustrated and vigilant vis-à-vis their marginalized social standing in their own country, there was no more appetite for the present they were emerging from and the past they were eager to leave behind. With a population triple or quadruple the white minority population, they had come to the conclusion that they had nothing to lose and nothing to live for but their liberation from the status quo – the despicable, dehumanizing system of apartheid, that socially-constructed system that corralled and stifled millions/generations of Black people – denying them their freedom.
International pressure was relentless, Black people were been mowed down by the forces of “law and order” for engaging in peaceful human rights demonstrations; some nations were on the side of ‘right’ others remained firmly on side with the regime and ‘system’.
It was untenable.
As one article states, “Amid growing domestic and international pressure, and with fears of a racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African apartheid, from prison after 27 years on February 11, 1990.
Visible and incremental tangible change was taking place.
Almost three decades since Nelson Mandela’s release, and apparently the end of Apartheid, just like in America there’s a sentimental racist demographic who continue to yearn the past, some of who are unable to accept the new South Africa. They’re probably living their lives, waking up each day saying ‘we like the good old days, the way things used to be…’
A prime example is land and its redistribution… to formerly landless Black people. [Remember, the land was taken from them.]
As an article states, “When South Africa ended apartheid rule in 1994, approximately 15 percent of the country’s agricultural land was owned by the government or by “previously disadvantaged individuals, a term used for people of African, colored or Indian descent…the remaining 85 percent “was owned by white commercial farmers…”
This mirrors a similar land redistribution issue in neighbouring Zimbabwe once Ian Smith reluctantly came to terms with Rhodesia’s reality and inevitability.
In both cases it’s just a matter of leveling the proverbial playing fields, as it were. Yes, lives (of farm owners) have been lost – unfortunately. But upon reflection… when juxtaposed with how all that African land fell into the hands of white people, one must wonder how many African lives were destroyed in that extended colonial land expropriation process.
Which is why “President Cyril Ramaphosa and South African lawmakers have proposed plans to seize privately-owned farmland and redistribute it to previously disadvantaged individuals…”
But it was their land. So it’s simply another case of ‘righting wrongs’ perpetrated by white South Africans during those colonial and more repressive Apartheid periods.
The “land question,” as Ramaphosa put it, goes back more than a century. Colonists in 1913 approved a law that restricted the African population to slightly more than 10 percent of South Africa’s land, while the white minority was entitled to the rest.”
“Among the greatest obstacles to growth is the severe inequality between Black and white South Africans.”
Which is why the U.S. president is attempting to create a crisis by doing what he does best, lying and fomenting, based on a Fox News report.
“Fake news.”
According to the tweeter-in-chief, the “South African government is seizing land from white farmers” and that there has been a “large scale killing of farmers” … “South African Government (was) seizing land from white farmers and that “white genocide” was happening…”
Being a nationalist and international white supremacist the political cult leader is apparently more concerned about the tribulations of that hardcore leftover white racist constituency in South Africa that hasn’t (or refuse to) come to terms with the new South African reality.