Back in the USSA: South Africa's Warning to America
Minneapolis, 2020: Were the George Floyd riots the start of what's happening right now in South Africa?
By Will Tanner
When Nelson Mandela ascended to power in 1994, with his African National Congress (ANC) winning South Africa’s first multiracial election, the world was full of hope. South Africans hoped that the “rainbow nation” would turn out differently than the Congo, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Angola, among other decolonized lands where mass violence between ethnic groups and tribes filled the vacuum of postcolonial defeat and withdrawal. To this day, South Africa has seen no Gukurahundi between its native groups nor mass slaughter between natives and Europeans.
Though it has avoided the worst outcomes, South Africa is hardly a multiracial paradise. Instead, it has trended toward chaos and internal disaster; its economy is in shambles, its once-budding space and nuclear programs are long gone. Crime rules in place of law and order. South Africa’s internal issues are manifold but can be distilled down to two categories: economic tyranny stemming from an unyielding top-down emphasis on racial spoils programs in the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mode, and anarcho-tyranny in which the government is both unable and unwilling to protect the Afrikaner, Anglo, and Indian populations from vicious criminals.
The economic aspect of South Africa’s decline is primarily a result of its postapartheid obsession with extending the country’s cursed racial logic, this time in the name of justice and equity. Though it didn’t see the outright expropriations inflicted upon white farmers in Zimbabwe by Mugabe’s government, it has seen softer forms of expropriation and reparations. For example, as of 2024, more than 24 million South Africans, the vast majority of them Black, received welfare grants from just 7.1 million taxpayers. That 3.38-to-1 grant-to-taxpayer ratio is plainly unsustainable. However, with the leftist ANC in charge, it is part of the system now and seen as an important social justice achievement. South Africa also has an outright reparations program for victims of apartheid, another expensive tax money transfer program.
The affirmative action situation in hiring is even worse. The state enforces its agenda through the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) laws. B-BBEE aims to “redress the inequalities of the past in every sphere: political, social and economic” and “promote economic transformation and enable meaningful participation of black people in the South African economy, through increased participation in ownership and management structures, increasing the involvement of communities and employees in economic activities and skills training.” It does so, as consulting firm Baker McKenzie notes, by requiring that “every organ of state and public entity must apply any relevant code of good practice issued in terms of the B-BBEE Act when, amongst other things, determining the qualification criteria for the issuing of licenses, permits or other authorizations, when determining their procurement policies and when developing criteria for entering into partnerships with the private sector.”
Post-Mandela South Africa is in a state of disaster that seems likely to get worse. In public life, tyranny reigns as the government enforces race-based mandates.
In short, B-BBEE requires racial preferences in hiring and promotion and handing shares of ownership to Blacks. The state measures compliance with B-BBEE via a scoring system that tracks compliance based on how companies hire Black workers under the B-BBEE racial preferences requirements; promote Black workers to management positions; and give ownership stakes to Blacks. Though the B-BBEE laws don’t directly burden the private sector, they require that the state only engage private companies in procurement contracts and issue licenses and authorizations if they comply with B-BBEE requirements.
As a result, most companies have played along with B-BBEE. That is particularly true of highly regulated entities like Eskom, South Africa’s electric utility, which prides itself on its B-BBEE compliance and recently planned to cut thousands of white engineers and other employees, though it backtracked on those cuts and instead promised to focus on hiring and promoting Black employees. Eskom’s ability to provide electrical power has meanwhile devolved to the point of frequent blackouts and legitimate fears of a total grid collapse.
Eskom is far from the only company to degenerate in the face of South Africa’s race laws. The country’s economy is shrinking while unemployment is crushingly high. South African universities struggle to produce qualified graduates while being known for overt racial discrimination. Corrupt politicians and party-linked, gangsterlike entities use the country’s racial laws to skim profits off the struggling economy. Basic infrastructure like the hospital system has crumbled. Meanwhile, what’s left is being pillaged or frittered away in bribery schemes by some of the most corrupt politicians and civil servants on the planet.
B-BBEE, though an albatross on the neck of South Africa’s economy, isn’t the country’s only pressing issue, however. In April 2023, President Ramaphosa signed the Employment Equity Amendment Act into law requiring “equity,” meaning racial-ratio-based representation of staff members in all companies employing 50 people or more, threatening to bring what remains of private enterprise inside the country’s racial spoils system.
The result of South Africa’s policies, racial and otherwise, is, as the Center for International Development described in “Growth Through Inclusion in South Africa,” that its vast postapartheid promise has been frittered away, and economic stagnation has taken hold, impoverishing everyone, regardless of race. As the South African economy has lost critical capabilities, the disadvantaged suffer the most.
Economic woes are just part of South Africa’s problems. It also suffers under a significant and ongoing crime wave that the state is both unable and unwilling to handle. As of 2023, South Africa was the most crime-ridden country on the African continent, beating out even Somalia for that dubious distinction. Most of its once-sparkling cities are uninhabitable due to crime that the state refuses to stop. The resulting state of lawlessness can rightly be called anarcho-tyranny.
Armed, illegal miners called zama zamas run extensive operations in full view. Copper cable thieves are rampant and exacerbate Eskom’s B-BBEE woes. Private security forces are now a necessity for those who want to stay safe, as the police can’t or won’t keep citizens safe from robbers, burglars, rapists, kidnappers, and murderers.
The worst of the crimes under which South Africans suffer are the farm murders, in which African criminals use equipment, including signal jammers and automatic weapons, to break into isolated farmsteads and torture, kill, rape, and rob the predominantly Boer inhabitants. These attacks are known for their brutality, with atrocities like drowning children in boiling water and gang-raping female victims being close to the norm rather than radically atypical. Similar atrocities are inflicted on other South Africans, including children.
The horrific murder of 79-year-old farmer Theo Bekker and the assault on his wife serve as a telling example of what happens in these stomach-churning attacks. In Mr. Bekker’s case, at least four thugs broke into his farmstead and demanded guns and money. They then bludgeoned Mr. Bekker on the head with an iron bar and slit his throat with a knife, killing him. They tied up his wife, suffocated her with a plastic bag they put over her head, and then assaulted her numerous times. Fortunately, she survived.
Another example of the brutality of farm attacks comes from a survivor who wrote in 2001, “The first time I was attacked was in August 1998. I came back home and parked my van. My boy said there were three people looking for work. I said I only want one, and I went out to meet them in the garage. They said they wanted work, but then one with a revolver signed to the other one, who grabbed my boy; the first one pulled out his gun, but it jammed. I grabbed a broom and hit him, and then the other one, and then I ran inside to get my gun. But they knocked me down and fractured my skull, so I was unconscious. They chased my boy, but the dogs went after them, and they ran out. The fellows from the farmwatch picked them up on the road. They shot one, arrested another, and the third one later gave himself up. But all three later escaped from the police cells.”
Sadly, America has flirted with following the same dark path as South Africa. The outcome has been the rise of sectarian grievance politics.
The scale of these farm attacks is extreme, with attackers, according to data from 2023, committing about one farm murder a week and nearly one attack a day. At the very least, the problem is “large scale,” as former President Donald Trump posted on X, then-Twitter, that his administration would study “the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.” Describing the attacks in even more extreme language, the South African artist Steve Hofmeyr, said that the attacks are a genocide. As he put it, “If you think that the slaughter of South African farmers is not genocide enough, ask them about their land, language, religion, education, universities, heritage, monuments, safety, dignity, and the race-based regulations imposed upon them and their children.”
Though farm attacks are less frequent than other crimes that plague South Africa, such as cash-in-transit heists, they are renowned for their extreme brutality. Jack Loggenberg of the Transvaal Agricultural Union, describing that aspect of the crime and what makes them worse than other crimes, said, “We say it is not only crime but something else; the way the people are handled, not only killed, but also tortured brutally, and sometimes nothing is stolen. And not doing anything about it gives the impression that this is acceptable. It could be organized, but we don’t have the facts. We find that in farm murders a lot of research is done, in 100 percent of cases there is prior reconnaissance and then there is extreme violence used.”
Observers, such as Ernst Roets in his book Kill the Boer: Government Complicity in South Africa’s Brutal Farm Murders, make the case that agents of the South African government, such as law enforcement officers, are either not willing to stop the farm attackers or actively assisting the brutal murderers. Some farmers and Boers, for example, hold the “belief that the government is training former members of MK or APLA to assassinate white farm owners.” Others argue that even if the government is not actively assisting the farm murderers, it is doing little to investigate them and bring the perpetrators to justice. At the very least, 95% of the farm murders go unsolved, and the government allows, despite prohibiting other “hate speech,” chants like “Kill the Boer” that encourage the horrific farm murders. Additionally, the government refuses to set up specialized task forces to investigate and stop farm murders, despite doing so to investigate crimes like the illegal mining of the zama zamas and cash-in-transit robberies.
Jacques Broodryk, AfriForum’s chief spokesperson for community safety, said that the South African government and police force see farm murders as less important than other murders and that it is shocking it will not develop unique police resources to handle the problem. “However, there are questions as to why the South African government refuses to follow the same approach with farm attacks and murders. In certain cases, the occurrence of farm attacks and murders is much higher, more violent, and requires a much more specialized approach than some of the crimes that were prioritized,” Broodryk said.
On the same note, Mike de Lange, formerly head of the KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union, argued that the government is intentionally ignoring the sickening attacks for ideological reasons. He said, “I don’t believe that there is an organized plan to drive farmers off the land; but I do believe that the government knows what is happening and is doing nothing about it.” Adding credence to the claims of Broodryk and de Lange about South African indifference toward the fate of farmers is that when former President Trump posted about the frequent attacks, the South African government responded not by pledging to solve the murders but by accusing him of spreading “false information” and holding a “narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.”
In addition to common crime, there are terrible riots that the government is unable and often unwilling to stop. For example, chaos broke out in 2021 and caused billions of dollars in damage, quite a significant amount for the small South African economy. Those rioters ran wild for days and were only stopped from committing more crimes by heavily armed militias, and it was in the wake of the militias stopping the riots that the government returned.
What makes the situation all the worse is that crime and economic issues frequently intersect. For example, the Eskom blackouts can lead to more crime, as the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade warned its citizens visiting South Africa. It said, in part, “traffic jams due to power outages provide opportunities for smash-and-grab crime,” and “Residences can be targeted when lights are out and security systems are not functioning. Ongoing conditions have led to increased protests and demonstrations, and in some cases, civil unrest, throughout the country.” In short, South Africa is at war with itself.
It seems clear that post-Mandela South Africa is in a state of disaster that seems likely to get worse. In public life, tyranny reigns as the government enforces race-based mandates on companies that are suffering mightily under the burden. In private life, the government levies taxes to pay for welfare programs, but otherwise, it is largely absent as criminals cause an immense amount of suffering and are rarely stopped by the police. Meanwhile, politicians like those in the EFF encourage criminals to engage in more crime as a form of punishment or reparations for apartheid. All of these localized disasters stem from the decision to continue putting race at the center of postapartheid South African life and thereby producing a photo-negative version of the past, rather than trying to build a new and better society.
Sadly, America has flirted with following the same dark path as South Africa. America suffered months of riots in 2020, much as riots racked South Africa in 2021. In America, as in South Africa, armed civilians had to defend their property when the police couldn’t or wouldn’t do so, while leftist politicians encouraged the rioters. Just as farm attacks go unsolved because of police incompetence and unwillingness in South Africa, murders are now only solved at about a 50% rate in America, the worst in the Occident. Some cities, such as Kansas City, have plummeted to under 40% clearance rates for homicides. Additionally, as robbers and farm attackers in South Africa, gangs in America are now using signal jammers to assist in burglaries.
Comparisons between America and South Africa aren’t limited to criminality, though. Some on the American left see South Africa’s reparations program as a model for an American reparations program. There is also the issue of affirmative action in higher education admissions and hiring. Although the American system now must be less open about racial preferences in admissions, the general effect is the same: Colleges ignore worse scores and admit favored groups. Though outright affirmative action is now illegal and quotas banned, unlike in South Africa, schools have found ways to discriminate regardless. Similarly, in the job market, proponents of affirmative action policies admit that they “shape the U.S. labor market” and argue that further affirmative action, or racial preference, policies are needed to achieve “equity” in the workplace. Bloomberg, reporting on diversity in the workplace, noted that “the biggest public companies added over 300,000 jobs—and 94% of them went to people of color.” When Bloomberg included replacements for old jobs rather than just new ones, the number remained around 80%. With white Americans making up around 62% of the American population, the only way to achieve such a DEI success was though racial preferences, as companies pledged to “hire and promote more Black people and others from underrepresented groups.” Of course that also means discriminating against white Americans in the process, much as South African companies like Eskom discriminate. Even companies engaged in hazardous activities, such as airlines, for which merit ought to be the sole qualification, have pledged to prioritize diversity.
Though America is not at South Africa’s disastrous level, it may be trending that way. Blackouts are growing more common as political agendas, such as “clean” energy, are prioritized supplying cheap and reliable electricity. Additionally, as Johannesburg is now uninhabitable for law-abiding people, Americans are fleeing their once-great coastal cities for safer and greener pastures in the Southwest and Southeast. As South African business and political leaders use their B-BBEE policies to skim off the top, America’s DEI-demanded struggle sessions are an opportunity for grift that is as massive as it is frequently abused. As a result of the various forms of indirect bribery and insider profiting, most Americans see their politicians as highly corrupt, an opinion with which many taxpayers in South Africa certainly agree. Meanwhile, much as South Africa’s nuclear and space programs are long gone, ours are mere shadows of their former selves.
Finally, there is the fact that America’s drift away from merit and toward South Africa-style CRT and affirmative action came after segregation had ended, much as South Africa’s Marxist change for the worse came after apartheid had voluntarily ended de jure long after it had ended in fact. As Ronald Reagan noted in 1986, “Black workers have been permitted to unionize, to bargain collectively and build the strongest free trade union movement in all of Africa. The infamous pass laws have been ended, as have many of the laws denying blacks the right to live, work and own property in South Africa’s cities. Citizenship wrongly stripped away has been restored to nearly 6 million blacks. Segregation in universities and public facilities is being set aside.”
The indignities inflicted upon people by segregation and apartheid are indefensible. But in both cases, one outcome of dismantling those systems has been the rise of sectarian grievance politics. Segregation, as Reagan said, was being set aside; now it’s coming back. New generations changed the rules to benefit the dispossessed; as a result, they are now disenfranchised. Let’s hope that America’s story has a happier ending.
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