Taki is an American-Conservative columnist. In his October 9 offering, Taki emphasized the need to talk with terrorists, Hamas, for one. He then praised the new dispensation in my old home, South Africa, RIP, as “the greatest triumph of chatter over machine-gun clatter”:

“It’s not perfect, and crime is at an all-time high in South-African cities, but at least the massacres are a thing of the past and life goes on much better than before.”

Decades of brutal, Apartheid-generated repression saw no more than a few thousand Africans perish as a direct result of police brutality. A horrible injustice, indubitably, but nothing like the blood that flows freely in city streets and soaks the soil in rural areas nowadays. In the democratic South-Africa, thousands of people perish by violence every few months.

During Apartheid, crime was not a serious issue, because the regime didn’t allow Africans to kill and rape with abandon, as they are now doing. Africans suffered indignities, but not that much violence. Unless one made a point of clashing with the authorities, one’s life was secure. Ask African women and children how they are faring under freedom. In the good old days, they caught and hung men who raped babies as a salve for AIDS. Now the police (mainly African) don’t bother looking for them. Such is the collapse of law and order that the conviction rate is a measly 2.96%.

So violent is the “free” South Africa that the equally free and democratic ANC government issued an official blackout (or shall I say whiteout) of national crime statistics. When these are divulged, officials prefer to use difficult-to-understand ratios. In many instances, data have been doctored.

Government sources claim there were 21,553 murders in 2002 (population 44.6 million). In comparison, the “high crime” United States (population 288.2 million) suffered 16,110 murders in 2002. The Mail & Guardian estimates that between January 2000 and March 2003 there were almost 48,000 murders in South-Africa. The most recent crime report I was able to find is this one, which estimates that between April 2004 and March 2005 there were 18,793 murders and 55,114 rapes (and by rape we don’t mean what American women consider rape: waking up the next morning after a romp between the sheets with a hangover and some regrets).

In the “democratic” South-Africa, you cannot start a business without employing an African, even if you can’t find one fit for the job. You have to hire someone black, and pay him a mandated salary, benefits and all.

The ethnic cleansing of Boer farmers and their families via slaughter and torture continues apace. You can read here how “attackers slashed an elderly farmer’s Achilles tendons, mutilated him, and left him 2km from his farmhouse in the bush to keep him from interfering with their murder rampage. Then, they murdered his wife.”

Or of the murder of “78-year-old Kobus van Tonder on the farm Merino near Vrede,” and “his 68-year-old wife, Charlotte.” They were both stabbed to death in their farm house. For Taki’s edification, there’s a report here of how “four men put an elderly farmer’s wife through four hours of torture, burning her feet with a candle, hitting her with a hammer and stabbing her in the legs.” There’s more, if you can stand it.

It’s not a good time to bring up the South-African success story. My mother recently departed for that cesspool to help my sister and her partner mend their lives after my sister’s partner was attacked by five African thugs. She was leaving her posh office building when the cowards surrounded her. Five men against a waif of a woman. They had jumped the walls—a permanent fixture in liberated SA. The African guard—another useless ubiquity—had barricaded himself in his cubicle and was cowering under the table.

Par for the course in such situations is for the woman to be driven to a remote location, raped and murdered. She is never seen again. The criminals go scot-free. But in this instance, the car, an otherwise-reliable vehicle, failed to start. My sister’s partner managed to escape, but not before she was hit on the head with a firearm, resulting in neurological damage. The lives of good people ruined by rubbish.

Some time ago, my youngest brother and his family (wife and new baby) were attacked in their suburban fortress at 2:00am, also by a gang of Africans. The alarm was bypassed. Luckily they escaped with their lives. In my father’s upmarket neighborhood, another dad was shot point-blank in front of his little girls, as he exited his car to open the garage gates. He begged the savages to take all his possessions and spare his life. Their loot? A cell phone and some cash. Two of my husband’s ex-colleagues are dead, so far; one shot in broad daylight as he left his girlfriend’s apartment. Also for a cell phone.