Category Archives: South-Africa

Exodus from SA to Israel

In June last year we advised South African Jews to go to Israel. Almost a year hence, and who knows how many bodies later, mainstream media have finally caught up:
“Sheldon Cohen was sitting in his car outside a Johannesburg sports stadium last week waiting for his son Noah to finish soccer practice.
Sheldon, 47, was talking to his father, Jack, on his cellphone when three young men ran past and shot him in the neck. Jack, realizing something terrible had happened, sped to the stadium.
The killers, who had moments before tried unsuccessfully to snatch a cellular phone from a woman parked nearby who was also waiting for her son, had seen Sheldon on the phone and thought he was calling the police. So they killed him. Jack arrived shortly after to see his son’s body slumped in his car, with grandson Noah standing watch.
A week earlier, a Jewish man walking to synagogue in Johannesburg was stopped by several men in a passing car. One man got out of the car and demanded that the Jewish man hand over his tallit bag, thinking it contained valuables. The Jew refused, and was shot to death. Searching through his victim’s bag, the attacker found nothing of value to himself and left it on the sidewalk.
According to South African press reports, police recorded 126,000 armed robberies in the 2006-2007 fiscal year. Exactly a decade ago, that figure stood at 70,000.
….of the Jews who leave Johannesburg, about a third go to Australia, and two-thirds to Israel and other places.
Ofer Dahan, the Jewish Agency’s emissary in South Africa, says there has been a dramatic increase in applications for aliya over the past two months.
Dahan says there is a 100-percent increase in interest in aliya from last year, and a 300% increase in those opening aliya files over the past two months. In 2007, 240 South African Jews and former Israelis made aliya, an increase from 143 in 2006 and 98 in 2005. Dahan says his staff are working round the clock, and have even had to hire outside staff to help cope with the demand.”
**
What the Jerusalem Post reporter failed to tell his readers (we didn’t) was why exactly a move to Israel—ostensibly a spot where homicidal Palestinian suiciders often attack—is so much better than SA, and even parts of the US.
We gave the numbers:
“Israel’s overall death rate from crime is very low; lower than that of the US, which is, overall, about 6 in 100,000. … Remarkably, in 2004, Israel’s death by murder was 3.7 per 100,000 for civilians only; 4.3 when soldiers were included. (“Homicide rates in 2004 in a number of major U.S. cities, including the nation’s capital, exceeded rates of Palestinian fatalities at the hands of Israel’s army in the past year.”)
It shows you, this one-woman band is able to offer better statistics-backed advice to desperate South Africans, who need level-headed advisors, than the mainstream newspapers with all their resources and biases. It’s about knowing what information matters.
Afrikaner non-Jews might want to consider converting. Israel may just be their last resort. The country is hungry for western immigrants, affords a nice life-style, as well as the hot weather Afrikaners so enjoy. Military service will also thrill the typical hardy Afrikaner.
And don’t forget: Israel was perhpas the only good friend the Old, orderly South Africa (warts and all) had:
“One of the most hidden but critical of South Africa’s strategic relationships during the apartheid era was that with Israel, including both the Labor and the Likud governments. Israel officially opposed the apartheid system, but it also opposed broad international sanctions against Pretoria. For strategic reasons, much of the debate in Israeli government circles stressed coordinating ties to Pretoria within the framework of the tripartite relationship among Jerusalem, the United States (Israel’s primary benefactor), and South Africa. Israel was also opposed to international embargoes in general, largely as a consequence of its own vulnerability to UN and other international sanctions.
South Africa and Israel had collaborated on military training, weapons development, and weapons production for years before broad sanctions were imposed in the late 1980s. Military cooperation continued despite the arms embargo and other trade restrictions imposed by the United States and much of Western Europe…”

Update: Those who are new to our ongoing discussion of the New South Africa, and in particular to the treatment emigration from that accursed country has received on BAB, please read “Advice to South Africans Contemplating Emigration,” and “Please Can My Sister Become and Illegal Immigrant.” We also direct welcomed newcomers, and or weary old timers with who’ve forgotten, to our Africa Archive.

CCD applauds Harper government for withdrawal of support for UN ‘anti-racism’ conference

Anti-Semitism, Canada, Israel, Race, South-Africa, UN

Our good friends at the Canadian Coalition for Democracies have posted my father’s “positively prescient, brilliant and stirring piece”—their words—on their website. Dad’s 2001 op-ed warned against Jewish participation in the first, UN “anti-racism” convention of cannibal’s in Durban. But, as the CCD warns, here they go again. Has the US emulated Harper? I hope so. (Unrelated: A few years ago, in Canada, Stephen Harper and I exchanged e-mails about classical liberalism. He’s an amiable intelligent man. Unrelated: Here’s another link to a CCD post out of which I still get a kick.)

For Immediate Release
Wednesday, 23 January, 2008
Ottawa, Canada – The Stephen Harper government has withdrawn its support for a UN anti-racism conference scheduled to take place next year in South Africa, according to a media release today from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity, said today that the conference, like its predecessor in 2001, “has gone completely off the rails… Canada is interested in combating racism, not promoting it. We’ll attend any conference that is opposed to racism and intolerance, not those that actually promote racism and intolerance”.
“Canadians are shocked when they hear the clear and simple expression of reality by their leaders,” said Alastair Gordon, president of the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD). “We are used to hearing double-speak from our politicians — fantasies that are at odds with the reality that most Canadians see and the values that they hold.”
The last UN anti-racism conference held in Durban in 2001 degenerated into a hate-fest of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel vitriol, while the most egregious human rights violators escaped criticism. The Toronto Star today reported that “all of the non-governmental organizations invited to the first conference have been invited back to the second, including those that were at the ‘forefront of the hatred’, some of which posted pro-Hitler posters at the 2001 gathering.”
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is in charge of planning for the conference, an entity that has directed 93% of its resolutions on human rights violations at just one nation – Israel. Iran is a member of the organizing committee, despite its government’s open call to wipe the Jewish homeland off the face of the earth.
“The Stephen Harper government has again demonstrated that Canada can project power as a moral leader in international affairs,” added Gordon. “A nation does not need a massive military to provide the moral leadership and clarity that denies legitimacy to Orwellian UN agencies that hijack the language of human rights to promote Jew-hatred.
“Stephen Harper has signaled that Canada will act on principle, regardless of UN consensus. This is the stuff of global leadership.”

Darkness Descends on South Africa, Literally

Africa, Economy, South-Africa

My father called today to confirm this report by the Mail & Guardian, a leading South African daily:
“South Africa was set on Monday to ration electricity in a bid to stem a spiralling crisis… After mounting anger over daily power cuts that have cost business hundreds of millions of rands, the government said it was drawing up plans that could see consumers fined if they exceed set quotas.
Nelisiwe Makubane, Deputy Director General of the Department of Minerals and Energy, said the regulations being worked on with the state power utility Eskom could be implemented within three months. … Meanwhile, Eskom has requested that business cut its energy usage by 10% to 15%, the energy supplier said on Monday.”
Of special interest is the reference, in the article, to a “skills shortage”:
“’While everybody is well aware there is a generation capacity problem at Eskom, [its] ability to fully utilise what … capacity is available is being severely undermined as a result of staff capacity problems,’ DA public enterprises spokesperson Manie van Dyk said in a statement.”
Even if South Africa imports foreigners to design more power stations, local personnel capable of supporting imported technology are in short supply; over the years, the ANC has mandated the appointment of empty suits filled with affirmative-action appointees.
Did I mention that in all my years in the Old South Africa, we never experienced anything remotely like this? But since majority rule came into effect, the electrical grid has been degraded at every level: generation, transmission, and distribution. Pylons and poles are routinely flattened, stolen, and then smelted. “Up to 100 miles of cables may be going missing every year, destined for markets such as China and India where booming economies have created insatiable demand for copper and aluminum,” reports the Telegraph. “The result has been entire suburbs plunged into darkness, thousands of train passengers stranded, and frequent chaos on the roads as traffic lights fail.”
Our Africa Archive.

Updated: Hermann Giliomee: Reluctant Historian of the Afrikaner?

Africa, History, South-Africa

I’m reading Hermann Giliomee’s The Afrikaners: Biography of a People. Giliomee is the historian of record on the topic. At the same time, I’m also reading David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. (I reviewed one of his later volumes for The American Conservative.)
Perhaps my South African readers—at least those who are in the know—can respond to my initial observation:
Besides Fischer being a better writer, Giliomee seem to lack any fondness for his subject—the kind I detect in Fischer, who simply delights in the American settlers, human foibles and all.
I was so looking forward to reading Giliomee, but I find his door-stopper quite a downer. He’s a fine historian, make no mistake; Giliomee has an impressive command of the primary sources. But he’s too negative about early Afrikaners.
For example, unanswered in Giliomee’s account of the travails of the 4000 odd settler/farmers in the Cape is why these people were subjected to ongoing cattle theft and brutal attacks from the indigenous peoples. Giliomee says the natives felt encroached upon. This may count as a necessary, but insufficient, condition. We are talking about a vast country. The locals would have hardly noticed the few farms that dotted the landscape.
Similar questions are completely elucidated in Fischer’s accounts. He leaves his readers with no lingering, nagging questions. Again, I’d have liked to detect some passion in Giliomee—an Afrikaner himself—for his subject. But maybe his known liberalism prevents him from connecting to his roots.

Update: Dan Roodt, a BAB A-Lister, writes:
“You are perfectly right about Giliomee’s book. It is full of detail and sources, but it lacks a central argument or passion as you call it. I think he was too scared to write anything that could be considered nationalist or un-PC.
Giliomee’s greatest failure, I think, is in the last part where he simply repeats all the clichés of how the old government fell, leaving out the role of the Western powers and all the behind-the-scenes wrangling that was going on.
Yesterday the power went out three times, at 10, at 4 and again at 8 p.m. for two hours each time.”
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I’m beginning to think I’ve been too charitable to Giliomee. Contrast his The Afrikaners with Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed. The last speaks in so many voices other than the historian’s. It’s replete with excerpts from personal diaries, accounts from tutors and travelers, and outsiders looking in on the settlers. Hackett also mentions his own roots and is manifestly proud of his ancestry.
In the magnificent Albion’s Seed you learn exactly from where in England the settlers came, how they built their homes, courted, married, made love, sired children, buried their dead, and punished outlaws; what they ate and how they prepared food; how educated they were. In one wonderfully vivid diary, a husband speaks of his wife’s high-spirited nature and temper; how they make-up after fighting (“I gave my wife a flourish”: don’t you love that? He sauces it up even more.)
Early Americans were as flawed as the Afrikaners and as brave and adventurous. However, none of this emerges from Giliomee’s account. Admittedly, I have not yet finished the thing. But so far, it’s dry, dour, and sour. No diaries are drawn from; you learn nothing about how farmers lived, loved, raised children.
Conversely, Giliomee is quick to highlight miscegenation, on the rare occasions it occurred, and cruelty to slaves (a wrong Americans were also guilty of, but Hackett Fischer doesn’t blacken them for the sins of their times; he simply narrates the facts). Giliomee is also diligent in bringing to light stories of rogue Afrikaners; about heroes and emerging leaders you learn less.