South Africa is an interesting test case internationally because in many ways it has done a speed run of the ideology that has otherwise infected many Western governments. And by observing what is going on there, we can really understand some of the implications of what has been happening in the larger West. An expropriation bill has been passed in South Africa that would make it easier for the government to reapportion land from those that own it, especially on a race-conscious based system.
00:00:33.740I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.
00:00:37.780I'm far from the only one to point out that South Africa is an interesting test case internationally
00:00:44.120because in many ways it has done a speed run of the ideology that has otherwise infected many Western governments.
00:00:53.420Now obviously South Africa has a very different political dynamic that is all its own.
00:00:58.080But by observing what's going on there, we can really understand some of the implications of what has been happening in the larger West.
00:01:06.120And Donald Trump this week spoke up about what is happening recently.
00:01:10.460An expropriations bill has been passed in South Africa that would make it easier for the government to reapportion land from those that own it,
00:01:19.000especially on a race-conscious based system.
00:01:22.720And so discussing that with me today is Ertz Van Zeele.
00:01:26.500He's been on the podcast a number of times.
00:01:29.060He is the public relations manager for the human rights organization Afroforum.
00:03:27.340So what happened was you need two thirds majority within Parliament to pass a constitutional amendment.
00:03:33.160The ANC had about 57% and their allies, the far left parties within the Parliament.
00:03:39.960Yes, the ANC is a leftist party, but you can go even more far left than the ANC.
00:03:44.740They and their far left allies were able to cobble together an alliance that's more than two thirds of the Parliament.
00:03:52.740But that alliance crumbled and they didn't get the two thirds support because the far left thought that they're not going to vote to approve this constitutional amendment
00:04:02.860because they didn't think it goes far enough and they think they've got enough support.
00:04:06.680If they push the government, they can actually make it go even farther.
00:04:12.300So what happens is, excuse me, I see there's an alarm going off here.
00:04:42.280So what then happens is in a strange twist of fate, private property rights in South Africa are saved by left wing hubris.
00:04:51.720They bite off more than they can chew.
00:04:54.500They think we can take this even farther.
00:04:56.420We're not going to accept the abolishment of private property rights.
00:04:59.380We want all property to be in the custodianship of the state.
00:05:02.780So they push the ANC and say, we're not going to vote with you for this constitutional amendment and that that opportunity fails and property rights are safe for the time being.
00:05:12.600At the time, AfriForum warns and says, well, you guys have to understand, I know there's a lot of celebration.
00:05:19.160Our private property rights have been saved, but these guys are going to come back.
00:05:22.540They're going to try again to amend the con.
00:05:25.400They're going to try again to make expropriation without compensation possible.
00:05:28.600And we are proven right just a few days later when the then Minister of Justice, Ronald Lamola, comes out, talks to the media and says, the first attempt to make expropriation without compensation possible has now failed.
00:05:42.220We will now move on to alternative ways to make it possible.
00:05:45.840One of these ways will be through the pushing through of legislation to make it possible.
00:05:51.200The legislation that he's talking about here is the expropriation bill, which now has been turned into the Expropriation Act in 2025.
00:05:59.760The next point on that timeline that's very important is about 2022, where the president of South Africa, Sooram Aposa, is giving an address to his ANC supporters.
00:06:11.040And he says the purpose of the Expropriation Act is to make sure or to ensure that we can expropriate property with zero or nil compensation.
00:06:22.6402020, fast forward to about 2024, Deputy President Paul Machetile says the same thing.
00:06:29.160He's asked about the terminology within the expropriation bill, but it says nil expropriate, it allows expropriation with nil compensation, but not expropriation without compensation.
00:06:40.220And he says, well, we as the ANC understand nil compensation to mean no compensation.
00:06:45.900So the goal of this bill is to enable expropriation without compensation.
00:06:51.260And then just to tie it all together, the little bow on top, why am I underlining this nil compensation, no compensation point?
00:06:59.620Because that's been the main angle of attack since Trump's post.
00:07:05.600Because now Trump says, well, expropriation without compensation is going to happen in South Africa.
00:07:11.000And now the ANC and all the entire PR and propaganda industrial complex have been mobilized to say, well, it's not expropriation without compensation.
00:07:21.360It's expropriation with nil compensation.
00:07:24.060It's not the same thing in quotation marks.
00:07:31.940No, it's a very cheap language game that they're trying.
00:07:35.880And not only a lot of people are falling for it, some international outlets seem to be falling for it.
00:07:40.860But I mean, that's why I mentioned those key quotes from the deputy president, from the president and from the former minister of justice, because they made it very explicitly clear two very important things.
00:07:52.140Firstly, the difference between nil compensation and no compensation, there's no difference in the mind of the ANC.
00:08:20.100You don't have to go dig through the archives.
00:08:22.200Yeah, this is a very strange thing I noticed when researching this through Western media.
00:08:27.140When I was looking at this, the first thing is just anything called an expropriations act should be scary, right?
00:08:34.420The name itself implies we are going to be taking your property by force, and that's never great.
00:08:40.440Now, in the United States, we have eminent domain, and that requires just compensation if the government needs something for a project.
00:08:49.280But even that, which is technically in the Constitution and the Fifth Amendment, is abused regularly by governments.
00:08:56.060And people are very worried, even with those very strict protections inside the Constitution, that that process is being abused on the behalf of developers and others who are cozy with the government and want to eminent domain your property in order so they can.
00:09:10.960Yeah, they have to pay you for it, but you are forced.
00:09:14.200You are compelled to give a property you don't want to give up, even with compensation, and that is considered an abuse of the power.
00:09:20.460So already, even with compensation, we're already talking about a power that is rife for abuse, no matter what kind of financial restitution is made.
00:09:29.620And then when you look in the Western media, whenever I see this discussed, as you point out, they say, oh, well, with compensation.
00:09:35.940But as you're pointing out here, that's just not the case.
00:09:39.040Like, this is clearly not what the intention is, even if they're trying to fudge around with the language a little bit.
00:09:45.620And I know they hate Trump, I get that that's like part of the thing, but are they really expecting to cover for what is functionally communist theft of land by just saying, well, they might throw them a few dollars or something at the end of the day?
00:10:02.480Hmm. And I mean, that's the thing about South Africa is it is already the current legislation before the Expropriation Act already allows for expropriation with compensation.
00:10:15.180That's it's such a key nuance, but everyone is either willingly or unwittingly just ignoring that fact.
00:10:22.840They're saying, well, everyone has expropriation laws.
00:10:26.340But the key thing is it's expropriation without compensation.
00:10:29.360And as I say, the other more sneaky approach to say, well, it's not because expropriation without compensation is a very scary term in South Africa, because that's exactly the terminology that ZANU PF in Zimbabwe use.
00:10:42.040They use the term expropriation without compensation.
00:10:45.000So that's why they're talking about expropriation with null compensation in this act.
00:10:49.940Try and defang it a little bit so it doesn't sound as scary.
00:10:53.900Unfortunately for them, it doesn't seem to be working.
00:10:56.020Everyone understands that if your boss tells you I'm going to pay you null salary this year, you're not going to be very happy about it.
00:11:03.220So that's that's what's going on here.
00:11:05.920And as I say, the ANC might be a weakened party, but they still have a very powerful PR and propaganda industrial complex machine out there.
00:11:15.220And that that machine kicked into high gear this week.
00:11:18.600I mean, we saw that happening and it's targeting my organization, Afri Forum and any other organizational individual that's standing up and saying, but you guys have been saying for the past five years that you are absolutely going to expropriate private property and you want expropriation without compensation.
00:11:35.680And this bill is how you're going to achieve it.
00:11:50.020That's the that's the terminology here.
00:11:52.820And what we're talking about is really, you know, the theft of land by the government on a regular basis without having any need to compensate the person, pay them back in any way for what's been stolen from them.
00:12:06.360Again, there's a word for that it's called communism, where the government can take from everyone according to what they have and, you know, redistribute it in the way that they see fit.
00:12:16.620Now, the kind of subtext behind this is that this isn't just communism, though, as you've pointed out when you've been on the show many times, many of these South African parties have deep ties to communism, often will explicitly praise it or, you know, be adjacent.
00:12:36.240Just a quick, quick detail there in South Africa, the ANC is actually a tripartite alliance.
00:12:42.580And so the ANC is part of this alliance of three different parties.
00:12:47.020One of them competes in elections, the ANC.
00:12:49.540The other two, just like parasitically, are a tie to it.
00:12:52.780They don't really compete in elections, but they do influence policy.
00:12:59.100Their members get appointed as ministers and within the state apparatus.
00:13:02.860And that tripartite alliance are the three parties, the ANC, the African National Congress, KUSATU, which is all the labor unions in South Africa.
00:13:17.240That's why when you Google President Sorama Poza South African Communist Party or President Sorama Poza SACP, you get photographs of him doing speeches in front of like a backdrop of hammer and sickles that look like it's been Photoshopped, but it's real.
00:13:33.160So just wanted to underline your point there.
00:13:35.940I mean, communism, it's not something that you have to go down a rabbit hole to find in South Africa.
00:13:42.600Yeah, and on top of that, like I was saying, you know, the reason that there's such a charged atmosphere around, you know, this expropriation, it would be terrible no matter what.
00:13:55.260The implications of this kind of communist government would be terrible no matter what.
00:14:00.340But specifically in the case of South Africa and unfortunately, you know, for a large part across the globe, the communism is also paired with a racial bias, right?
00:14:13.040I mean, this is a lot of what is going unsaid by the media when it comes to expropriation, expropriating from who, for what cause, redistributing to whom, why, right?
00:14:25.780So for people who don't know, is the expropriation just going to be random?
00:14:30.720Are they just choosing people off the street?
00:14:34.660All the rich people are losing their property or is there a specific target for this expropriation?
00:14:40.040Well, to answer that question, all we really have to go on is the rhetoric of the ANC itself.
00:14:46.180So what is the rhetoric around expropriation without compensation?
00:14:49.520Well, in South Africa, it has like an official title with capital letters.
00:14:52.940It's called the land debate, almost like this, the sacred, the sacred thing that you take part in, where there's, they literally call it the original sin, the original sin of land theft by evil white people in the past.
00:15:07.740And that original sin needs to be rectified by almost literally a divine intervention, which would be expropriation without compensation, redistribution of land.
00:15:19.340And that's how they talk about these issues.
00:15:21.860So when you ask the question of what are their intentions in regards to who's going to be targeted?
00:15:27.060Well, if your entire rhetoric, everything you say around property and land revolves around the narrative that whites own 150% of land or 1,000% of land, then if you're making those types of claims, it's very clear that if anyone's going to be expropriated from to redistribute to fix a problem, the problem being this original sin of land theft in the past,
00:15:54.860then by default, the people that are going to be dispossessed have to be Afrikaners and white South Africans.
00:16:02.500Otherwise, you're not going to achieve your divine end of perfect equality in regards to land ownership and property ownership in South Africa.
00:16:10.200And why I'm so exaggerating when it comes to the statistics that I'm mentioning is the ANC literally talk like that.
00:16:17.880Now, they don't really use terminology like 150% of land, but they say things like white people, the 5% minority own 70% of the land or 80% of the land in South Africa.
00:16:29.620You've probably seen that statistic in very Soviet-esque fashion.
00:16:33.620They do these studies and these audits and they do their little ideological science, the National Democratic Revolution science in the background.
00:16:42.760And then their prophets come forward and say, we have determined through our research that white people own this amount of land and property in South Africa.
00:17:00.820It's literally based on, well, we looked at these statistics and we tortured the statistics a little bit and then it screamed out this answer.
00:17:09.760But to wrap it up, I mean, that's to give you any hints about what they intend.
00:17:14.520If the entire conversation around land ownership in the country revolves around this grand religious narrative of white people own all the land and it's because it was stolen in the past and we need to rectify it, who do you think is going to be targeted?
00:17:36.020If the red team owns all of the resources, the only way to redistribute the resources is to explicitly depossess or to confiscate from the red team.
00:17:47.340Anything else would not achieve anything even close to redistribution.
00:17:53.180So we're talking about a country in which a song about killing the boar is sung from the local-
00:18:02.880Yeah, can't actually draw any conclusions from this.
00:18:05.420But yeah, this genocidal statement is sung from political stages in South Africa.
00:18:12.780And even if they're not saying explicitly in the legislation, hey, this is going to target Afrikaners or white South Africans, as you point out, the rhetoric attached to everything else they're doing makes it very clear.
00:18:25.280There's only one conclusion if you're based on the rhetoric, yes.
00:19:27.360So, but I'll adjust them a little bit based on just my gut feeling where they are at the moment.
00:19:33.460So the white population in South Africa is in the range of about 4.5 million, between 4.5 and 5 million.
00:19:41.040And about 2 point, between 2.7 and 3 million of that are Afrikaners.
00:19:45.460So about 5% of the population are white, and about 2.5% or about 2.7% around there of that minority are the Afrikaners.
00:19:56.540So the Afrikaners are a majority within the white minority, and the white minority is about 5% of the population.
00:20:04.020Now, as you pointed out, South Africa is not the only African nation to have gone through this process to face many of these issues.
00:20:12.500And Zimbabwe famously has had a great difficulty in getting its agriculture going and providing for its food-based needs since it made sure that white farmers basically weren't working the land anymore, weren't in possession of the land.
00:20:30.920Does any of that reflect in the way that the South African government treats this issue?
00:20:38.000I mean, you've seen this movie play out before, you know where it goes.
00:20:42.860Is it just a simple, they're so corrupt that they're going to offer this, even if it starves their people?
00:20:49.400Or what is the motivation behind this, given the context in which this has already happened in other nations?
00:20:54.880Hmm. So there's two very important details here.
00:20:57.980The first detail is that the ANC have no, it's no secret that the ANC praise and hail Robert Mugabe as a hero, as a revolutionary hero, a hero of the revolution.
00:21:08.960And it's not an idealized version of Mugabe as in, well, none of these, the land grabs and the atrocities happen.
00:21:41.840That's their stance, which, again, just destroys any form of trust that anyone will have in them when they try to assure people in 2025.
00:21:50.080No, we deeply value the constitutional rights of private property, while at the same time hailing Robert Mugabe, a tyrant that plunged his country into chaos due to expropriation without compensation, while at the same time hailing him as a hero.
00:22:07.740The second aspect to that answer is the fact that when it comes to particularly what is driving the ANC, my colleague Barant Ace actually summed it up very nicely.
00:22:19.780He said about a week ago, in his words, and I quote, I think people are underestimating how far the ANC are willing to go to hold on to power.
00:22:30.080They are willing to burn down the country in order to rule over the ashes.
00:22:34.140I mean, that's literally what the ANC, from what I can see, are willing to do based on the policies that they're pushing through.
00:22:40.720They're not pushing through these policies based in some deep ideological principle, even if it's in the leftist sense, ideological vision of we will bring about a utopia through these policies.
00:22:53.200No, they're doing it out of a very, very cynical push of we need to do anything possible to hang on to power.
00:23:01.320I mean, it's no coincidence that they pushed through this bill after they dropped to 40% below 50%.
00:23:08.520So South Africa has been a one-party state for 29 years.
00:23:12.180And then in 2024, in our elections, the ANC dropped to 40% and they went into coalition with a bunch of former opposition parties.
00:23:20.340But they're still ruling as if they're a 50-plus party.
00:23:45.680So just to finish up there, I mean, that's what's driving the ANC.
00:23:50.660It's a party that idealizes Robert Mugabe and it's a party that's willing to hold on to power no matter what, even if it ruins millions of lives.
00:24:00.120I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but South Africa was a nation with a space program at some point, right?
00:24:07.560And with nuclear weapons that we developed ourselves, yes.
00:24:12.940I think South Africa has the title of the only country in the world that developed nuclear weapons and dismantled them.
00:24:20.400I would say it's a wonder that you would look at a country that was that advanced and decided to go from a functional space program and a nuclear program to not even being able to operate an electrical grid and possibly driving themselves to the point where they might not be able to feed themselves due to this kind of ethnic hatred built around land use.
00:24:47.740But at the same time, I'm living in the United States and we were going the same direction, but slower.
00:24:56.340I mean, I hope ultimately that the arrival of Donald Trump and his desire to dismantle a large amount of the programs that have been pushing the United States that direction changes what's happening here.
00:25:08.640Obviously, Trump posting about South Africa brought a lot of attention to what is going on there now.
00:25:15.820You've been on the show many times kind of telling us about this journey, warning that this final step would come.
00:25:23.220But here we are and Trump is announcing it in a way that makes it many people across the globe aware of what's going on.
00:25:30.660What do you think about Trump making that statement and what has been the fallout?
00:25:35.160Has that brought international awareness?
00:25:37.480Has that just made everybody in the country double down, increase the pressure on Afroform?
00:25:45.980What has been the fallout of Trump getting involved?
00:25:48.680Well, that's the meat and potatoes of the conversation.
00:25:51.600I mean, well, firstly, Russell Lombardi, my good friend and economist here in South Africa, sums it up.
00:25:56.600He says South Africa is the leading de-developing country in the world.
00:26:01.040I mean, we're going backwards in a lot of senses.
00:26:03.260I mean, we had a functioning rail network.
00:26:06.220The other day, me and my wife were driving down from the capital, Pretoria, to Cape Town, and we saw a freight train, a functional freight train.
00:26:13.200And we both reacted like we saw a cryptid, like we saw Bigfoot.
00:26:16.640We both like shouted out, look, a working train.
00:26:19.240And it just is a symptom of what's happening around us.
00:26:26.960Well, firstly, I think what needs to be understood is two things.
00:26:30.860One, the ANC and the government of South Africa is in total panic stations.
00:26:37.260The one thing that they're not very good at, well, there's many things that they're not very good at, but the one thing that they're particularly bad at is having a poker face in the face of crisis.
00:26:55.780They're attacking left and right, screaming about misinformation, screaming about words like treason and betrayal.
00:27:03.140And Donald Trump is X, Y, and Z, all the bad words under the sun.
00:27:10.140And I mean, my organization, AfriForum, the ANC put out an official press statement attacking my organization, AfriForum, for spreading disinformation that has now led to this.
00:27:21.040And ignoring the fact that it's their radical policies and pushing of extremist policies and attempts to abolish private property rights that brought this on them, AfriForum just told the world, can you guys like put like one eye on South Africa?
00:27:58.660They're putting out press statements, attacking civil society organizations like AfriForum, screaming about misinformation, never saying what the misinformation is, never saying how they know we're spreading misinformation.
00:28:10.200As if, I mean, if they have such intimate knowledge about what we're telling people in the Trump administration, I mean, then they're going to have to admit that probably they have a, do they bug our meetings?
00:28:26.760The other aspect, which I think a lot of analysts are missing, is, yes, on the one side, the big damage to the ANC and the South African government is the retraction of funding and the threat of future funding.
00:28:38.420That's the other thing that's critical to understand.
00:28:41.420Yes, Donald Trump has announced that he's cutting off aid, but I mean, he's cut off aid to many other countries.
00:28:46.820What I see, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, what I'm seeing in what Trump is doing here is he's threatening escalating cutting off of aid.
00:28:55.720For example, ending trade agreements like AGOA that are based pretty much agricultural trade agreements based on private property rights being protected and respected and cutting off other forms of funding as well and other agreements as well.
00:29:09.480I don't see this as Trump saying, well, we've cut off aid all across the world and in your country for special reasons.
00:29:17.260I think the aid being cut off is something separate to much, much broader cutting off of aid and punishment coming South Africa's way, which is worrying.
00:29:27.960Because at the same time, AfriForum does not want to see the citizens of South Africa punished.
00:29:33.260We want to see the corrupt politicians and extremists within the government punished.
00:29:37.120But the other aspect here that a lot of analysts are missing is that, yes, there is that one aid aspect, the aid that's been canceled and the threat of future funding that the ANC and the South African government is worried about.
00:29:54.160But I would go as far as to say that the majority of the fuel that is fueling this outrage response, this panicked response, is not necessarily a financial drive.
00:30:06.020It is rooted in a phenomenon that some people are missing.
00:30:10.020It's the phenomenon or the fact that the ANC have no immune system against international criticism.
00:30:17.400For the first 20 plus years of their reign in South Africa, they were the golden boys of the world.
00:30:28.880They were pretty much the party of the progressive paragon of the 21st century.
00:30:34.480And everyone was saying how they want to emulate the ANC, the party of Nelson Mandela.
00:30:39.560They were called, they were pretty much called the role model party.
00:30:46.080And there's literally nothing wrong that they can do.
00:30:48.560And that's the environment within which the ANC pretty much got used to for the past 25 plus years.
00:30:57.760Only recently that they burned through that almost infinite mountain of international goodwill.
00:31:05.860I think they believe that mountain was infinite.
00:31:07.940I think they believe the international goodwill could never run out.
00:31:10.840If I was in their position, if I looked at how I was treated by the rest of the world, I would also start believing that my international goodwill has no limit.
00:31:32.360They don't know how to function in an international setting, in an international environment where they can actually be criticized, where they can actually be attacked, where they can actually be told what you're doing here is wrong.
00:31:45.040We don't agree with what you're doing here.
00:31:47.020What you're doing there is destructive or extremist.
00:31:49.840And that's why I think the main drive behind their reaction is particularly from that point.
00:31:55.220It's like a child that grew up only with compliments.
00:31:58.800He's never experienced any negative word in his life.
00:32:01.360And then in his 20s or in his 30s, he gets the first real piece of substantial criticism in his life.
00:32:13.600That's what's happening with the ANC at the moment from a Trump post.
00:32:18.420Yeah, that's a really interesting dynamic to bring up.
00:32:20.980Because, of course, as you point out, post-apartheid, which is the most evil thing that has ever happened to a human being in the existence of mankind.
00:32:28.880Yeah, there was this idea that any government that follows it has to be blessed somehow, right?
00:32:35.600It's got this dispensation to just rule in the name of progressive enlightenment.
00:32:41.660And it's going to set all these wrongs right.
00:32:44.300And it's going to bring everyone onto equal footing.
00:32:46.980And the magic wand has been waved over this once racist state.
00:32:51.660And that's going to kind of solve all of these issues.
00:32:53.900And so when you're in this environment, when you're kind of inheriting this post-apartheid politics in a global liberal order, you're going to be the golden boy.
00:33:04.440You're going to, like you said, you're just going to receive nothing but compliments.
00:33:07.760You're never going to have any discipline.
00:33:09.760All the gates of probably international financing and other things are open to you because they want to see the project succeed.
00:33:16.340And you're the one who's supposed to bring about the right of these wrongs.
00:33:20.380But then when you see that the performance is poor, that the corruption is high, that the abuses are real, maybe that takes a little bit of the shine off the apple.
00:33:31.140But you've still got the backing of most of the global liberal order.
00:33:35.620But as you point out now, yes, Trump has said there's no aid to be had there.
00:33:41.680The international aid is not just for South Africa, but many different countries.
00:33:45.800But the fact that there could be consequences, right?
00:33:48.040He's throwing around the idea of tariffs and trade relationships.
00:33:51.140He's saying an investigation has begun.
00:33:53.240An investigation implies that whatever that investigation finds could either be aggravating or be lessening on the consequences.
00:34:02.700Right. And so you have the scenario where not only would there be consequences from the United States and, you know, Trump is evil and all those things.
00:34:09.980So maybe you can play it off that way.
00:34:11.760But more importantly, you can feel the global liberal order weakening overall, right?
00:34:16.620We didn't have it to the same extent in here in America.
00:34:19.480But very clearly over the last 10 years, progressives who were very firmly in control of the institutions of the United States basically ran through all of their goodwill as well.
00:34:29.640Right. They burned down all of their their their credentialism and all of their moral superiority just so they could lock people in their homes and steal a bunch of their stuff and punish their political enemies, throw them in jail, hit them with all these false charges.
00:34:43.480And so it's kind of a terrible time for the ANC to kind of double down on this because they as you say, they're kind of taking for granted this goodwill that they don't have.
00:34:55.100They're assuming this immunity that came from the global liberal order just as that liberal order is kind of starting to fall apart.
00:35:02.500And so it seems like they're betting on a large stock of, you know, funds and goodwill that simply don't exist.
00:35:10.260And they're going to but they're going to continue to play as if they have those cards in their hand to their own destruction.
00:35:17.240Well, I think that I think you're absolutely right.
00:35:20.240And the best metaphor for that is the ANC is a nail and they're being asked to screw in a screw.
00:35:25.740They they can't do it. All they can do is try to just hammer the screw in.
00:35:30.540But as any carpenter will tell you, that's a terrible idea.
00:35:34.680There's a quote by a South African investigative journalist that I actually have a lot of respect for.
00:35:39.940Yes, they do exist here in South Africa still.
00:35:42.320James Myberg, he's the editor of Politics Web, a fantastic publication here in South Africa.
00:35:48.540And he summed it up so brilliantly this week in his quote.
00:35:51.820He said that, and I quote, the Trump administration's efforts to pressure the South African government to close the door that the Expropriation Act is trying to open represents the first time in living memory that the leader of a Western democracy has sought to check the ANC's kleptocracism as it enters its final and most ruinous phase rather than excuse, enable or profit from it.
00:36:18.600Given this history, the apoplexy that this has provoked among sections of our commentariat with cries of lies and treason is truly a breathtaking sight to behold, end quote.
00:36:31.000And I think that that sums it up perfectly.
00:36:32.900So people who have watched this channel before have seen you talk about this, but just in case it's someone's first time hearing about what's going on in South Africa or learning about Afroforum, can you explain just real quick what Afroforum is and why it would be the target of the ANC in a moment like this?
00:36:50.360So Afroforum is a community-based solutions organization in South Africa that also has a human rights or a constitutional rights element to it when it comes to protecting particularly the rights of minority groups and especially Afrikaners and Afrikaans speakers in South Africa.
00:37:08.440And it's a community, but we have a strategy that is two-pronged.
00:37:13.560So we call it the fight and build strategies.
00:37:16.000On the one side, the fight side, we do lawfare, we do court cases, we do international pressure, we do political pressure.
00:37:24.700But on the other side is the build side.
00:37:28.580The build side, you see throughout what we call the solidarity movement.
00:37:32.840So Afroforum is just one node within what we call the solidarity movement, which is a network of 50-plus Afrikaner organizations that each specialize in a particular field.
00:38:10.500But when it comes to particularly what Afroforum does, as I said, we have the fight side.
00:38:15.600But the build side is we mobilize communities to become what we call state proof.
00:38:19.940If we, through any type of form of taking back responsibility, and that was so refreshing to read in your book that you come to the same conclusion, that the only way to fight the total state is to start taking back more responsibilities, the responsibilities that we've given up over the years, over the decades, over centuries, to the total state.
00:38:40.000The only way to fight back effectively is to take up those responsibilities.
00:38:52.140But that's exactly what Afroforum is doing, not in theory, in practice.
00:38:56.180So we have, for example, we're pioneering a private firefighting unit at the moment, which has been very successful.
00:39:02.920We just started it last year, and we're already planning on rolling it out to other cities.
00:39:08.200We have a massive security network all across the country of 175-plus neighborhood watches.
00:39:14.800And these aren't your grandma's neighborhood watch with pepper spray and a little logbook to write down crimes in.
00:39:21.820These are well-trained and well-equipped community members that are organizing to make their community safe because the government is failing to make their community safe.
00:39:30.780Then we also have solutions in the field of water, in electricity.
00:39:36.460And it's still early days in regards to what we can do, but we're making major progress there.
00:39:41.700We're putting an increased amount of resources, particularly into water, seeing as the water system, the water infrastructure in South Africa is crumbling.
00:39:50.480So in regards to, I mean, we can get into what we're going to, how we're going to be challenging the Expropriation Act as well.
00:39:56.800But in short, what we do is the government has in South Africa is, as Rasul Lombardi says, the world's leading de-developing, is in charge of the world's leading de-developing country.
00:40:09.800And de-development means that the state's capacity is constantly degrading, and it's creating this massive vacuum.
00:40:16.360And that vacuum can only be filled by one of two factions, either the good guys or the bad guys.
00:40:25.200The good guys are communities and your own institutions and organizations.
00:40:30.860That's why South Africa, because we have this big void, is a playground and a great case study of both the good guys and the bad guys in that binary.
00:40:43.040South Africa has amazing success stories of state-proof solutions, but also has some of the most sophisticated, advanced organized crime networks in the world.
00:40:55.240We have a mafia for every sector in South Africa.
00:40:57.860We have a construction mafia, a mining mafia, we have a mafia mafia, we have a mafia within every single sector in the country.
00:41:08.700We have a water mafia in South Africa.
00:41:11.080So that's the context within where AfriForum is fighting back, but we're achieving major success, and I'm very proud to be part of it.
00:41:19.680Yeah, that's an important reminder that when people want less of the state, they have to remember that if they don't fill the void, as you say, if the good guys don't fill the void, then the bad guys will.
00:41:33.840The state doesn't just disappear, and then everything, the perfect individual just begins to do their work and live their life in kind of this libertarian utopia.
00:41:44.900What happens is people organize, and either the good guys organize, the communities organize, and they work for the good of the people in the area in which they live, or the bad guys organize, and they become parasitic.
00:41:57.320But something is going to get organized, and someone's going to control an area, and so those that wish for the state to be rolled back, that they want to see less of a total state, you know, obviously South Africa is getting us in a less than ideal way.
00:42:11.180It's not a voluntary option that the state is simply so incompetent and so corrupt that its ability to project power collapses, and these other organizations, good and bad, fill the void.
00:42:23.360But many who would like to see it voluntarily occur need to remember the same thing, that the responsibilities that you're talking about, the organization that you're talking about, is incumbent on any people that would like to take back that power.
00:42:36.460And so it's not enough to simply say, I want smaller government.
00:42:46.820You must fill your time with the things that once created and maintained civilization, because you no longer have this giant state doing it for you.
00:42:56.020And when your state is a rather evil one, in the case that, unfortunately, that South Africa is currently facing, that could be good in some areas.
00:43:04.600But if they're going to turn their powers against you, that's something that you have to watch out for.
00:43:09.680And that was going to be my next question, given the reality of this bill, what actions do you expect from the South African government?
00:43:20.000And what are the responses that Afroforum is planning to fight against it?
00:43:24.340So firstly, I think, and this is still speculative, I do think this post and action by Trump is going to have a massive effect on what's going to happen.
00:43:37.240And I say that because the ANC up until this point has been strutting around.
00:43:49.620We still have the power to do what we want.
00:43:52.000They were strutting around like the world belonged to them.
00:43:56.680And as I said, now that's completely been shattered.
00:43:59.900They've just now, they're cowering in the corner.
00:44:02.640And I don't think they're going to have the confidence, at least in the short and medium term, to really go full in in regards to what this act enables for them.
00:44:13.860And I think that at least, at the very least, Donald Trump has bought us very valuable time in regards to that.
00:44:20.180It reminds me of the social experiment that I saw a while back, long ago.
00:44:25.160So they put a bowl of money next to the street that just says, take as much as you want.
00:44:29.800And then within like the first hour, all the money is gone.
00:44:33.420And they do the same experiment again, same place, bowl of money, sign that says, take as much as you want.
00:44:38.880But they put a poster up on top of the bowl that is just a poster of two big eyes watching the bowl.
00:44:46.800And then nobody takes any of the money.
00:44:48.940At the end of the day, the bowl was still full of money.
00:44:52.560But the only factor was they put the psychological fear of you are being watched into the equation.
00:44:58.040And I truly believe that that psychological aspect is going to play a role in the future of what's going to happen with this bill or with this act.
00:45:09.760So we're very, very thankful for Donald Trump's intervention there.
00:45:31.740Firstly, the first point is that the Expropriation Act has been signed by the president.
00:45:37.500But for it to be enacted, for it to be proclaimed, it has to be co-signed by the minister that has to turn it into action, that has to execute it.
00:45:47.540That minister is the Minister of Public Works, Dean McPherson, who is associated with the former opposition party, the Democratic Alliance.
00:45:56.200The Democratic Alliance rejects the expropriation bill, or at least in their rhetoric they reject it.
00:46:01.900So AfriForum met with the minister and sent him a letter saying that, pressing him that he under no circumstances should co-sign the bill, which will put the bill's implement or the act's implementation in crisis.
00:46:15.640It's unknown what will happen then, but we'll see.
00:46:19.280The president will likely be then forced to fire the minister, but he will have been fired then on a matter of principle, rather than signing a bill and legitimizing a bill that his party rejects.
00:46:29.960And if the DA's minister does sign that bill, legitimizing it, it's a death sentence for that party, so they don't have pretty much have a lot of a choice.
00:46:40.420That's the one angle that we're going in at, putting pressure on the minister to not co-sign the act.
00:46:47.020The second aspect is the legal aspect.
00:46:49.340As I said, AfriForum has a fight component to our strategy, and that is testing the bill, taking it to the high court and testing its constitutionality, taking it all the way to the constitutional court, which is the South African version of the Supreme Court, if necessary.
00:47:05.980And then thirdly is the international pressure aspect, which Donald Trump has already played a massive role in, informing our network of contacts and allies abroad, how they can put pressure on the South African government, how they can help and how they can spread the word, and how they can support us.
00:47:26.220That's the three-point plan, but it's also not in isolation.
00:47:29.620That's just the Expropriation Act fight plan.
00:47:33.180Then there's the Build plan, where we all increasingly focus on creating state-proof solutions in our communities, following the philosophy of the hedgehog or the porcupine philosophy, rather, where you make yourself as inedible as possible.
00:47:49.620You make your community as impenetrable as possible and in as many facets as possible.
00:47:56.980And I think there lies one of the major lessons for Americans.
00:48:03.480It's that story of the guy in the bar fight.
00:48:10.560And then he says, fine, you can try and kill me, but one of you is going to lose your eyes.
00:48:15.680I'm going to poke out one of your eyes.
00:48:17.840And who of you is going to be willing to do that?
00:48:19.840And none of those 10 guys gang up on him is willing to take a 10% chance or a 1 in 10 chance that they're going to be blinded at the end just to kill one guy so they leave him alone.
00:48:30.120That's the porcupine approach of making yourself actually resistant to attack from the outside.
00:48:38.660That's why there are still porcupines in the Kruger National Park here in South Africa, the large nature reserve that has lions and leopards and any massive predator that you can imagine.
00:48:49.800But these small porcupines are abundant because a porcupine spikes in South Africa.
00:48:54.980Go Google or look on YouTube porcupine versus lion or porcupine versus leopard or badger versus leopard or lion.
00:49:02.300And it's an animal that thrives on the same principle of where the porcupine has spikes, the badger has a very, very, very thick skin that's impenetrable to even a predator's bite.
00:49:14.160So that's the way you survive, particularly as a minority, when there are predators as big as the total state out there, is you make your community as inedible and as dangerous as possible through spikes or a thick skin.
00:49:30.220As I explained, many of the operations that AfriForum do are particularly to achieve this, specifically our nationwide security network that we've built.
00:49:42.200The final lesson there that I think Americans can learn, and I've noticed this when I describe some of our solutions, Americans and Europeans, also Westerners in general, will zero in on one aspect of your strategy.
00:49:56.480For example, the legal strategy, and they'll say, you're wasting your time, the courts are corrupt, the courts will never help you in any way, why are you doing this?
00:50:06.240Because you have to use, the answer is you have to use every single avenue and every single opportunity at your disposal.
00:50:13.480Yes, ideology has infected many of South Africa's courts, but they're far from useless.
00:50:18.980The AfriForum have won many court cases to stop destructive policies from the ANC.
00:50:25.500And that's the reason why we're taking this to court as well.
00:50:29.260It doesn't mean we're putting all of our eggs in that one basket.
00:50:32.060If that strategy fails, there's five other strategies and tactics we're also employing at the same time.
00:50:39.500I mean, the military is not just made out, you don't win a war just with infantry.
00:50:43.540Infantry are a powerful tool in your arsenal, but you also have a Navy, you have an Air Force, you have a mechanized unit, you have artillery, you have all these different units that act in tandem, all serving a particular role in your strategy.
00:50:58.980I mean, it's you that always talks about you have to capture castles.
00:51:02.620I always talk about you have to dig trenches, but it doesn't mean you just have to dig trenches or capture castles.
00:51:08.660You can walk and chew gum at the same time.
00:51:10.540You can capture castles, dig trenches, bombard your enemy's positions.
00:51:14.700There's many different strategies and tactics that you can use, and you should be using them at the same time.
00:51:20.420Because if you use them in tandem, they start dovetailing and start complementing each other.
00:51:25.280And when they do that, they start enhancing and elevating each other to a point where when they are in sync, they are much more powerful as a sum together than as any one individual part.
00:52:03.020So the answer was always you work on the national level, yes, but you also work on the local level, right?
00:52:08.880Because it's great now that this thing that would never happen, that will never get anybody who's going to do that stuff, that it is happening now.
00:52:16.680That avenue did at least to some degree seem to bear fruit.
00:52:23.400You assume that at some point that might not work or Trump might not get it all done or there's some aspect of that that won't be complete.
00:52:30.140And you still need to do the work at the community and the state level.
00:52:33.540You still need to strengthen your community, the ability of your state to resist all your local governments, sheriffs, all these things.
00:52:42.480And so you should use this moment with Trump in the United States as a moment to secure castles, dig trenches, build more, fight, like you said, have a fight and a build strategy simultaneously.
00:52:55.200Don't leave it to just one or the other.
00:52:56.800But it is funny how, you know, the people who constantly complain that nothing ever happens and nothing's ever going to win and there's no victory in sight and there's no way you can overcome these things.
00:53:07.660Well, those people are still sitting around complaining online and the people who are building and the people who are working and the people who were, you know, yes, not buying into everything, not drinking the Kool-Aid, not worshiping any individual.
00:53:18.800But we're actively taking the opportunities that were available to them.
00:53:22.600They're the ones that are going to succeed.
00:53:24.300And as you're saying, in South Africa, no different, right?
00:53:31.480Where you don't, you just redirect to one of the other tactics.
00:53:34.200The important thing is that you're working.
00:53:36.520The important thing is that you are planning to make a difference and that you are willing to apply across so many domains the resistance necessary to protect you, your community, your people, and everything else involved there.
00:53:49.260So I think that is really important for people to take away.
00:53:53.280And of course, you know, I hope, I don't want the United States, you know, militarily or financially involving itself in other nations, but to the extent that Donald Trump can bring a light to what's happening, obviously Elon Musk being a South African himself, also very aware of the dynamics of play there.
00:54:10.700The more that they can bring the light, what's happening there, and assist you guys in any diplomatic way or media relations way possible.
00:54:19.460I'm glad that that's something that they can contribute.
00:54:22.440For anybody, we were going to, we got a few questions of the people here real quick.
00:54:26.920For anybody who wants to follow your work or know more about Afroforum, is there anywhere you want to direct them?
00:54:32.500So I think most of your subscribers might have seen me on your show before, so they will know that I post under Conscious Caracal on X or on YouTube.
00:54:44.320On YouTube, I just interview interesting people, both from South Africa and abroad, about topics that I think are both relevant to South Africa and the wider West.
00:54:53.840I don't really do current events on my channel.
00:54:56.400I talk about more lessons for the future and strategy and tactics.
00:55:00.360And on X, I have comments on what's happening in South Africa, sometimes on what's happening abroad.
00:55:05.980And if you want to support Afroforum, I know there's, Oren put a link in the description.
00:55:11.800You can become an international member of Afroforum.
00:55:14.760That's a new feature that we just added recently.
00:55:18.300And or you can make a once-off donation.
00:55:20.920Because the dollar is so much stronger than the rand or currency, don't tell yourself, well, what can my little small donation do?
00:55:28.100Your small dollar donation goes a very long way in South Africa.
00:55:32.660I mean, when it comes to international support, there's still, Afroforum doesn't even get 1% fraction of our financing from international support.
00:55:43.260We get all of it from our membership base in South Africa.
00:55:46.640But we've just now added this new feature where you can become an international supporter as well.
00:55:52.020So you can follow that link in the description for that.
00:55:55.140Just wanted to add there quickly, Oren, when you were talking about how the battlefield works, there is one lesson that we learned from the ANC that was very valuable.
00:56:06.000And that is the concept of the balance of forces, as they call it.
00:56:09.280They learned it from the Soviets and they still use it today.
00:56:11.680The balance of forces is actually, it sounds very theoretical, but it's actually quite simple.
00:56:16.780The balance of forces dictates that before you make any decision, you take into account what the weight of the different forces, the different pieces on the board are.
00:56:28.160And if they are in your favor, you move forward.
00:56:30.400If they are not, you regroup, you readjust, and then you do the calculation again.
00:56:35.440And the lesson there that's so important is the fact that you need to constantly be working to increase your weight on the board, to increase the power of your little chess piece on the board.
00:56:48.020Because the other chess pieces or the other pieces on the board, you can rest assured, are fighting to increase their weight on the board in that balance of forces.
00:56:57.040And the best way to influence reality is to constantly use from every angle at your disposal, build up that center of power, build up that weight on the board.
00:57:07.720And the more your value in the balance of forces, the more you can get done.
00:57:15.060So that outlook, I mean, we're applying that lesson that we learned from the ANC in our own politics as well.
00:57:20.840If you're still too small to make a difference, well, then you better start thinking about what are some of the basic things that I can start doing or my organization can start doing or my community can start doing to increase our resilience and to increase our hitting power or our just power in general in the larger game.
00:58:03.320Yeah, but even if you have to start in a small way, if you don't think you're going to make any difference, finding a way to make the next victory easier to accumulate enough power so the next victory rolls.
00:58:14.720Like you said, it creates that snowball effect, and that's definitely key to any form of activism.
00:58:45.520Mana Yud Susha says, in a war to impose global Zimbabwe, we are all Rhodesians now.
00:58:55.880And then we have Lowbrow again, and he says, when this is all over and we have won, I would love to see Oren chat with Ernst Roths of Afroform about metal.
00:59:06.680Till then, check out some Windai Wolf.
00:59:10.640Yeah, so that's my colleague, Ernst Roths.
00:59:13.500He is also part of the Solidarity Movement.
00:59:15.660Dr. Ernst Roths, even though he will never introduce himself as such.
00:59:19.920He, I mean, he's a senior figure within the Solidarity Movement.
00:59:24.360He was from Afroform, but I mean, he's still, he's still my colleague, seeing he's still in the same constellation of organizations.
01:01:43.080And South Africa gives you a roadmap for how to do that in the harshest climate.
01:01:46.820So if you have something that isn't as harsh, it should be easier to get it done, right?
01:01:51.180And that's a great way to study and understand what's working there and what can be applied in the United States or your nation if you're living somewhere else.
01:02:00.000If this is your first time on the channel, of course, you should subscribe on YouTube.
01:02:05.080Click the bell, notifications, all that stuff.
01:02:07.320If you'd like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, you need to subscribe to The Orr McIntyre Show on your favorite podcast platform.
01:02:12.780And if you'd like to pick up my book, The Total State, which Ernst has talked about a couple times here, you can get it in both print and now in audio book format.