The DEMISE of South Africa & PERSECUTION of White People w⧸ Lara Logan & Ernst Roets
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 1 minute
Words per Minute
183.28479
Summary
In South Africa, there are more than 7,000 reported farm killings a year. It s a problem that has been going on for years, and it s only getting worse. In this episode, we talk to a journalist, an author, and a researcher who have spent much of their adult life in South Africa about what they know, and what they don t know, about the scale of the problem.
Transcript
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A couple nights ago, we were talking about an app on Timcast IRL. It's called like Protector or
00:00:49.200
something, and it was an Uber for private security. I actually don't mind the idea. I guess they're
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targeting the wealthy areas of Los Angeles, namely like, I don't know, Malibu and Brentwood and stuff
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like this. But wealthy people are becoming increasingly concerned about the escalating
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crime in this country. And I think it was either, maybe Mary was making the joke that soon we're
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going to have to have these big private security fences and apps for security. And I was like,
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you mean like in South Africa? To which Serge nods and laughs because that's where he's from.
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And so this subject, it's well known that in South Africa, there's serious crime. There's private
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security as an attempted solution to this. That people have gates and security inside of their own
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homes because even after your house gets broken into, you've got to go flee somewhere else or
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sleep in a secure cage. Now, why is all this happening? What's going on in South Africa?
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And are the stories and rumors we hear true? That's the conversation we're going to be having.
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We have a couple of guests, but why don't we start with, good sir, you can go first. Who are you and
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what do you do? Thank you, Tim. It's great to be on the show. Thank you for having me a second time,
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and it's great to be here in studio. I'm Ernst Terutz, or Ernst, you could say. I live in South
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Africa. I live in Pretoria, and I am an author. I'm an author. I wrote the book, Kill the Boer,
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which is about the farm killings in South Africa. I also recently started a think tank and an advocacy
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group called Lex Libertas. It's a new initiative, and it's aimed at it publishes research about
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developments in South Africa, but also it advocates for an alternative political dispensation in South
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Africa. And our argument is that the only way to really deal with the crisis in South Africa at
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the moment is to work towards decentralizing the political system so that the central government
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has less power. And there's much more to be said about that. That's an intro. We're also joined by
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the intrepid Laura Logan. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Would you like to introduce yourself and what
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you do? I'm a journalist, and actually I am a South African, but I'm an American citizen now, and started as a
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journalist in South Africa 462 years ago. Okay. Sort of. I was 17 years old, 1988, before the internet, before
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cell phones, before email. Can any of you remember a time like that? No, you cannot. Okay. Grew up in South
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Africa, but worked as a journalist from age 17. I worked at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN. I worked
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all over. I worked in print and radio more than 35 years as a journalist. Really good at getting
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canceled. I can get everybody to hate me. I'm an equal opportunity offender, and I don't give a
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shit. Well, right on. Thanks for hanging out. We got producer Tate, who actually has traveled around
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Africa and has been to South Africa as well. It's true. Yeah, I was there a few months ago,
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backpacked from Kenya to South Africa, spent a considerable amount of time in South Africa.
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Like your jersey. Yeah, I picked it up there. It was a good place to find one. Of course, Laura Logan's
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a legend, Ernst Root's legend. I've followed him for a long time, so privileged to be here.
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Well, the first question, the obvious one is, as it pertains to the farm killings,
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there's been a debate in the United States. Activist groups have called it a white genocide.
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The media has said it's a lie. Farmers are not being targeted. It's just normal killings and
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normal murders. I suppose the question is for all of y'all who've actually been there,
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and for you, who actually lives there now and deals with this on a daily basis,
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is there any truth to these rumors and what is actually going on?
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So, well, there is certainly truth to that. The term genocide has become somewhat of a
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controversial term because it's a technical term and it has a very particular definition.
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But we certainly do have a very serious problem in South Africa when it comes to genocidal rhetoric.
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Politicians talking about genocide, chanting things like kill the boer, kill the farmer.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm an Afrikaner or a boer, as you can say, yes. I grew up in the north of South Africa on a farm.
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I lived there for some time on a farm. I grew up in a community where there were many farm attacks and farm murders
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to the effect that people I know who are close to me, including my brother, have been attacked on farms
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and people I knew have been murdered on farms and some of them have been tortured.
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Yes, although they are. It's not as easy as it is in America, but they are working very hard to take away
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your gun rights to get access to firearms. So we have guns and it's very common in South Africa
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to see people walk with, you know, armed pistols by their side and so forth.
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So I got a question for everybody, I guess. Why is the crime so high? When did this, was it always this way?
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Was South Africa just from its inception, just this high crime place where people are being raped,
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Well, that probably deserves a long answer, but it's not supposed to be like that.
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So when the new South Africa started, as it was called in the 90s, the former president, F.W.
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the clerk, was asked at a press conference, how will you know if this new South Africa is a good idea or not?
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And he notoriously responded by saying the crime statistics will show if it was a good idea or not.
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And if there's a decrease in violent crime, then we did the right thing.
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And there was a decrease and now it's picking up again.
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So the crime in the moment, there's about 27,000 murders in South Africa per year.
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And the murder rate in terms of the ratio is 45 people per 100,000 per year.
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Now, just for perspective, the global average is six per 100,000.
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And in many European countries, it's one per 100,000.
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So it's very high, and I think there are many reasons why there are such high crime levels.
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One is obviously poverty, but it's not sufficient to just say people commit murder and torture because they are poor.
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Another part of the dimension that isn't that often said, but I would say equally important,
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is that those in power in South Africa have actively encouraged a culture of violence throughout the years.
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Their political strategy was making the country ungovernable, encouraging violent riots, and so forth.
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And I think the country is still suffering from that.
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Was there like an inflection point where murder just skyrocketed and went really high?
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Or was it like a gradual increase over the years that it got worse and worse?
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It skyrocketed in the 80s and 90s as a result of political violence with the political transition in South Africa
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And then it went down, I guess, in the late 90s and then maybe the early 2000s.
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So there's no sign that it's going to decrease.
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but the part of the equation that it's not talking about enough
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South Africa is often called the rape capital of the world
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And there's some religious connotations to that, you know,
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And then adding the dimension of gang-related violence
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It's just a very violent country and it's very sad.
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Yeah, I was kind of crazy because you're going through places
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like very desolate places where there's a lot of struggle,
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there's a lot of poverty, a lot of desperation.
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And I would tell people my plans, those people, the locals there,
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I'd be like, well, yeah, and I'm going to finish off in South Africa,
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And they would recoil in horror when I would tell them this.
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And they're like, oh, you're going to South Africa?
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So it's like even in Africa, even elsewhere in the continent,
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And so it was something I was aware of when I was traveling.
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but even then I do think there was a bit of luck involved
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and not getting myself in a too crazy of a situation.
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I did like would pay random people as like bodyguards
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when I'd want to go into like the CBD in Johannesburg and stuff.
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But the CBD in Johannesburg is exceptionally dangerous.
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Well, I don't know if you can like if it's legal or not,
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I was like, hey, is anybody there that you know?
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I was like, do you know anybody that's like a gang,
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and he just took me around the Johannesburg CBD
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for like a few hours and no one would touch me.
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and it says that murder is at 45 per 100,000 people.
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And I then asked, was crime as bad during apartheid?
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But the reasons are complex and often misunderstood, it says.
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It says, rape in South Africa is often perceived
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as a post-apartheid epidemic, but the truth is far more complex.
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While formal reporting increased sharply after 94,
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sexual violence has deep roots that stretch back
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the argument that it's making about violent crime
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the violent crime largely in the black community.
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However, I then, of course, ask the very obvious question.
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After the end of apartheid, interracial violent crime,
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It then goes on to add for seemingly no reason,
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It says, but consider whites are not being genocide.
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I just asked if interracial violent crime has increased.
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It's just that there's a couple of things though.
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provided the drivers acting in self-defense as depicted in this mock-up
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about 25 vehicles so far have the blaster but no one's yet tested the system for real
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yeah yeah exactly farms in South Africa that have moats or trenches
01:50:47.060
so that people it has to be long enough so that you can't jump over and people can still
01:50:53.240
so you laugh but my husband built trenches on our place in Texas and uh
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yeah and you can put cactus in there you can put whatever just they're not that wide
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so then when you'd fall on it you'd get like a bunch of diseases
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well it was funny because when I was in South Africa I would like talk to kids
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and I would like be like yeah you can just walk up and knock on people's doors in America
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I mean it's not that long ago growing up there that you could do that kind of
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it's like everyone is living in alligator alcatraz in South Africa
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there's some footage also of of um um like security footage because that's many of these farms you would find that
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is you know security cameras recording all the time
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before I moved to where I live now I I had that I had cameras all around my house
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and then when I was especially at night I would put it up on the screen
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so you could every time you could see what's happening all around the house and it's just
01:52:06.300
well and now imagine if you live in a township right in a shack
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and you're living on top of everybody and there's no cameras and there's no security
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that's where the rapes is so and and the murders
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the rapes and murders and there's an unconscionable amount of violence
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and what the South African government does very well
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so I mean and just because the vast majority of people who are attacked and raped and murdered on
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a daily basis there's more black people than white that's going to happen statistically but
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it doesn't mean that you don't have a specific targeted extermination campaign against a group
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of people you know those two things can both be true but they use one as if at this one just
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because this is true this means this is not true and that is not true and the other thing
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is to look at the attacks on the farms in the context of the the laws the interpretation and
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the implementation of the laws right and also the prevailing ideology because what a lot of South
01:53:00.180
Africans will tell you is that kill the farmer kill the poor is historic it's reminiscent of the
01:53:05.500
revolution it isn't literal it's a metaphor it's a metaphor it's not meant literally and um and that
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they don't mean it and that even though that they've passed this law that says they can take all
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this land they're not doing it some people will say they haven't taken any of the land without
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compensation I know that's that's not true but it's certainly not it's not widespread they haven't
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gone in and done a massive campaign because they've they function on deception and dishonesty right they
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they tell you well we have to change the law but we're never going to use it it's just like well
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we've created this technology that can spy on you at any time but we're not really going to spy on you
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I mean if you believe that you just you're not very smart fair enough yeah yeah I mean I guess
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for two South Africans the question would be being well and you you know you obviously have a lot of
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experience in the states too is like what is the advice slash warning for Americans I think
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the warning is is partly what what we discussed already is just where these policies go uh what what
01:54:07.600
you end up with if you start implementing these policies another is is this uh I I spoke at an
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event at the conservative partnership institute last night and they also asked me this and
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one warning is or lesson I think from South Africa is don't feed the crocodile it's that old I think
01:54:25.180
Winston Churchill has said and someone an appeaser is someone who keeps feeding a crocodile hoping that it
01:54:30.620
would eat him last but what just keeps happening is that the crocodile doesn't get full it just keeps
01:54:36.220
getting bigger and bigger and and that's what happens when you when you give in to these demands
01:54:40.680
especially from the left saying well you should do this and you should do that and especially then
01:54:45.200
the sort of the the the liberal response is often yes but look how much power we have and and so let's
01:54:51.780
just let's just give away these things even though there's no legitimate argument as to why you
01:54:56.980
should do that it's just concede or cede ground and then then sort of we will stabilize and everyone
01:55:03.380
will be happy but what is very clear in South Africa is um once you become a minority it's it's
01:55:09.840
it's worse it's more difficult because then the argument is that you are a minority with you're a
01:55:14.920
minority with disproportionate wealth yeah um and that makes it even worse and that makes the argument
01:55:20.420
even more aggressive and so I think I think I think there are some important lessons and another
01:55:25.500
important lesson from South Africa and it links a bit to this is just that old thing about
01:55:29.700
demographics is destiny oh yeah um so so we that's why I mentioned that we can't vote ourselves out of
01:55:36.120
the problem in South Africa because the country is very big very poor more than 40 percent unemployment
01:55:42.860
with that's the narrow definition of unemployment and do you can you blame those people if they vote
01:55:50.100
for socialism so one one party comes up and says I'll give you you know I'll give you um we will have a
01:55:57.060
system where you you can get a job and you have to work and you can flourish and the other one says
01:56:01.500
vote for me and I'll give you money yeah and and then so in South Africa at the moment about 40 just
01:56:07.680
over 40 percent of the country or roughly 40 percent are on social grants wow what yeah yeah like 20 more
01:56:14.840
than 28 million people in South Africa but then if you add if you add people who work for the government
01:56:20.060
it's almost 60 percent of people in South Africa get money from the government so and then then
01:56:26.660
compare that to how many people in South Africa actually work how many are employed then the
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amount of people in South Africa that vote for money is like two or three times as much as the amount of
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people that work for money and that's why disenfranchisement is the only path say again
01:56:41.780
disenfranchisement is the only path yeah in the United States I think I think uh your right to vote should be
01:56:47.820
tied to uh civic duty yeah uh the easiest and simple one I think is that in the U.S. in order to
01:56:53.760
vote you have to sign up for selective service and you get a voter ID card and that would eliminate a
01:56:58.600
lot of degenerate voting practices immediately and there's nothing really tied to it I mean don't you're
01:57:03.080
not going to get drafted but you have to at least pledge to do it then there's the more serious of
01:57:07.900
you have to actually serve in some capacity and that doesn't mean combat people always try to
01:57:12.540
insinuate it means combat because they're trying to discredit you but then uh you'd have people who have
01:57:17.300
full rights and everything we just don't vote on how the system is run unless you agree to contribute
01:57:20.600
to that system unless you're a part of it yeah with with your actions and that could mean service
01:57:24.740
could be cleaning the highway it could mean volunteer work when a soup kitchen who knows
01:57:30.460
but if you're not going to actively take a role in bettering the community in serving then don't vote
01:57:35.040
yeah there's got to be some tied to it otherwise people will just vote to take your stuff
01:57:38.620
yeah I mean our system wasn't like it's very explicit was not set up for just every single person
01:57:44.620
can vote no matter what no questions asked it's clearly not functioning with this new rule people
01:57:50.060
are just voting for money they're voting for yeah people are going to vote for their interests
01:57:52.700
and for a lot of people their interest is getting food in their mouth and that's really the end of
01:57:56.320
it yeah that's that's something the ANC said in the 90s you know when the Berlin Wall fell and
01:58:00.740
everyone said okay the future communism has been defeated they Joe Slovo from the communist party
01:58:05.780
in South Africa said well actually the future of communism lies through democracy
01:58:09.900
and and he said that in and he then said well real communism has never been tried and he's but
01:58:16.600
he said the argument his argument was that Stalinism is not real communism because it's too it's it's too
01:58:24.520
it gives too much power to the party or it's too aggressive and it's too what they what they mean
01:58:30.420
when they say that is that you show people your true intent because when Obama said defund the police
01:58:36.040
and Democrats lost support he said we shouldn't have said defund the police he didn't say we
01:58:40.760
shouldn't defund the police he said we shouldn't have said it yes we shouldn't have been honest
01:58:44.960
about what it was we were going to do because Marxism is built on deception when Hugo Chavez ran
01:58:50.500
for power in in Venezuela he said we were going to give wealth the wealth of the country to all of
01:58:56.760
Venezuelans he didn't say most of you are going to be starving in a few years time and my daughter is
01:59:02.020
going to be the richest woman in Venezuela exactly yeah yeah yeah well uh it's been fun I do appreciate
01:59:08.240
you guys coming in and sharing your insights and all of this uh do you have any final thoughts or
01:59:11.460
anything you want to shout out before we wrap up uh well thank you for having me thank you for for
01:59:16.340
the discussion if if I may I I work for an an um a think tank slash advocacy group it's an NGO in
01:59:24.060
South Africa that works does research on what's happening in South Africa um and our main argument as I
01:59:29.960
mentioned in the beginning is that we believe that the reform South Africa needs is systemic reform it
01:59:35.940
needs a different political dispensation and so if there are people watching who are interested in
01:59:40.940
that either from a journalistic perspective or a research perspective or just becoming involved or
01:59:46.140
supporting I would encourage them to go and visit our website it's Lex Libertas it's the the Latin for
01:59:51.960
law and freedom and what we mean by that name is we want a legal system that enables more freedom in
01:59:58.560
South Africa and not less so it's Lex Libertas dot org dot zeta right on any final thoughts something
02:00:04.240
to shout out um I would just say that uh this is a global assault and the things if South Africa
02:00:10.740
seems to you to be far away and halfway across the world and why should you care I would say you should
02:00:16.040
care because all of the things that are happening there are the same battles that are being fought
02:00:21.040
here in the United States and um if people want to find me they can watch my show going rogue
02:00:25.600
with Laura Logan my podcast which is on every platform right on cool yeah you can find me on
02:00:31.800
x at real tape brown and on instagram at real tape brown some Africa stories coming I've been
02:00:36.220
procrastinating a little bit but these two are so awesome it's just so cool to be here with you too
02:00:40.460
so thank you right on for everybody else we're back tonight at 8 p.m for Timcast IRL and then tomorrow
02:00:46.720
the culture war live in Washington DC it's gonna be fun you can show up there may be open seats I'm not
02:00:53.380
entirely sure because things got all crazy but we do recommend everybody come come to the event
02:00:57.860
we'll even let you come up on stage and debate us and join the show thanks for hanging out