The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 538. South Africa： What the West Needs to Learn ｜ Dr. Ernst Roets

00:00:00.000 I mentioned this story about the vow that was made in 1838,

00:00:03.840 and he went to negotiate with the Zulu king, King Dangan.

00:00:06.720 They signed a treaty, and the king said,

00:00:08.400 we need to celebrate this, but leave your weapons outside.

00:00:11.360 And so during the celebration, the Zulu king chanted, 0.99

00:00:14.880 kill the wizards, and they slaughtered them. 0.99

00:00:16.880 We need to retaliate, we need to attack back. 0.99

00:00:19.120 And so they had a commander of about 300 to 400 people.

00:00:21.840 They were completely surrounded by about 12,000.

00:00:24.880 A man named Sarul Salia, he was the religious leader,

00:00:27.520 and he said, we need to make a vow to God.

00:00:29.520 Some people say that's the origin story of our people.

00:00:32.400 Let's flip to the modern time.

00:00:34.560 What was the relationship between the apartheid state, per se,

00:00:37.840 and this notion of separate homelands?

00:00:40.400 The argument was that South Africa should be thought of as Europe.

00:00:43.280 The single biggest problem in South Africa, 0.98

00:00:45.440 it's the triangle of unemployment, poverty, and inequality.

00:00:49.120 Ironically, they've gotten to a point where they can only think about inequality.

00:00:52.960 It looks to me like the cost of innovation is inequality.

00:00:56.560 Okay, now your book is entitled, Kill the Boer.

00:00:59.440 There's a reason for that.

00:01:01.440 Kill the Boer. 1.00

00:01:16.320 Hello, everybody.

00:01:17.280 I've watched over a very long period of time,

00:01:21.840 the political and economic situation in South Africa, both heat up and destabilize.

00:01:27.840 And that's taken somewhat of an accelerating turn in the last few years.

00:01:35.360 And because of that, I've become increasingly interested in delving more deeply into the history of South Africa,

00:01:43.520 to understand the context, and then also the political situation on the ground in that country now.

00:01:51.280 And I came across the work of Dr. Ernst Roots, who wrote this book called Kill the Boer, this book,

00:01:58.000 which was published in 2018.

00:02:00.000 Now, he's also a filmmaker.

00:02:02.160 He made a film called Tainted Heroes, which is about the apartheid era in 2016,

00:02:07.760 and another one called Disrupted Land.

00:02:09.840 And I hoped to talk to Dr. Roots about South Africa, about its history, and about, well, about its current situation,

00:02:18.560 and about hopes and concerns for the future.

00:02:21.760 And that's exactly what we did.

00:02:23.280 And so the first thing I wanted to do was to delve a little bit into the history of the origin of South Africa,

00:02:32.000 because there's a narrative in the West that the evil white Europeans came to a land dominated by black Africans and colonized it in their brutal and murderous fashion. 0.52

00:02:42.960 And while any territorial dispute has its bloody edge, let's say, 0.96

00:02:51.120 but the truth of the matter is that the settlement of South Africa is a hell of a lot more complex than that,

00:02:57.760 and that the two primary racial groups that exist there today weren't the original inhabitants of the land,

00:03:05.360 whether they're black or white.

00:03:07.200 And so just knowing that is useful.

00:03:09.440 And we spent the first half, really, of the podcast talking about the history of the settlement of South Africa.

00:03:17.920 The original people there were Bushmen, who aren't particularly related genetically to the Bantu,

00:03:25.920 the black people who live there now, and obviously not to the Europeans.

00:03:30.960 So the situation with regards to ethnicity and race in South Africa is a lot more complicated than it appears on the surface.

00:03:38.720 And so, well, that's what we're trying to puzzle out in this podcast.

00:03:42.080 So join me and my guest, Dr. Ernst Roots, for that discussion.

00:03:48.480 So this is likely to be an unsettling conversation, so we might as well dive right in.

00:03:53.040 The first thing I think that people who are watching and listening should know is a somewhat more detailed history of the settlement patterns in South Africa.

00:04:04.560 Because the presumption, first of all, what most people in the West know about South Africa,

00:04:10.800 you could put in a very small thimble with enough room left over for another thimble, and that includes me.

00:04:16.560 And so it's not like I studied that in high school, for example.

00:04:20.720 And so people know nothing about South Africa, like really nothing.

00:04:25.200 And they certainly don't know anything about its settlement patterns.

00:04:28.560 And so I suppose people use the analog of the European settlement of the Americas, which is also a very complex story.

00:04:37.680 I mean, by the time the pilgrims got to the eastern coast of the United States, there are estimates that 95% of the Native Americans had already died from measles, smallpox, mumps, etc.

00:04:52.240 And so the settlement story is extremely complex, but it's even more complex in South Africa, and they're not the same.

00:04:59.360 So could you enlighten everyone who's watching and listening about the settlement patterns, the relationship between the land and the Europeans and the black Africans?

00:05:10.620 And let's just lay that out so we know where we stand first.

00:05:13.840 Well, let me firstly say thank you very much for speaking with me.

00:05:18.120 And I can say with great self-assurance that a lot of people in South Africa would be very happy to hear that you are interested in what's happening in South Africa.

00:05:26.820 Interested in and terrified by.

00:05:29.780 Well, hopefully we can flesh out a lot of that.

00:05:32.380 Yeah, yeah.

00:05:33.040 So you're absolutely right to say that the history of or the patterns of land ownership and the history leading to this is complex.

00:05:41.460 And we can do an entire interview just about that because there were so many events that happened in South Africa.

00:05:45.980 Broadly speaking, the people who live in South Africa who are of European descent, such as myself, arrived in 1652.

00:05:56.080 That was the settlement when the Dutch East India Company arrived in Cape Town, or what is today Cape Town, to start a refreshment station for ships traveling around Africa to trade with the East.

00:06:10.100 It was initially the Dutch, and they were then joined by Germans and French especially, but some other Europeans as well.

00:06:18.000 And we sometimes call them the proto-Africaners because the Afrikaner people became a people.

00:06:24.600 Obviously, it's not just one singular event and then you are a people.

00:06:28.040 But it happened over time when we developed our own language and culture in Africa.

00:06:33.080 So that was about 400 years ago.

00:06:34.840 So, but what also happened in South Africa in terms of the different black groups, if you could use that term, who live in South Africa, is we had the, and still have the, what is called the Koi and the San.

00:06:46.380 A lot of people know it as the Bushmen.

00:06:48.120 That's how they're also known.

00:06:48.940 A lot of them prefer to be called the Bushmen.

00:06:51.600 People know them from the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy and so forth.

00:06:55.240 And they are the true indigenous people.

00:06:57.640 If you want to say who are the indigenous people of South Africa, it's the Koi and the San. 1.00

00:07:02.080 They lived pretty much all over South Africa.

00:07:05.240 They've been there for tens of thousands of years.

00:07:08.120 And they're very, they're a very ethnic and genetically separate group, right?

00:07:12.840 There's a lot of genetic and ethnic diversity in Africa, more than in the rest of the world by a lot.

00:07:18.000 And the Bushmen, those people are very distinct.

00:07:21.680 In fact, I've read that genetically they're more akin to Asians than they are to black Africans. 0.99

00:07:26.940 I've heard that too.

00:07:27.760 Yeah, yeah.

00:07:28.360 So I'm just laying that out, not to make any genetic claim of any sort, just so everybody's clear about that.

00:07:33.880 But just to know that these things are extremely complicated.

00:07:37.040 And all so-called black people aren't the same by any stretch of the imagination. 1.00

00:07:43.600 They're probably less similar from a cultural and genetic perspective than Europeans are to one another.

00:07:50.180 I think you're right.

00:07:50.940 Yeah, I think you can make that case pretty bluntly.

00:07:53.200 So there's a lot of diversity in Africa.

00:07:55.420 And I'm very happy that you recognize this, because a lot of people don't.

00:07:59.800 Because all those black people are the same. 0.80

00:08:01.580 Yeah, yeah.

00:08:02.320 But there are also groups like the South African government who would like people to believe that all black people are the same,

00:08:08.320 because that's their way of organizing as a collective on the basis of race.

00:08:12.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:08:12.620 Well, that way you can make the racial story, the racial oppression story, for example, a lot simpler than it actually is.

00:08:18.140 Okay, so is there any estimates for the number of people, of Bushman people that were there, say, in the 1600s?

00:08:25.160 And what, like, how densely populated was South Africa?

00:08:29.180 And what part of Africa exactly are we talking about?

00:08:32.100 Like, Africa's a wallopingly big continent, despite the Mercator projection.

00:08:37.440 And the people who Americans think of as black, they occupy, mostly they occupy Africa, south of the Sahara Desert, but north of, fundamentally north of where South Africa is.

00:08:52.380 Like, how far down, how far up were the Bushmen, how far to the north were the Bushmen, the predominant human population in the 1600s?

00:09:03.260 Well, that's a very important point. So, they occupied, there were several thousands, I don't know if there were 100,000, I'm not sure, we can check those numbers.

00:09:12.180 Yeah, yeah.

00:09:12.560 But they lived pretty much all over South Africa, and they lived more to the eastern part, which is important, because the eastern part is much more fertile land, it's much more humid, and that's where the most productive farming land is, and so forth.

00:09:25.800 Right.

00:09:26.120 The western part is arid, it's more deserts, and dry, and so forth.

00:09:30.340 So, they lived mostly in the east.

00:09:31.780 Yes, but they don't anymore, and that's important, because, so if you go to the eastern parts, like the Drakensberg, you would find the cave paintings of the Khoi and the San, but they don't live there anymore, because they were pushed out by groups coming in from the north, who, it has become a controversial term, although I don't know what the appropriate term then would be, by the Bantu people.

00:09:52.860 So, the word Bantu is a word that means people, it just means people.

00:09:56.620 Like, that's typical anthropologically, most tribes refer to themselves as the humans, as opposed to everyone else, who aren't the humans.

00:10:04.600 Exactly.

00:10:05.160 So, they've been known as the Bantu speaking groups, but today it's controversial to use that term.

00:10:10.020 Why is that?

00:10:10.780 Because it's a term that refers to black people, and I think some people have used the term in the context of making derogatory remarks or something to that effect.

00:10:20.460 I see, I see.

00:10:21.580 Okay, okay.

00:10:22.440 But that's how they were known historically, and that's the Zulus and the Khozas and the different groups that we know in South Africa today.

00:10:29.400 And they came down from the north and pushed out the Bushmen. 0.99

00:10:31.760 They came down from the north and they pushed out the Bushmen. 1.00

00:10:33.300 Right.

00:10:33.540 Now, also, the Bushmen, from what I understand, and like, I don't know lots about the Bushmen either, although what I do know about them is that they were basically hunters and gatherers and trackers, and that they were very sophisticated.

00:10:45.920 Very nomadic.

00:10:46.700 Those little lightweight bows and arrows and the poison darts, and they're very good at running down prey, right, and they can live where no one else can live.

00:10:55.520 But also, they weren't agriculturalists, from my understanding, and there were no places where the Bushmen produced like cities or dense population centers.

00:11:05.960 Correct.

00:11:06.600 And they are fairly small also, which is one of the reasons when the bigger tribes came in from the north and there was conflict between these groups, they were pushed out.

00:11:15.140 They were not able to take a stance against the Zulu people, who are typically a strong nation.

00:11:20.200 Right, and very, yes, yes, well-armed comparatively speaking.

00:11:23.220 Yeah, very militaristic, yes.

00:11:24.460 Right, right.

00:11:25.180 The Bushmen have those little bows and arrows with their poison darts, but those don't make very effective weapons of war, partly because the poison is long-acting.

00:11:35.400 Yes, exactly.

00:11:35.960 For all those people who think, by the way, that the Bushmen were like peaceful agrarian communists and that there was no conflict amongst them, let's say, prior to the Bantu or the Europeans, the most common, if I remember correctly, the most common pathway to death for a Bushman man is through murder. 0.97

00:11:55.620 Right, right.

00:12:25.600 I don't want to bring that up to put to rest any suspicions that the Bushmen, for example, were Rousseau noble savages and that everything was peaceful before civilization came along.

00:12:36.040 It's like, that's not how the world works, even a little bit.

00:12:38.840 Okay, so in the 1650s, the Europeans came to the very southern tip of Africa, and that was primarily a consequence of the trading routes because people had to sail around the Horn.

00:12:50.800 Yes.

00:12:51.040 Right, and they set up this settlement as a refreshment station, you said, for the sailors, and that would be the European sailors who were starting to trade in the, well, in India and so forth.

00:13:00.900 Exactly, yes.

00:13:01.460 And in Asia.

00:13:02.160 And also to service the ships, building ships, repairing ships, and so forth, yes.

00:13:07.200 So that, they started there in 1652.

00:13:10.080 Eventually, they had what we call the Freiburgers or the Freeburgers, which was that some of the, they were employees of the Dutch East India Company.

00:13:17.580 Some of them were then released from their contracts so that they could become farmers, so that they could start developing an economy.

00:13:23.980 And so there were some clashes with, for example, the Bushmen already there in the Cape between the Europeans and the Bushmen, but there was also examples of trading and cooperation and so forth.

00:13:34.380 Right, so that's similar to what happened in North America.

00:13:36.620 Yeah, yeah.

00:13:37.160 Like, there were lots of it.

00:13:38.260 There was a lot of allied, there were lots of peaceful and productive interactions between the natives and the Europeans, and it also depended on which Europeans.

00:13:48.200 So the Cree in Canada were much more likely to ally with the English, for example, than with the French.

00:13:54.040 And so these things were very complicated.

00:13:55.340 We had the same dynamics in South Africa with the Afrikaner people and the English as well, yes.

00:14:00.060 And so, but just to get to that point, it's unfortunate that thinking about history, history tends to overestimate or overemphasize the conflict and downplay the cooperation, because conflict is more newsworthy, you could say.

00:14:13.880 So when we think about history, we think about war and conflict, but we forget the cooperation part, that's very important.

00:14:20.060 Right.

00:14:20.660 And so that was about the time when the Zulu people were settling in what is today called Zulu Natal, and that calls up people in what is the Eastern Cape, closer to where the Afrikaners or the Proto-Afrikaners were.

00:14:33.880 So when did the Bantus start moving south?

00:14:36.420 And why hadn't they done that before?

00:14:39.180 I'm not sure why they haven't done that before, but from what I know, there was conflict up north in Africa, and there was nomadic tribes, and some groups started.

00:14:47.840 So they were pushed down as a consequence of intertribal warfare in their own lands.

00:14:52.180 Yes.

00:14:52.540 It's still surprising, isn't it, that so much of Africa was essentially unsettled.

00:14:57.160 I mean, I know the Bushmen were there, but there weren't very many of them.

00:15:00.400 And it's also a lifestyle that can't support that huge a population's pre-agricultural lifestyle.

00:15:06.660 So, I mean, there weren't very many human beings 100,000 years ago.

00:15:10.760 So, okay.

00:15:11.740 And so, all right.

00:15:12.720 So the Europeans start settling in the southern most part of Africa.

00:15:18.940 It's the Dutch East India Company.

00:15:20.720 It's primarily for trade.

00:15:22.660 The employees of that company get acclimated to Africa.

00:15:25.740 They realize that there's immense productive farmland there.

00:15:29.620 I read, for example, I know Uganda's farther north, but Uganda has enough arable land to feed all of Africa with no problem.

00:15:36.860 And a water table that's 200 feet below the surface of the country that's virtually everywhere in the country.

00:15:42.140 Right.

00:15:42.380 So Africa's, God only knows how many people Africa could support if it was well-managed. 1.00

00:15:47.540 Yes, which is why we have some of the best farmers in South Africa today.

00:15:50.740 So, in terms of the history, then, one major event was with the Napoleonic Wars.

00:15:58.840 We sometimes joke, as the Afrikaner people, we say we skip the Enlightenment because we have this joke.

00:16:04.500 We say in Europe, they were reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau while we were hunting elephants.

00:16:08.940 That was probably a better use of time than Jean-Jacques Rousseau anyways.

00:16:12.980 Yeah, but that's important because I think it, in a way, shaped our culture in a particular way,

00:16:18.140 which is why the Afrikaner people, at least, are much more conservative, much more religious than many of our friends in Europe.

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00:17:34.340 Should I outline a little bit probably too the conflict between the Dutch, the Boers, and the English?

00:17:42.840 Yes, I want to get to that now.

00:17:44.080 Okay, so we've got the setup now.

00:17:46.680 So really what happened in South Africa was that there was a relatively small population of pre-agricultural tribesmen, the Bushmen, 0.94

00:17:54.420 who were very ethnically distinct from the, let's call them Central Africans for the time being.

00:17:58.980 Yes.

00:17:59.480 And that in around 1600, 1650, let's say to 1750, there was an influx of Bantu-speaking people who were larger from the north and there was an influx of Europeans.

00:18:11.240 It was a bit before, I think they came in before the Europeans came, but they were coming in from the north in the same century, you could say.

00:18:17.800 Okay, in the same century.

00:18:19.000 Anyways, and so the Bushmen were starting to feel pressure from an invasion, so to speak, from the north and also an influx from the south.

00:18:26.700 Yes.

00:18:27.000 Okay, so that's a more accurate, and none of this was agricultural to begin with.

00:18:31.780 Yes.

00:18:32.200 Right.

00:18:32.660 So now were the Bantu also interested in agricultural settlement?

00:18:37.420 Yes, they were less nomadic than the Bushmen.

00:18:40.460 The Bushmen were more nomadic.

00:18:41.960 They moved around much more, and the Bantu groups were also in a sense nomadic, but they settled in, like the Zulus built the Zulu kingdom in KwaZulu-Natal in the eastern part of the country, and they had more degrees of settlement.

00:18:54.440 Okay, so we're also seeing an anthropological struggle in the broader sense between the archaic mode of human existence, which was nomadic hunter-gatherer, and the developing agricultural and settled communities.

00:19:07.000 Some of them were black in Africa, and some of them were white.

00:19:09.580 And so now we've got at least a three-way conflict going on, not counting the conflicts inside the groups.

00:19:16.540 Yes.

00:19:16.920 Okay, okay.

00:19:17.660 And so by mid-1700s, what's the status of the white settlements in South Africa?

00:19:24.040 So it developed, it grew, and the borders shifted out, especially toward the east.

00:19:29.820 Then the reason why I mentioned the Enlightenment is after the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars took place.

00:19:36.700 Specify the time frame.

00:19:37.960 1810.

00:19:38.520 Yep.

00:19:39.580 And that's when the British came to colonize the Cape, partly as a result of the wars in Europe.

00:19:47.500 And so we had some battles with the British, the Battle of Bloberg, the Battle of Meisenberg, and eventually the Cape was colonized.

00:19:56.240 Right, so that's why the Brits are really expanding their empire.

00:19:59.440 Yes.

00:19:59.640 And so now they come into what's now a European settlement in South Africa, and the battle for dominion is between Europeans.

00:20:06.860 Now, you see the same kind of thing, in a sense, play out in North America, right?

00:20:10.180 Because, well, it was New Amsterdam before it was New York, and a huge chunk, well, that was eventually the Louisiana Purchase, was French, and of course Quebec remained French.

00:20:23.280 And so who the colonizers were, it's not like they were a monolithic group, and there was plenty of fighting between them.

00:20:30.060 So what motivated the English to show up in South Africa, per se, in the 1800s?

00:20:35.460 You said it was in the aftermath of Napoleonic Wars, but it was part of the colonial expansion, no doubt.

00:20:40.960 It's a trade issue as well, I presume.

00:20:42.980 I think it's all of that.

00:20:44.000 It was part of the British, expanding the British Empire, the strategic importance of the southern point of the African continent, especially the trade that was before the-

00:20:53.460 Well, and the richness of the land, there was gold.

00:20:56.000 Was gold discovered by them?

00:20:57.200 No, not yet.

00:20:57.520 Not yet, okay.

00:20:58.260 And so they settled, which led to the great event in our history that many people say is the event that during which we became a people, which was the great trick.

00:21:11.500 So some of the Afrikaner people or the Dutch-speaking peoples in the Cape at the time felt that they cannot be governed by another nation.

00:21:21.080 They were very, very aggrieved by the idea that someone came in from another continent and-

00:21:27.720 They took over.

00:21:28.400 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:29.020 And they wanted to be free.

00:21:30.500 And so they eventually opted to move into the interior of South Africa, which was a very dangerous thing to do because people didn't know what they would find in the interior.

00:21:40.600 They sent in some, what they call the commission track, they sent in some scouts.

00:21:44.080 And actually, the scouts came back and said that they found some people in certain areas, but largely speaking, there were vast open tracts of land.

00:21:53.340 And because what's also important, and this is, again, why the history of land ownership is so complex, that was shortly after the Mfeqane genocide, which was a genocide.

00:22:04.580 Some figures estimate that about a million people were killed as a result of Zulu expansionism and a conflict between the Zulu king and Mfeqane or Msilikati, who was the, I think he was a soldier in the Zulu kingdom.

00:22:19.040 And he eventually had the Matabele people, and it was expansionist wars, and it spread out throughout the southern part of Africa. 0.98

00:22:28.220 And there was mass extermination campaigns.

00:22:30.200 So the scouts came back and they said in some places they found peoples living, in some places there was just no one, and in some places they just found bones, skeletons.

00:22:39.540 So there was evidence that there was good reason and possibility to get the hell away from the English and move the British and to move farther north and into the central parts of South Africa. 0.75

00:22:51.980 Yeah, two wards.

00:22:53.160 What sort of size geographical area are we talking about?

00:22:56.340 South Africa is about twice the size of Texas.

00:22:58.320 So it's a pretty big country.

00:23:00.500 Compared to the US, it's small.

00:23:02.440 Right.

00:23:02.740 You could say it's the size of Western Europe if you take away Spain.

00:23:06.620 So it's a pretty big country.

00:23:08.860 Right, right, okay.

00:23:09.680 So there was plenty of northward geographical area to move towards.

00:23:15.000 Yes.

00:23:15.280 And how many boars, what year was the trek?

00:23:17.800 The 1830s.

00:23:19.560 1830s.

00:23:20.040 And how many boars participated in the trek?

00:23:22.300 I think about 2,000, if I recall.

00:23:24.460 Okay, okay.

00:23:25.160 It was a fairly small group initially.

00:23:26.820 Right, right, right.

00:23:27.360 And now, and they used wagons and moved like that?

00:23:29.680 Wagons, yes, ox wagons.

00:23:30.160 Right, so it's kind of like the settlement of the American West in that way.

00:23:33.540 Very, very similar.

00:23:34.320 The Afrikaner story is remarkably similar to the American story.

00:23:39.020 It's also, we had our wars with the British.

00:23:41.600 We had, it's remarkably similar.

00:23:43.120 Our interactions with local communities, the trek towards the interior.

00:23:47.060 It's a fascinating story, just how comparable it is.

00:23:50.080 Also culturally speaking.

00:23:51.220 Right, so there was plenty of vacant land in the western U.S.

00:23:57.800 When the pioneers went westward, there was occupied land as well.

00:24:01.800 There's still plenty of vacant land in the western U.S., like plenty, although a lot of

00:24:05.240 it's desert.

00:24:06.320 And so I suspect that, although I don't know this for sure, but I expect that there was

00:24:11.180 more habitation in North America than there was in South Africa at that time.

00:24:15.240 I guess I really don't know, because I don't know how extensive the Bantu settlements

00:24:19.040 might have been, but you said that was also complicated by the fact that there was a genocide

00:24:23.140 and that many, many people were wiped out.

00:24:25.200 Of course, the situation in North America was complicated by the fact of the mass deaths

00:24:30.340 that were a consequence of the illnesses that spread across North America, like a plague,

00:24:35.280 actually like three plagues.

00:24:37.120 And so, well, all that to just say how complicated these things are.

00:24:40.940 Okay, so these 2,000 people spread north, and then what was the consequence of that?

00:24:45.340 So, they, again, going back to the issue of conflict versus cooperation, there were many

00:24:51.860 examples of cooperation and treaties, dozens of treaties that were signed with local tribes

00:24:56.080 cooperating, but there was also conflict.

00:24:59.760 And one of the most significant or the most well-known battle was the Battle of Blood River,

00:25:06.360 which was when the voortrackers, as they were known, which essentially means pioneer, also

00:25:11.940 another similarity, it means those who go out ahead, they were known as the voortrackers.

00:25:18.020 And so, they had conflict with the Ndebele people of Msilikati, this soldier from the Zulu

00:25:24.180 who was part of this, you know...

00:25:26.540 So, he was a rebel in the Bantu...

00:25:28.140 Yeah, yeah, yeah, he had conflict with the Zulu king, and yeah.

00:25:30.740 Okay.

00:25:30.900 And then they also had conflict with the Zulus, and one of the battles, I should just mention 0.95

00:25:35.480 this in passing, was the Battle of Vagkoop, where the voortrackers were attacked by the

00:25:42.860 Ndebele's of Msilikati. 0.96

00:25:44.700 But it was an ambush, they didn't expect it, and so it was men and women and children who

00:25:49.120 had to defend themselves.

00:25:50.060 And it's an important part of our story, because the women were there in the field next to 0.58

00:25:56.100 the men with their furlajers, as they called it, these front-loading rifles, the very sort

00:26:01.080 of primitive guns that they had at the time.

00:26:03.360 And they had to defend themselves as they were attacked.

00:26:08.060 The big...

00:26:08.740 Right, and from what I understand, too, the victory of the Europeans over the Zulus, the 1.00

00:26:14.260 Bantus, let's say, was by no means foregone conclusion.

00:26:17.440 That they were very formidable fighters.

00:26:20.460 And there was a difference in weaponry, as you just pointed out, but it wasn't like the

00:26:24.720 Boers had machine guns.

00:26:26.300 Yeah, it took quite some time to reload the gun.

00:26:29.320 It took quite some time.

00:26:31.120 So sometimes you had to get people to help you to reload the gun.

00:26:34.520 And also, they had sheer numbers against them.

00:26:38.640 So I mentioned this story, but maybe I should tell this to you as well, the story about the

00:26:43.940 vow that was made in 1838.

00:26:46.020 I mentioned this when I spoke with Tucker Carlson as well.

00:26:50.020 So the voortrekkers, they had a democratic election internally, and they elected this

00:26:56.360 leader, Pieter Tief was his name.

00:26:58.860 He became sort of the leader of this trek.

00:27:01.000 And he went to negotiate with the Zulu king, King Dangan, who was the younger brother of

00:27:06.240 Shaka, King Shaka.

00:27:07.560 He actually killed his brother, and then he became the king.

00:27:10.080 And they negotiated for a piece of land.

00:27:13.720 And the treaty was, broadly speaking, that they would get a piece of land between the

00:27:18.000 Tugela and the Umzumvubu rivers, for which they had to get cattle back that was stolen

00:27:24.380 from the Zulus by another tribe.

00:27:25.920 And so they brought the cattle back.

00:27:29.280 This retif was warned against this.

00:27:31.640 Some of the people said to him, listen, this is very dangerous and be careful.

00:27:34.380 And he said, no, we have to do this.

00:27:35.640 We need to get land and we need to buy land.

00:27:37.780 So they went to the Zulu king, they gave the cattle back, they signed a treaty.

00:27:42.160 The king made a cross on a piece of paper, on the contract.

00:27:47.680 And he then said, the king said, we need to celebrate this.

00:27:50.800 And so he said, come to my camp tonight and we'll have a celebration, but leave your weapons

00:27:56.460 outside.

00:27:57.780 And so during the celebration, the Zulu king at one moment chanted, 0.99

00:28:02.740 which means kill the wizards. 0.96

00:28:05.480 And so they took the entire group to a nearby hill and they slaughtered them. 0.92

00:28:10.660 And this retif, who was the leader, they had him stand and watch how his men were slaughtered, 0.99

00:28:15.000 including his son, who was with them.

00:28:17.800 And they killed him last.

00:28:19.700 So then they went out to attack the lagers, the camps where the voortrackers were, 0.98

00:28:25.100 especially women and children. 0.91

00:28:26.720 I believe the number is 185 women and children who were killed during these attacks,

00:28:31.240 surprise attacks at night.

00:28:32.740 But the voortracker people then said, or the Afrikaners said, we need to retaliate.

00:28:38.520 We need to attack back.

00:28:39.860 And so they had a commando of about three to 400 people to go and attack the Zulus. 1.00

00:28:44.580 At one moment, they found that they were completely surrounded by about 12,000 Zulus. 1.00

00:28:50.200 Some people, some estimates say 20,000, but I think 12,000 is the number that's most commonly

00:28:54.180 used, like all around them on the hills.

00:28:56.760 And they thought...

00:28:57.100 How many of them?

00:28:57.400 They were about 300 against 12,000, surrounded by 12,000.

00:29:01.560 And so they thought, well, we're going to die.

00:29:03.340 This is it.

00:29:04.220 That's kind of what you'd think, already.

00:29:06.140 And then a man, I'm very proud to dissent from him, a man named Sarul Salia.

00:29:11.260 He was the religious leader.

00:29:12.400 And he said, we need to make a vow to God.

00:29:14.360 And so they wrote, they got together and they wrote a vow.

00:29:18.560 And the vow said that they make a vow to God, that if he protects them in the battle that

00:29:24.940 lies ahead, that they would commemorate this day as a Sabbath, even after, regardless of

00:29:31.580 what day of the week it is, that we would tell our children to commemorate this day as

00:29:35.180 well.

00:29:35.780 And that we will build a church where he wants us to build a church and that the honor of

00:29:39.760 the victory will go to him and not to us.

00:29:41.780 And so that battle took place on the 16th of December, 1838.

00:29:48.020 And the consequence of the battle was that not one of the Voortrakkers were killed.

00:29:54.740 3,000 Zulus were killed in the battle.

00:29:58.320 So it was a spectacular event.

00:30:01.680 And some people say that's the origin story of our people.

00:30:05.080 That's when we became a people.

00:30:06.520 And that's partly, this is so important to us.

00:30:08.880 Firstly, because we still celebrate 16th of December.

00:30:12.160 We commemorate that as a Sabbath. 0.86

00:30:13.840 We go to church on the 16th of December.

00:30:15.720 We have cultural festivals and so forth.

00:30:18.000 Not because of the battle against the Zulus, but because we were protected by God.

00:30:23.940 And so, but it says a lot about why we are so conservative, why we are so, why we love

00:30:29.000 the land so much and the country and why we are so religious still.

00:30:33.240 So that, after that, they went further north and they settled and they established Pretoria,

00:30:40.080 which is the capital of South Africa today.

00:30:42.080 And many of the northern towns and cities eventually became developed.

00:30:47.540 Okay.

00:30:48.080 Now, since then, let's skip ahead a little bit.

00:30:50.520 Since then, the Bantu people have multiplied and the Europeans have multiplied. 0.99

00:30:56.060 I don't know to what, I don't know the population ratios or the absolute numbers.

00:31:01.720 So maybe you can fill me in on that.

00:31:03.060 And I'm curious about where the bulk of the population growth has come from.

00:31:08.040 Like how much more European influx from Europe directly has there been to South Africa?

00:31:13.300 How much of it is multiplication of the Afrikaner stock?

00:31:16.940 And I'm curious about the same thing with regards to the Central Africans who came down

00:31:22.040 and also invaded the Bushman territory.

00:31:25.060 Well, it's certainly both.

00:31:27.400 So the population in South Africa grew quite rapidly in the centuries that followed among

00:31:32.960 the white communities and also the black communities up to the point where now there are about 60

00:31:39.500 million people in South Africa.

00:31:41.180 Okay.

00:31:41.420 And what's the racial mix?

00:31:42.480 It's about the white section, which are the, what you could say, the white Anglos, the English

00:31:47.280 speaking, and also the Afrikaner people are just below 5 million.

00:31:50.440 The Afrikaners are about 2.7 million.

00:31:54.660 And, and, and the African or the black African population has grown rapidly.

00:31:59.860 Interestingly enough, this is worth mentioning.

00:32:02.660 The, it's often said that the apartheid system was a genocide.

00:32:07.120 There's a lot to criticize and we should talk about that, about just how bad it was and what

00:32:11.880 went wrong.

00:32:12.500 But genocide is not the right term because the black population in South Africa doubled in,

00:32:18.580 I think it was in the first two decades of the apartheid system.

00:32:21.660 And then it doubled again after that.

00:32:24.220 So, so there was a massive population growth among black South Africans, especially in the

00:32:28.680 last century.

00:32:29.680 Right.

00:32:29.880 And so now you said 60 million people in South Africa as a whole and 5 million are of European

00:32:35.260 descent and 2.7 million of them are Afrikaner.

00:32:38.180 Yep.

00:32:38.340 And the rest, and what about, what about like Indians and Asians and so forth?

00:32:42.020 So there would be slightly less.

00:32:43.660 I can, we can look up the exact numbers.

00:32:46.020 They would, they are slightly fewer.

00:32:47.560 There's also what we call a colored community.

00:32:49.520 I think in some countries they say mixed race.

00:32:51.580 Yeah.

00:32:52.500 Quite significant, quite big as well.

00:32:55.600 Bigger than the Afrikaner community. 1.00

00:32:57.520 They generally speak Afrikaans, the same language as us.

00:33:00.460 But they are, they have their own culture that they've developed over time.

00:33:04.880 They also live mostly more in the Southern parts of South Africa.

00:33:08.580 So, so, so just from a racial perspective, South Africa is very diverse.

00:33:12.320 But as you mentioned initially, races are not homogenous.

00:33:16.620 So if you consider the fact that within the different racial groups, there are different

00:33:20.040 cultures and communities, that the diversity, the complexity of South African society is really

00:33:26.780 something that people should take note of.

00:33:28.400 And it's easy to simplify that by simply saying, oh, there are white people and black people

00:33:32.760 and the whites and blacks are in conflict.

00:33:34.660 That's, that's so oversimplified that it's a false narrative.

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00:34:38.700 Right, right.

00:34:42.440 Well, and a false narrative that can be usefully repurposed.

00:34:45.600 Okay.

00:34:45.960 So now my suspicions are, and we'll get back to this as we proceed in our discussion, that

00:34:50.540 the history that you briefly outlined, which puts things in context quite nicely, would

00:34:56.460 be criticized by leftist and radical historians.

00:34:59.840 Okay, so what would be the counter story for, because like I, the way that, like I didn't, I

00:35:07.300 don't know a lot about South Africa, but what I do know is in accordance with what you just

00:35:12.260 described.

00:35:12.620 I knew that the land was basically sparsely occupied before the Europeans came and that

00:35:18.460 most of the people who live there now who aren't European came from Central Africa and

00:35:22.880 weren't there originally.

00:35:24.460 And so it's actually a story of, well, a sparsely inhabited hunter-gatherer society that was

00:35:32.540 mobile.

00:35:33.720 Yep.

00:35:34.320 Being pressured from the South and from the North by two competing, you could say, two competing

00:35:40.220 diverse racial groups and that produced a population explosion over the last 300 years,

00:35:48.300 the transformation of a hunter-gatherer society into an agricultural and industrial society.

00:35:53.740 That looks, and that's roughly the story that you told.

00:35:56.900 Now, but that isn't the story that the typical Westerner who isn't South African, if you guys

00:36:03.660 are Westerners, which I guess, you know, sure, you know, whatever that, what, yes.

00:36:09.220 And so that's not the story that is on everyone's, like at the tip of everyone's tongue and everyone 0.80

00:36:15.440 being people who are absolutely 100% ignorant about South African history, like they are

00:36:19.840 about their own history.

00:36:21.180 And so, but if we were giving the devil his due, what's the strongest European colonial 1.00

00:36:27.620 narrative?

00:36:28.680 I mean, I guess that would probably more involve even the English or the British.

00:36:31.560 So, unfortunately, that narrative is so oversimplified that it's almost farcical.

00:36:39.020 So the one claim would be that Europe is the continent for white people and Africa is the continent 0.89

00:36:44.320 for black people.

00:36:45.400 So it doesn't matter that the groups who live in South Africa came from the north of Africa.

00:36:49.660 They still came from Africa.

00:36:51.700 That's kind of hard on the North Africans.

00:36:54.000 Yes.

00:36:54.840 But, and so my answer to that is that implies that if you apply that same argument to Europe, 0.95

00:36:59.720 then you should say black people in Europe are not welcome. 0.99

00:37:02.140 They should go back to Africa. 1.00

00:37:03.120 Right, right. 1.00

00:37:03.380 Because the narrative in South Africa is whites must go back to Europe because this is black 0.98

00:37:06.440 people's continent. 0.91

00:37:07.120 Well, it also begs the question of which black people.

00:37:10.180 Yeah, exactly.

00:37:10.880 Like, is it the San, the Bushmen, or the Bantu, let's say? 0.97

00:37:14.020 And it's not like that's the only kind of black people that are in Africa.

00:37:18.360 And so the political slogan is that when the Dutch came, they didn't bring any land on their

00:37:24.960 ships.

00:37:25.480 So that's sort of the joke that, oh, you didn't, you came and you colonized.

00:37:28.420 And the narrative is that they wouldn't say that South Africa was densely populated because

00:37:34.120 they know it wasn't, but they would say that all of it belonged to the black groups who

00:37:39.420 were living in South Africa.

00:37:40.580 And so the arrival of the Europeans was essentially colonialism.

00:37:43.560 That's a particularly tricky argument when you're talking about people like the Bushmen,

00:37:47.440 because my suspicions are, from what I understand about them anthropologically, first of all,

00:37:51.700 they conceptualize themselves as belonging to the land rather than the reverse, which is a much 0.64

00:37:56.880 more typical attitude of hunter-gatherers because they're nomadic.

00:38:00.020 They don't own land.

00:38:01.880 There's no ownership notion.

00:38:03.960 And so not, I mean, what have the Bushmen owned?

00:38:07.400 They definitely owned their bows and arrows and the things they could carry with them,

00:38:11.440 which were very lightweight.

00:38:13.120 And I don't believe they had domesticated animals.

00:38:16.520 I don't believe so.

00:38:17.240 Not the regionally lighter they had.

00:38:18.500 Yeah, yeah.

00:38:19.180 But that was the same in the Americas, like the Indians, the Indians, I'm going to use that 0.99

00:38:24.620 phrase because it's not politically correct, let's say.

00:38:27.600 They didn't have horses until the Spaniards showed up. 0.99

00:38:29.640 Yeah, exactly.

00:38:30.380 So there were, now, there were some domesticated animals in South America,

00:38:35.640 llamas, for example.

00:38:36.600 And it's not that easy to domesticate animals, as it turns out.

00:38:40.040 So I don't know what the Bushmen would have owned.

00:38:43.020 Like, I'm not even sure, especially ownership of land.

00:38:46.320 I think that's a conception that you develop once you become, you're like, you have herds

00:38:50.440 and you have agriculture before that and a permanent settlement.

00:38:54.960 Like, how do you own land when you don't have a permanent settlement?

00:38:58.700 That's not your relationship to the land.

00:39:01.480 Yeah, so the argument is if something like, if you have walked over a mountain once, then

00:39:05.980 that mountain belongs to your tribe, something along those lines.

00:39:09.240 Which is playing out in Australia, for example, right now, in a major way.

00:39:13.380 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:39:14.140 And in Canada, for that matter.

00:39:16.300 But this is a classic example of what Huntington would call the clash of civilizations.

00:39:21.740 It's just different perspectives on, for example, the issue of property rights,

00:39:26.620 the notion of what does ownership mean.

00:39:29.400 Different cultures, different communities, but also different civilizations have different

00:39:33.060 perspectives on that.

00:39:34.200 And now we're sort of in this place now where the Western perspective has become the dominant

00:39:38.760 perspective.

00:39:39.500 Right.

00:39:39.780 And so it looks self-evident.

00:39:41.580 Yes.

00:39:42.060 Yes, exactly.

00:39:43.220 But yeah, that was, the fact of the matter is there were large tracts of land that wasn't

00:39:48.500 inhabited.

00:39:48.940 Well, and there's also a really complicated question here too, which is, there was a very

00:39:56.440 small population in South Africa in consequence of the Bushman's lifestyle.

00:40:02.540 So then you ask yourself, well, is there any net good, absolutely speaking, in generating a

00:40:12.120 technological revolution that radically increases the carrying power of the land?

00:40:17.520 Right?

00:40:18.140 Because that's the question about agriculture.

00:40:19.900 That's the question about domesticated animals.

00:40:22.020 It's certainly the question about industrial civilization.

00:40:25.280 Right?

00:40:25.600 Yes.

00:40:25.840 And I guess the answer would be something like you'd hope that if there were hunter-gatherers

00:40:32.100 and then agricultural people came along or industrial people came along, that in optimal

00:40:37.320 circumstances, there would be a series of treaties and the treaties would hold and everybody could

00:40:41.600 have their cake and eat it too.

00:40:42.860 There's going to be conflict because there's always conflict between, well, herders.

00:40:47.260 There's certainly conflict between hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, herders, and industrialists.

00:40:52.200 So those conflicts are going to emerge.

00:40:55.760 You could imagine a series of treaties that would mediate that.

00:40:58.560 I mean, complicated to establish and to maintain, especially given the unbelievably vast cultural 0.99

00:41:04.700 differences.

00:41:05.380 But I guess that's what you'd hope for, for a non-war-like solution.

00:41:09.700 And some of that did happen in North America and in Africa.

00:41:13.640 But I want to add-

00:41:14.460 It's still happening.

00:41:15.480 I'd like to add one thing is weapons technology or warfare technology.

00:41:20.520 So Neil Ferguson talks about the killer application.

00:41:23.780 There's one thing that has a massive consequence.

00:41:26.260 So many of these-

00:41:27.400 Like stirrups.

00:41:28.720 Yeah.

00:41:29.060 Well, like the tribes that came in from the North had spears.

00:41:32.140 Yeah.

00:41:32.680 And the Bushmen weren't able to defend themselves against spears. 0.76

00:41:37.300 Then the Zulu people, King Shaka, developed or had a different approach to using the spear

00:41:44.060 as a weapon.

00:41:45.040 He made the stick or the staff end much shorter so that you don't throw away your spear because

00:41:50.380 he became concerned that you go to war and then you throw away your weapon.

00:41:54.140 And then what do you do?

00:41:55.440 And so he said, we shouldn't throw away our weapons.

00:41:57.660 We should have big shields so that when they throw spears at us, we should be able to defend

00:42:01.600 ourselves.

00:42:02.400 And then our spear is something that we can use to stab and then we still have it.

00:42:06.540 And just that one thing had a massive consequence in terms of Zulu dominance in South Africa.

00:42:13.940 Just that one thing.

00:42:15.800 Like the stirrups that allowed mounted armored Europeans to become knights.

00:42:21.440 Right.

00:42:21.960 And then to go to South America and wreak absolute havoc because they were basically the equivalent 1.00

00:42:28.860 of tanks.

00:42:30.400 Yes.

00:42:30.760 Right.

00:42:31.180 Isn't it the Space Odyssey story with, I think there's reference to the ancient primates

00:42:37.320 and the one group is able to pick up a stick, a bone.

00:42:41.600 And the fact that one group is able to do that and the other isn't just means that the

00:42:45.940 other group gets obliterated.

00:42:47.100 That and throwing.

00:42:47.820 Yes.

00:42:48.340 Yeah.

00:42:48.800 Yeah.

00:42:49.240 Right.

00:42:49.860 So these things, from our perspective as industrialized people, these look like trivial technological

00:42:55.680 transformations.

00:42:57.080 But, you know, what's trivial is not obvious.

00:43:01.320 Yeah.

00:43:01.500 So, you know, I read, for example, that when the Europeans went, especially into the Pacific,

00:43:07.660 especially the Pacific Islands, but this happened to many, certainly Stone Age people that they

00:43:12.500 came across, that they were prone to distribute steel axes like they were nothing.

00:43:18.380 Well, these are people who, if you were the big man in the kingdom, you had a really nice 0.87

00:43:22.440 stone axe and those bloody Europeans came along and were giving away steel axes like they were 1.00

00:43:27.280 nothing. 0.96

00:43:27.780 It was a little on the demoralizing side, you might say.

00:43:30.500 It's the equivalent of the atomic bomb.

00:43:33.280 It's a game changer.

00:43:34.560 Exactly.

00:43:35.160 Yeah.

00:43:35.620 Yeah.

00:43:35.980 So, okay.

00:43:36.920 Absolutely.

00:43:37.520 Okay.

00:43:37.920 Okay.

00:43:38.260 So, you said that the antithetical history would be, well, the black people owned the 1.00

00:43:45.400 land.

00:43:46.340 And so, that's like all black people are the same people. 0.92

00:43:49.220 Yeah.

00:43:49.420 And they had a concept of ownership.

00:43:51.840 And ownership applied, despite the fact that these were widely dispersed nomadic tribesmen,

00:43:58.920 ownership applied to all the land, like over what district?

00:44:02.680 I mean, that's something that's sort of ambivalent.

00:44:04.700 You said when the scouts went north, they found huge tracts of land that were unoccupied.

00:44:09.880 I mean, even in European, say British, English, British common law now, if you leave a tract 1.00

00:44:17.900 of land uninhabited, if there is a tract of land that's uninhabited and someone comes along

00:44:24.060 and improves it and builds a domicile, at some point they obtain rights over it.

00:44:28.540 Because there's a deep principle that if you're not using the land, it doesn't belong to you.

00:44:34.680 Yeah.

00:44:34.860 Certainly not intrinsically and even under a contract, because you can end up with, and

00:44:39.920 you know, squatter's rights can obviously be taken too far, but we should note that there

00:44:43.880 is a principle that if you're not using it, you don't own it.

00:44:48.460 Right.

00:44:48.900 It's the Dutch legal principle of res nullius is a piece of land or property that doesn't

00:44:54.500 belong to anyone because there's no one there.

00:44:56.780 Right.

00:44:57.060 And so that's something, so a res nullius is something that you can occupy, but that's

00:45:03.140 not the narrative.

00:45:03.960 That's not the mainstream narrative.

00:45:06.160 I think there are very few historians who actually push this mainstream narrative.

00:45:11.200 I think most historians who are worth their salt know that the history of land ownership

00:45:15.360 in South Africa is much more complex.

00:45:17.140 Well, then that begs the question.

00:45:18.620 And now we can, let's turn from the historical to the more political, and then we'll start

00:45:22.240 talking about the current day in South Africa, because I think we laid the groundwork

00:45:25.560 quite nicely. 0.89

00:45:26.180 So, the typical observer of South Africa pretty much buys the land was inhabited by the black 0.97

00:45:38.580 people, and then the white people came and stole it. 0.93

00:45:41.540 They buy that narrative. 0.97

00:45:43.080 Right.

00:45:43.660 So, given the complexities of the situation and the fact that, as you just pointed out,

00:45:49.960 most historians worth their salt tell a story that's somewhat approximately akin to the

00:45:56.160 story you just described, why is it that that isn't the story that's widespread in the

00:46:03.500 West as such?

00:46:04.900 Why do you think that is?

00:46:06.240 That is a very good question.

00:46:08.480 And I think it deserves a long answer, and I might not have the full answer.

00:46:13.160 Yeah, well, fair enough.

00:46:14.220 Because I think it ties in with a lot of the problems that the West has in terms of this

00:46:19.580 deep-rooted sense of guilt that Westerners have about their own history, about their own

00:46:25.760 past.

00:46:26.660 And this oikophobic, I think that's Roger Scruton's term, of sort of hating your own and having

00:46:32.540 a deep sense of remorse for your own history and feeling sorry for that.

00:46:36.280 I think it's rooted in that.

00:46:38.380 It's this down-with-us mentality that we are the bad guys and we need to feel sorry for that.

00:46:43.600 Do you see any of that in South Africa among the Bantu? 1.00

00:46:47.440 No, no.

00:46:48.280 Like, literally none?

00:46:50.220 Is there any streams of black thought, let's say, in South Africa where there's guilt being

00:46:54.960 manifested for what happened to the Bushmen?

00:46:56.820 I, to be honest, I haven't seen that.

00:47:00.220 What I can say is Prince Mangosutu Batelezi, who was a very well-known Zulu politician,

00:47:06.100 anti-apartheid activist, he once apologized to the Afrikaner people for the massacre of

00:47:12.740 Pitratif that I mentioned earlier.

00:47:15.440 Okay, so that's one example of remorse for expansionist overreach, let's say.

00:47:21.720 Yes, that's the only...

00:47:22.680 Because I'm curious about why this would be particularly a European malaise, right?

00:47:27.540 Because it seems to be particularly a European malaise.

00:47:30.500 I mean, maybe that, does that have something to do with the intrinsic peacefulness of Christianity?

00:47:36.360 Maybe?

00:47:37.160 I mean, we don't have to wander down that rabbit hole, but it is an interesting thing to speculate

00:47:41.720 about.

00:47:42.080 Like, why has this become, this self-hating become a Western obsession?

00:47:47.600 I think it's oversimplified, but I think Enlightenment philosophy has played some role.

00:47:54.660 And you, okay, is that part of the reason that you noted earlier that the Enlightenment

00:47:59.020 skipped?

00:48:00.120 Yes.

00:48:00.300 Okay, develop that a little bit then.

00:48:02.000 So, why I say Enlightenment philosophy played a role?

00:48:05.160 I mean, there are many examples.

00:48:06.280 We mentioned Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

00:48:07.420 Voltaire, for example, if you read his works, he places a lot of emphasis on, as many modern

00:48:16.260 philosophers do, sort of detachment from the community.

00:48:19.360 We have to cultivate your garden, which is a good thing.

00:48:22.240 But the Voltairean view of cultivating your garden is, you know, don't look at what's

00:48:27.220 happening in the world out there.

00:48:28.380 Just focus on your garden at your home, something like that.

00:48:30.700 But Voltaire also writes a lot about how other, you could say, civilizations are actually better

00:48:36.080 than the West.

00:48:36.900 He writes a lot about the East, about...

00:48:40.160 So, okay, so that's interesting.

00:48:42.040 You know, that could be actually an indication of something that I think was part of the reason

00:48:47.880 for the destruction of Rome.

00:48:50.180 You know, and Nietzsche wrote about this a fair bit.

00:48:52.540 So, well, so imagine you have a relatively homogenous local community.

00:48:56.320 Let's call it Christendom.

00:48:57.660 Okay, well, there's a lot of fractionation inside Christendom, a lot of factions fighting.

00:49:03.480 But roughly speaking, there's an overarching ethos, which is Christian in its essence.

00:49:10.120 And even the warring parties agree on many things.

00:49:14.300 Okay, but now you expand, and you expand, and you encounter, well, the Chinese, let's say, 0.99

00:49:20.380 and you encounter the Indians, the actual India Indians, these sophisticated alternative

00:49:25.600 societies, the Buddhists, the Muslims, who have cultural traditions as sophisticated and rich

00:49:33.480 as your own.

00:49:35.080 Well, so Nietzsche's take on that was twofold.

00:49:37.860 He said, well, first of all, you think you're right to begin with, but part of the reason

00:49:42.220 you think you're right is because you don't know any other ideas.

00:49:44.920 It's like 14th century Christians didn't believe Christian things.

00:49:49.560 They weren't like Enlightenment rationalists who adopted Christian superstition.

00:49:54.960 I mean, they looked at the universe through a Christian lens.

00:49:57.700 There wasn't another viewpoint, apart from a couple of secular people and some heretics.

00:50:02.440 It was like the world was Christian. 0.99

00:50:04.560 That's your frame of reference.

00:50:05.360 That's everything about it.

00:50:06.900 That's that, you know, you see, yeah.

00:50:11.340 There's no contrary philosophy.

00:50:13.480 Okay, now you expand, well, and you're also doing this with regards to the Enlightenment

00:50:18.320 discoveries and scientific, and now there's like eight competing viewpoints, each of which

00:50:23.880 has the same depth, let's say.

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00:51:23.540 And so, at some point, you have a terrible case of indigestion.

00:51:31.760 And then Nietzsche says something even more subtle than that.

00:51:34.820 He says, well, you know, first of all, there's a monolithic worldview, and so you're pretty

00:51:38.900 secure about that, because that's just the way things are.

00:51:41.440 Then you encounter these competing belief systems, and they're pretty compelling, and competing

00:51:46.200 ethical systems as well.

00:51:47.540 And then it starts to become a question, when it never was, who's right?

00:51:52.440 Well, good luck sorting that out.

00:51:54.680 That's what wars are for, right?

00:51:56.500 It's really hard to sort that out.

00:51:58.060 But then Nietzsche says something even more interesting.

00:52:00.240 He said, well, you have belief system one, and then you encounter belief system two, and

00:52:04.920 you see there's a conflict, and it isn't obvious who's right.

00:52:07.860 Then you add belief system three in there, and you think, uh-oh.

00:52:10.700 It's not just that there's a conflict in belief systems.

00:52:13.360 It's that the idea that there's an absolute truth itself, or even truth itself, now becomes

00:52:20.080 questionable.

00:52:20.920 That's when moral relativism makes its ugly appearance, and nihilism.

00:52:24.700 And so, not only do you lose faith in your initial unquestioned presuppositions, but you

00:52:30.340 lose faith in the idea of certainty itself.

00:52:33.540 And then you have no strength.

00:52:35.080 I mean, I think part of the reason the Romans couldn't withstand the barbarians, let's say, 0.95

00:52:41.180 is because they died of indigestion.

00:52:43.240 Like, there was no unity of purpose anymore, because they had bitten off more than they

00:52:48.800 can chew.

00:52:49.640 And you could certainly, I think, part of the reason the UK is in the dreadful situation

00:52:53.400 that it's in now is exactly because of that.

00:52:55.400 It's like, when you go to India, and you're a little island, and there's hardly any of you, 0.85

00:53:02.340 and you go invade India, it's a real toss-up, who's invaded who.

00:53:06.580 Like, you might have the upper hand for 50 years, but when you're outnumbered by a factor

00:53:11.500 of, what is it, 100 at least, who's going to win that contact is by no means obvious.

00:53:18.480 Yes.

00:53:19.160 So, maybe a different way of putting this, as opposed to talking about Enlightenment philosophy,

00:53:24.560 is to say, the West has had to make this, the West went through some form of a recognition

00:53:31.260 that the Western frame of reference is not the frame of reference, but a frame of reference.

00:53:37.300 And I think a lot of people in the West, we're not quite sure how to deal with that.

00:53:42.900 We still aren't.

00:53:43.760 Yeah, which leads to a lot of conflict.

00:53:45.780 And one way of dealing with that is to say that our way is right, and everyone else's

00:53:51.400 way is wrong, and we need to enforce our view on the rest of the world.

00:53:54.480 Yeah, yeah.

00:53:55.040 And then you get a kind of ethno-fascism that can develop out of that.

00:53:58.180 Yes, and that doesn't work.

00:53:59.720 Yeah, well, that's got its problems, I'd say.

00:54:02.640 And another way of dealing with it that is equally bad is to say, well, we need to dissolve.

00:54:06.820 Yeah.

00:54:07.520 We, you know, it's, we have an identity crisis as a result of this.

00:54:13.660 Yeah.

00:54:14.140 And so, maybe those guys are better than we are.

00:54:16.420 And I think the appropriate solution lies in the middle, the golden mean, is to say

00:54:20.540 that we have a particular frame of reference, and we see that in South Africa all the time,

00:54:25.740 that there's a Western frame of reference, but people who aren't Westerners don't have

00:54:29.120 that frame of reference.

00:54:30.280 And one practical example in South Africa is property rights.

00:54:33.400 So, we believe in individual ownership of property.

00:54:35.840 Yeah, yeah.

00:54:36.680 Because we also believe in individuals.

00:54:38.580 Yes, yeah.

00:54:39.380 But the Zulu culture is much more one that emphasizes monarchy and communal ownership of land.

00:54:45.700 So, the king owns the land.

00:54:47.160 And I don't think the correct way to deal with that is for me to go to the Zulu people 1.00

00:54:53.180 and say, you guys are wrong.

00:54:54.500 You need to change your culture. 0.98

00:54:55.700 You need to adopt our way of thinking.

00:54:58.020 And it's not that easy to navigate.

00:55:01.480 And I think that's why South Africa is such an important case study for the world, because

00:55:05.100 we have these communities living on this piece of land.

00:55:08.240 And how do we deal with that?

00:55:09.320 Because people think about things like history, as we mentioned, differently.

00:55:12.720 They think about things like property rights differently.

00:55:15.280 They think about ownership and so forth in different ways.

00:55:18.920 And the appropriate way to deal with that is not to try to enforce your way of thinking

00:55:22.440 onto the other, but to try to find a way where there's mutual recognition and respect

00:55:26.920 between different perspectives.

00:55:29.200 Yeah, but even that presumes that there's something like boundaries, right?

00:55:33.060 Like, so that you can each have your space, so to speak.

00:55:36.320 And so, there's a metaphysic under that even, which is, well, there can be treaties.

00:55:40.020 And the treaties are made between sovereign, what, individuals or at least sovereign peoples.

00:55:44.740 Like, and even that can be, as pointed out, say, in the massacre, there was a treaty there.

00:55:49.920 Well, you know.

00:55:50.960 Yeah, which to us was very important.

00:55:53.120 But in their culture, it's not that big a deal.

00:55:55.820 And the signed document is almost irrelevant.

00:55:58.120 Well, the fact that there's eternal war between different tribes is an indication of the

00:56:03.260 complexities of negotiating such things.

00:56:05.460 Yes.

00:56:05.780 Right?

00:56:06.060 But it is the case as well that there's two streams in human history. 0.98

00:56:10.020 And one stream is kill the foreigner. 0.98

00:56:12.420 And the other stream is, no, we've got our differences. 0.99

00:56:15.740 But they have something to offer.

00:56:17.480 And we have something to offer.

00:56:18.560 And if we can get the trade arrangements right, we could both be better off.

00:56:21.980 Right?

00:56:22.420 And, you know, well, that's the battle.

00:56:25.660 It's like, can you get the trade arrangements right?

00:56:27.900 That's really hard.

00:56:28.840 And if you don't, well, then it's capitulation or mayhem.

00:56:31.880 Right?

00:56:32.440 So we're trying to figure out how to get the trade arrangements right.

00:56:35.140 And you guys are right on the cutting edge of that.

00:56:37.060 Yeah.

00:56:37.460 Okay, now this book of yours, Kill the Boar, let's flip to the modern times.

00:56:42.180 Now, you know, I can remember in the 1980s going to McGill.

00:56:46.920 And at that time, apartheid was a major issue.

00:56:50.920 And we should let everybody listening and watching know what the apartheid state was exactly.

00:56:57.380 So we get that clear.

00:56:58.400 But there was immense pressure, especially from the more radical end of the political belief spectrum,

00:57:05.140 to divest any investment in South Africa, to put pressure on the government to dispense with apartheid.

00:57:11.620 And I watched that and I thought, well, apartheid's a pretty brutal regime.

00:57:15.500 And it has its marked catastrophic disadvantages. 0.98

00:57:19.280 But you bloody radicals, you're messing with things you don't understand. 0.99

00:57:22.760 And you're virtue signaling like mad. 1.00

00:57:25.240 And you're not going to have to bear the consequences of your idiot interference. 1.00

00:57:28.560 Because I figured, and I still do, that the most likely outcome for South Africa is that, 1.00

00:57:34.500 because of the vast disparities in population size and distribution of wealth,

00:57:39.680 is that the white South Africans are going to find themselves in serious trouble.

00:57:43.660 Now, that already happened in Zimbabwe, right?

00:57:46.360 That already happened in Rhodesia.

00:57:47.680 And we haven't talked about the relationship between those states and South Africa at all yet,

00:57:51.300 but we might.

00:57:52.240 But like, the most likely pathway forward is the one that requires the least intelligence and effort,

00:58:01.980 right?

00:58:02.240 Because there's way more ways for things to deteriorate than for them to improve.

00:58:06.540 Like, there's like one way for them to improve it, a million ways for them to go wrong.

00:58:10.180 And the wealth disparity in South Africa is a major, major problem, like a massive problem.

00:58:16.980 And that has to do with land ownership as well.

00:58:19.840 And so, it seems to me that there's great danger, at least, in that as an outcome.

00:58:28.020 And now I've watched, especially in the last few years, because, let's say, for the 35 years since the 1980s,

00:58:37.160 I don't even remember exactly when the apartheid state disintegrated.

00:58:40.800 When was that?

00:58:41.320 1990 was when it ended.

00:58:42.700 1990.

00:58:43.380 1994 was when the ANC took power.

00:58:43.960 So, we're basically 35 years away from that.

00:58:46.900 And so, things maintained a somewhat stable equilibrium until five years ago?

00:58:56.800 Is that about right?

00:58:58.000 Let me just say something about the dismantling of the apartheid system.

00:59:02.440 But by the end of the system, initially, it started out as an attempt to deal with these complex dynamics that we've been discussing.

00:59:10.500 And the broad idea was, let's give everyone homelands.

00:59:13.560 We have a strong central government to keep everyone in check.

00:59:16.260 And then the different nations have their own homelands.

00:59:19.140 And, you know, that sounds great.

00:59:20.640 But in practice, it's not quite that applicable, especially when you still have a strong central government that sort of manages everything.

00:59:26.400 But by the 80s, the Afrikaner people knew this is not working.

00:59:33.360 You know, we need to change.

00:59:35.200 What was the relationship between the apartheid state, per se, and this notion of separate homelands?

00:59:42.200 Exactly.

00:59:43.020 So, there were nations or states set up like a federation, essentially.

00:59:48.620 And they were racially or ethnically or both?

00:59:53.000 Like, how are the states configured?

00:59:55.200 More culturally.

00:59:56.880 So, the argument was that South Africa should be thought of as Europe, which I don't think is a bad argument.

01:00:02.740 Because the point is, it's a big piece of land that's very diverse.

01:00:06.240 Right.

01:00:06.460 And how do we deal with that?

01:00:07.440 And the solution to Europe is not have one big European government.

01:00:10.660 Yeah, well, we've seen where that goes.

01:00:12.160 Exactly.

01:00:13.000 So, the solution must be some form of decentralization.

01:00:15.200 But the way to do that, they thought, was to have one big centralized government that sort of manages the decentralization.

01:00:22.580 And then, of course, there were all these laws that were implemented.

01:00:27.460 And it was also during the time of the Cold War.

01:00:30.020 So, they had the Suppression of Communism Act, which said that if you promote communism, it's a crime.

01:00:35.240 Right, right.

01:00:36.060 And you're going to be prosecuted.

01:00:37.200 Yeah, well, this whole suppressing communism thing is a very complex rabbit hole as well.

01:00:41.100 Exactly.

01:00:41.440 The communists turn out to be quite a lot of trouble, especially in places where there's a lot of wealth disparity.

01:00:46.360 Yeah, the concerns about the threat of communism wasn't exaggerated.

01:00:49.540 That's certainly...

01:00:50.320 It's hard to exaggerate the threat of communism.

01:00:52.780 Yes.

01:00:53.240 Yeah, yeah, that's for sure.

01:00:54.940 Yeah.

01:00:55.180 Especially in parallel with wealth disparity, because it's a revolutionary ethos.

01:01:00.960 Exactly.

01:01:01.320 And one that results in nothing but bloody, brutal murder and mayhem, starvation.

01:01:06.660 Like, as a solution to the problem of disparity of wealth, it's not a good one.

01:01:10.820 Yeah.

01:01:11.000 So, the point I want to make is by the end of the apartheid era, the metaphor that was used was like riding on the back of a tiger and having to get off.

01:01:23.340 You know you have to get off this tiger, but the question is, how do you get off without getting eaten?

01:01:28.900 That was the question that at least the Africana people were grappling with.

01:01:32.240 How do we end this in a way that is peaceful and in a way that would not...

01:01:36.240 And sustainable.

01:01:37.140 Yes, yes.

01:01:37.760 And it was...

01:01:39.940 The transition, I would say, was at least peaceful, fairly.

01:01:42.880 Yeah, not bad.

01:01:43.820 The violence in townships, I think, is underestimated, but especially black-on-black violence in South Africa.

01:01:50.060 Tell people what the townships were and are.

01:01:52.940 So, it's urbanized areas that are very poor in South Africa, where the majority of black people live.

01:02:01.520 And at the time, there was some very, very vicious rival warfare, you could say, between competing political groups who were competing for support of black people as if that's one whole.

01:02:16.000 And the ANC, who's currently governing, was not the biggest initially, but they became the biggest because they were supported by the Soviet Union and the Chinese, and they got weapons and so forth.

01:02:26.720 Well, in terms of getting off a tiger, things went not too bad.

01:02:30.940 Like, it could have been...

01:02:31.560 Yes.

01:02:31.800 It could have...

01:02:32.100 As apartheid fell apart, it could have been like the fall of the Soviet Union.

01:02:35.840 It could have been a lot worse.

01:02:37.240 It's quite the miracle that it wasn't just absolute bloody mayhem immediately.

01:02:41.260 And, you know, there were a lot of remarkable people who took leadership at that point to make sure that it did go well, quite miraculously well, all things considered.

01:02:51.960 Nelson Mandela probably being the prime example of someone who continually called for peaceful solutions.

01:02:57.060 And he was criticized for that within his own party.

01:03:00.560 But I think to use...

01:03:01.940 You mentioned safe, but also sustainable.

01:03:05.280 So, the solution we got was a safe one, but not sustainable.

01:03:08.500 Okay.

01:03:08.820 Well, walk through that.

01:03:09.780 Tell everybody what has unfolded and what the current situation is.

01:03:16.420 Well, there's so much that has unfolded, but one way to think of it is that in terms of...

01:03:23.040 The way I put it is we have two problems.

01:03:25.420 The one is the ship is headed in the wrong direction.

01:03:27.960 And what I mean by that is those in power openly say they want to implement socialist solutions.

01:03:33.600 They want to take property rights.

01:03:34.780 They think the way to help to uplift the poor is to attack the rich because that has happened there are many examples.

01:03:40.260 Right.

01:03:40.540 Well, and we should...

01:03:41.260 Let's rephrase that a bit.

01:03:43.140 There's different between...

01:03:44.260 There's a difference between rich and productive, right?

01:03:49.340 Yes.

01:03:49.940 Productive people have something for themselves, but they produce a lot for other people.

01:03:55.060 And from what I understand about, well, I think this is true in Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, and South Africa, it's like, well, the South African farmers, they feed the country.

01:04:06.080 Yeah.

01:04:06.280 So, if you do what was done in Zimbabwe, and you confiscate the land, because the rich people own it, the oppressors, you confiscate the land, well, then what happens?

01:04:18.340 Well, everyone starves to death.

01:04:20.600 That doesn't...

01:04:21.120 Then everyone's equal because they're all six feet underground.

01:04:24.220 Exactly.

01:04:24.600 Yeah, so, like, the problem, part of the problem we have in the West is that the language has been captured so completely by the left that it's almost impossible to have a discussion like this without using their terms.

01:04:37.060 Like, most pro-free market people in the West talk about capitalism.

01:04:42.200 Yeah.

01:04:42.420 That's a really bad idea.

01:04:43.900 It's like, it's not capitalism.

01:04:45.940 It's free market.

01:04:47.060 I agree.

01:04:47.460 It's not the rich versus the poor, exactly, in South Africa.

01:04:50.760 As if the rich only have what they have because they took it from the poor.

01:04:55.820 It's like, no, the South African farmers, most of whom are white, actually know how to farm. 0.93

01:05:02.460 They're some of the best farmers in the world.

01:05:04.420 Right, right.

01:05:04.760 So, one way they did this, which is...

01:05:06.200 They were Dutch, a lot of them. 0.98

01:05:07.500 Yes.

01:05:07.660 And look at what the Dutch do in Europe. 0.74

01:05:09.600 I think the Dutch are probably the best, I think, productively the best farmers.

01:05:12.960 They are.

01:05:13.820 That's their status in the European West.

01:05:17.360 Yes.

01:05:17.900 Right.

01:05:18.320 So, go Dutch farmers. 1.00

01:05:19.840 Yes.

01:05:20.040 They're rich because they make stuff.

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01:06:19.440 So, one thing they did, which is very smart and very strategic, is the ANC, when they took

01:06:29.320 power, they said the single biggest problem in South Africa is a triangle.

01:06:33.200 It's a triangle of unemployment, poverty, and inequality.

01:06:37.620 And so, they lump those three things together.

01:06:40.760 And so, the solution is to find, or the quest is to find a solution for these three things,

01:06:46.020 which is essentially the same thing.

01:06:48.060 But unfortunately, they don't seem to know how to encourage production.

01:06:52.400 They don't know how to fix the unemployment problem because they think the solution is

01:06:56.080 socialism.

01:06:57.060 And so, the way, ironically, they've gotten to a point where they can only think about inequality.

01:07:01.820 And so, they get Margaret Thatcher had that famous line saying, you would rather have the

01:07:06.660 poor be poorer provided that the rich is less rich.

01:07:10.280 And it's that-

01:07:10.880 You know, there's actually an anthropological theory about human beings that's relevant to

01:07:16.100 that.

01:07:16.580 So, you know, we evolved in our genetically modern form 350,000 years ago.

01:07:22.720 Okay.

01:07:23.080 So, one question is, well, what the hell were we doing for the 330,000 years before the Ice

01:07:29.560 Age, say?

01:07:30.200 And the answer is, well, we were engaging in nonstop intertribal warfare.

01:07:36.620 And then, within our own tribes, every time anybody got something that everyone else didn't

01:07:41.260 have immediately, we just killed them. 0.87

01:07:43.320 Yeah. 1.00

01:07:44.400 Right.

01:07:44.880 Yeah, we had to figure out how to, yeah.

01:07:46.900 We had to figure out how to let some people have more than other people some of the time.

01:07:52.820 Because the alternative solution is, like, imagine a new product comes along, like a flat

01:07:57.540 screen TV.

01:07:58.200 Well, the first people to get the flat screen TV are the billionaires.

01:08:02.580 But if you wait five years, then everybody gets a flat screen TV.

01:08:06.660 Or an iPhone.

01:08:07.340 You have to wait.

01:08:08.320 And so, if the socialist idea is something like, well, if a new innovation comes along

01:08:15.920 that makes people wealthy, it can't be implemented until every single person can have exactly the

01:08:20.740 same amount all at once.

01:08:22.540 Well, so it looks to me like the cost of innovation is inequality.

01:08:26.760 Because things have to start somewhere.

01:08:29.820 Now, you know in the West that if you're rich, what does it mean if you're really rich compared

01:08:35.120 to just, like, middle class?

01:08:36.560 It means your house has exactly the same amenities, but three times the square footage.

01:08:42.140 It's like, or your car is more luxurious while you're stuck in the same traffic.

01:08:48.860 Right?

01:08:49.080 But the incremental difference is, truly, it's trivial between middle class and ultra

01:08:53.960 wealthy.

01:08:54.920 You know?

01:08:55.120 And I mean, people might say, well, you know, that's easy for you to say because you're

01:08:58.480 rich.

01:08:58.820 It's like, if you're middle class, you're rich. 1.00

01:09:01.580 And if you're too stupid to realize that, you know nothing about the world. 1.00

01:09:04.520 And so, in South Africa, but we know one of the things that promotes violence, like, this 1.00

01:09:10.240 is absolutely crystal clear from the anthropological, sociological, and psychological literature.

01:09:15.360 Extreme inequality breeds male violence, like mad.

01:09:19.600 Because low status, poor men have nothing to lose by engaging in mayhem. 0.57

01:09:26.260 Right?

01:09:26.620 You see this in gang warfare.

01:09:28.560 You see it, you know, so for example, if you look in North America, this is true across

01:09:33.560 the world, places where everyone's poor, there isn't much violence.

01:09:37.280 And places where everyone's rich, there isn't much violence.

01:09:40.160 But places where some people are poor and some people are rich, look the hell out.

01:09:44.520 And South Africa's got that in spades.

01:09:47.200 And so, the easiest solution for a politician, especially unscrupulous one, is to say, well,

01:09:52.180 you see those people over there in that house?

01:09:54.000 They took it from you.

01:09:55.180 Yep, exactly. 0.94

01:09:55.520 That's what the bloody Bolsheviks said to the peasants.

01:09:58.840 And that worked very effectively.

01:10:00.180 It's like, soon there were no people who were rich.

01:10:02.360 Right?

01:10:02.760 None.

01:10:03.560 And then everyone was dead.

01:10:05.600 Yeah.

01:10:05.860 And so, okay, so you guys have this problem in spades.

01:10:09.260 And the communist influence, it's stronger now than it was 40 years ago?

01:10:15.660 Yes.

01:10:17.200 But also not.

01:10:18.440 So, that's the irony.

01:10:19.700 So, that goes to the point about the ship I mentioned.

01:10:21.900 Yeah.

01:10:22.200 So, the ship's headed in the wrong direction.

01:10:23.860 But even though the ship is heading in the wrong direction, the ship is sinking.

01:10:28.560 And what I mean by that is-

01:10:30.000 That's a bad combination.

01:10:31.240 Yes.

01:10:31.540 So, the fact that the ship is sinking has become a bigger problem than the fact that it's headed in the wrong direction.

01:10:37.180 And when I say the ship is sinking, I mean that we just have massive state failure in South Africa.

01:10:42.460 So, they want to implement all these very radical policy ideas.

01:10:45.780 Yeah.

01:10:46.020 They have become more radical because they talk about a two-phase revolution.

01:10:49.880 Phase one is getting control of the levers of power through democracy.

01:10:54.040 Yeah.

01:10:54.180 And phase two is once you have power, you need to use the levers of power to implement your socialist ideas, which is where they are now.

01:11:01.680 So, we have this plethora of new, very radical leftist policy ideas in South Africa.

01:11:08.780 But on the one hand, they're not really able to implement this because firstly of large-scale corruption, but just sheer incompetence within the South African government.

01:11:17.880 So, everything that the government is supposed to be doing in South Africa, with the exception of tax collection, is collapsing.

01:11:26.280 Okay.

01:11:26.600 Tell us what that looks like.

01:11:28.500 Like, can we start with the stability of the power grid?

01:11:31.580 Like, what's the difference between South Africa now as a modern industrialized state and South Africa, say, 10 years ago?

01:11:39.480 Yeah.

01:11:39.660 What are you seeing fraying?

01:11:41.320 What does it look like in the streets?

01:11:42.860 So, we can literally take any example, but let's take power as an example.

01:11:47.860 We started having rolling blackouts maybe a decade ago.

01:11:52.940 And it was first, it was you would have an hour without electricity because they're not able to provide electricity for everyone because they didn't build power stations.

01:12:01.100 Well, providing electricity for everyone turns out to be very difficult.

01:12:04.260 Yes.

01:12:04.820 You better stay on top of it.

01:12:06.400 So, you have to build stations, but you also have to maintain them.

01:12:09.320 Yeah, right.

01:12:10.100 And neither of these two are happening.

01:12:11.600 So, we're about at, I think the last time I saw about at half of the capacity we would have been if the power stations were maintained.

01:12:21.220 With a massive population increase.

01:12:23.240 Yes, exactly.

01:12:24.280 And so, yeah.

01:12:25.140 So, that's one part of the problem.

01:12:27.140 But then, so where we are now, initially, it's the metaphor.

01:12:31.040 Let me say this because I think this is relevant.

01:12:32.640 So, Cyril Ramaphosa, who's the president of South Africa now, was the chief negotiator for the ANC during the negotiations for the New South Africa.

01:12:41.660 African National Congress.

01:12:42.860 That's it.

01:12:43.240 Yes.

01:12:44.000 The ruling party.

01:12:44.820 And so, one member of parliament who was an opposition member of parliament wrote in his memoirs that he was part of the negotiations.

01:12:53.180 And he asked, during this negotiations, he asked Ramaphosa, who's, as I said, the president at the moment, what's your plan for dealing with the whites?

01:13:01.800 To which he said, well, that's easy. 0.82

01:13:04.360 You deal with them like boiling a frog alive.

01:13:07.620 You know that metaphor, putting the frog in the water and just lifting.

01:13:10.840 I hear that metaphor a lot nowadays in many places.

01:13:13.380 Yes, just lifting the temperature gradually and then the frog doesn't jump out.

01:13:17.980 And so, the problem with that is we really see that how we, something gets worse.

01:13:21.500 We hear that we have, for example, one hour of rolling blackouts.

01:13:24.960 And everyone complains and that's fine for a week or a month.

01:13:28.540 And then it's two hours.

01:13:29.660 And then it becomes three hours.

01:13:30.500 Well, people can adapt, like unbelievably well.

01:13:33.240 And the new normal becomes normal so fast.

01:13:36.280 It's just, like I just remember during COVID, it's like six months in, it was like, oh, this is how life is.

01:13:42.080 And you just forget about what it was like before.

01:13:44.820 Part of that's a testament to human adaptability.

01:13:47.160 But it's also an indication of the fragility of our, even our fundamental expectations.

01:13:53.820 Okay, so there's a level of collapse that is slow enough so people won't rise up.

01:14:01.440 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:14:02.360 So, now we have times where there are up to 12 hours a day without electricity.

01:14:06.700 That's everywhere.

01:14:07.700 And what, people have their own diesel generators?

01:14:10.300 How do you deal with that?

01:14:11.080 Yeah, yeah, we put up solar powers.

01:14:12.760 So, people adapt to that, those who can afford it.

01:14:14.680 You have solar power.

01:14:16.120 Right, right.

01:14:16.320 So, the richer people still have power.

01:14:18.140 Exactly.

01:14:18.800 Ironically, making the gap between the rich and the poor are bigger.

01:14:21.480 Well, look, as soon as your infrastructure starts to deteriorate, the poor people, like people die from the bottom up, right? 1.00

01:14:29.160 Literally.

01:14:29.780 Oh, yeah.

01:14:30.980 And so, water is an example.

01:14:32.820 So, we lose about 40, almost 50% of our water as a result of leakages.

01:14:38.560 Pipes not being maintained.

01:14:40.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:14:40.140 And the funniest story was in one town, the town didn't have water.

01:14:44.000 And then the municipal manager said, but remember, these pipes were built by the apartheid government.

01:14:48.900 So, we should blame the pipes.

01:14:50.880 So, they're not maintaining the pipes.

01:14:53.120 But the fact that they were built by the previous government means that the pipes are the problem.

01:14:57.500 Yeah.

01:14:57.920 But not maintaining them.

01:14:58.800 That's right.

01:14:59.320 Well, that's like failure as indication of our moral virtue.

01:15:02.580 That's what the degrowth people would be doing in the West, too. 1.00

01:15:05.440 Yeah.

01:15:05.640 We're not economic failures.

01:15:07.880 We're aiming at degrowth.

01:15:09.060 And man, we're hitting the target.

01:15:11.420 And so, we have, that's a good example where, again, people who are more wealthy can make a plan.

01:15:16.620 They dig boreholes or something.

01:15:18.600 Well, it's the definition of wealth.

01:15:20.220 Yes.

01:15:20.540 You're protected from entropy. 0.51

01:15:22.940 And the people who suffer the most are poor black South Africans who live in townships, who die from drinking water that is contaminated. 0.97

01:15:30.760 Right.

01:15:31.100 Yeah, when the water would be even a more crucial issue than power.

01:15:34.020 Exactly.

01:15:34.360 They're integral.

01:15:35.860 What else do you see?

01:15:37.400 Well, we have the transport system, for example.

01:15:40.260 Our railways have collapsed.

01:15:42.720 The port in Durban, in the eastern part of the country, last I read was it was number, was it 405, rated number 405 on a list of 405 ports.

01:15:55.640 So, the worst one in the world, which is a big deal because you need a well-functioning port for the economy to function.

01:16:02.260 So, that's an example.

01:16:04.780 For people not to die.

01:16:06.860 Again, once again.

01:16:08.360 The transports, I mentioned that the roads, the fact that the roads aren't maintained.

01:16:12.420 And then we have these practical things like policing is more than just practical.

01:16:18.580 So, and once again, an example of the more wealthy people who are able to adapt to that.

01:16:24.240 Higher private security.

01:16:25.400 Exactly.

01:16:26.080 So, private security in South Africa is currently double the size of the police and the army combined.

01:16:32.240 Oh, yeah.

01:16:32.660 Oh, yeah.

01:16:33.360 Yeah, because the police are, I mean, I was in an army.

01:16:36.260 So, that's really a reversion to something like, it's quasi-feudal society at that point.

01:16:41.600 Yes.

01:16:42.180 And then what happens, again, in poorer communities is they resort to some form of mob justice.

01:16:48.440 Yes, yeah.

01:16:48.960 Because the police aren't there. 0.92

01:16:50.240 There's a guy who rapes people in your community. 0.88

01:16:52.380 Everyone knows who he is.

01:16:53.900 And the police doesn't do anything.

01:16:55.500 So, the people deal with him themselves.

01:16:57.560 So, you get vigilante justice in South Africa.

01:16:59.600 So, that, I mean, we can go down the list.

01:17:02.280 The education system.

01:17:03.500 One poll found that 80% or survey, 80% of the schools in South Africa are dysfunctional.

01:17:10.200 I believe the top, I think the number is the top 200 schools in South Africa, which are predominantly the more wealthy schools, have more distinctions, you know, for children who finish high school than the next 6,000 schools combined.

01:17:27.360 So, the education system.

01:17:29.940 And so, again, everything, one economist who's a very renowned economist in South Africa, he sort of makes a joke, but it's not just a joke.

01:17:36.120 He says, people ask him, where should you invest?

01:17:38.900 What should you do to make money?

01:17:40.440 And he says, it's easy.

01:17:41.280 You should look at what is the government supposed to be doing and invest in something that is in the private sphere that is doing that thing.

01:17:48.500 Whether it's electricity generation, whether it's water, whether it's private security, whether it's private education.

01:17:54.920 Those are the areas that are...

01:17:56.920 So, okay. 0.99

01:17:57.520 So, your metaphor was not only is the ship going in the wrong direction, so that's in, we're going to do more stupid things faster. 0.90

01:18:05.000 But the additional complication is that all the evidence is that the whole thing is fraying at the seams and sinking. 0.97

01:18:11.220 Yep.

01:18:11.580 Right.

01:18:11.960 And that that's the most, well, of course, the most likely trajectory always is the disintegration of a complex and sophisticated industrial society.

01:18:18.920 Because those bloody things are impossible to produce and very difficult to maintain.

01:18:23.780 And so, now that one of the terrifying things that, you know, you brought up earlier is that, you know, whither goes South Africa, there goes the West. 0.94

01:18:32.860 It's just like delayed.

01:18:34.560 And, you know, that's partly why I'm interested in South Africa.

01:18:38.420 It's like, hmm, okay.

01:18:39.660 Let's not be thinking that couldn't happen here, because that is here for all intents and purposes.

01:18:45.860 It's just on the cutting edge of here.

01:18:47.640 Okay, now your book is entitled Kill the Boer.

01:18:50.920 There's a reason for that.

01:18:52.500 So, why don't we delve into that?

01:18:54.000 We've got about 20 minutes left, something like that on this side of the podcast.

01:18:57.440 Let's switch to the, like, cutting edge, let's say, of the revolutionary inclination in South Africa.

01:19:03.580 Because I've really noticed, especially in the last two years, like, things have been heating up like mad.

01:19:08.380 You know, I watch X a lot, and I follow a lot of South Africans, and I'm starting to see, well, I'm starting to see some evidence of the worst of possible outcomes increasingly becoming likely. 1.00

01:19:19.920 And so, you're obviously concerned about something approximating that.

01:19:23.300 So, let's delve into this particular phrase and illustrate for people where that came from and what it means.

01:19:30.740 Yeah, well, I'd love to talk about that.

01:19:32.160 And I would also love to hear your views on that, because this is, I know you have a particular interest in it.

01:19:36.980 People do what they say they'll do.

01:19:39.080 That's my view.

01:19:40.100 You want to know what Hitler was going to do? 0.52

01:19:42.500 Read Mein Kampf.

01:19:43.960 You know, and you think people hide their motives.

01:19:45.980 It's like, no, most people aren't sophisticated enough to have two personalities.

01:19:50.040 The well-developed lie and the actual plan.

01:19:53.680 People more or less do what they say they're going to do.

01:19:56.380 And so, when they're chanting, kill the boar, or singing about it, that's, even if none of the individuals in that chanting mob would take the next step, the spirit that infuses the mob.

01:20:10.260 The climate.

01:20:10.940 It's already there.

01:20:12.240 Yep.

01:20:12.540 Yeah.

01:20:12.760 So, the counter-argument would be that it's just a metaphor.

01:20:18.140 Yeah, right.

01:20:18.700 And you should respect- 1.00

01:20:19.480 Bullshit. 1.00

01:20:20.080 Yeah. 1.00

01:20:20.560 No, seriously.

01:20:21.720 That's not a metaphor.

01:20:22.900 That's the short answer, yeah.

01:20:23.500 Well, come on.

01:20:24.520 There's metaphors. 0.97

01:20:25.840 And kill the ex, that's not a metaphor. 0.78

01:20:28.900 Yeah. 0.99

01:20:29.080 That's not a cover for some benign, for some benign revolutionary ideal.

01:20:35.600 No, it's like, it's the call to blood of the psychopaths wielding the sword.

01:20:42.080 And maybe there's some good thinkers around the edge who think, oh, they don't really mean it.

01:20:45.800 It's just a metaphor.

01:20:47.000 It's like, make no mistake about it.

01:20:49.280 The worst of them mean it.

01:20:50.700 It doesn't take very many people to mean things.

01:20:53.780 Three percent of the population, that's plenty.

01:20:55.780 It doesn't need to be the majority of the population.

01:20:57.140 Oh, God, no, it wasn't the majority, the majority of Russians weren't Bolsheviks.

01:21:01.500 Yeah.

01:21:01.900 Tiny percentage, three to five percent, maybe.

01:21:04.680 Yeah.

01:21:04.920 So, you know, don't be thinking, you don't need that many organized psychopaths to wreak 0.62

01:21:09.960 bloody blue murder.

01:21:11.520 That's for sure.

01:21:12.820 So, there was a cartoon about this in South Africa.

01:21:16.420 It was two farm attackers, they've just murdered a farmer, and they were running out of the house.

01:21:21.260 And then the radio had a news report, which says, kill the boer is just a metaphor.

01:21:26.200 And then the one attacker turns to the other and asks, what's a metaphor?

01:21:30.380 Yeah.

01:21:30.800 And so that, so the kill the boer is a chant.

01:21:33.760 And what happens, you know, again, considering that people say it's just a metaphor, you have

01:21:37.920 these politicians, many of which are more to the left of the ruling party, who are already

01:21:43.140 quite to the left.

01:21:44.900 So, they have these political rallies.

01:21:46.820 The fringe of the fringe.

01:21:48.200 Yes.

01:21:48.660 And then they make these speeches.

01:21:50.300 Let's name a politician.

01:21:52.120 Who's the guy who's been pushing this most?

01:21:53.880 Julius Malema, in particular, is the guy, the leader of the economic freedom fighters.

01:21:58.620 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:21:59.500 So, they fight for economic freedom.

01:22:00.560 He looks like he's lots of fun.

01:22:02.020 Yeah, yeah.

01:22:02.400 And so, now, has he been pushing the metaphor camouflage?

01:22:06.120 He would say he's celebrating the struggle against apartheid, and that's why he chants this.

01:22:12.060 But then he would also conclude that, he would also say that the struggle isn't over.

01:22:16.880 Right, the struggle is never over, not for the communists.

01:22:19.460 Yes. 0.98

01:22:19.660 Well, it's over when they all die. 0.99

01:22:21.560 Yeah. 0.99

01:22:21.980 Yeah.

01:22:22.660 So, he would make a speech, and the speech would be along the lines of, we need to slit 0.91

01:22:27.260 the throat of whiteness. 0.94

01:22:28.540 He would say things like that.

01:22:29.900 He would say-

01:22:30.520 That's all conceptual, you know.

01:22:31.840 Yeah.

01:22:32.040 And then he would make a, this is an exact quote, he would say, all white people are 0.98

01:22:35.620 criminals, and they should be treated as such. 0.99

01:22:37.560 He would say this during the speech, and then he would get an applause.

01:22:39.500 Standard Bolshevik nonsense. 0.98

01:22:41.360 And he says, if you, and then they do the de-humanization thing, they call them cockroaches, 0.98

01:22:46.160 and all of that.

01:22:47.120 Right, that's the utilization of disgust as a, so disgust is a very, very dangerous emotion.

01:22:53.560 Like, people have this misapprehension that the German Nazis were afraid of the Jews.

01:22:59.040 It's not fear.

01:23:00.760 It's disgust.

01:23:01.740 Yep.

01:23:02.060 The thing about fear, fear freezes you, and fear, if you're afraid of something, you also

01:23:06.480 respect it.

01:23:07.720 If it's disgust, you want to eradicate it. 0.99

01:23:10.360 You burn it. 0.99

01:23:11.180 You eliminate it, right?

01:23:12.300 It's a disease, like mold.

01:23:14.680 There's no quarter given.

01:23:16.500 So, any appeal to disgust.

01:23:18.280 Oh, they would say it's fulth. 0.94

01:23:19.360 They would say the white fulth. 0.91

01:23:20.980 Yeah, so it's the disgust.

01:23:21.800 Blood purity, all those metaphors.

01:23:23.560 They're all disgust, not fear.

01:23:25.140 Yep.

01:23:25.440 Yeah, and so anybody who's making an appeal to disgust, boy, you better be thinking there's

01:23:29.960 murder on their mind.

01:23:31.080 Yep. 0.78

01:23:31.960 So, they would do that.

01:23:33.000 They would talk about economic inequality.

01:23:34.740 Yeah, yeah.

01:23:35.180 And the road, they would suggest that the road to your wealth is to go and attack those

01:23:39.840 people over there.

01:23:40.680 Yeah.

01:23:41.440 And then they would say things like, again, this is a direct quote, if you see a beautiful

01:23:45.560 piece of land, go and take it.

01:23:47.340 It's yours.

01:23:48.180 Yeah.

01:23:48.500 So, they would make these claims.

01:23:49.560 Only the thieves own it now.

01:23:51.680 Yes.

01:23:52.200 Yeah, exactly.

01:23:52.680 The people who own it are criminals.

01:23:54.220 Yeah, yeah. 0.96

01:23:54.460 It's exactly what the bloody Bolsheviks did with the Kulaks in the Ukraine before they 0.99

01:23:59.180 starved six million people to death.

01:24:00.980 Yep.

01:24:01.420 Exactly the same place.

01:24:02.480 Well, and you can see why it's effective.

01:24:04.660 You know, you talk to people and you say, well, look at how miserable your life is. 0.81

01:24:08.300 It's like, yeah, it's pretty damn miserable. 0.59

01:24:10.060 Look at those people over there.

01:24:11.660 They have everything.

01:24:12.900 Why do they have everything and you don't have anything?

01:24:15.380 Well, it's because they're evil people and they took it from you.

01:24:19.100 Well, it kind of looks like that.

01:24:20.220 It's going to take it back.

01:24:21.060 You don't know any better.

01:24:21.920 Yeah. 1.00

01:24:22.140 The moral thing to do is to kill the cockroaches. 1.00

01:24:25.100 Yep. 1.00

01:24:25.360 Right.

01:24:26.100 Well, then you think, well, where does our food come from?

01:24:28.180 It's like, well, you know, we'll deal with that.

01:24:29.960 Exactly.

01:24:30.840 We'll deal with that later when the Edenic landscape that we're promising makes itself manifest,

01:24:37.620 which of course never happens.

01:24:39.560 Right.

01:24:39.740 But you can see why it's so effective.

01:24:42.080 And so this same guy, he would, again, during a speech and he was asked about this in court.

01:24:46.420 Yeah.

01:24:47.180 Yeah.

01:24:47.440 Because it became a free speech case, didn't it?

01:24:49.640 Yes.

01:24:50.180 Yeah.

01:24:50.560 Yeah.

01:24:50.920 Yeah. 0.95

01:24:51.220 So he said, we are not calling for the slaughter of white people, at least for now. 0.88

01:24:55.760 That's the line he used. 0.96

01:24:57.440 Yeah.

01:24:57.800 And so in court.

01:24:58.620 Well, then everyone's relieved by that.

01:25:00.160 Yeah.

01:25:00.380 At least for now.

01:25:01.120 Happy.

01:25:01.500 Yeah.

01:25:02.000 So there was a court case against this song, this chant, and he was asked to explain this.

01:25:07.740 And he said, I can't guarantee the future.

01:25:10.480 So the lawyer asked him, if you say, I'm not calling for the slaughter of white people, 0.97

01:25:15.760 at least for now, do you foresee a future where you might call for the slaughter of white people? 0.98

01:25:21.040 And he said, yes, I do. 0.98

01:25:22.380 I foresee that.

01:25:23.220 But that would be their fault. 0.99

01:25:24.440 It would be the fault of white people. 0.99

01:25:25.560 Yes, of course. 0.98

01:25:26.240 For not getting to the program.

01:25:29.360 Yeah, definitely.

01:25:30.620 And so they would make these speeches.

01:25:32.460 And then once the speech is finished.

01:25:33.560 Well, the Jews in Nazi Germany, you know, they brought it on themselves. 0.98

01:25:36.640 Yeah, it's their fault. 0.90

01:25:37.600 Oh, no, that's the standard claim.

01:25:39.340 Of course it is.

01:25:40.060 Of course that's the claim.

01:25:41.180 Yep.

01:25:41.520 You know, that's the claim that that's analogous to the claim is, well, they're conspiring against us.

01:25:46.960 We better act before they do.

01:25:49.120 You know, that's a genuine precursor to genocide.

01:25:52.040 Like when that kind of rhetoric starts, that's what happened in Rwanda.

01:25:56.020 It's like those people, they're preparing to attack you.

01:25:58.660 You better get ready.

01:25:59.820 Then you add the disgust and you add the economic inequality and you heighten that with some

01:26:04.180 ethnic tension and, you know, and then, and you give people the excuse to go, plus they're

01:26:09.400 so angry.

01:26:11.040 And you can see why.

01:26:12.260 People who are like young and absolutely poverty stricken with no hope, they're so angry.

01:26:17.380 And if they have the opportunity to turn that anger into vengeance, even for a day, especially

01:26:22.660 the worst of them, it's like, oh my God.

01:26:25.020 Yeah.

01:26:25.340 Oh, mayhem breaks loose.

01:26:26.880 Yep.

01:26:27.020 And then there's nothing for anyone.

01:26:28.660 Well, oh, well, that's tomorrow.

01:26:30.480 You know?

01:26:31.100 Yeah.

01:26:31.680 Yeah.

01:26:32.400 Brutal.

01:26:33.020 So they would then burst into this chant and it's not even a song.

01:26:35.900 It's just a chant. 1.00

01:26:36.740 Kill the boy, kill the farmer. 1.00

01:26:38.080 And there are different variations. 1.00

01:26:39.340 They often, they would make these- 1.00

01:26:39.860 Yeah, kill the farmer. 0.99

01:26:40.720 There, that's a, that's a slogan aimed at death. 1.00

01:26:43.660 Yeah. 1.00

01:26:44.280 Kill the farmer. 1.00

01:26:45.440 Okay. 1.00

01:26:46.200 Well, what are we going to eat?

01:26:47.800 Each other.

01:26:48.160 That doesn't matter.

01:26:49.000 Yeah.

01:26:49.060 Well, that's what happened in Ukraine because they descended into cannibalism. 0.66

01:26:52.100 Venezuela as well.

01:26:53.240 Yeah, right.

01:26:53.900 Yeah.

01:26:54.380 Right.

01:26:54.660 Do you know what one, I think this may be still true, but at one point in the not too

01:26:57.980 distant past, so I mean in the last decade, it was illegal for doctors to list starvation

01:27:03.420 as the cause of death.

01:27:04.740 That's how the communists dealt with hunger.

01:27:07.200 It's illegal to die of starvation.

01:27:09.220 Oh, problem solved.

01:27:10.620 Problem solved.

01:27:11.440 Problem solved.

01:27:12.700 Yeah.

01:27:13.040 Yeah.

01:27:13.760 It's, it's, it's, yeah, it's bizarre.

01:27:15.360 But, but you know, what's really, really shameful is, so I and many others have been campaigning

01:27:21.860 against this for quite some time.

01:27:23.980 And I'm, I can honestly say I'm not aware of a single cause in South Africa for which

01:27:29.940 you get more viciously attacked by people in the media, the government and so forth.

01:27:34.840 In South Africa?

01:27:35.640 In South Africa.

01:27:36.200 And in the rest of the world?

01:27:37.420 And largely in the rest of the, no, I mean, I'm talking about a South African cause for

01:27:42.620 which you get attacked more than campaigning for the farm killings to stop and for the

01:27:46.500 hate speech to stop.

01:27:47.880 So explain that.

01:27:49.760 It, it would be, you, you would be, you would be accused of fear mongering.

01:27:54.660 And, and so we, we had this term rooie gevaar, the red danger was the fear about the communists

01:28:01.420 and now the, the accusation is swart gevaar.

01:28:03.960 So you are, you are, you are depicting black people as dangerous when, when it's, it's a

01:28:08.980 minority, it is a minority who's doing these things, but, but you get viciously attacked 0.98

01:28:13.360 Picking resentful communists as dangerous like they are.

01:28:17.500 Right. 0.93

01:28:18.080 Yeah.

01:28:18.700 So it's, I think there's a reason why.

01:28:22.860 I think there's because some form of a hierarchy of recognition in terms of who should be recognized

01:28:27.600 for the, the hardships that they face.

01:28:30.380 And when it comes to recognizing hardships in South Africa.

01:28:33.680 Oppression Olympics.

01:28:34.620 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:28:35.400 And, and, and, and this is an, and sort of an inconvenient reality when you took, when

01:28:39.480 you go to the area of oppression.

01:28:40.800 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:28:42.140 So people don't want that to be part of the conversation.

01:28:44.300 Yeah, it's like the suffering of the Jews, you know, that's a rough one because they're 1.00

01:28:47.920 the, the radicals who play the oppression Olympics game won't let the Jews play because they're

01:28:53.880 successful.

01:28:55.000 Right.

01:28:55.460 So you don't get to play, you don't get to be in the oppression Olympics, even if you

01:28:59.380 have reason to be terrified out of your skulls, say.

01:29:02.600 Because it's inconvenient to us.

01:29:04.160 Yeah.

01:29:04.400 Yeah.

01:29:04.620 Well, it, it, it's a counter, it, it goes against the narrative in a, in a terrible way.

01:29:09.020 The victimization narrative.

01:29:10.640 Exactly.

01:29:11.080 Right, right.

01:29:11.580 So yeah, so that's definitely playing out in South Africa.

01:29:13.880 There's no doubt about that.

01:29:15.420 Yeah.

01:29:16.000 Yeah.

01:29:16.200 Because the rule is, the fundamental rule of that narrative is if you're poor and dispossessed,

01:29:22.580 you're moral and oppressed.

01:29:24.520 And, you know, some people who are poor and dispossessed are moral and oppressed and some

01:29:29.180 aren't.

01:29:29.780 Yep. 0.99

01:29:29.980 And look out for the ones that aren't because some of them are vicious, psychopathic, murderous 0.98

01:29:34.720 criminals and you don't need that many of them.

01:29:37.200 And they're generally about three to four percent of the population.

01:29:40.620 So heaven help you when they organize.

01:29:43.480 And people are so naive about that.

01:29:45.720 You see that, especially on the left.

01:29:47.440 It's well, you saw this again in the Soviet Union because the rule was, well, if you're a 0.96

01:29:52.260 criminal, then you're a part of the victim class, which is why the bloody Russians let the 1.00

01:29:56.580 criminals run the gulag camps. 0.95

01:29:58.820 You're a socially friendly element.

01:30:01.060 Well, why are you a criminal?

01:30:02.360 Well, it's because you were oppressed by the landowner. 0.99

01:30:05.080 It's like, no, I'm a murderous thug.

01:30:07.020 No such thing.

01:30:08.800 Just victims.

01:30:09.560 So the criminal is a victim.

01:30:11.080 The criminal.

01:30:11.640 And the worse the criminal, the more the evidence for the victimization.

01:30:15.680 And it's partly because, like, to give the devil his due, a lot of the radical progressive

01:30:21.060 leftists, especially the sheltered middle class type, they're very agreeable by temperament.

01:30:26.380 They're empathic.

01:30:27.220 They're maternal.

01:30:27.780 They have no idea.

01:30:29.420 There's no space in their worldview for the sort of person you don't want to have hiding

01:30:34.220 under your bed at three in the morning when you come home from a party.

01:30:37.140 It's like, those people don't exist.

01:30:38.460 They're just victims.

01:30:39.480 It's like, you wait till you run across one.

01:30:41.920 You'll change your tune.

01:30:43.440 But if you're protected enough, you never have to deal with that reality.

01:30:47.420 You know, because you're Jean-Jacques Rousseau and everybody's a noble savage.

01:30:50.740 It's like, well, most people, most people are peaceful, even if provoked.

01:30:55.920 Some people aren't.

01:30:57.700 Right.

01:30:58.240 And you better be able to draw the distinction between those kinds of people because otherwise

01:31:02.920 you're at the mercy of the worst of them.

01:31:05.600 Right.

01:31:06.060 And this is a lesson that's very hard for people to learn.

01:31:08.740 Well, you guys are going to be facing this in no time flat while you all are already.

01:31:14.340 Can I say something about that, about sort of the road ahead?

01:31:16.920 Because that's probably the most important part.

01:31:19.140 So, President Trump has started speaking out about what's happening in South Africa,

01:31:23.780 for which we are very grateful, which has led to quite a backlash from the South African government.

01:31:29.600 And their response is, it's not happening.

01:31:32.100 That's the official.

01:31:32.880 Right.

01:31:32.940 Yes, yes, yes.

01:31:33.760 It doesn't exist.

01:31:34.580 There are no far murders.

01:31:35.600 Fear mongering.

01:31:36.320 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:31:36.900 So, I do think one of the issues that's on the table now is refugee status.

01:31:42.800 Yes.

01:31:43.880 For the Afrikaner, especially the farmers, to flee to the U.S. or to get some form of protection from the U.S.

01:31:49.900 And I know some people are interested in that.

01:31:52.660 But what I should also say, and that's why I'm so grateful that we spoke about the history part at first,

01:31:57.400 is our concern is that if we just leave the country, our culture dissolves and our communal identity dissolves

01:32:06.160 and we become Americans or whatever.

01:32:07.520 Well, plus the entire country descends into, like, lawlessness, chaos, and everyone dies.

01:32:14.280 Yep.

01:32:14.620 Right.

01:32:14.980 Because if all the white South African farmers leave, that's 100% what will happen. 1.00

01:32:20.840 Right.

01:32:21.540 So.

01:32:22.060 Well, and you can look at the rest of Africa as an example.

01:32:24.660 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:32:25.460 Zimbabwe and so forth.

01:32:26.720 Yeah.

01:32:26.880 So we need to find some form of a, what I would call, dispensational solution.

01:32:33.080 The solution is not simply to say we need a different president or we need a different party to take over parliament

01:32:39.100 because there's fundamental structural problems with the political system.

01:32:43.220 It's like trying to repaint the skirtings when there's a problem with the foundation of the house.

01:32:48.660 And the reason why I say that is because the country is very big, it's very diverse, it has a very strong central government.

01:32:56.860 Yeah.

01:32:57.480 And also the country is quite poor.

01:32:59.420 And poor countries tend to have more socialistic governments that are not necessarily.

01:33:03.540 That's because they want to be poorer still.

01:33:05.720 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:33:06.160 And they're not necessarily interested in economic investments.

01:33:09.260 It's just about blame shifting and scapegoating.

01:33:11.920 Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

01:33:12.460 So, and I think, and this is our message also to people in America, is it's great if there are people who want to flee or get out to help them, that they should get help.

01:33:23.320 But we must also look towards some form of a solution for the problem.

01:33:28.380 Okay, well, we've got five minutes left on this side.

01:33:30.380 One of the things I would, so for everybody watching and listening, most of you know that we do another half an hour behind the Daily Wire paywall.

01:33:36.600 And I think I'm going to concentrate mostly on what South Africa, what the Boers, let's say, the Boers who were concerned about this, what they would want to see from the West politically and sociologically.

01:33:49.880 So, I'd like to do that on this side.

01:33:51.700 We're only going to be able to do about five minutes here.

01:33:53.980 But you can come and join us on the Daily Wire side for an additional half an hour if this is a topic of particular interest.

01:34:00.020 That's what we'll talk about there.

01:34:01.180 Okay, so let's at least lay out the outlines of that.

01:34:05.460 Like, what do you see?

01:34:06.820 What can the West, the rest of the West, offer under these circumstances to everyone in South Africa?

01:34:12.140 Because this is an impending catastrophe for everyone.

01:34:15.700 Like, it might be the white farmers that are first on the chopping block, and that's highly likely. 1.00

01:34:19.860 But as soon as they're gone, everyone else dies. 0.83

01:34:22.160 So, this is not good.

01:34:24.440 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:34:24.920 So, there could be many different solutions.

01:34:29.640 But I think what we are quite certain about is the direction that we need to head in, and that could lead to different outcomes.

01:34:37.200 But the direction, the way I see it, is it's some form of a combination between decentralization of political power, so that those in power have much less power.

01:34:48.120 So, that turns South Africa into something more like Europe, let's say, where there are a multitude of nations.

01:34:53.840 Yeah, it could be a federation, it could be some form of cultural autonomy, it could be territorial autonomy, it could take different forms.

01:35:01.280 It could be balkanization.

01:35:03.600 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:35:06.020 So, decentralization, and the other aspect is sort of the bottom-up approach is self-governance.

01:35:12.100 Because people, and that's not just for the Afrikaners or the white Anglos, or it's, South Africa is a, people call it a community of communities.

01:35:21.640 There are so many different nations and tribes and so forth, and they don't get to make decisions about their own affairs, because the central government decides.

01:35:29.440 And the central government regards things like cultural identity and so forth as backwards tribal thinking.

01:35:35.880 Well, you see the same thing playing out with the European Union at the moment.

01:35:38.800 It's very similar.

01:35:39.640 It's very similar to the European dynamics with the European Union.

01:35:43.980 Yeah, the problem is, is that as the size of government mounts, the proclivity for society to become tyrant and slaves magnifies, right?

01:35:53.900 You need those intermediary structures, which are something like, well, families, towns, cities, states, you know, maybe separate countries in some sort of federation with serious limitations on the top-down power, right?

01:36:08.360 Right, right, that's a subsidiary structure, the classic alternative to tyranny and slavery.

01:36:14.160 And there's a big problem in South Africa with traditional leaders, or let's say the king of the Zulus, for example, not being recognized by the government for his role that he's playing.

01:36:28.200 And so the government, the way we talk about it is the difference between natural identity and artificial identity.

01:36:34.120 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:36:34.980 They have this slogan that says, for the nation to prosper, the tribe must die. 0.97

01:36:39.140 Right.

01:36:39.580 And so, but the nation for us is something else in the way a lot of Westerners think about the nation, because the nation in our context is an artificial thing.

01:36:47.240 It's a construct.

01:36:48.380 It's putting all these people together, lumping.

01:36:50.380 It's like saying you are all just Europeans now. 0.91

01:36:52.360 And so Europe is the nation, and the nations or the countries.

01:36:57.520 Yeah, well, that enlightenment emphasis on the atomized individual leaves no place for the town, the city, the family, the state.

01:37:06.360 Yeah.

01:37:06.580 Right?

01:37:06.840 We haven't sorted that out well in the West at all.

01:37:08.960 Yeah.

01:37:09.220 I think the West has gone too far.

01:37:10.700 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:37:11.780 We missed the idea of subsidiarity.

01:37:14.340 We don't know what to do with the complexities of structured social identity, right?

01:37:21.240 We figure the autonomous individual is the only unit of analysis.

01:37:25.560 And that's true under very limited conditions, right?

01:37:28.460 One of the conditions might be something like first approximation to cultural homogeneity and a Judeo-Christian metaphysic, right?

01:37:36.220 And so where that doesn't apply, you don't have atomized sovereign individuals.

01:37:41.560 Yep.

01:37:41.880 Yeah.

01:37:42.320 And when it gets to the point where the community dissolves and the atomized individual finds himself against the Leviathan, there's nothing you can do.

01:37:51.840 You can't do anything against it.

01:37:53.720 You can pray.

01:37:54.440 Yeah, yeah.

01:37:54.900 That's the only thing you can do.

01:37:56.020 So the only solution is, again, what we call natural community or natural identity, as opposed to these artificial communities we see today, is for communities to be well organized in the context of their communities, to have community institutions.

01:38:11.140 That's very Tocquevillian. 0.63

01:38:12.580 Alexis de Tocqueville, when he wrote Democracy in America, he said, well, this is what is going to make America great in the 1830s.

01:38:20.180 Well, and America's got that right with its 51 state or 50 state experiments.

01:38:24.900 Yes. 0.99

01:38:25.160 Right, because they're always, Americans are always doing something intelligent somewhere, no matter how many stupid things they're doing other places, right? 0.99

01:38:31.640 Well, they keep renewing because of that. 0.99

01:38:33.340 Yeah.

01:38:33.540 It's a miracle to see.

01:38:34.740 Okay, we should stop on this side.

01:38:36.880 Yeah.

01:38:37.020 And so everyone, join us on the Daily Wire side.

01:38:39.820 We're going to talk more about solutions.

01:38:41.600 We're going to talk about, well, what the Boers, for example, in South Africa need to see from the West. 0.87

01:38:48.640 And, well, the pathway forward, well, really, what are we trying to avoid in South Africa?

01:38:54.200 Mass murder and starvation, which is by far the most likely outcome as far as I can see at the moment.

01:39:00.400 So join us on the Daily Wire side to continue the discussion.

01:39:04.760 And thank you to the film crew here in Scottsdale today for facilitating that and the Daily Wire for making this distribution of this podcast widely possible.

01:39:14.400 Possible.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - April 14, 2025

538. South Africa： What the West Needs to Learn ｜ Dr. Ernst Roets

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