The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Fate of South Africa ｜ Interview with Ernst Van Zyl

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to this interview with Ernst Lanzell who is head of public relations at Afriforum

00:00:07.200 and I think I've probably got to clear up because we've got a lot of people outside of South Africa

00:00:11.400 that might not be familiar with what Afriforum is.

00:00:15.000 So it was established as an independent initiative in around 2006 of Solidarity

00:00:20.340 which is a predominantly Afrikaner trade union

00:00:23.540 and I suppose Afriforum acts as a non-profit civil rights organisation for Afrikaners.

00:00:29.480 Is that about right?

00:00:31.600 That's about right. That's more right than a lot of other people get it

00:00:35.500 especially our opponents and the people that try to smear us

00:00:38.500 they completely miss the mark in regards to what we are and what our plans are.

00:00:43.440 It would help if they actually read our websites and all of the reports and things that we publish

00:00:48.740 listen to some of the interviews that we do.

00:00:50.800 I mean we don't hide anything we spell out exactly what we are

00:00:54.440 what we want to achieve and what our mission is.

00:00:56.580 So the only real excuse for people out there that are trying to claim that they have deciphered

00:01:02.460 what Afriforum and the Solidarity movement is about

00:01:05.520 when they get it wrong they don't really have an excuse because it's all out there.

00:01:08.600 We literally make documentaries about what our plan is.

00:01:12.560 But if you haven't necessarily heard of Afriforum

00:01:16.860 you might have been seen on Twitter or now X I think it's called

00:01:21.340 as Conscious Caracal.

00:01:23.400 That's how I first encountered you I think.

00:01:26.740 So getting right into it then

00:01:28.960 I suppose I'm going to ask

00:01:30.660 a somewhat difficult question here

00:01:33.060 which is how would you characterize

00:01:35.080 the current state of governance in South Africa

00:01:37.220 under the ANC?

00:01:38.560 Which is a very broad question.

00:01:42.000 Well Josh I mean

00:01:42.740 South Africa is definitely not

00:01:45.200 for beginners. If this were to be

00:01:47.160 a political science class I would definitely

00:01:49.160 warn the audience or the class

00:01:51.040 that we're going into very difficult and complex

00:01:53.580 territory. But I mean

00:01:55.000 thank you very much for the opportunity

00:01:56.940 to be able to decipher a little bit

00:01:59.260 about what's going on here. I mean

00:02:00.820 South Africa in general

00:02:03.020 is still very much the dark continent

00:02:05.040 in the sense that in the past it was called

00:02:07.040 the dark continent because people literally believed

00:02:09.020 there was like monsters walking around

00:02:10.820 all these. They didn't know what

00:02:13.040 there was absolutely no information coming

00:02:15.060 out. It was fog of war times

00:02:17.180 a million. It was genuinely

00:02:19.000 an information blackout going

00:02:21.140 on in regards to South Africa. All these

00:02:23.000 tall tales coming out. But

00:02:24.680 why I think it's still the dark

00:02:26.880 continent is the fact that people in the 21st

00:02:29.060 century mock our ancestors

00:02:30.720 for example European ancestors

00:02:32.500 looking at Africa and drawing

00:02:35.040 a lion and it doesn't look like a lion

00:02:37.040 at all thinking that Africa

00:02:38.440 all these myths and legends out

00:02:41.000 of Africa are true. But I don't 1.00

00:02:43.060 think that's really apt seeing as in the 21st

00:02:45.320 century a lot of people outside

00:02:47.260 of Africa remain just as 1.00

00:02:49.100 uninformed, just as fooled

00:02:50.880 by many of the myths and legends

00:02:52.820 and just tall tales coming

00:02:54.920 from Africa. So I think it's very much still 0.87

00:02:56.900 the dark continent information

00:02:58.960 wise in that sense. And South Africa

00:03:01.140 is no different. South Africa is also

00:03:02.980 being part of Africa. It is 0.83

00:03:04.780 trying to decipher South African

00:03:06.680 politics, South African society

00:03:08.660 even in the 21st century, even in

00:03:10.900 the information age is a

00:03:12.820 Herculean task. It is not for the

00:03:14.920 faint of heart. It is not something

00:03:16.500 that you're just going to do

00:03:18.000 with an afternoon's

00:03:19.700 worth of light reading.

00:03:22.500 But let's start off with that complex

00:03:24.640 the difficult question. Let's get it out

00:03:26.260 of the way. What's going on in South

00:03:27.700 Africa? Well, in 0.99

00:03:29.740 2025 we are

00:03:31.600 seeing the fruits of

00:03:33.940 ANC rule in South Africa

00:03:36.160 for the past 30 years. Now I mean

00:03:38.720 there is a little bit of a

00:03:40.380 complexity footnote that I have to add

00:03:42.560 here without

00:03:43.460 hopefully losing the audience.

00:03:46.580 The ANC has been the

00:03:48.380 one party ruling South Africa

00:03:50.520 since 1994, the end of apartheid.

00:03:53.060 But in 2024, the

00:03:54.680 2024 election, they

00:03:56.560 did lose the election. They didn't get

00:03:58.180 more than 50% of the vote.

00:04:00.680 There's a lot of factors going into

00:04:02.440 that. It's not as simple a story

00:04:04.680 as just, oh well, they just

00:04:06.000 didn't, they weren't just as popular anymore

00:04:08.640 and people were tired of them. It's

00:04:10.220 absolutely not the case. There's a lot of

00:04:12.200 other complex stuff going in there.

00:04:14.200 But in 2024, South Africa got its

00:04:16.340 first coalition government. But

00:04:18.120 for the sake of this

00:04:20.080 conversation, I'm going to keep referring

00:04:22.160 to the South African government

00:04:24.100 as if the ANC is still

00:04:25.820 100% in charge of it because

00:04:27.780 since the coalition has been formed, the

00:04:29.980 government of national unity as it is

00:04:31.760 called, the ANC have just been getting

00:04:33.780 exactly what they've wanted. They've

00:04:35.540 nowhere they've had to compromise,

00:04:37.600 nowhere they've had to step back and say,

00:04:39.380 all right, we're not going to go this

00:04:40.840 far on this. They've pretty much

00:04:42.840 just been given free reign still to

00:04:44.760 push their agenda, even though they

00:04:47.320 are now a 40% party as opposed to a

00:04:49.680 50% plus party. So as I said, just

00:04:52.400 that little foundation for the rest of

00:04:54.460 the conversation, I'm going to be

00:04:56.180 referring to for all intents and

00:04:58.360 purposes to the South African

00:04:59.620 government as if the ANC is still the

00:05:01.500 sole party there because that is

00:05:03.520 the reality. So to sum up in regards

00:05:06.520 to where do we find ourselves in 2025?

00:05:08.980 Well, we find ourselves in the ANC's

00:05:10.980 agenda of the National Democratic

00:05:13.140 Revolution, which is their whole theory

00:05:16.140 or their whole model for governance.

00:05:19.620 And it's simply put that you should be

00:05:21.720 constantly focusing on centralizing as

00:05:26.220 much power in the hands of the state as

00:05:28.220 possible, first gaining power under the

00:05:33.140 banner of liberalism, freedom for

00:05:35.480 everyone and all these human rights,

00:05:37.560 then transitioning to socialism and

00:05:40.180 then transitioning to Marxism or

00:05:42.300 communism. I mean, this is not a

00:05:43.920 conspiracy theory where you have to go

00:05:45.640 dig in some rabbit hole to find this

00:05:47.820 information. You can find this on the

00:05:49.660 ANC's website. You can find this in

00:05:51.600 their own documents. So it's not even

00:05:53.920 like you have to go in some dark

00:05:56.040 information alley to find this plan.

00:05:58.620 They reference it constantly, the

00:06:00.760 National Democratic Revolution, or as

00:06:02.520 they call it the NDR. And that's where

00:06:05.020 that's where we find ourselves in

00:06:06.300 2025 is still this master plan of the

00:06:09.120 ANC is still still on course.

00:06:12.440 So a lot of attention has been focusing

00:06:15.720 on lots of, I suppose, infrastructural

00:06:18.560 decline under the ANC rule. And

00:06:21.780 obviously the country's had severe

00:06:24.240 problems like energy and water

00:06:26.740 infrastructure rarely seems to work in a

00:06:29.820 large number of places. And one of the

00:06:32.020 other things that perhaps went under the

00:06:33.700 radar a little bit internationally, I

00:06:36.520 don't know how it was perceived

00:06:38.920 domestically, but I know that there was a

00:06:43.620 Southern African development community

00:06:45.800 force that was forced to withdraw from

00:06:48.880 the Congo after the M23 rebels basically

00:06:54.680 killed a fair few of them and a

00:06:58.240 disproportionate number were South 0.98

00:06:59.820 African. And so that raised lots of

00:07:01.360 questions about is South Africa even able

00:07:03.660 to defend itself if it has to?

00:07:07.120 Right. Yeah, I mean, you've been doing your

00:07:10.200 homework. That's definitely one of the main

00:07:12.640 challenges at the moment is the South

00:07:15.320 African military that is just 0.99

00:07:17.020 dysfunctional on an increasing amount of

00:07:19.720 fronts and an air force that I think at

00:07:23.500 most has three fighter jets that are

00:07:25.460 operational, a Navy that is in complete

00:07:28.100 disarray, armed forces that is genuinely

00:07:30.660 just every year we read in the newspapers

00:07:33.440 about how this is now the end financially for

00:07:36.580 the South African military. Their money has

00:07:38.560 run out. I mean, you can just Google very,

00:07:41.420 very simply South African military bankrupt and

00:07:44.560 you'll get hundreds of stories just detailing the

00:07:47.780 financial woes of the South African military. It's in a

00:07:51.160 horrible state. So absolutely right. That's one of the

00:07:53.860 many fronts where you see this what we call state

00:07:57.540 decay in South Africa. And I think that's the

00:08:00.100 story of the past three years is state capacity

00:08:03.220 decay where the state, as I said earlier, the ANC has

00:08:07.220 this mission of wanting to centralize as much

00:08:10.500 power as possible in the hands of the government. They

00:08:13.040 want all these responsibilities, but they simply

00:08:16.180 can't and increasingly so meet these

00:08:20.320 responsibilities. The best example would be

00:08:22.320 electricity. I mean, in South Africa, we have electricity

00:08:26.960 monopoly in the state power monopoly called ESCOM, which

00:08:30.960 is supposed to provide the country with electricity. But

00:08:34.800 for the past 15 years, well, no, actually, no, it's now

00:08:38.940 2025 and the electricity crisis started in 2007. That means

00:08:43.680 it's now that's 17 years. No, yeah, seven, no, 18 years. The

00:08:49.280 electricity crisis in South Africa is old enough to

00:08:52.080 vote. The electricity crisis started in 2008. I remember

00:08:57.920 I was still a schoolboy at the time. I remember hearing over

00:09:00.720 the radio on our drive to school that the government was

00:09:04.000 announcing rolling blackouts are going to be instituted this

00:09:07.440 evening. So around 2007, 2008, this what we call load shedding, which is

00:09:13.840 just a euphemism for rolling blackouts, starts, and it is still a crisis

00:09:19.440 that's ongoing in 2025. Just the other day, we had load shedding once again. So

00:09:24.480 the government has had 18 years of grappling with this crisis and they just,

00:09:29.280 they can't, can't solve it. And just a little bit of a fact there to put it all

00:09:33.360 into perspective. I mean, in, in 2000, was it in 2003? I think if I remember correctly,

00:09:41.440 ESCOM, the state power monopoly, was, was named the electricity company of the year.

00:09:48.960 Somewhere there at the turn of the century, I might get the year by one or two years off.

00:09:53.520 But there around 2003, ESCOM, the state power monopoly, got international award for being one of

00:10:00.080 the best power generation companies in the world. And now, 20 years later, the,

00:10:08.960 they've just admitted defeat almost there. They, it seems like nobody believes the state anymore

00:10:15.280 when they say, well, they're going to solve this problem. It's one of these days, there won't be no

00:10:20.240 more rolling blackouts. It's still, it's still a problem today. And that's not even talking about

00:10:25.920 the power outages that we, that we experience in, in between the, the state induced rolling blackouts

00:10:33.360 due to copper cable theft, due to infrastructure decay. The other day, electricity substation just

00:10:40.800 caught on fire, massive explosion there. And then massive parts of the city's power just went off

00:10:46.320 because the maintenance is not being done. And it's just everything, it's slowly decaying due to a lack

00:10:52.080 of maintenance from, from the government side. And I don't think that, I think that's at the root

00:10:56.640 of the problem as well, is that the word maintenance doesn't really factor into the ANC's vocabulary.

00:11:02.240 They, they try to build very shiny things, but they don't really maintain the things that, that exist,

00:11:08.800 like for example, key infrastructure. The other day, they did finish building a new coal power station

00:11:16.000 that had been in construction for, I think almost 20 years now. The project, I think the pro-,

00:11:22.000 oh well not, it was, it's around, it's between 10 to 15 years, if I remember correctly. It's called

00:11:27.760 Madupi Power Station. And the other day it was reported that due to corruption, fund mismanagement,

00:11:34.640 just project bloat over the years, Madupi Power Station that was finished now, I think this year,

00:11:41.760 is officially now the most expensive coal power station in the history of humanity. And it's not

00:11:48.480 because it is the most advanced one that humanity has ever built, it's just been one of these power

00:11:54.080 stations that has been in construction for over a decade now and just racking up costs. But that's the,

00:12:01.120 that's the typical, that's almost like a metaphor for the ANC's rule in South Africa,

00:12:06.320 is all these major projects that just keep racking up costs due to corruption and mismanagement.

00:12:12.400 That leads us on very nicely actually to our next question, which is, do you see a lot of this

00:12:17.280 decline as the result of incompetence, ideology, corruption, or probably most likely a mix of

00:12:24.080 all three of those things? It's a, it's the disgusting cake where all these horrible ingredients 0.68

00:12:30.000 have just been thrown together. I think it's definitely a mixture of all of that. I mean,

00:12:34.400 there is definite, one of the main issues is the corruption. I mean, South Africa just has,

00:12:39.360 it is one of the most corrupt governments in the world. One of the funny things that happened,

00:12:43.760 you know, Drikas Duplessis, the MMA fighter or the UFC fighter, he was doing an interview and

00:12:49.040 he just doesn't care what people think about what he says. And he said in an interview,

00:12:52.560 South Africa's government is the most corrupt in the world. And then the South African government

00:12:57.760 officials took a lot of offense because South Africa is officially not the most corrupt. I think

00:13:02.880 it's like the third or the fourth most corrupt in the world. So they wanted him to get his facts

00:13:07.200 straight. But I mean, I've got some facts here about corruption in South Africa that I think

00:13:13.200 paints the picture quite well. So in, in 2021, there was a poll among South Africans about corruption

00:13:20.560 and 70% of respondents believe the government is performing fairly badly or very badly in fighting

00:13:26.800 corruption. 20, 71% believe corrupt officials often or always go unpunished. So that's definitely one of

00:13:33.840 the main factors there, but we can't ignore also just general mismanagement, incompetence. And this comes

00:13:41.360 from, it's baked into the cake. So it's baked into the ANC cake through their own model of CADA 0.73

00:13:47.920 deployment. So CADA deployment is, it forms part of the National Democratic Revolution. It's part of the

00:13:53.520 formula, but it's, it's, it's your bog standard Marxist idea that when you gain power as a party,

00:14:01.360 you need to then your first priority there needs to be to deploy party loyalists caders as the ANC or 0.52

00:14:08.720 the communist vocabulary calls them into every single facet, every tentacle of the state, no matter how

00:14:15.680 small the office, no matter how trivial the, the, the, the government apparatus there or the government,

00:14:22.400 the, how trivial the parts of the government machine, it has to be filled by a CADA, a party

00:14:30.160 loyalist loyal to the ANC. So for the past 30 years, they have been, again, openly, this is not, this is a

00:14:36.080 term they use, they've been doing what they call CADA deployment, deploying party loyalists to every

00:14:42.800 single facet of the government throughout the machine of the state. And these caders that they deploy,

00:14:48.560 their deployment is not, the criteria for whether they are deployed to a certain position or not,

00:14:53.680 is not based on merit or on their, their expertise or their experience. It is based on the, the amount

00:15:00.000 of loyalty they have to the part of the, the ruling party specifically. So that's where the incompetence

00:15:05.360 comes in. It's just people being deployed to jobs that they have no idea how to do, that they have no

00:15:09.920 experience in doing. And then of course, lastly, and you mentioned this, it is then the third part

00:15:15.600 of this failure trifecta is the ideological component. It's just, I know that there's a lot

00:15:21.440 of exaggeration in our time of people just calling people they hate either far left or far right,

00:15:27.600 anyone that disagrees with them, particularly on the left, they call anyone far right that disagrees with

00:15:31.760 them. But the ANC is genuinely a party that has a Marxist, a Marxist foundation, a communist foundation.

00:15:40.080 I mean, the ANC is literally in an official alliance with the South African Communist Party.

00:15:45.280 The South African Communist Party, the SACP does not compete in South African elections because they

00:15:50.880 are in an agreement with the ANC that when the ANC wins an election, representatives from the South African

00:15:57.600 Communist Party are deployed to government positions. So they don't have to compete in elections. They

00:16:02.640 have an official alliance with the South African Communist Party. It's called the tripartite alliance.

00:16:09.200 And I mean, we've had ministers of finance in the past that were members of the South African

00:16:14.720 Communist Party. So it's not an exaggeration when you call the South African government out for its

00:16:20.160 Marxist and communist foundations. It is like explicit. It's not a conspiracy. It's not even,

00:16:25.920 you have to play with the terminology to make it work. No, it's explicitly has a far left foundation,

00:16:32.080 a Marxist and a communist foundation. And you can see it in their deployments. And you can just

00:16:38.000 Google the tripartite alliance if you want a little bit more context there. So just to sum up,

00:16:42.720 I think you're absolutely correct in regards to the different elements and you have to combine them

00:16:48.000 all to really get the picture on what's going on. It's not a single element. It is the combination of all

00:16:54.400 those just horrible influences on the South African society and government ideology, mismanagement and

00:17:01.760 corruption. Absolutely. And one thing I'm very curious about is that we're starting to see some

00:17:10.000 of these infrastructural failings in, for example, European countries. We actually had a case where a

00:17:17.200 power station near Heathrow airport in London went out and half of London and, you know, several airports

00:17:24.560 actually had to ground their flights and there was no electricity. And there's a sort of growing

00:17:31.200 interest in what is the most sort of under acknowledged or most significant infrastructural

00:17:37.760 failing in South Africa, because a lot of people outside of it see this as

00:17:41.520 a template for the future, I suppose. Absolutely. I mean, it's South Africa tells

00:17:50.160 you a lot about the nature of collapse. So a lot of people think about collapse as something that

00:17:56.240 is akin to like an explosive going off or a bomb going off, but that's not how collapse works.

00:18:01.440 Collapse happens little by little, like every day your country is 0.1% worse than the day before.

00:18:09.200 You don't wake up one morning in a collapsed country or a collapsed system. That's a bit of

00:18:14.000 the simplified idea that you often find online of people talking about the end of their society or

00:18:19.040 this apocalyptic collapse that happens one day, just like immediately. But that's not how it works.

00:18:24.640 It's one extra piece of graffiti on the road that you walk to work. It's an old lady getting mugged 1.00

00:18:31.840 on a street where she was usually safe to walk down. It's a gravestone that's been vandalized. That's

00:18:38.080 that's what collapse looks like. All these little little cracks just accumulating and accumulating

00:18:44.880 on top of each other. And infrastructure in South Africa is particularly where you see this come to

00:18:49.760 the fore. I mean, I've mentioned the electricity crisis, but it's all the infrastructure. It's

00:18:55.360 it's not just electricity. It's the road infrastructure. It is the bridges. It is the

00:19:00.960 the sewage infrastructure. It's the water infrastructure. I mean, South Africa is currently

00:19:06.160 entering, to add insult to injury, a water crisis where our water infrastructure all across the

00:19:12.240 country just can't support the population anymore. An increasing amount of communities are suffering

00:19:18.880 water outages, water that's not fit for human consumption. We've had major incidents over the

00:19:26.320 past few years as well of communities. The water quality getting so bad that you have

00:19:31.440 mass deaths of people getting cholera and all these horrible diseases from drinking water because the

00:19:38.080 infrastructure is just collapsing. The water infrastructure, government induced collapse of

00:19:43.600 the infrastructure because the the authorities just aren't maintaining these this infrastructure

00:19:49.040 and the population keeps growing. So you just have this increase in pressure on an infrastructure that's

00:19:53.600 like decades old. So and specifically sewage as well. There's major problems. A lot of sewage is just

00:20:00.400 being dumped into our rivers and dams and into nature here in South Africa because the there's just not

00:20:06.240 enough plants to refine it or to clean it. So that's again, I think the thing that South Africa teaches

00:20:14.080 you about collapse is that it is not something that happens overnight. It's not something that happens

00:20:18.480 suddenly. It is just increasingly you notice the quality of the society around you starts deteriorating just

00:20:26.160 little by little by little. And increasingly socially you realize South Africanization entails your country 0.60

00:20:32.960 also just increasingly becoming lower and lower trust society in regards to the type of behaviors that you

00:20:40.640 that you notice around you just start deteriorating morally as well. And that and that's a that's one of the

00:20:48.080 the memes that I often mock a lot of people in America and the United States with is that whenever

00:20:53.920 their social ills just keep increasing and at one point they're going to have to make peace with the

00:20:58.480 fact that they are now living in a low trust society. They better start believing in low trust societies.

00:21:03.760 You're living in one.

00:21:07.280 Oh, yeah, I don't. I know it's very much getting that way in Britain as well. Certainly parts of it. And

00:21:13.360 I think that people took a lot for granted both in South Africa and Europe and North America that

00:21:21.520 things would always stay that way and it's not necessarily the case. But yeah, and it's a simple

00:21:27.040 criteria for what a low trust society is a low trust society means that if a stranger is this is not some

00:21:33.680 some scientific gauge is just my own little gauge is that you know you live in a low trust society when a

00:21:39.280 stranger approaches you in the supermarket or in the streets in a or in a safe environment let's say in

00:21:44.240 a supermarket and your first instinct is to think why are they be lining for me are they trying to

00:21:51.040 exploit me in any way are they trying to hoodwink me in any way are they trying to harm me in any way

00:21:57.200 then you know you are in a low trust society when someone approaches you directly a stranger and your

00:22:03.040 default instinct is not a positive one but a negative one a negative association with the stranger

00:22:09.360 that then you know you're in a low trust society seems perfectly reasonable to me because of course

00:22:16.400 the key component of trust is is feeling safe and if your initial reaction is to feel threatened then

00:22:22.880 it must be that surely so zooming out a considerable amount here what do you think of the ANC seemingly

00:22:30.960 further aligning itself with countries like Iran China and Russia and the the recent conflict with the

00:22:38.720 United States and the West more generally I suppose so there's a right there's a there's a fascinating

00:22:44.640 divide there as well because on the one side if you look at South Africa just political why or like

00:22:51.200 political rhetoric wise and vibe wise you you as an outsider looking in you would just see oh well

00:22:57.680 they're parts of bricks they're very free increasingly friendly with Russia and China and Iran of course

00:23:02.880 this country is realigning themselves but then you then you zoom out a bit further and you look at the

00:23:09.600 bigger picture the economic picture and then you realize that South Africa is still incredibly dependent

00:23:16.080 on Europe and the United States for trade but to a very large extent which means that when it comes

00:23:22.880 to specifically the bigger picture I think the ANC very if this was an a real-time strategy game the the

00:23:30.640 ANC would have loved to just realign with the click of a button with the the BRICS countries trade-wise

00:23:37.520 military-wise political-wise but it's not that simple South Africa's economy is heavily tied to the

00:23:44.160 United States economy and the European economy the economies of Europe which means that that realignment

00:23:50.080 is again even if there's a lot of will from the ANC side to want to make it happen

00:23:55.280 no amount of will is going to make that happen overnight or very quickly

00:24:00.240 they're trying their damnedest they're trying their best to realign South Africa increasingly with

00:24:04.960 the nations of China Iran Russia all that entire sphere but it's taking a lot of time

00:24:11.760 and the other thing that's also important to note is that the ANC is aware of this they're not

00:24:17.520 uh they're not oblivious to the fact that South Africa is increasing not in South Africa is still

00:24:24.320 heavily reliant on trade with the West um because they're trying to to play this double personality

00:24:30.800 on the split personality very schizophrenic of them on the one side they're very pro uh BRICS countries

00:24:37.200 in their rhetoric abroad and the antics abroad but then at the same time when they do visit the United

00:24:42.720 States when they do visit European countries they're also trying to smooth up everyone that

00:24:47.680 they meet they talk about this important relationship that we have with these countries

00:24:52.160 and we want to strengthen that relationship they're not always openly they're not always openly taking

00:24:58.080 one side even though they have have have made some incredibly just reckless blunders the past few

00:25:04.640 months particularly to almost actively sabotaging the relationship between South Africa and the United

00:25:11.600 States the past two months can be described as nothing else than a diplomatic crisis between the

00:25:16.960 Trump administration and the South African government but I mean there's a reason why on the one side you

00:25:22.480 have literally the author of the art of the deal saying come to the negotiating table let's make a deal

00:25:28.240 and on the other side you have the ANC the art of the no compromise the art of the double down

00:25:32.960 saying no we're not going to compromise on anything in their words we will not be bullied well you're

00:25:39.520 the you're one of the smallest kids on the playground and you're taking on a six-foot child

00:25:45.440 you're going to get bullied there you can't just scream in his face I will not be bullied

00:25:50.160 you're gonna have to you're gonna have to make another plan so when it comes to the the bigger picture

00:25:55.280 there to sum up I think politically the ANC wish they could realign the country immediately with the click of a

00:26:01.920 button uh with the brick sphere but economically it's it's like it's not gonna happen overnight

00:26:08.400 economically South Africa for the foreseeable future is going to still be heavily target uh

00:26:13.600 tied uh to the United States and uh and to Europe and the western sphere

00:26:19.760 so um I'm not entirely sure whether they've actually gone ahead and effective but I have heard

00:26:26.400 uh the US talking about sanctions on South Africa um so this would probably stand to have a very real

00:26:33.840 effect then and would give the United States a fair amount of leverage to influence domestic

00:26:39.200 politics and and I suppose geopolitics as well because if you have that amount of power over a

00:26:45.440 country's economy then you know this is how the United States sort of its soft power empire works is that 0.95

00:26:52.320 they apply economic pressure and if South Africa is so dependent on them as well as Europe who I

00:26:59.040 don't think will necessarily stand in their way when it comes to South Africa then Trump's intervention

00:27:06.480 is quite significant and what what do you think um is likely to happen there yeah so Trump holds a lot

00:27:13.440 of cards in his hand I mean this is not a this is not an even match up between I mean that's it's

00:27:20.000 bizarrely how the ANC are trying to cope with the situation by saying well we need you and you need

00:27:25.280 us I'm like not really um economically the United States uh imports a lot of products from South Africa

00:27:33.040 luxury products and the fruits and other agricultural things and raw raw materials that it does need

00:27:39.840 but it can live without um economic sanctions from the Trump administration on South Africa would be

00:27:46.160 catastrophic to put it lightly um and the Trump administration and the South African government

00:27:52.240 know that they're not oblivious to that fact um on AfriForum's side I mean we're going to get into

00:27:58.000 AfriForum a bit more in detail in a moment but just a quick note on that we don't want to see South 1.00

00:28:04.480 Africa as a whole sanctioned by this by by the United States because that would punish the regular 1.00

00:28:10.320 citizens and normal people of South Africa our whole stance is that if sanctions are put on South

00:28:16.320 Africa those sanctions need to be targeted laser targeted on those politicians pushing these

00:28:21.520 destructive policies inciting violence against minorities those politicians that are actively

00:28:26.880 destroying South Africa those politicians need to feel the pain but not the the regular citizens of 0.93

00:28:32.880 South Africa are already punished by their foolish and uh policies and destructive policies of the ruling

00:28:38.400 party um they don't deserve a second punishment but you're absolutely right both the United States 0.96

00:28:44.640 and South Africa are very very intimately aware of the fact that the Trump administration holds all

00:28:52.000 the cards in their hand when it comes to negotiation negotiation especially if you have the economic

00:28:58.160 nuclear weapon of of economic sanctions that would be absolutely devastating for the South African

00:29:04.560 economy as I said to put it mildly mm-hmm and I think the thing that that kicked all of this off was the

00:29:11.200 land expropriation bill which um to the audience if they're not familiar it allowed the South African

00:29:17.760 government or the ANC to seize any property without justification really um in and they say that

00:29:26.800 they can use the criteria of uh of public interests but I mean that's so subjective exactly yeah it's so

00:29:34.320 subjective that it's not really a proper justification and they can do this without providing any compensation

00:29:40.400 and so it's basically the eradication of property rights and um as many people understand it would be

00:29:47.520 targeting the white minority in South Africa and when I've been covering this I've seen a lot of people

00:29:53.360 outside of South Africa saying well the persecution there is so bad they've seen um things about the

00:30:00.560 farmland murders and things like that and a lot of people say well it's so bad that why aren't people

00:30:07.680 leaving why why are people there in the first place and I think one of the important things here

00:30:13.920 is understanding the the character of the the political persecution of the white minority in

00:30:19.840 South Africa and and how would you perhaps explain that to someone who's not experienced it firsthand

00:30:26.160 right so I'll give the short answer and then the long answer the short answer is a Moroccan saying

00:30:31.120 that goes my country is my country even when I'm um treated unfairly there um and you have to if you

00:30:37.840 understand the the character of the Afrikaners and the white minority in general but specifically in

00:30:43.760 particular the Afrikaners you'll understand why there is not just uh why it's not as easy a decision

00:30:49.680 just to to leave I mean let's just take my own case study personally I mean I'm the ninth generation

00:30:55.920 of my family living in South Africa my first ancestor came here in 1688 um I mean that's that's before

00:31:02.720 the United States was a country um I challenge your audience to think back what was happening in in

00:31:08.560 Britain in in 1688 I mean that's that's a long way ago that's a long time ago and I mean

00:31:15.360 that's the story of almost every Afrikaner family we've been here for eight nine ten eleven generations

00:31:22.240 most of us uh my wife's family as well have been here since 1707 um so when it comes to particularly

00:31:28.720 the Afrikaners it's a rootedness it is a tied to a place uh uh uh an element of your identity that you

00:31:36.800 can't really put a monetary or material value on so I think that kind of helps explain why it is not just

00:31:43.360 as simple of a decision of leaving um there are many that have left I think there has been hundreds

00:31:50.640 of thousands of Afrikaners white South Africans black South Africans as well that have uh that have

00:31:57.360 emigrated over the past decades from South Africa um those people I'm not going to attack or shame them

00:32:03.600 it's a deeply personal decision uh that's something you yourself personally make you make the best decision

00:32:10.160 for your family I personally have decided to stay um for the reasons I set out the fact that

00:32:17.040 it feels like uh it doesn't seem like the right uh end to the the epic story of my family here at the

00:32:23.920 southern tip of Africa just to to leave but that's my own personal reasoning and also there's a lot of

00:32:29.520 other factors in there as well I've written extensively about it in my own personal capacity um but now I

00:32:35.440 I mean that's the the element of um uh whether to stay or leave really comes down to at the end of

00:32:42.160 the day millions of the white minority in South Africa either can't leave or do not want to leave

00:32:49.200 um it's not as simple even if uh with Trump's refugee program on the table the details have not been

00:32:55.760 have not been made clear they're still we're still waiting to get all the full details and criteria of

00:33:01.040 that resettlement program so I mean any conversation in that direction would be pure speculation but even

00:33:06.800 with that on the table millions of white South Africans will still be here next year and the year

00:33:12.560 after that and the year after that um and they are there's complex reasons for that but I mean the main

00:33:17.920 reason they on the one side it's not as easy to just pack up and leave there is physical and material

00:33:24.000 reasons for it but then also there is non-material spiritual reasons for it as well being rooted in a

00:33:30.720 place um being the 9th or 10th or 11th generation of your family somewhere not having any other home

00:33:38.560 um I think that's the difference particularly between the Afrikaners and many of the the British

00:33:43.200 subjects throughout Africa when colonialism ended is that they had a home to return to or to flee to

00:33:50.080 or to be ordered back to um Afrikaners didn't have that type of home uh Afrikaners are a mix of Germans

00:33:58.160 French Dutch and also many of the British peoples as well the Anglos also intermixed there too um so we

00:34:05.840 don't have and it's it's it's it's there's not one of those genetic or ethnic influences that really

00:34:12.160 dominates which mean or majorly dominates which means that we don't have an external home to Southern

00:34:18.880 Africa this is the place where our culture was formed where our language was formed

00:34:23.280 and our language of Afrikaans I mean our culture and our language are both named after the continent

00:34:28.160 that should tell you everything you need to know Afrikaners and Afrikaans both contain Africa

00:34:34.720 so there's also a part of the puzzle but to sum up in regards to whether to stay or leave

00:34:42.160 it's not as simple everyone will have a different answer but it's it is a deeply personal

00:34:48.000 matter and it is a complex matter I can't really talk for everyone I can't really um

00:34:53.600 give you access to everyone's heart and what's going on in there but from my own personal experience

00:34:58.800 it is very much non-material reasons spiritual reasons uh things that you can't put a value or

00:35:06.080 a monetary uh a monetary value to I understand perfectly because I've had people from the United

00:35:12.160 States saying why didn't you come and move over here there's nothing in Britain for you anymore 0.93

00:35:16.160 look at it it's becoming worse and I've said to them that as much as I appreciate that and it's a

00:35:21.440 very kind thing to say um I believe that a culture um shapes the land and therefore the land shapes

00:35:30.640 the culture in return there's this exchange and it gets to a point after I think in our globalized

00:35:36.320 world we've lost I think in our globalized world we've lost uh some sight of the importance of place

00:35:42.560 so I'm glad to hear that you also feel that connection I think it's an important aspect of our

00:35:47.360 humanity that people have we've kind of ignored for a long time in the in the increasing globalized world

00:35:53.840 I think in many ways uh because Great Britain's so parochial that um it's a lot easier to make those

00:36:01.920 sorts of arguments because um even within England alone there are parts where you don't necessarily

00:36:08.560 feel as at home like I grew up in Devonshire in the southwest outside of that it doesn't necessarily

00:36:15.200 feel as much like home because the the land shapes who you are and I think that um the the cost there

00:36:24.240 is that were you to move you've lost a little bit of yourself in a sense that's the way I see it and

00:36:30.640 it seems like we're coming at it from the same sort of direction there absolutely I mean you are a

00:36:36.880 product of your of the place that that you grew up in that you were formed by and that place often is

00:36:42.400 not just the physical attributes of it it is all the other unseen elements as well there in where you

00:36:48.160 grew up the school that you went to the families in the street that you grew up in the types of values

00:36:53.840 that you were exposed to the little nuances of that makes humanity interesting I mean that's that's

00:37:00.320 unfortunately the time that we're living in is the fact that I mean humanity is this just metaphorically

00:37:05.600 this rainforest of just different peoples and cultures and that's what makes it amazing and

00:37:10.880 interesting but there's people out there that want to reduce it just to a a pine tree plantation where

00:37:16.480 all the trees are planted in in nice little rows they all look the same it's a sterile forest and it's

00:37:22.080 perfect to be just cut down and pulped uh for for industrial use and I mean that there's the

00:37:27.760 africana philosopher impier van wijk lowe sounded up beautifully when he said that humanity is is an

00:37:33.680 orchestra of different languages and cultures the orchestra of god and if you are worked and there

00:37:38.960 are people out there there are forces out there that want to reduce it to a single instrument to a

00:37:43.520 lonely flute and those people are genuinely evil and they want to reduce this beautiful orchestra of

00:37:49.440 humanity all the different cultures and peoples out there just to one homogenous like gray goo 0.97

00:37:55.760 and that's that's incredibly evil I mean that's that's what we're up against is they that little

00:38:00.960 those little nuances that you were mentioning there as well the place that you grew up in

00:38:05.200 they want to the the people that think in this way the globalists and the the people in that sphere

00:38:12.080 genuinely don't want that difference they want to wipe out all those little nuances everything needs to be

00:38:17.040 i mean the best word word for it would be standardized everything needs to be standardized humanity needs to

00:38:23.040 be standardized um as my friend uh russell lombardi says uh humanity needs to be made legible for all

00:38:30.800 the different states that are going to administer it or the mega state that's going to administer it and

00:38:35.680 cultural differences linguistic differences ethnic differences that all gets in the way of this

00:38:41.040 this machine that wants efficiency and legibility and standardization i 100 agree with that um so

00:38:49.680 moving on to what's actually being done in south africa um to push back against some of the the bad

00:38:56.400 things happening i suppose we may as well get on to afro forum and the solidarity movement and would you

00:39:03.520 be able to outline roughly what they do because i think many people are unfamiliar and um how does

00:39:10.480 afri forum's sort of core mission differ from the broader solidarity movement as well because of course

00:39:16.240 it's independent um but linked as i understand it at least right so afri forum and the solidarity

00:39:24.880 movement is the other side of the coin of the story that we've been talking about now for this episode

00:39:31.280 um on the one side of the coin you have the story of state capacity decay of slow motion collapse the

00:39:38.400 just think of like a video of a car just slamming into a wall in ultra slow motion that's south

00:39:44.160 africa some parts of it may be worse than others in regards to the collapse but that's on the one side

00:39:49.680 of the coin the other side of the coin is but this void this power vacuum is being created and

00:39:55.680 something has to fill it just as nature abhors a vacuum politics and power also abhors a vacuum

00:40:01.920 and that vacuum can only be filled by one of two factions the good guys or the bad guys the bad guys

00:40:08.640 are organized crime good guys are communities organizing and south africa is a place where both

00:40:15.760 of those are flourishing organized crime and communities that are organizing so and there's a

00:40:20.640 a reason for it because there's this vacuum being created so on the organized crime side we have

00:40:26.400 we have a water mafia we have an electricity mafia we have a construction mafia we have just

00:40:33.120 south africa is a playground for organized crime the most from the most advanced organized crime

00:40:38.240 operations you'll find anywhere in the world and another and then also the good guys are the

00:40:43.040 communities organizing and that's where solid the solidarity movement and afri forum come in so solid the

00:40:48.400 solidarity movement starts in 1907 as this a solidaritate solidarity a africaner christian

00:40:55.760 labor union but a labor union not from the leftist tradition but from the christian tradition i think

00:41:00.640 there's just a little bit of homework maybe for your audience that's very curious go look into the

00:41:05.280 christian tradition of labor unions in europe as well that's what inspired um that's what inspired the

00:41:10.480 solidarity movement uh to form and that labor union started growing and then it realized well we want

00:41:18.880 to expand into other areas that labor union doesn't really have any business in being in so the solidarity

00:41:25.680 solidarity labor union uh then or trade union then starts creating different organizations in a network

00:41:32.640 that all specialize in different facets of trying to build a future for africaners at the southern tip of

00:41:38.880 africa so they start afri forum in 2006 afri forum the civil rights organization or constitutional rights

00:41:45.440 in the south african context and then also uh community-based solutions so afri forums whole

00:41:51.600 model is a membership based model so afri forum is the largest community-based solutions organization

00:41:57.680 on the african continent based on membership but membership not in the sense of you like a facebook

00:42:03.040 page or fill in a form and then you're a member you have to be an active donating member

00:42:08.160 every month to be considered a member so afri forum has 315 000 members and we use the funds from those

00:42:16.560 members to do various things so on the what we're basically filling that void that i described earlier

00:42:22.400 from all as many angles as possible so on the one side we have our branches so afri forum has over 170

00:42:30.080 branches all across the country in south africa and south africa is a massive place we haven't even got into

00:42:35.360 that yet south africa is the size of western europe without spain um so when you look at that massive

00:42:42.880 area there's 170 afri forum branches all across it and they do everything from well firstly they

00:42:49.040 organize communities but they organize communities to address the particular issues that those

00:42:54.160 communities are affected by in their vicinity in their immediate place so those are planting trees

00:43:00.160 cleaning up rivers picking up rubbish um uh maintaining infrastructure uh filling potholes as i said

00:43:08.480 earlier we talked about the the just falling apart of infrastructure potholes are rife in south africa

00:43:15.440 so afri forum falls thousands of potholes every year all across the country and then there's the safety

00:43:22.080 side of it so we've got 175 neighborhood watches all across the country as well and these aren't your your

00:43:28.560 your grandma's neighborhood watch with pepper spray and binoculars these are well-trained well-equipped

00:43:34.160 people keeping their community safe in a very hostile environment but all within the confines of

00:43:39.760 the law they're not vigilantes that can just be judged jury and executioner um they actually work

00:43:45.200 quite well with local police uh in regards to keeping their community safe uh our friction with the

00:43:50.960 government is that is at national at the high level that that's where the most friction we encounter on a

00:43:56.880 local level the local police chief just is just completely overwhelmed by the the crime wave that

00:44:02.640 they have to deal with understaffed under resourced here comes afri forum and says we've started a new

00:44:07.440 neighborhood watch do you want to cooperate share intel uh do operations together local police stations

00:44:13.520 are just like yeah get on board here here's some work for you to help us out with um so on a local

00:44:19.680 level there's cooperation very good cooperation between the police and our neighborhood watches as well i did a

00:44:24.960 uh uh episode on my youtube channel my conscious caracal youtube channel um where i specifically

00:44:31.520 went on a on patrol with an afri forum neighborhood watch to show people what it's like um and to show

00:44:37.120 you what uh what's going on there so that's the the community solutions side and i mean all of this

00:44:44.000 is done through volunteers so it's not people get paid to do this it's communities coming together

00:44:49.360 the afri forum helps on the organization side the equipment side the resources side uh but the the

00:44:54.800 people that are running these branches the people that are volunteering at these branches aren't earning

00:44:59.440 a salary they're doing it because they have to otherwise their communities are going to fall apart

00:45:04.240 slowly but surely so um we've got i think our whole model is based on about 11 000 volunteers on the ground

00:45:11.600 actively every month uh being uh being organized and taking part very very explicitly in their communities

00:45:19.520 um and that's on top of the the 315 000 donating members that give money every month so that we can

00:45:26.000 do these community-based operations but also we have the the court case side as well so we've got

00:45:33.200 the civil rights side uh where we take the government to court for uh abuses of power laws that target people's

00:45:40.080 private property rights laws that abuse uh minorities laws that target minority communities on

00:45:45.680 land base of language race or culture but then also just uh cases that benefit all south africans where

00:45:52.880 we we fight for basic constitutional rights like freedom of association freedom of religion uh

00:45:58.160 freedom of expression um these types of cases we take on as well so that's the legal side of what we do

00:46:04.400 as well but i mean that's the the rough overview and then just the last point on the solidarity

00:46:09.600 movement itself it has now expanded to a network it's now at in 2025 a network of 50 plus organizations

00:46:16.880 and institutions all specializing in different fields to build that future for africa ensure a

00:46:23.280 future for africaners at the southern tip of africa where we are safe and free um but also it's a it's

00:46:30.080 an initiative where many other communities uh in south africa also benefit the whole of south africa

00:46:35.680 benefits from less potholes safer streets safer neighborhoods uh maintained infrastructure and

00:46:42.240 planted trees rubbish pickup uh initiatives and then afri forum has other projects that we are pioneering

00:46:49.040 at the moment as well they're still in a in an early stage but we're already stress testing them in

00:46:53.520 reality a private uh firefighting unit that's been very successful a private rubbish removal uh initiative

00:47:01.360 where we have a rubbish removal truck and everything in bloomfontein a city here in south africa and

00:47:08.480 that's a major success as well and we're going to expand it to other cities um and then there's also

00:47:13.520 if we have time we can get into it but there's also all the other different organizations within

00:47:18.400 the solidarity movement that have their own focus so just to name one or two um we have soltech which is

00:47:24.720 our technical college that we crowdfunded it's a technical college campus that has

00:47:30.000 almost 3 000 students at this time uh educating uh the the plumbers builders electricians the tradesmen

00:47:37.600 of the future in afrikaans and that campus was built through solidarity the solidarity labor union

00:47:45.120 asking its members whether they are willing to give one a 10 rand extra per month i think that's that's

00:47:52.160 less than 50 cents in in pound terms um per month to a building fund so they can then invest those funds

00:48:00.720 and save them up to build a technical college campus which was then built and finished under time and

00:48:06.720 under budget in 2020. um so that's another aspect of uh of the solidarity movement is building our own

00:48:13.760 educational institutions where people can where where the youth can be educated in their mother tongue of

00:48:19.760 afrikaans which is also under attack from the south african government in primary school level high

00:48:25.440 school level and especially at university uh level so um my next question was actually something that

00:48:33.040 you've uh addressed slightly and one thing that um has been a major question of mine is that um with a

00:48:42.160 a lot of the solidarity and afri forum actions um they've seen such successes um and it's grown so

00:48:49.520 much that um i've seen certain people describe it almost as like a parallel government and i would have

00:48:56.720 thought that um the anc and the state would be a lot more punitive of such things because this might

00:49:04.320 just be my my british mind you know we we uh can't really even build so much as a shed without the

00:49:10.400 government say so and planning permission and the likes and i always joke 1984 could only have been

00:49:16.800 written by an anglo no other parallel universe exists where a non-anglo wrote that novel that's

00:49:23.120 very true we love our bureaucracy for some reason but um i've got basically two questions here um the

00:49:31.600 first of which is is quite simple is that um it seems like it's simply necessity um that a lot of

00:49:40.160 these things aren't challenged obviously you've got the political realm the national realm where

00:49:44.400 there's a back and forth but i was under the impression that um for the coordination with

00:49:50.800 the united states um wasn't afro forum branded treasonous at some point right yeah so that's i mean

00:49:59.760 that's one of the common questions that we often get is that why why are you building even bothering to

00:50:05.280 build anything isn't the state just coming going to come and smash it at one point and that's a

00:50:09.920 a question we often get but i mean uh flip base the head of the solidarity movement has a fantastic

00:50:15.440 quote that he always uses when he gets that question where he says on the one side yes there's always

00:50:20.320 there was always going to be a risk in trying to build anything with a hostile state hovering over you

00:50:26.160 but the the other option was to do nothing and then defeat is certain um so we're taking uh that risk

00:50:32.240 but i mean at the same time there's also a more pragmatic side to it and that's the fact that

00:50:37.760 we're not breaking any laws we're not uh doing anything illegal there is no way that the south

00:50:43.680 african government could for example really prosecute us for anything because there's no

00:50:49.040 laws being broken are they the the treason uh investigation into afri forum and the the delegation

00:50:56.320 that we sent to the united states is concerning but i mean there's no basis for it south africa's

00:51:01.280 uh legal system or our judiciary um is still relatively functional i mean there are a lot

00:51:08.240 of ideological creep has happened i mean as you see in the united states as well a lot a lot of

00:51:12.960 ideology seeping into it increasingly but it is still relatively reliable as it is in the united states to

00:51:19.920 some degree so uh there's not really a legal route for the anc to take on afri forum or the solidarity

00:51:26.400 movement because we're not breaking any laws and at the same time we have a support base of well

00:51:32.320 official membership base of 315 000 the solidarity movement has over 600 members if you combine all

00:51:39.360 the members of all the different the 50 different institutions and organizations that's an awful lot

00:51:44.560 of people and i mean that's uh when it comes to particularly the the state challenging anything that

00:51:50.000 we're building i mean what what do you do in that situation well then you defend it and uh when it

00:51:55.840 comes to specifically afri forum and the and the solidarity movement we built up to this point a

00:52:02.480 capacity to be able to defend ourselves legally constitutionally but also physically in regards to

00:52:08.720 our uh if any of our communities were to be threatened by just random violence or targeted violence

00:52:15.120 uh we've got a a community-based security network all across the country of over 175 neighborhood

00:52:22.080 watches that are well equipped and well and well trained the people that are i mean we had a stress

00:52:27.120 test of what if south africa were to be hit by mass waves of anarchy what would happen with your

00:52:32.560 security network how would it perform well that happened in 2021 in 2021 south africa was subject to

00:52:40.080 subjected to the worst riots and looting that the country had seen since 1994 hundreds of people

00:52:46.240 dead billions of rands of damage and looting happened and what we did in that situation was

00:52:52.160 we sent out a message to all of our neighborhood watchers all of our community safety networks

00:52:56.560 to secure their communities make sure that it's safe all the points of entry are safe and that if they

00:53:02.080 were to be the target of these looters and rioters that they can use their capacity as community-based

00:53:08.720 security structures to with cooperation with alongside the police secure their neighborhoods

00:53:14.320 and all the neighborhoods where our neighborhood watchers were active and securing them were

00:53:19.920 came out on the other side um so i mean that was a major stress test for this model of ours and we we

00:53:25.840 passed it with flying colors so at the end of the day the future is unpredictable i can't sit here

00:53:30.960 and say everything that we build is guaranteed safety there will not be challenged or sabotaged or attacked

00:53:36.960 in any way of course that of that option always exists but then there's the two-pronged uh response

00:53:42.560 to that on the one side is the fact that well the other option would be to do nothing um and just accept

00:53:49.280 that everything is futile and uh i mean we're not going to be doing that because then defeat is certain

00:53:54.800 then on the other side i always use the metaphor of uh the the the porcupine strategy where so in south

00:54:02.000 africa we have and i think this will tie it up nicely in regards to what we are doing uh our

00:54:07.840 philosophy of a porcupine philosophy to a certain extent so we have got a massive nature reserve in

00:54:13.200 south africa called the kruger national park and it's the size of a small country it's a massive

00:54:18.080 absolutely massive and it's filled with any type of major african predator that you can imagine lions

00:54:23.920 leopards hyenas everything but it's also filled to the brim with badgers and with porcupines but

00:54:31.440 how can that be it's it's filled with predators that can munch these little critters anytime they

00:54:35.840 want well those a lot of these smaller animals have adapted and have amazing defense asymmetric

00:54:42.240 defense strategies and mechanisms to keep themselves safe so i mean that's what afri forum into the

00:54:47.440 solidarity movement is metaphorically doing is we are increasingly becoming what we call state proof in

00:54:53.520 regards to our initiatives but then also we are following a porcupine and a badger strategy by

00:54:59.200 making sure that we have spikes to defend ourselves and that we have a thick skin like a badger and then

00:55:05.040 the the proof of concept that you just have to check out is go look on youtube badger versus leopards or

00:55:10.880 porcupine versus lions or porcupine versus leopards and you'll see that even though it's a much smaller

00:55:17.040 animal the asymmetric strategies nature is full of successful asymmetric strategies um the asymmetric

00:55:25.520 defense strategies and that's uh that's the i think the lesson from nature that we are philosophically

00:55:30.720 taking as afri forum and solidarity as well as that it is and not just nature human history is filled

00:55:37.680 with examples of asymmetric defense strategies that that means that you it's not just a done deal or a

00:55:44.160 guarantee that if you are lesser in number or of in lesser in power or firepower or whatever

00:55:49.920 metric that you're using that it is just written in the stars that you are going to be destroyed or

00:55:55.600 dominated uh in all facets um and that's why even in 2025 we're continuing to build we're continuing to

00:56:03.600 state proof ourselves we're continuing to increase our capacity to uh to be able to ensure a future here

00:56:09.920 at the southern tip of africa and uh that's what we're going to continue to do so um i think in

00:56:18.080 many ways you're actually understating the stress test that um many of these institutions went through

00:56:24.720 because um in 2021 i actually wrote about a lot of the riots um so you were you were keeping an eye on

00:56:31.440 the country already then i was yeah um because i at the time i had no idea what was going on it was

00:56:38.640 that's where everything began um but one thing that i can remember if my memory serves me correctly

00:56:45.440 is that um durban is you know the major port in south africa is it not or at least one of them

00:56:52.160 one of the major ports are durman and cape town and many of the uh many of the distribution centers there

00:56:59.120 got burnt to the ground and um outside of south africa you might think okay well that's not too bad but

00:57:05.360 they're all all centered in uh one place and so for a very long time it may have even been for

00:57:11.600 a full year afterwards if not more um this infrastructure didn't come back and so there

00:57:17.840 wasn't the capacity to bring in goods into south africa and so for a considerable amount of time

00:57:24.800 there was a massively reduced um number of imports from what i understand at least so that um if you're

00:57:31.680 able to even during that crisis in the of the the hutis uh attacking freight ships i think it was

00:57:38.320 was it two years ago was it last year in the past two years uh and a lot of the ships were diverted to

00:57:44.800 go in in to return to tradition and go past the cape of good hope um south africa was not positioned to be

00:57:52.080 able to take full advantage of that diversion of uh of cargo because for the reasons that you outline

00:57:58.400 there are our ports were firstly already crippled just by mismanagement and corruption again government

00:58:04.080 monopoly transnet um but at the same time also due to destruction as you rightly pointed out in in the

00:58:10.560 port of durban mm-hmm yeah i um i did look at this wasn't it that they would deliberately avoid

00:58:18.560 south africa because um well they tried their best yeah wherever possible yeah because they were going

00:58:25.040 to when they get to south africa they were going to stand in line uh to get into port for like for

00:58:30.960 days sometimes for weeks okay so i suppose we may as well look um to the future and um one of the

00:58:40.240 questions that um when i've said i was doing this interview most people were keen to find out about

00:58:45.920 being um from abroad is that um do you see any other countries that are following in the footsteps of

00:58:51.840 south africa because i've seen many people um using south africa as an example as the destination for

00:58:57.920 a lot of uh western europe and north america um sort of the anglosphere countries more generally

00:59:07.120 so uh your question is what what lies ahead for the for south africa and in regards to

00:59:13.680 maybe the situation deteriorating or improving mm-hmm all right so on the one i mean it once again comes

00:59:21.440 down to that split between the state capacity decay on the one side and communities organizing on the

00:59:26.480 other one the future of south africa i mean it's it's difficult to make predictions about especially

00:59:31.280 about the future but when it comes to south africa particularly um i think there is one prediction

00:59:36.880 that i can very confidently make and that is the two-pronged approach on the one side state capacity

00:59:42.800 decay will continue to uh to decay that i've seen no indications to the contrary that the state will

00:59:50.240 finally get its act together and that everything will be fine as i said this is the government that has been

00:59:56.000 struggling to fix an electricity crisis for 18 years um i think that trend is going to continue

01:00:02.080 the government capacity to provide basic services like water electricity infrastructure

01:00:08.800 um maintenance fighting crime that's going to keep deteriorating but it's going the counterweight

01:00:16.000 is going to keep increasing and that is the counterweight of communities keeping continuing

01:00:20.480 to organize and becoming increasingly state proof we've seen it's not just i mean i don't want to

01:00:26.080 create this impression that it's only afri forum and the solidarity movement that is organizing communities

01:00:31.200 there are many other organizations out there that are also state proofing or helping state proof

01:00:36.800 their communities and finding alternatives to service delivery and all the filling the void left

01:00:43.040 by the government that is a trend that is increasing in a positive way many communities

01:00:47.680 all across south africa have just started taking things into their own hands when it comes to

01:00:53.360 basically solving the problems that the government should be solving and communities of all

01:00:57.280 backgrounds black and white so when it comes to the future i think those two trends are going to continue

01:01:02.800 the state capacity decay on the other side on the one side the government is going to become increasingly

01:01:08.400 irrelevant in south africa at different paces as as the circumstances change and then on the other

01:01:15.280 side decentralization and state proofing on a community level is going to be is going to increase

01:01:22.320 and is going to become increasingly complex so there's a there's a fascinating case study for the

01:01:27.440 international for those internationally on the outside looking in whether you are interested in

01:01:32.240 particularly the nature of collapse and the nature of the state deteriorating as many of you on the

01:01:38.000 outside are experiencing as you mentioned earlier even in your homeland of britain even in the united

01:01:43.840 states all across europe you are you're feeling that things are getting worse in regards to the

01:01:49.440 performance of the those various states um and the those various bureaucracies well that then you can learn

01:01:55.840 a bit about south from south africa because we are already a long way down the line of state capacity decay

01:02:02.160 and then on the other side is the positive lessons that you can learn from well what is the response to

01:02:07.040 that problem as your countries unfortunately looks like increasingly south africanized well what is the

01:02:14.640 response to south africanization well luckily there are many organizations communities test cases in

01:02:20.720 south africa being as i said earlier stress tested under incredibly stressful uh um

01:02:26.480 um my english is running out now under start to translate constantly but under i almost just used

01:02:33.520 the afrikaans word my brain was like they'll know what know what you mean under increasingly stressful

01:02:38.320 circumstances so when it comes to the the good there's good news and bad news i don't want your

01:02:44.320 listeners to walk away with just bad news that their countries are likely going to increasingly south

01:02:49.440 south africanize and the good news outweighs the bad news the good news is that the solution to

01:02:55.600 south africanization is already far down the line in development and it's not just in the realm of

01:03:01.040 ideas we're not sitting around doing podcasts about what we're going to do about the problem we're not

01:03:05.840 just sitting around writing opinion pieces we are actually pioneering and stress testing these ideas

01:03:11.680 in the field and we've been doing it for decades now and increasingly so so the good news that i want

01:03:17.920 to end on is that you can learn from not just the seeing the problem unfold in south africa but then

01:03:25.520 also you can learn from not just the successes i want to add the mistakes as well that we have have

01:03:31.440 naturally made over the years and will continue to make seeing as these are human initiatives

01:03:36.400 you can learn from those mistakes and from those successes so that if your country finds

01:03:41.360 itself in a more south africanized state of being um you at least know how to react on a on a basic

01:03:48.640 level doesn't mean that you can copy and paste what we do um but you can at least take what we do and

01:03:54.000 adapt it for your own personal uh situation and context this has been very very interesting and um

01:04:01.840 obviously i wish you all the best um and good luck to everyone in south africa because uh can't be the

01:04:08.800 easiest thing to go through but it's nice to uh end on a nice positive note i imagine that um quite

01:04:15.280 often these sorts of things bring communities together more than anything and that's a nice

01:04:19.840 positive way to end it so um final thing i wanted that's one of the benefits uh that's one of the

01:04:25.120 benefits of living in in troubling and trying times is that you you really see what the people around you

01:04:31.520 are made of and that's that there is a positive a positive view in that in regards to when things

01:04:38.000 get very comfortable around you you you just see the worst of people but when things get tough when

01:04:43.200 things get really bad you genuinely do see the best of people coming to the full even if it is an

01:04:49.200 organized minority and that is one of the things that that brings me a lot of gives me great hearts in in

01:04:54.640 in our situation and that's uh i i didn't expect to go away feeling so positive after talking about

01:05:02.560 south africa's decline but that's very nice um so where can people find you online um how can people

01:05:10.160 support the work you're doing right so uh you can support the work that afri forum does by uh supporting

01:05:18.400 us at a link that i will give to the the lotus eaters that you can put in the description of this episode

01:05:24.160 you can either become an international member which is a new feature that we've added or you

01:05:28.560 can make a once-off donation to to help fund the state-proof solutions and state-proof experiments

01:05:34.240 here at the southern tip of africa you are investing in your own future as i said earlier because you can

01:05:38.960 fund the experiments and then the results of the experiment can can inform your own future actions

01:05:45.360 but then my myself personally well you can find my content on x i post under my my uh my name

01:05:52.560 conscious caracal but that's just my my brand there i'm not i'm not anonymous you're not going

01:05:57.440 to be doxing me if you refer to me as adenst um but then also on my youtube channel i do interviews

01:06:03.680 with guests from south africa and abroad but with a specific focus on every episode that i or every

01:06:10.160 interview that i do i want to firstly make sure that it remains relevant the topic that we talk about for

01:06:15.680 the next five at least five or ten years i don't do current events so if you want to see like

01:06:21.280 current events analysis of like what the south african government did this week and my reaction

01:06:26.240 you're not going to see that we're going to be talking about topics that i try to make relevant

01:06:30.480 not just for south africa but for the wider west simultaneously so that my audience in abroad and

01:06:36.320 my audience locally in south africa um according to my analytics is pretty much 50 50 split in regards to

01:06:42.480 to my audience that the topics that i discuss on my channel is relevant to both of those uh those

01:06:47.680 audiences every time that's what i try to do with my channel and that's also under the name conscious

01:06:52.480 caracal or so you can find that on youtube and on x on any uh podcast platform where you listen to

01:06:58.560 podcasts and then lastly i think it's just broadly it might sound a bit cheesy or lame but i mean what you

01:07:04.800 really can do to help is just to continue talking about south africa continuing to inform people about

01:07:10.000 what's going on here um even as i said it might it doesn't sound as dramatic or glamorous or glorious

01:07:16.640 but i mean just simply if you're in a conversation and people are talking just absolute nonsense about

01:07:21.680 south africa that you know is nonsense correct them not in a in a like a rude way but in a genuine like

01:07:28.640 critical way and saying i don't think that's that's the situation and here's uh here's why i say that and

01:07:35.040 i can't tell you how many times i've encountered that those types of just conversations being had

01:07:42.080 by either expats of african expats or just people taking an interest in south africa informing other

01:07:48.800 people around them it does have a cumulative effect so as i said it sounds a bit like a hippie flowery like

01:07:55.680 yeah just talk about south africa and that's how you can help us but it genuinely does make a difference

01:08:00.640 when a lot of people just correct the factual errors that they encounter on a daily well on a

01:08:05.760 daily basis but on a regular basis um when uh south africa is a topic of discussion so that genuinely is

01:08:13.360 something that you can do it's not just uh screaming into the void if you help get the truth about south

01:08:19.120 africa out there it really makes a difference and i've seen the difference as someone who lives here

01:08:24.000 well that's great and uh thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me um i wish you all

01:08:30.400 the best and um you're doing some great work and um i suppose thank you and i suppose you're going to

01:08:37.360 continue on with much the the same direction and so i i would encourage everyone watching this

01:08:43.840 to um check out your work as well thank you very much josh i appreciate it and keep up the good fight

01:08:50.640 there on your side of the of the big salty pond as well i know you've got your own uh challenges

01:08:56.640 major challenges as a nation as a people and um all the best to you i think it's i'm glad to see

01:09:03.280 the people and we appreciate people on the outside looking into what's happening in south africa but do

01:09:08.240 know that we are also paying attention to what's happening on your side of the atlantic we are not

01:09:13.200 just focused here on particularly south africa south africans in general are actually very

01:09:18.400 outward focused often with our with our focus when we are looking at the issues all across the world

01:09:25.040 but we are we are keeping an eye on you guys there in britain as well in the united states and other

01:09:30.320 european countries too um and we we wish you all the best well thank you very much and um i suppose um

01:09:38.560 i address the audience now um thank you very much for watching this and um i hope you enjoyed it

01:09:44.480 um make sure to check out um your videos your work support afri forum and goodbye all right goodbye walk well

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - April 19, 2025

The Fate of South Africa ｜ Interview with Ernst Van Zyl

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