Jobs Australians won't do, I guess.

mozzaok wrote on Aug 24^th, 2010 at 1:44pm:


The reason South Africa refused to change under international pressure because they predicted what is happening there would happen. Black majority rule was resisted because it was expected that it would be disasterous for the entire population; blacks and whites alike, but especially whites. It has been and things are getting worse.

It amazes me that the pious democratic world, only ten or so years *after* the dismantling of their own segregation programs, had the effrontery to look down on South Africa as they did. It reminds me of that old slogan that was used in Colonial America that the further away people lived from the Sioux and the Apache the more people sympathized with them. South Africa's unique geographical and demographic situation instilled in the whites there their hard-edged, no-nonsense approach to running their country. They were probably right, though many of the cruelties of the Apartheid regime cannot simply be excused.

skippy. wrote on Aug 24^th, 2010 at 12:52pm:


I'll go along with that.

Yeah, I've heard that the ANC is also seriously out of touch there with even the blacks. Didn't they make gay marriage legal in South Africa? Like that's going to go down well with blacks. In some districts a lot of black people are now voting in whites, I think. Could be wrong about though.

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Imp

That is right Imp, and the fact that they were is largely what caused the problem in the first place.

You seem to be arguing that if black sth africans had been treated fairly and compassionately, they would have simply reverted to type as murderous black demons.
I know you believe that people have genetic dispositions towards violent behaviour along cultural lines, but I do not agree with that contention.

Historically Africa has been a very violent place, as has most of the world.
With the advancement of civilisation, we saw western europe develop into a more orderly society, but that did not happen over night, it happened over centuries.
Even with our advanced secular democracies, the west still has the capability of creating bloody mayhem in the world from time to time, so to claim the moral highground in relation to violent behaviour, for the white, western races, along genetic grounds, may be just a bit presumptuous.

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What would you define here as to be treated "compassionately"? Many of things done to Black africans during Apartheid were wrong, but others were simply precautionary measures. Pass laws for instance -- not necessarily very pleasant for individuals, but on a group level (from the perspective of whites, and even some blacks), probably fairly sensible. Keeping Africans disenfranchised was a good move as well; their enfranchisement has only led to the current situation.

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Mozzaok, it does not necessarily matter whether individuals have genetic predispostions towards violence or not. It is not not a necessary condition for white South Africans to have taken the precautionary measures that they did. Treating them differently  only would have made sense **if** the causes of their violent tendencies were directly as a result of the treatment metered out by Apartheid in the first place. I think most of the evidence is inconsistent or does not fit into this explanation so the precautionary measures taken by the white South Africans, while unpleasant, and at many times went far too far, were probably the most sensible course of action. I am not saying that because Group X is more violent/etc on average than Group Y because of genetic reasons (though I do think this) therefore many of the legislative measures taken by Apartheid were justified; I'm saying that the disparties in these negative behaviors between groups, which certainly and undeniably do exist, could probably not be reasonably ascribed to Apartheid itself, and therefore the White South Africans were likely judicious in their actions.

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Even in an historical context, I don't think that most of the world has ever really been as violent as Africa.  Though civilization and the environment do in fact, and you are quite right to point out so, have passifying effects; whether or not they can ever *truly* remove disparities between certain groups, on certain behaviors, remains to be seen. The only African nations that exist that are nothing like the rest are tiny Caribbean nations that have unique demographic, economic and historical conditions that have given rise to them in the first place.

The "cradle of civilization" was Mesopotamia and the Indus valley, not Africa. Let's not try to confuse the geographic descriptor for African with its other descriptor. The Egyptians were not "Africans" in the sense that we are using here (as much as Afrocentric liars would like them to have been), though they did exist in Africa.

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That's very interesting; I didn't know that about the Zulu. I would have thought, being that the Zulu are a formidable warrior people, they would have been *more* volatile than the rest of the Africans in the Cape, not less. I'm infinitely impressed by the bravery (perhaps temerity) and indomitable spirit of the Zulu impis; despite vast and obvious technological and economic disadvantages, they almost managed to bring the world's foremost hyperpower to its knees.