The situation in South Africa is super messy and seems destined to end in disaster. I'm generally rather optimistic about humanity's ability to pull through, but I have to admit, the future of SA looks...grim.
There's no question that white farmers are being murdered in horrible fashion, or at least that some of them are. But then, so is everyone else in the country - the murder rate in South Africa is quite high compared to anywhere in the west. There's also no question that what's currently happening in SA does not at all fit our modern understanding of 'genocide.' Farm murders, as horrible as they are, do not appear to be the result of any kind of pattern of violence designed to drive whites out of the country, and at least until very recently, the government of SA was not overtly engaging in racial policy making, much less racial extermination.
But there's a LOT of room between 'everything is fine' and 'everyone is dying' and it's frankly very difficult to tell just where on that gradient SA currently falls. Reliable data is hard to come by - there is not a lot of trust in public institutions left in the SA, and almost all statistics that come out of it are questionable at best. Antiboyscout is right that only white land is being reclaimed, but then, something like 75% of farmland in SA is currently held by whites despite them being a fairly small portion of the population, so, yeah, of course only white land is going to be claimed. On the other hand, we have guys like Julius Malema, who is the head of a major political party, making a point of saying that they are
not calling for the murder of white people...FOR NOW.
In an interview with TRT World, published on Monday, Malema said he could not guarantee what would happen in the future, and warned that a revolution would happen if things continued as they are now.
"I'm saying to you, we've not called for the killing of white people, at least for now. I can't guarantee the future."
Asked by the presenter if he understood that to some this might sound like a "genocidal call", Malema responded, "Cry babies, cry babies!"
I can't help but think that Fuzzy would not be quite so nonplussed if Mitch McConnell gave an interview in which he bragged that the US wasn't just
killing Mexican immigrants wholesale, well for now anyway, so why are they crying so much?
And as if a high crime rate and a horrifying taste in politicians weren't enough, SA finds itself staring at a double-barreled shotgun of capacity vs. need. If you actually watch
Lauren Southern's documentary on farm killings (which I don't really recommend unless you're bored) you'll notice that while she pretty much fails to find any evidence of
genocide, she finds lots and lots of evidence of
climate change. Farms are literally turning into desert as the planet heats up. This trend is almost certainly going to continue - honestly, it's likely to speed up. This means the capacity of SA to support it's population is going to fall, even if there aren't political shenanigans, which appear increasingly likely. And what does that population look like?
Now, remember what I said earlier about statistics. Getting good numbers is hard, and verifying them is harder. But this chart is basically in line with most of the numbers I can find online. And that trend line is
terrifying. Don't be distracted by the racial component, race is irrelevant when it comes to feeding people. Even a country with a strong economy and a healthy political infrastructure would struggle to accommodate that level of growth, and SA doesn't score particularly well on either category. Syria has already shown us what can happen when climate change destroys the ability of a country to feed itself, and Zimbabwe offered a master class in what badly implement land reform looks like. South Africa may find itself in a worse situation than either of them very soon unless cooler heads prevail.
Of course, while this is all very unfortunate, for once, it really doesn't have much to do with America. We don't even have much in the way of a tangential connection to this mess. Trump is just flailing because he's had a bad, bad week at home.