The Tucker Carlson Show - Ernst Roets: Attacks on Whites in South Africa, Attempts to Hide It, and Trump’s Plan to End It

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

South Africa is what happens when you take DEI seriously, which is why the western media pretend it’s not happening. Ernst Roets on what’s going on there right now. (00:00) South Africa Is Falling Apart (04:03) The True Story of Nelson Mandela (08:50) Perfect Example of the Failures of Communism (12:34) The Killing of Whites in South Africa (25:01) The West’s Role in the Destruction of South Africa (29:02) The Origins of the Afrikaner People (37:40) Europe’s Propaganda War and Concentration Camps Paid partnerships with: Heritage Foundation: https://Heritage.org/Tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether it's a family member, friend or furry companion joining your summer road trip, enjoy the peace of mind that comes with Volvo's legendary safety. During Volvo Discover Days, enjoy limited-time savings as you make plans to cruise through Muskoka or down Toronto's bustling streets. From now until June 30th, lease a 2025 Volvo XC60 from 1.74% and save up to $4,000. Conditions apply. Visit your GTA Volvo retailer or go to volvocars.ca for full details. So I think for most Americans, news about South Africa ended in 1994. Both literally, we stopped getting a lot of news from the country, but also people's views about it stopped evolving then. That was the year that apartheid ended, I guess, officially. You had elections. Nelson Mandela, still a hero in the United States, often referred to by politicians. couple of months that stories have come out of South Africa that a lot of Americans have read

that actually the country seems to be falling apart and that the government is kind of genocidally racist. And then President Trump in the past month has basically said the same thing. And it's shocking to a lot of people, I think, how bad it is and just how racist South Africa, you live there, describe the state of the country right now, if you would. Yeah, well, perhaps I can start with your reference about the 90s, because it's absolutely true. South Africa and America was very involved with the setting up of the political system yes we have in south africa during the 90s and it was of course the end of history era everyone is excited about the fall of the berlin wall and the whole world's going to be liberal and democratic

including african countries yes and samuel huntington actually cautioned against this in 1996 saying you know when he wrote the clash of civilizations and he said don't expect of african leaders and african liberation movements to suddenly become Western when you give them Western constitutions, because they are still African. So they will use, it's the democratic paradox, they will use democratic institutions to promote non-democratic ends. And that's what we see in South Africa. We have a parliament, we have a very liberal constitution. But if you read the constitution and you compare that to reality in South Africa, it's two completely different worlds. The de facto and the de jure reality in South Africa is irreconcilable. And so what has

been happening in South Africa is firstly, there was this major excitement about the new South Africa, Nelson Mandela, the miracle story, you know, Oprah spoke about this, and Charlize Theron, everyone. But the reality on ground level was in many ways the opposite. And I think a lot of- From the beginning? Gradually. So they started, for example, with these BEE, as they call it, it's Black Economic Empowerment, which of course has nothing to do with economic empowerment. They started with that in 1996. And so they actually said, initially in the 90s, that that's the ruling party's strategy, they still call it that, the National Democratic Revolution, which is about using democracy to

promote socialist ends. And so the revolution, they say, goes in two phases. The first phase is present yourself as being liberal and democratic and get support, especially international support and local. And then use multi-party democracy as a way of promoting the goals of taking the country down the road to socialism. And so recently they even went as far as publishing a document saying we are now ready for the second phase of the revolution. We now have power. We have control of the state. We now have power. We have control of the state. We now need to use this to become much more aggressive in our socialist policies.

And we're seeing this in a plethora of new laws all of a sudden in South Africa, which I think it's gotten to the point where it's just not possible to maintain the view that people have had of South Africa for the last few decades and look at what's currently happening in South Africa. It's two completely different worlds. And hopefully, or happily at

least, a lot of people are starting to wake up to this. So, you said Samuel Huntington wrote that in 1996, two years after the election. I kind of thought that from day one, simply because I knew people there, and I was more familiar with the details of the Mandela's. Yes. But I think most Americans don't get any idea. What was Nelson Mandela on Robben Island for? What was he in prison for? For being black, or was there another reason? Well, literally, so I have children, and they are taught in in schools and the government prescribes what children should learn in history.

And so the official version is he went to prison because he was a good leader and the government didn't like that. I should say that he certainly was the best that the ANC has ever had to offer. Yes. to offer. But the reason why he went to prison is because they started Mkonto Isiswe, which was the military wing of the ANC, which became involved with military actions in South Africa with an attempt to overthrow the government. And they actually, and this is, I'm quoting from the ANC's own policy documents that's on their own website. So they had this operation when they started, which was used in the Rivonia trial against Nelson Mandela. It was a strategy called Operation Mayi Buye.

And the slogan of this operation was, shamelessly, we shall attack the weak and shamelessly, we shall flee from the strong. So those were the circumstances in the 1960s. Pretty noble policy statement there. We'll attack the weak and flee from the strong. Yeah, and it's still on their website. You can find it there. So that was an attempt at an armed uprising. Now, we can talk about everything that was wrong with the previous political system in South Africa. There was a lot wrong.

But it's simply not the case that he went to prison for being a good leader. Well, I think that most people would acknowledge a distinction between military action, which is, you know, a fight, a war, a battle between militaries and attacks on civilians, which is something we call terrorism. Yes. So, in 1985, the ANC had a conference in Kabwe in Zambia, and they took a formal decision that in their so-called military operations, they would not differentiate between hard and soft targets. So it was officially a policy that says we can kill innocent people. And a lot of innocent people died in the political violence in the run-up to 1994. And 90% of the people who died were black South Africans. Right. It was… But non-combatants, women and children. Yeah, yeah who died were black South Africans. Right.

It was... But non-combatants, women, children. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Women and children. Pastors by, you know, people had nothing to do with anything. Yes, yes, especially. And so during that time that Mandela was in prison, I'm 55, so I remember this very, very well.

His wife was effectively his spokesman, Winnie Mandela. Yeah. And she was lionized in the United States. She was a hero. She was the mother of an emerging nation, a woman of peace and decency, really a transcendent figure, a holy figure. And then it turned out that actually she was a murderer who had burned to death or supervised the murder

of a bunch of different people. Tell us about that. Yes. So let me firstly say that I have a lot of respect for Nelson Mandela. I think in terms of his efforts and as I say, I think he's the best the ANC has ever had to offer. Winnie Mandela, his wife, not so much.

So she famously, I mean, she's been involved with a lot of things, including what was called the Mandela Football Club. Yes. Which was a gang that was involved with violence and killings of innocent people. And she famously said at a political rally, with our necklaces and our matches, we will liberate this country.

Which of course is a reference to the necklace murders, which was very popular in South Africa and still happens in South Africa. That's when you take a rubber tire, you fill it with petrol or gasoline And you put it around someone's neck So that it's bound around their arms And you set it on fire

And then you stone that person while he's burning to death And that happened There were I think 500 or 700 people were killed like that During political violence in South Africa And she encouraged this Initially she denied it And then it came out that it was recorded Of her saying this So yes, she denied it, and then it came out that it was recorded of her saying

this. So, yes, it's very bizarre that someone like Queen Mandela is a hero today. And was a hero then. And so, that, to me, was a sign that these are not, you know, liberators, that they're oppressors. Yeah. And so, but no one in the West wanted to think that. It was like a really simple tale of white oppression, of noble black people, and by definition, the black people, I mean, there were oppressed black people, of course. And there were noble black people, but the leadership always I think an important component here that is very well documented, it's not a secret, but a lot of people don't seem to want to know this or recognize this,

is the very strong alliance that the ANC has always had and still has with the South African Communist Party and the extent to which they were supported not just by the Soviet Union, also by the Vietnamese and by Mao Tse Tung as well, implementing what they call the people's war strategy that they got from Mao Tse Tung.

So yes, it was very much the ANC saw themselves as being the African or South African frontier of promoting a socialist or communist revolution. So how did it turn out? Well, you mean in terms of where we are today? Let's just follow different threads. So let's just start with, I don't know, technology and infrastructure. In 1993, South Africa was famously the most prosperous society in Africa by far, right? Among the most prosperous in the world, correct?

They had nuclear weapons in South Africa. Yeah. What is it like now, 30 years later? Well, the reality is that virtually every sphere of society is collapsing, with the exception of taxation, of course, and tax collection. That's still very, very efficient. Maybe I can explain it this way. So, America has a somewhat skewed tax system with, if my information is correct, about 85% of tax, income tax in America is paid by about 10% of the people.

I think that's correct. So, one in 10. In South Africa, 85% of income tax is paid by one in 30 people. So it's a very small number of people, a very small portion of society that pays tax, that is heavily taxed. And then about almost half of the population in South Africa get money from the government in the form of social grants. If you add government employees, conservative estimates say that 50% of people in South Africa get money from the government. Some estimates say it's up to 60% of adults,

voting age adults, get money from the government each year. So then this money, of course, is then used. It's given out as social grants, but what's left is used to set up these programs that are actively discriminating against taxpayers. I mean, there are so many examples. One of the most recent ones is this blacks-only fund that the government has set up whereby they give money to black entrepreneurs exclusively. So this is happening. of that, so after you spend your tax money to fund these government programs that are discriminating against you, you have to spend what is left to do the things that the government

was supposed to be doing. So the classical definition of a government is that it should protect life, liberty, and property. The classical liberal view, we're a bit Ciceronian, so we think a government has to do more than that. But if we use those three things, the government's not protecting our lives. There's about, if this interview that we're about to have is two hours, there will be about seven murders in South Africa in this time. Government does not protect liberty. It's actively targeting schools of minority communities, actively denying the identity and the rights of minority communities.

And it's certainly not protecting property. It's actively involved with the program to empower the government to expropriate private property without compensation. And then we have to use the money that is left to pay for our own private security, to become involved with organizations, to fulfill the things that the government was supposed to be doing with the tax money that we paid in the first place. One of the reasons that I find this story so fascinating is not simply because, you know, it's like the classical, you know, irony of history. This, you know, group comes in with one aim and then achieves exactly the opposite. We're

going to have a, you know, we're going to end racism and then make racism much worse, but also because they have gone about it in a way that's almost like American, the same language, the same diversity is our strength kind of sloganeering. And it's had the same result, which is to basically kill whites. And I mean, that's just true. And I wonder if you see that. It's almost like you imported our kind of intellectual class framework for this project. No, that's absolutely the case. So there's a theory.

There was this video that just went viral on social media of this guy talking about how white people are subhuman and all of that. And they get – well, this is taught at universities in South Africa. There's a theory called Azania critical theory. Azania is a Pan-African word for South Africa. There's a theory called Azania critical theory. Azania is a pan-African word for South Africa. And they actually get this from Americans like Robin DiAngelo, who's this Ibrahim X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, these people. They get it from them and then they put an African flavor on it, which essentially boils down to a theory that justifies the targeting and extermination of the white minority. And so the theory, to summarize, goes more or less like this.

There's an African term called Ubuntu, which means brotherliness, or it's about your internal humanity. It's a Zulu term. And the theory goes that white people are incapable of having Ubuntu. But Ubuntu is the essence of humanity. So if you don't have it, you're not truly human. So it boils down, the logical conclusion is that if you kill a white person, then you did not actually commit murder.

So this is not widely believed in South Africa, but this is taught at universities by university professors. And it's certainly believed by radical elements. It's a predicate for genocide. I mean, it's always the same in every, I mean, we're watching in parts of the world now, they're not fully human, right? So we can kill them because they're fully human. Then it's, of course, a grave sin to kill them.

Yeah, well, we've always been saying that there's not a genocide in South Africa, looking at what happened in Rwanda and so forth. It's not the same thing. But it is very alarming to look at some of these claims that are being made and to compare that to what was made in Rwanda. Well, every country and, you know, genocide broadly defined, an attempt to eliminate a group of people on the basis of their race or ethnicity. Yeah. And we have these political parties chanting. I mean, you've seen this,

you've reported on this chanting, kill the boer, kill the farmer to a stadium filled with people. And it's not just rhetoric. So they would say, no, it's just a metaphor. But it's preceded by a speech about how white people are criminals and should be treated like criminals, how everything they have is illegitimate and stolen, in which people are encouraged to go and invade their farms and so forth. And then they chant, kill the Boer, kill the farmer, and they make these hand gestures. Of course, the Boer is a reference to the Afrikaner people. But the reality is also that the farmers are being attacked

and killed on their farms. So it's not just a metaphor. And our attempts at researching this has found that there's an increase in farm attacks. Obviously, when the political climate becomes heated or warmer, and these type of statements are made in a way that's highly publicized, you do get an increase in farm attacks. And it's very brutal and very horrific farm attacks that we see. So, the farm attacks are attacks against white farmers, not against…

Not exclusively white farmers, but it's attacks against farmers in South Africa, of which the majority is white. Right. Okay. So, this has been going on a long time. I think it's been well documented. I believe you wrote a book about it, which has become very... sold a lot of copies on Amazon, I noticed. Yes.

And so none of this is like a secret, and all of it's verifiable because, you know, dead people are pretty easy to track because they're dead. Yeah, we have the names of the people who've been murdered. Exactly. Yeah. But in the United States, the country that inspired the revolution that you're living through, our media have ignored that and then gone beyond ignoring it to attack anyone who brings it up as a, quote, white supremacist. Yeah.

Well, I can tell you so many stories about this. Please do. For example, I was on your show a few years ago to talk about the farm murders and the extent to which we were attacked by American media as a result of that. I had someone from CNN come see me in my office in Pretoria to interview me about farm attacks. And the entire interview was about you. So you would put things to me and say, did you know Tucker Carlson said the following? Do you agree with this statement? And did you know that Donald Trump said this?

And are you comfortable with this? And so I paused him at one stage and I said, what are we doing? I thought we had to talk about farm murders and what's happening in South Africa. But the only, so the argument was that because Trump made that comment about farm murders in 2018, it has to be a non-existing issue because Trump is a liar and everything he says is false. And the same with you because you spoke about it.

That means that the problem doesn't exist, and we have to prove that it doesn't exist in order to get to you. Well, not only doesn't it exist, you're not allowed to complain about it existing. Yes. It's somehow a moral crime to notice and to not like it when people are murdered for the color of their skin. It's bizarre. Well, it's not bizarre. They're telegraphing genocidal intent

when they're telling you, no, you're not getting killed, and yes, it's a good thing that you are. Yes, and no, you're not getting killed. What are they saying? Yeah, it's no, you're not getting killed, and yes, it's a good thing that you are. Yes, and no, you're not getting killed. What are they saying? Yeah, it's no, you're not getting killed, and if you are, you deserve it. Right. Because of a variety of things, because the attackers are poor,

or because remember all the horrible things that white people have done in South Africa and outside of South Africa. So there's always a justification. And so another example, just in 2018, again, after you spoke about this and after Trump spoke about this, the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, came to America and he spoke at an event in New York. And he said there are no killings of farmers in South Africa. And he just flat out denied the existence of the problem. And he said this on an international platform. He said, it's not happening.

It's not true. And the worst of it all was how the media knew this was wrong, especially mainstream media in South Africa. They knew that it's not true. And so they immediately rushed to his defense, writing articles like this is what he actually meant to say. And then they sort of justify what's happening. And so we really do sometimes feel that our biggest battle is not primarily against what the government is doing, but against how the media is reporting. But just consider this. I mean, if, you know, if Tootsies and Kilgali in 1994 said, boy, I, you know, a lot of us

seem to be getting hacked to death by machetes and reporters or political figures said, boy, a lot of us seem to be getting hacked to death by machetes. And reporters or political figures said, shut up. You're a Tootsie supremacist for saying so. I think we could fairly say the people shouting them down are pro-genocide of Tootsies. I mean, what's the other explanation? I don't really get it. I mean, honestly, what's the other explanation? Well, the explanation that is used in court cases, so by the way, the skill, the boer chant was found in court not to be hate speech,

according to South African law. It's not hate speech. Killing people is not hate speech. Yeah, chanting about killing people. You know why it's not hate speech? Because it's not speech they hate. That's why. Well, maybe that's it.

It's speech they approve of. So the arguments that is used or are used to defend this type of rhetoric would always be something like you need to see it in context. You need to remember the apartheid system. You need to remember what these people went through. That they deserve to be killed. You need to remember that. That's well. So the argument is that they're actually commemorating the historic struggle.

And that's why they are still chanting this. I would disagree with you. I think what they're saying is the people getting murdered deserve to be murdered so stop complaining about it yeah well i a few people are saying that out loud but it does seem to be i mean look at some point you know i don't need you to explain your motive if i have a clear glimpse of your actions if i know what you're doing i don't have to hear you explain why you're doing it. I already know because the motive is displayed in the action. Do you know what I mean? Yep. So in other words, if I pull out a gun and shoot you and somebody said, did you not like Ernst? Yeah. I can say whatever I want, but I just shot you. So I think it's kind of fair to

infer that I didn't like you. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But the motive is also explained in the words. So they're trying to defend the words. It's a famous story of Chamberlain and Churchill. When Chamberlain came back from meeting Hitler and he said, no, well, I met him and I think we're going to find peace. And then Churchill said, no, well, I read what he said and I believed him. And so you can just read what they're saying. If you read the policy documents of the ruling party, they say they want to convert South Africa into a communist society. They want to have a revolution in South Africa.

And if you listen to the more radical parties to the left of them, they openly chant about killing white people. So they say these things out loud. And now they are obviously more to the fringe. You find the more extreme rhetoric in South Africa, but it's very alarming and how people just rush to their more to the fringe. You find the more extreme rhetoric in South Africa, but it's very alarming and how people just rush to their defense all the time.

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So that's the part that bothers me. Like, I'm not surprised. I'll just say it. I'm not surprised at all. I watched what happened in Rhodesia when it became Zimbabwe in 1980, and something identical happened. There was a lot of killing, and they drove it to the bottom rank of nations,

the poorest country in the world. And following exactly the same script, I always thought that would happen in South Africa. I wanted to be wrong. Turns out I wasn't. What really bothers me is that the West has allowed this and cheered it on because I live in the West. I live in the United States. So, like, I don't want to think that my leaders are for killing people on the basis of race.

But watching how they've stood by and applauded, Barack Obama's applauded all this stuff. It tells you everything about Barack Obama and other American leaders, doesn't it? Yes, and this brings us back to the 90s. So during the 90s, it was again after the Cold War and the world and especially the West was high on ideology and this idea that the world will become liberal and everyone's going to become like us

and everyone in the world is just an American waiting to be liberated and we just need to go and liberate them from their own traditional beliefs and so forth. And so it really is the case that America and many Western countries played a very significant role in creating the South Africa that we have today. Oh, I'm aware. I'm aware. And so we don't want other people to fix our problems on our behalf. We want to solve our own problems.

But you can certainly make the case that the West has a moral responsibility towards the people in South Africa. Of course. The West forced through sanctions and boycotts the change of government that put the ANC in power. So, absolutely. In the same way the West has armed

Ukraine. So, they have an obligation to make sure, you know, to at least know what's happening and to be honest about it not to hide their own you know responsibility for the crime yeah and so there's this false dichotomy in south africa or with regard to south africa that if you are against what's happening in south africa now that means you want the apartheid system so you have a choice and this one former judge recently said this who's retired he said that we have a choice in South Africa between a moral system that is dysfunctional which is the

current system or an immoral system that is a functional one which is the former system and so the problem is if you criticize what's happening in South Africa now you get accused of wanting to return to the apartheid system but the truth is you can reject both you can say we don't want the apartheid system and we don't want what's happening in South Africa at the moment. We want to govern ourselves. We want freedom. But it seems that a lot of people are incapable of making that conclusion or leaving any room for saying that both these systems are wrong and we need a better system, a system that is much more decentralized, a system in which the various nations who live in South Africa, because South Africa is very big, it's almost as big as Europe, the various nations living in South Africa should just govern themselves.

And that's not what's happening in South Africa. And I think it's a worthy cause to pursue. So can I, I think I'm hardly an expert on South Africa at all, but I am American. So if I, can I just give my overview of what, of the different groups in South Africa and you correct me, but just so people following on because I think it matters for reasons I'll explain. So,

so the Africa, um, they're basically two big white populations in South Africa. Historically, they're what were called the Boers, the Afrikaners who are, were religious, basically religious refugees,

a mixture of Dutch and French Huguenots, Protestant Dutch, Protestant French, who moved to Southern Africa for reasons of religious liberty. And then you had the English, who I think were, after the Boer War, in power, who mostly were there for economic reasons and had in many cases passports back to great britain um and then you had a couple of different african black groups the largest of which i think is to this day are the zulus yes who like the afrikaners the boers and the english were not native to the area at all.

They were newcomers who arrived, I think, just right before the Boers did. Yeah, not long before the Dutch arrived. Okay, is that true? Yes, yes, yes. And they, you know, as invading groups often usually do, kind of exterminated the native population who were what we would call the Bushmen. Yeah, the Khoi and the San, as they are also called thank you yes okay so that that's my like dumb foreigner overview is that roughly true yeah so so just um can i tell you a story from our i hope you will yes uh it's some people call it the origin story of the afrikaner people and it explains a lot about

who we are today so we were settled in the cape the the Proto-Africaners, who were still the Dutch, the French, and the Germans. We were then colonized the Cape in, I think, 1810 by the British. It was during the Napoleonic Wars. When did the Afrikaners for the Boers first get there? 1652. 1652. Yeah, that's, what, 150 years before the Declaration of Independence or something Wow

Something like that Yeah, so A long time ago Yeah, so my great-great-great-grandfather, Nikolaus Roots, who was the first Roots who came to South Africa Came more or less the time when George Washington was a teenager So he was eight years older than George Washington So my family has been in Africa since, you could say, since George Washington, since the time of George Washington. So before the United States was a country.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the Cape was- Do you have another passport? No, no, no. I don't really want one. And do most Afrikaners have other passports? No, most don't. But this goes to the story I want to tell you. So we were colonized by the British. And you can call them the proto-Afrikaners then said, you know, we don't want to be governed by anyone else. We want to govern ourselves.

And so they opted to move into the interior of South Africa, which was called the Great Track. And they didn't know what they would expect. They said they reject slavery. They want to foster good relations with local tribes, which they did. There were many treaties signed and agreements and so forth. They did not hold slaves. There was slavery in the Cape Colony before that,

but when the Great Track, that was around the time of the abolition of slavery. And they also rejected slavery. They explicitly said so. So they then went into the interior and the leader of the great track was a guy called peter thief yes who went to negotiate with the zulu king dungan and so he said what can we do to buy land from you for our people to live the agreement was they had to return cattle that was stolen by another tribe with a

king called si coniella so they went they retrie the cattle, they brought it to the Zulu king. The Zulu king, King Dungan, said to them that we have to celebrate, so leave your weapons outside the lager, come inside, and we'll have a celebration. During the celebration, at one stage, he chanted, which means kill the wizards. So they took Retif and his commando, his group, to a nearby hill, and they slaughtered him. They slaughtered him last because they wanted him to see,

they wanted to make sure that he sees his people and his son murdered. A few months later, before, so after that, they went on an extermination mission. They killed women and children in the lagers and so forth. A few months later... A lager is a group of wagons pulled into a circle. Yes, correct, yes.

And so a few months later, his body was found with the treaty on which the Zulu king signed, giving them some land. So they then started a... initiated a punishment commando, a group of three to four hundred men to counterattack the Zulus, which eventually led to the Battle

of Blood River, one of the most significant battles in our history, where they found themselves completely surrounded. They were about, let's say, 400. But four naboors. Yes, surrounded by 12,000 Zulus. And so they had this wagon. And my great, great, great, great grandfather was in that lager and he was the religious leader. His name is Saral Salia. So Saral Salia-

And what was their religion? Christian. Dutch Reformed? Dutch Reformed, yes. So he said to them, listen, we need to make a vow to God. And so he wrote a vow, which they all made. And the vow said that we're standing here in front of the God in heaven and earth to make a vow to him that if he protects us in the battle that lies ahead, we will commemorate this day in the years to come as a day of thanksgiving and a Sabbath. And we will also tell our children this story and we will build a church

and we will make sure that the honor of the victory goes to God and not to us. So they made this vow and the battle took place. And the result was that not one of the Afrikaners were killed. 3,000 Zulus died in that battle. Not one was killed? Yes. Yeah. And so the reason why I'm telling the story is not because not to point to the Zulu people. We have good relations with the Zulu and we've worked with them. This was, of course, the one major battle, but we've had good relations with them over the years. But it says something about, firstly, why the Afrikaner people are so patriotic. It says something about why we are so attached to African soil and why we are still religious.

We're a very religious community. We have some problems in terms of belief and so forth. But broadly speaking, the Afrikaners are, compared to Europe and compared to some parts of America, still a very religious people. And it also says something about why we are so attached to the country and why we don't want to leave.

We want to stay there because our ancestors have been there for hundreds of years and we fought and died for our space there. And we've gotten used to it to a certain extent. Well, it's the only country that you have, isn't it? Exactly. We don't have any other country. We can't go back to England.

We're not Dutch anymore. There's a slogan in South Africa that says, go back to Holland. But, I mean, I've been to Holland. I've been to Amsterdam. It's a beautiful city. But I don't feel like I'm at home when I go there. It's a beautiful foreign city that I'm attending. We became a people in Africa, which is why we are called the Afrikaners. We named ourselves after the continent and our language, Afrikaans, is named after the continent. But you're being called invaders by people whose ancestors were also invaders. Yeah, well, who came from the north of Africa, yes, from where Cameroon is and so forth, who came down firstly towards the east of Africa

and then along the Great Lakes, eventually ending in South Africa, yes. I think what you said is really important because I think from the American or the Western perspective, there's this idea that the Afrikaners, the Boers, are worse. They're the worst whites there. Worse than the English. Yes. English, by the way, created the concentration camp

during the Boer War. That's true. Winston Churchill was there. And kind of behaved pretty dishonorably, I would say, on many, many levels for hundreds of years in South Africa, but that's just my opinion. But that the Boers are somehow the worst and that they have no right to be there. And I think history suggests something different.

Well, absolutely. So, on my mother's side, I descend from the British. My great-grandfather fought in the First World War for the British. And so in many ways, culturally, we've become very close to the British because of the influence over the years. And I don't think there's friction today between the Afrikaners and the British, but it certainly is the case. I mean, the concentration camps were horrible. I recently read the Gulag Archipelago and Solzhenitsyn writes in there that the first concentration camps were invented by the Soviets, but that's actually wrong. The first concentration camps that we know of, at least this type of concentration camps, were during the Anglo-Boer War, where about 30,000 women and children died.

But the great thing about the Anglo-Boer War was that it was in many ways a first for the world. Some people call it the first international propaganda war, because it was in many ways a first for the world. It was, some people call it the first international propaganda war because it was in a time when newspapers became popular. So there was this propaganda war in Europe with regard to the Boers or the Boer war with a lot of people saying the Boers are Boerish. That's where the word comes from. Evidently, if someone told me that's where the word Boerish comes from, it's to be sort of, you know, very old style and, you know, not very sophisticated. Yeah, rough around the edges. And so there was a lot of propaganda like the boor is being compared to wild hogs and things like that. But that's okay.

The word boor was actually used for a long time as an insult, almost like Jew, like calling someone a Jew. It's like, oh, you're a boor, a typical boor. But I mean, we're very proud of that word. It's something that we take pride in. It's in many ways, there's some debate about the difference between Boer and Afrikaner, but it's broadly speaking synonymous. But I mean, we're very proud of our history in South Africa, and we've become a very sophisticated community with an immense treasure chest of literature, of poetry, of philosophy, all of it in our own language that we did over the last, especially the last hundred years, which of course is under threat now. Your language not spoken by anyone else in the world? No, it descends from Dutch. Yes. And so if you spend some time as an Afrikaans person with

some Dutch friends, eventually you start to follow, but it's not Dutch anymore. There's been influences by other languages and so forth. So there are people who speak it all over the world, but that's only because people who have left from, so many people have left from South Africa. Some estimates say it's about a million people, white people who have left South Africa over the last few decades. How many are left? How many whites overall in South Africa and how many of them are Afrikaans? So it's more or less about 5 million who are left. The Afrikaner community is about 2.7 million. And the total population is about 60, just over 60 million. And now it looks like

you're, as you said, entering some kind of final stage where they'll be, I mean, they've been expelled from a bunch of different African countries, as you know. But it sounds like the plan is to force them to leave or kill them, or what is the plan exactly? So, Jan Smuts, the famous Boer general who worked with Churchill, also famously said that South Africa is a country where the best never happens and the worst never happens. And so we sort of believe that and we hope that the worst outcome is an unrealistic outcome. We do know that the most important thing that we need to do now is to be very well organized in terms of our own communities, to be very well connected to each other. You know, there's this whole debate about the individual and the community in philosophy. And we've realized that if you're just an individual, you are completely helpless. If you're not part of a community, if you're not given meaning by

the community of which you are a member, you're completely helpless against the Leviathan, the state. So we need to be well-organized. We need to be armed. We need to have well-functioning communities who look after each other, look after the poor, do all the things that the government's supposed to be doing, but also look after our safety. So we drive patrols at night. We're involved with tens of thousands of volunteers

involved with patrols looking after our own safety and so forth. But I think the bigger question here is the future of South Africa. And this is a controversial thing to say, but it's so obvious that it's not sustainable. It's not going to work. And it's just getting worse. So the only possible solution is not simply to say we need a different party in power, because the underlying foundations is problematic. The only possible solution is to move toward a system with subsidiary authorities, which could imply something like a republic for the Afrikaner people. It could imply a kingdom for the Zulu people.

It could imply different types of authority depending on the community. But South Africa is a country made up of a long list of minorities. Unless if you look at it from a racial perspective, you can say there's a black minority, a black majority. But the black majority also consists of a variety, as you mentioned, a variety of nations and tribes and so forth. Plus massive immigration into your country. Yeah, yeah. It's a very serious problem. Yeah. We virtually don't have borders in South Africa. Right. And a problem, of course, for the country, but also a demographic fact that it's not as if there's this like monolithic black majority. There are all kinds of different

components of the black majority, right? Yes. Don't necessarily get along. Yeah, yeah. But a lot of Zimbabweans murdered in South Africa. Yeah, xenophobic violence. Every now and then there's this upsurge in violence against foreigners. So they get accused. What typically happens is people come in from the north of South Africa, like Malawi, Zimbabwe, and so forth, Zambia, and so forth. And then they work and they accept jobs for lower wages. And a lot of them work really hard.

So that leads to friction because there's very high unemployment in South Africa already. And so it leads to friction among the local communities. And then every now and then we have this upsurge in very, very brutal xenophobic violence. So yes, the border is, it's virtually non-existent, the border to the north of South Africa.

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So what would it look like to have autonomous republics? And is that allowed under your 94 Constitution? I thought there was some provision for that. this yes so there's a section in in uh in the south african constitution section 235 that provides for self-determination for communities now there's some ambiguity in terms of how to interpret that section but it is there's some constitutional provision for that and so during the 90s the negotiations for new south africa the more conservative groups who were white and black who were arguing for self-determination were made fun of by the ruling party at the time, the National Party and the ANC, of course, and also some Westerners. This is just backwards. This idea of governing yourself is somehow an old ancient thing that we should move away from. And part of the problem, part of the reason why they were made fun of is the question is, how do you do that practically and and the only way to practically do that is to have areas where people live

concentrated where where people form a de facto majority and there are such areas like for example when you talk about the zulus and so forth the afrikaner people are pretty much dispersed although there are some areas where we live more concentrated but there's for example and there are some initiatives to get afrikaners to move closer together. And I think that's a solution that we need to really focus on is getting the Afrikaners to move closer together. So they're clustered in Pretoria, was my understanding. The majority, yes. Pretoria and then the Western Cape and the south of the country. And then there's this Orania initiative in the Northern Cape. So tell us about that. What is Orania?

So Orania is a cultural community. It's an Afrikaner cultural community. It's fairly small. It's about 3,000 people, but it's growing rapidly. It's growing by about 12% to 15% per year. And the idea is it's privately owned. It's a community where the Afrikaner culture can survive and flourish. And it has been growing at quite a pace, even though it's from a small base. But the idea is to say this is an area where we are the majority and we make our own decisions.

We make our own laws. We govern ourselves. We make our own decisions in terms of what happens with our tax money, what happens with our streets, what type of monuments. Do you murder other people or oppress other people? No. Then why? Maybe you murder other people or oppress other people? No. Then why, maybe you have an answer to this, a neighborhood, a community of 3,000 people, which is tiny, even by South African standards,

has received unrelenting negative media attention in the West. Why is that such a moral crime, such an outrage to have a community like that? Yeah, it's bizarre the extent to which Urania has been attacked, especially in the international media. So I spoke with a friend in Europe recently who said to me,

I've only read negative things about Urania, but that's why I like it. Because I know who's writing it. A lot of us have reached that conclusion. And so in South Africa, there are many traditional- The lying is just, can I just pause and just say, the lying is unsustainable. When you open up the New York Times and it's a safe bet that whatever they're telling you is the opposite of the truth, then you've reached a point where it's like, why even have media coverage at that point?

You know what I mean? Yeah. So in South Africa, there are many cultural communities, like Zulu communities. Let's say there are many black cultural communities, and when they are reported on by the media, they would say, this Zulu cultural community so-and-so, or this Xhosa cultural community is doing this. But when it's Orania, they say it's a whites-only enclave.

That's the term they use, even though it's a cultural community. So black communities can have that. What is that? Why the hostility? And that's true globally, by the way. There's no, any white majority country, there are very few left. Very few left,

but there's just suspect because they exist. What is that? I think it's underpinned by oikophobia, this idea of just hating your own people and wanting your own people to go down. It is strange. I'm not mad at China for being 99% Chinese or whatever. I'm not mad at Burundi for being all black.

It just never even enters my mind. What is that? Why is that? I mean, honestly, I guess now we can ask questions like this. Do you have any idea? I honestly think it's underpinned by an enormous sense of guilt within Western society or the Western world,

not knowing how to make sense of the Second World War and being influenced over decades and centuries by enlightened philosophy that talks about how you are the problem and how you should have a sense of guilt for who you are. And the idea that community and identity is a bad thing. But it's not a bad thing if it's someone else. Well, not only is it not a bad thing, it's required by law. Community and identity, I mean, those not a bad thing, it's required by law. Community and identity. I mean, those are like the buzzwords of the moment.

Yes. But those are, I mean, basically it's just like everyone hates whites, including a lot of whites. And I just don't understand that. I am white, but I'm kind of agnostic on the question. I kind of like all people. I think they're all created by God. But we're required to pretend this isn't happening, but it is happening. Everybody hates the whites and wants them to die.

Where does that come from? I think it's primarily a Western thing. But what's the root of it? I think it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Yes. By the way, if everyone wanted Malaysians to die or something, I would say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, whatever Malaysia has done through the years, like you can't attack people on the basis of their Malaysian-ness.

That's just wrong. I would say that. And I would mean it too. But it's considered a crime to say that about whites. Like, where does that come from? I'm honestly baffled. Do you have any idea? Well, no, I can only speculate. I think some part of this oikophobia, I honestly think enlightenment philosophy has played a big role in this. I think the influence of, you know, ideas about power structures and, you know, all this stuff that's coming from America, it used to come from Europe.

The Chinese have an awful lot of power in Asia, and I never heard anybody say you should, like, you know, it's outrageous that, you know, China's 95% Han or something. It's not even a thing. It's something that China is 95% Han or something. It's not even a thing. It's something about, well, as they say in our universities, whiteness is uniquely offensive. It's uniquely, and I don't think that's a product of Enlightenment philosophy because, I mean, this is a new thing. This is post-war.

The Second World War did this in some way that I don't fully understand. I don't understand at all, actually. I think, so, Alasdair MacIntyre has an explanation of how to make sense of what, how we derailed in trying to make sense of the Second World War. I mean, obviously, you know, Hitler was evil and all of that. I mean, no one disagrees with that. Obviously. But so, the wrong lesson from the Second World War is that nationalism is evil or a sense of pride in your identity is evil. And there are a lot of people who would really like us to believe this, that we need to abolish communal identities. McIntyre's line – Only when they're white.

Yes, yes. Yeah, of course. It's actually – I don't think anyone thought the lesson of the war was that nationalism is evil, only that nationalism when whites do it. Yeah, when whites do it. Yeah, when whites do it. Yeah. So McIntyre's line is that a sense of communal identity and pursuing what is good for your people is a good. And what went wrong with the Second World War was that Hitler was trying to pursue this good at the expense of all other goods. He was detaching this one thing from everything else.

And you cannot do that without committing evil and inflicting evil. And so I think it's a bizarre situation where we are in currently. So I thought and think that the lesson of the Second World War was that targeting people for violence and discrimination, but especially violence, on the basis of their immutable genetic characteristics was wrong. Like, that's what I was taught. It's inerrancy evil. I believe that now as much as I've ever believed it. But it's just crazy to see people say that on the one hand, and then for a lot of people, a lot of our leaders,

the lesson of the Second World War was, no, that's good. Actually, you need to target more people on the basis of their immutable ethnic characteristics their whiteness yes and kill them that's the lesson that's the opposite lesson right yeah of course well also in south africa and this is part of the bizarre part of it is the ruling party in south africa they would write in their own policy documents. They say our ideology is a blend of race, nationalism, and socialism. That's literally what Nazi means. Now, I'm not saying they're Nazis, but in some sense, they're calling themselves Nazis.

If they say we promote a combination of race, nationalism, and socialism. Yeah, I don't think people can hear themselves. I mean, I think even this conversation will be like, oh, that's a Nazi conversation. It's like, no, we're arguing. I'll speak for myself. I'm arguing against what I thought the core idea was it or the core bad idea in the Second World War, which is that you should attack people, hurt people because of how they were born. I'm just based on who they are. Always been opposed to that. I will always be opposed to that. But now it's like complaining about it makes, I don't know. It's all so, you're not even allowed to say this. It's also fake.

It's also fake. Like it's actually, this is all a cover for something much more sinister that is not really related to the second world war. Like I just don't think, cause it doesn't make any sense as an intellectual exercise. You just like immediately hit a brick wall. Yep.

Like what you're saying is nonsensical, right? Yeah, well, it's difficult to make sense of it because it's completely irrational. It's completely irrational. Therefore, I think it's a lie because it doesn't even, like you don't even, I don't have especially high IQ

and it's super obvious to me that it doesn't make any sense. So like what really, I guess there's no answer. I don't even i don't have especially high iq and it's super obvious to me that it doesn't make any sense so like what really i guess there's no answer i don't know the answer but there's something very deep going on here where the leaders of every country in the world all of a sudden decide this one ethnic group needs to be killed like what i think one part of it is something that you've said before which is affluence the people people in the western world have become very affluent. And unfortunately, as a result of that, very self-centered. And in many ways, they've become disconnected from their communities, disconnected from their tradition

and so forth. There's no doubt about that. But I mean, I spent a lot of time in the Gulf, in the Persian Gulf, the most affluent countries in the world per capita i think um i mean they are and you know whatever you think of them you don't see a lot of arab leaders being like we really were too arab that's the problem where i hate myself for my arabness like that doesn't even occur to them and to their great credit by the way i don't think self-hatred is ever good i don't think hating anybody in the base of race is ever good. It's only this one group that does it. I'd like to believe, and I hope that I'm right, that it's a minority within the Western world that really believes this stuff.

I think. But they have significant power and influence. Boy, do they. They are the editors of newspapers. They are the prime ministers. They are professors at universities and so forth. And those are the people who's promoting this type of idea. When I think most hardworking, ordinary people don't fall for this.

Well, certainly most authentic Christians reject it out of hand immediately. It's essentially anti-Christian in many ways. Well, it is the definition of anti-Christian, I think. I mean, that's my, what do I know? Don't take theology advice from me. But that's certainly my truest, deepest belief that this is immoral, you know, no matter who it's done to. Yep. So, I should have said this at the outset, but one of the reasons there's been this real change in people's willingness in the West to talk about what's happening in South Africa in an honest way, not with the false pieties of Desmond Tutu was so great. Whatever Desmond, you know, you think of Desmond Tutu, not much. But we were

required to talk about South Africa in a very specific way and to repeat certain cliches at really a gunpoint. And that's changed in the past couple of months. And it's really changed due to a South African emigre called Elon Musk. This is my perspective, you tell me yours. But he has made it possible through X, but also through statements he's made on X, to say the obvious, which is this is a crime against a beleaguered minority. And, you know, this is racism against human beings, and it's wrong. Do you feel that? Yes. So I don't know how much of what is in his biography by

Isaacson is true, but it does seem from his biography that he's had some bad experiences growing up in South Africa, which is unfortunate. And we were, we're still not sure quite how attached he still is to South Africa as a country, but looking at his ex and his comments, it's very clear that he's interested. And the strange thing is, even though some people are very angry with him for speaking about South Africa, the only thing that he's really doing

is he's picking up a mirror and he's saying, look at what's happening in South Africa. And he's just, he's retweeting videos from rallies in South Africa. Exactly. He's literally just saying to people, look at this stuff that's happening in South Africa. What do you think of this?

Are you okay with this? No, no. Well, a lot of people, I think, I can speak for a lot of people in saying that we're really, really grateful for what Elon Musk is doing to shed light on what is happening in South Africa. It must be so weird to live in a country

that has received so much attention from Western media, so much attention. western media so much attention i mean there's no other country in africa where your average american knows the name of three famous people you know what i mean there's not even close name three famous people from you know congo no you know um but every american knows about nelson mandela probably woody mandela desmond tutu jan smith was also very big, who became this Boer general, who was an advisor to Churchill.

Joined the English in, I think, in the First World War, like right, you know. Yes, First and Second World War. Right, but the First World War was, you know, not even 15 years after the Boer War. So that was a pretty remarkable decision that he made. I don't think most people are that in tune, but they know the big outlines, but of what happened post-94, and they know all about apartheid and all that, but it must be so weird to be living in this country where all this stuff is happening and nobody is saying anything about it. Yeah, it's crazy. It really is. And I have to say, the last few months has been quite a ride in terms of what we, you know, the executive order signed by President Trump and statements coming from the US. Tell us about that executive order, if you don't mind. So the executive order is a very strong reprimanding of what the South African government is doing.

It says that the South African government is, well, as Trump said, is treating certain sections of society very badly. Sorry, that's the Trumpiest thing ever said. And the US will not stand for this. And so it boils down to sanctions in an important way, which is not, on one part of it says that they will grant refugee status to Afrikaners if they want to go to the US, which I don't think in all fairness, we're really grateful for the public stance taken by the US.

And in a certain sense, they haven't gone far enough. But in a certain sense, I don't think the granting of refugee status is much of a solution. Some people will take that up. But that's why I told you the story of the Battle of Blood River and the vow. We are culturally very, very attached to South Africa. I think your family got to South Africa around the time my family got to the United States. Hundreds of years. This is my country. I think I'm ninth generation. And so – I also have a mother of English descent, and I'm also – unlike you, I'm ashamed of it. Sorry, just kidding.

Sort of, not really. But, yeah, no, of course. I mean, it's your country. I mean, what – at that terms of what the South African government is doing. But then to say how can the US support minority groups in South Africa who are really working for some form of self-determination. I think America should recognize that it does have part in the problem in terms of what happened historically. Are you kidding? Yes, it does. Big time. Yes. And therefore, it's reasonable. And I think it's fair. And I'm hesitant to say this because

I'm not an American. But I think it's reasonable to say that America has some form of a moral responsibility, not to fix South Africa, but at least to try to rework this mess that has been created because it was involved in creating this mess. We've mobilized our State Department to defend, quote, trans rights in the Donbass, okay? We've weighed into every sectarian conflict in this world for the past 80 years. Yeah, I think we can certainly say that a minority group targeted for genocide in the country we've been involved in really intimately for my entire life, that that group has a right not to be killed and to have some

measure of self-determination. I think we can do that. That's not too big. Absolutely. Right? Yeah. And the solution, I would say the most sustainable solution is to help such communities to govern themselves, to have self-determination. And it's not only, obviously, it would be in our interest, but I think it's also in the interest of the West and of America. Well, just on principle, like every other group in the world has the right to its own homeland except white people? Like what? Yeah. Like, tell me, just explain to me how that makes sense. Either no group has the right or every group has the right. It's really that simple. And if you want to say no group has the right, okay. You might even

convince me. I don't know. I'm not a race guy, actually, by my temperament at all. I'd kind of like to ignore it. But as long as some groups have a right to self-determination, then every group has a right. It's that simple. And if there's a special carve-out where one group doesn't have a right, you have to explain to me why that group doesn't have that right. Yeah. Is that fair? No, it's absolutely fair. Well, I think South Africa is a... What? I mean, what the hell is... Why are we playing along with this nonsense?

Yeah, this narrative has become this massive stream that is turned into rapids on a river that just pulls everyone along. And this narrative just says, if you're white, then there's inherently something wrong with you. It doesn't make any sense. And it's leading toward a really bad conclusion,

obviously, as it has for every other group targeted in this way has really suffered and there are a lot of them. Okay. It's not, you know, there are a lot of them and it never ends up well. And I just don't know why we're playing along where you're not even allowed to say, oh, you haven't been, I don't care anymore, obviously. But again, either every group has a right to self-determination or no group does. You can't have this system where, you know, some groups do or all groups do, but one, no, no, no. It's all or nothing on this.

Yeah, well, I can guarantee... Tell me how I'm wrong. No, well, I can guarantee you that when I get back home, I'm going to be in a lot of trouble for this interview. I don't know why, though. I mean, like, what's the counter argument? I don't really get it. Like, what is the counter argument? There's only one group on the entire face of the planet that doesn't have the right that every other group has? Like, tell me how. It's really bizarre.

Maybe there's a good answer. I'm waiting for it. No, well, we don't know what the answer is. So there is no answer. And so because there is no answer, the way that uniformity is maintained is just through threats. Like, shut up. You're a bad person for saying that. You're a Nazi.

It's like, no, no, no. I hate the Nazis. I'm going to speak for myself. I hate the Nazis. Of course. I hate the idea that people are attacked for something they can't control, like how they're born, their genetics.

I just don't believe in that. I never will. I'm a Christian. I don't believe in it. So you can call me whatever you want. I'm actually making the opposite case. And I haven't done anything to be ashamed of. And if defending the right of people not to be murdered

because of how they were born is a crime, then I'll plead to it. Yep. But I actually think that the only thing that people currently in charge of most of the world, certainly of the West, are good at is seizing the moral high ground. And they don't deserve it. They haven't earned it.

They're rotten. Their ideas are rotten. And they don't deserve to lecture the rest of us about our moral inferiority while they're endorsing the murder of people for how they were born. Sorry. It's a house of cards. What is a house of cards? It's exactly right. Yeah, it's built. Sorry. It's a house of cards. What is a house of cards? That's exactly right.

Yeah, it's built and it's a very shining house of cards and it's very proud of its accomplishments, but it's not sustainable. So South Africa has been a victim of Western imperialism. I'm aware. In many ways, ideologically currently, ideological imperialism, but also, and this is interesting, the ANC that's governing South Africa today was founded just after the unionization of South Africa in 1910.

And they said that this was one of the major triggers that sparked us to start this movement. And the unionization was after the Boer War, before the union. South Africa was a variety of different republics and colonies governing themselves. And unionization effectively meant that all of these different subsidiary authorities were combined into one big South Africa. As we know today, the borders of South Africa were actually drawn pretty much by the British in 1910. And the ANC were vehemently opposed. They have a long history of border drawing, I notice. You see this when you have these completely straight borders.

That's artificial. And so the borders we have for South Africa today was a product of Western imperialism. And now those in power would very much like to maintain these borders because they have control. And so if we are truly anti-colonialism and anti-imperialist we should we should return to a position where people govern themselves we should rethink the borders you'll never be allowed to do that i mean let's just cut right to the the no bs part of this that will not be allowed it's never been allowed you will need either to get to force which i pray you don't because i hate that i hate. Or you will need the

assistance of a powerful outside force that makes it happen. That's just a fact. Is that fair to say? Yeah, no, I think it's fair to say. I mean, right. So anyone who says, I want to kill you, you know, kill the boar, you're subhuman. Those are not people are going to say, yeah, go ahead and create your own independent state and not bother anybody because you're going to be way more successful and prosperous than they are. And they're going to hate you on the basis of envy, of course, that's already happening. And we have to ask them nicely to make certain concessions. No, I get it. It's not going to happen. So, what is your plan? Well, I think the plan is to firstly to be well-organized communities, to have a very strong sense of community, a sense of pride in who we are, to remain Christian and have a strong faith, strong family ties and so forth.

That's where it starts. And then other than that, the second step, you might say, the plan is to just create certain realities on ground level. So it's one thing to say, you know, we want more authority or more self-determination, but you have to, in a sense, create that so that what you have created can be recognized. There's no point in saying, well, you guys can have your own place, but that place doesn't exist. So I think what the Afrikaner people need to do is is in a large to a large extent build their own self-determination and i think that that's what we intend to do

but it would help a lot if we can get recognition for this pursuit as a legitimate pursuit so you don't think i i sort of just didn't ask you to pause i should have you began this segment of the conversation by saying the current scheme, the current arrangement is not going to work. I think most people, certainly I as an outsider, instinctively kind of want it to work. Well, it's a good story. It sounds like a good story. It's a good story. Yeah, it is.

I mean, I'll admit to being kind of a dopey liberal in some ways. I really prefer the idea of, you know, people living together in harmony. I just feel that way. I can't help it. That's my enlightenment legacy or something. I also think you should deal with reality, and I definitely don't think you should be allowed to kill people because of the way they look, period. So, by the way, how did these people, why did they go on TV like they're on the right side? They're, like like endorsing genocide.

Like, I don't understand how they've been allowed to get away with being on Winnie Mandela's side and feeling self-righteous. I just don't get that. I think it's disgusting. Whatever, I said that five times. I can't say it enough. But how do you know it won't work? Like, ANC obviously is a criminal gang, totally incompetent. You don't have electricity a

lot of the time like it's not working they're just stealing everything got it stealing the copper out of the wires but there's not another political coalition that could run it effectively no so so you mentioned electricity in johannesburg the mayor just a few days ago announced that people should just wait seven days and then they will have water um so so it's not just an electricity problem there's a water problem you're gonna have a food problem at some point people should just wait seven days and then they will have water. So it's not just an electricity problem. There's a water problem. You're going to have a food problem at some point. Well, if the farmers are targeted, yes. So there are many reasons why it's not working and why it won't work. And well, everything you can think of points to that direction.

One is just the data. As I said, you can look at the levels of how crime is increasing, how unemployment is increasing, how government service delivery is increasingly failing, everything, everything. Honestly, how health is deteriorating, everything except tax collection. That's one aspect of it. Another aspect of it is just the extent to which people in South Africa are turning their back on politics. There's this political vacuum in South Africa are turning their back on politics. There's this political vacuum in South Africa. And you can see it, for example, with the extent to which people have stopped voting, how voters' turnout has dropped significantly in elections. People just don't interest it.

They vote reluctantly, those who do. So that's one aspect. Interesting. Why do you think that? Because they feel hopeless? Because they feel the political establishment is completely disconnected. It doesn't resonate with them. People vote for parties, even though they don't really like them. But they think this is of all the parties, I don't like any of them, but this one is the least bad, so I'll vote for that one. So there's a complete disconnect between the politicians or the political elite in South Africa, even the opposition parties and the people. And so there's this political vacuum that has developed. And this vacuum is filled, as my friend Aaron Stansel in South Africa says, either by the good guys or the bad guys. It's filled by the bad guys in terms of organized

crime. So we have these mafias and gangs coming to the fore with significant power, to such an extent that the government is afraid of them. Or it can be- Boy, that is the story globally, isn't it? Yeah. Well, yeah, I think it is. The drug cartels are one of the most powerful governments in the world, or they're not even in government. It's incredible. Yeah. So we have a construction mafia, for example. If you build a shopping center, the construction mafia turns up and they tell you, you need to employ our people or else

we're going to sabotage your building and stuff like that. And it's a regular thing. And you can't fight them. No, you can't. You can't fight them. But the vacuum can be filled by the good guys, and that's well-organized communities who take control of what is important to them. And so the future is very, and that's what analysts and scenario analysts and so forth have been saying, that the future is one of deterioration, where you will have communities who will be much worse off than they are today because of the bad guys filling the void. And you might have flourishing communities because of good guys filling the void. And so that's another reason. But I think the most important fundamental underlying reason why it's not sustainable is it's a political system that is detached from the reality in South Africa. The reality is the distance from Cape Town, the south to the north of South Africa is

the distance from Rome to London. So it's a big country, number one, but it's not homogenous by any means. It's very diverse. There's 11 official languages. Right. It's not just, just to restate, it's not just black and white at all. No, no, no, no, no. It's certainly not. There's this Indian community. There's what we call colored community in South Africa.

And there are various different tribes, you could say, or cultural communities within, among black South Africans and among white South Africans. So it's very diverse, different languages, different cultures. And now we have this political system that just says you have individual rights. And in some ways, the constitution, even though it was very much celebrated when it was adopted, it was called the best constitution in the world and the most liberal, most democratic and so forth. The constitution guarantees everything, but you get nothing. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it. So we have what they call third generation rights,

first, second, and third. It's a very vast network of rights that you have in theory. But then the question is, so there's this idea that the highest authority is the constitution, but it's not possible for a written document to have the highest authority. The highest authority is with the person who gets to interpret it. Boy, is that true. So, for example, Section 25 of the Constitution in South Africa, which the government is trying to change, it's a private property rights clause. They want to change it. But currently, it says the government can expropriate your property if it's in the public interest.

Now, if you ask me as a Westerner, when is it in public interest to expropriate your property if it's in the public interest now if you ask me as a westerner when is it in public interest to expropriate property it would be something like they have to build a big highway or maybe there's a military emergency or something like that if you ask one of if you ask a judge who is founded in this ideology we've just spoken of they would say it's in the public interest for white people not to own land so so it's it's a question of interpretation you can have a wonderful document but it boils down to how do you interpret it and so and that's why i'm saying it's it's not compatible with with realities on ground level and you know we can and there's there've been many law fair in south africa many many many

south africa is a very good example of political court cases and we've won many and we've lost many but it's it's it's it's a it's a ship that is sinking that's the fun it all seems fake i mean it seems like and i again one of the reasons i'm so fascinated by your country is i think it's it's on a trajectory um that i recognize as an american so you have these legacy institutions that sort of go through the kabuki of dispensing justice but it's not justice actually it's It's totally disconnected from justice. It doesn't mean anything. Yes. And you have this constitution, which is beautiful, which is, you know, ignored. The only power resides in the people who interpret it, as you said.

And so then you reach kind of the end point or the most recent end point, which is the idea that whites can't own land. Can you explain this? Yes. So they have been trying to change the South African constitution, the property rights clause to empower the government to expropriate private property without compensation. That's the buzzword. Just steal the land. Yeah. It's, well, they call it EWC. It's expropriation without compensation, but it's confiscation of property. That's what it is. Well, how is expropriation without compensation different from stealing? No, exactly. It's just shoplifting. I mean, what? It's flabbergasting to see the extent to which, again, academics and analysts and journalists are rushing to the defense of the South African government.

In South Africa, then? Yes. So here's one of the many bizarre things that they would say. They would say, this is all a lie. You guys are lying. It's not expropriation without compensation. It's expropriation with compensation, but compensation can be null. So it can be zero compensation.

So it's not happening, but it's a good thing that it is. Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. As always, right. And so the president has just signed the expropriation bill in South Africa, which they now – He signed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's still an attempt to change the constitution.

And there's now a new bill in process. It was just announced, I think, a week ago that they want to pass through parliament that says that 80% of... That's what it boils down to, that 80% of land or property in South Africa must be owned by black people. So because it says it must be racially representative. And so I want to tell you a quick story about this because it sort of highlights the ideology. I was at a land summit in South Africa and a spokesperson for the Department of Land

Reform spoke. And it was very clear from his speech that the problem is white people owning land. It was a racial thing. It was very clear from his speech that the problem is white people owning land. It was a racial thing. It was very clear. But it's colored with words like restitution and correcting historic injustices and so forth. And so I asked him at this summit, I said, so here's an example. And what would the government's position be on this? The example is a white guy owns a farm.

The government takes it from him to correct historic injustices. And they give it to a black guy. And it's a white guy owns a farm. The government takes it from him to correct historic injustices. And they give it to a black guy. And it's a black farmer. And maybe a year or two down the line, this black farmer decides he doesn't want to be a farmer anymore. He wants to sell his land. And the buyer is white. And now there's a white farmer again. What's the government's position on this?

And the spokesperson for the department says, in that case, the correction of the injustice has been reversed. It's completely bizarre. What's interesting is we've seen this exact movie frame by frame right next door in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, which was one of the most prosperous countries in Africa, one of the big tobacco producers in Africa. It's very sad what happened to that country. Well, it's shocking. But it's, again, it's, you know, like, organized government-sponsored racism doesn't work. And I don't care how often the New York Times defends it. It's always the same.

And that is, like, right next door to you. And you have a refugee crisis in your country because of it and well our government are really so what do they say to that no they they say that robert mcgarvey is a hero and that zanu pf the party's party yeah is is a good party and it's it's a liberation force and we respect them okay so again no one wants to use the term but this is this is genocide i mean that's what that is. It's targeting a group of people for extinction, elimination, on the basis of immutable characteristics.

Like, I don't know what, is there another genocide definition I'm not aware of? Well, I think you can say there are threats of that happening. There's not a genocide happening in South Africa. No, I'm not saying there is. I'm saying that's where it's going. Like, what's the other end point here? Well, you're not human you can't own land you should be killed what am i yes and and yeah if you own land by definition that's illegitimate regardless of whether you bought the land it doesn't matter how you got the land the fact because of your race

because of your race yes okay if we can't say that's wrong then you know anyone who can't say that's wrong anyone who makes excuses for that is a dangerous person i don't know what else to say put another group in there i don't care what group it is so the anc in south africa wanted to they have this process of name changes and by the way this targeting of statues came from south africa it's happening in america it started in south africa you know burning down statues and so forth so and they've had this long process of name changes. And one thing they wanted to change the street in which the US embassy is in South Africa

to Fidel Castro Avenue. That's one story. The other one is they wanted to change one of the main streets in Pretoria to name it after Mao Tse Tung. And then some of the opposition parties said, are you crazy? Do you know what Mao Tse Tung did? And the response was, remember, Mao was never convicted of any crime. Can I say, it does seem not only like one of the worst governments in the world, but one of the dumbest also.

Well, so I think there's some explanation as to why the South African government has gone so off the rails. And it's that they've gotten a free pass for decades. Yeah, that's right. Because of this narrative. They could do and say whatever they want. They got no criticism or very little criticism or very careful criticism. And that's why I think they've gone so ballistic after the recent comments by Trump and people like Elon Musk. Oh, I'm sorry.

I don't follow it that closely. Have those comments were noticed in South Africa? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's the biggest story in South Africa at the moment. Really? And what are they saying? Well, they're saying that the organizations that I was involved with at the time have committed treason, that we've been charged for treason. You've been charged with treason? Yeah.

For what? For speaking, well, among others, for me speaking with you about what's happening. That's treason you've been charged with treason yeah for what for speaking well among others for me speaking with you about what's happening that's treason yeah because it's bad mouthing your country that's that's the argument damn so i don't know if it's it was this one of the opposition parties i wanted to go to cape town for christmas just on vacation i didn't have time in the end but you'll have to put probably probably shouldn't go is that what you're saying no no you should come to South Africa. No, you should definitely come.

I don't know if much will come from the treason charges, but that's certainly the action. But you've been charged with treason. Yeah, there were official complaints filed at the police. Yes, yes. What's the penalty for treason in South Africa? It would be imprisonment. We don't have the death penalty. No, they just necklace you.

It's informal. Well, I'm honestly, seriously, I'm more concerned if the question is about safety, about mob justice in South Africa than the actual government coming after you. Of course. So what does that look like well we we have we i think you reported on this in 20 2021 i think when there was this massive riots in south africa um when they just in durban in durban and then it i remember that yeah it sort of spilled out to gauteng to johannesburg to a lesser extent um and it's just people it's almost like you know smelling blood and becoming extremely violent and so forth. And then people join in by the thousands. I've seen that with my own eyes a couple of times.

Yeah, it's really scary. So someone, a friend from Europe once asked me, are you not afraid that the government's going to come to your house and take your stuff? And my honest answer is not that much. I'm more concerned about a mob showing up. So then what do you do? Well, if you are alone, you can't do anything. If you're a well-functioning, well-organized community, then the community, you can call people on the radio,

you can get the community to take a stance. And I think that's one of the things. So you don't get lynched? Yes. You got a lot of lynchings and stuff. I mean, again, add it to the irony file. I mean, South Africa is like the world capital of lynching. Yes.

Oh, I noticed. Yeah. It's not so much white people who are targeted. I'm aware. No, blacks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That certainly. It has happened in the previous dispensation.

It's still happening to an extent, not as much as in the past. But people don't know that it's still happening. To people accused of crimes. Yeah, and it's partly due to the fact that the police is absent. Right. So, especially in townships, someone is a rapist and the police doesn't show up,

doesn't do anything, and then the local community just deals with him. That type of thing happens. In a very brutal way. Yes, yes. Yeah, it does happen in a brutal way. Yeah.

Yeah. I've noticed. Like, pretty shocking. Almost like I wouldn't want a brutal way. Yeah. Yeah. I've noticed. Like, pretty shocking. Like, almost like I wouldn't want to describe it. Yeah. Yeah, I mentioned the necklace murders before. So, we have that. And it's the same with the xenophobic violence.

It's very unfortunate. And if we had a well-functioning police service, maybe that would have helped. But we don't. So, in South Africa, we can check the numbers. I'm pretty sure the private security sphere in South Africa is almost as big as private security in America. But America is much larger. Private security in South Africa is more than double the police and the army combined. If you add the police and the army up together and you multiply it by two, private security is the amount of private security offices in South Africa or security guards is...

Do you have the right of self-defense? The right to defend yourself and your family? Yes, we do have the right to self-defense. We can own firearms, although it's not as easy as in America. Yes. But you can do that. You can get arms,

especially through a private security company. You can, there's some room to make sure that you can protect yourself. And does it work? Yes. Yes. In terms of the farm murders, we've seen that statistically, that in communities where areas or communities where people are well organized, where they have radios, where they drive patrols,

where they are trained, there's a decrease in farm murders. You can clearly see that. Actually, in the last few years, the farm murder numbers have come down a bit. And it's not because the incitement has gotten better. It's not because the police is more efficient. It's because local communities have become much more involved with their own safety. And so that's certainly one of the most important building blocks of this. So what now that the president, I'm using air quotes again around president. I mean, the whole system is fake.

Obviously, it doesn't affect justice. It doesn't improve the lives of its citizens. It's in no sense, a legitimate government. And by the way, it's not the only illegitimate government in the world. But anyway, what happens when they try, the government tries to put this law into effect, to try to act on it? You know, the government shows up at your house, you've lived in the same plot for 100 years, you can't have it because you're white, we're taking it. Do people comply? No, no, people won't comply.

No, I mean, that's partly why I told this story at the beginning is the Afrikaner people and the farmers are very stubborn. In Afrikaans, we say hard-headed. So this idea… Well, farmers, you have to be stubborn to be a farmer in the first place. Yes, and especially a farmer in South Africa. Why aren't you in private equity? I mean, it's easier. Yes, exactly. So it's a common trope among farmers to say that I would rather die on my farm than to hand it over to the government. And so I think if they really try to act on it, which they haven't tried,

there are land invasions in South Africa, but it's not so much the government, it's mobs and gangs and so forth invading people's land. But if they really try to act on these attempts at expropriation, there's going to be a massive backlash. And there's no doubt. So what they would say is, this is actually what the government says, that we need to do what happened in Zimbabwe, but without violence. But that's how they would argue it. They actually say we need to do what happened in Zimbabwe?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this time without violence. That's one of the worst crimes of my lifetime. Yeah, well, they say it publicly. Yeah, you can find it online. And so the argument is, but we're going to do it a bit better. We're going to do it without violence. But what that means is we're going to do what happened in Zimbabwe and you are not going to resist.

That's what it means. But obviously people will resist when they try to do that. There's no doubt about it. But I do think the government is very incompetent. You know, they have is very incompetent. You know, they have these very radical ideas. I don't know if they have the competency to actually go through. That's the upside. I lived in Washington, D.C. almost my whole life. And that was absolutely true there. You know, the government make all these local government make all these threatening

noises, do this, do that, do the other thing. It's against law to do this, whatever. And you just kind of ignore people just ignored it. So there are some business organizations in South Africa who now use the term maximum appropriate noncompliance. That's what they encourage private companies to do. So it's a form of civil disobedience. It's with all these BEE, these black empowerment laws, to just say, we're just not going to comply.

I know someone who had a thriving business he built himself in South Africa. And the government showed up and said, you're handing half your business to your new partner who didn't do anything. Just show up and collect the money. And they stole half his business. Because it's all theft. I mean, it doesn't – I noticed that black South Africans haven't gotten richer in the last 30 years. No, no, no. And the government owns the land, most of the land that they expropriate.

They don't give it to people. It goes to the government. So what if you were to say, like, how about no? Like, you have no legitimacy and you haven't been here any longer than I've been here. And you have, I mean,

and I have guns too, so like I'm not participating. How's that? Yeah. Well, civil disobedience can be a wonderful thing. And we've had some examples of successful civil disobedience campaigns in South Africa where the government had this, they call it the e-toll system.

It's like a big tax system on the highways that just, it's an electronic tax toll system that, but people just buy the thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, just refuse to comply, to get the tags and so forth. And eventually they had to stop it because even though it was law, people just didn't do it. And the same with COVID. COVID was a good example. We've had a bizarre COVID. Everyone has had a bizarre COVID.

So we had these strange laws like you can't buy flip-flops during COVID. Those are deadly. Yeah, and you cannot buy shorts. You cannot buy cooked chicken. We had these really, really bizarre COVID laws. It's a crime cannot buy cooked chicken. We had these really, really bizarre COVID laws. It's a crime to buy cooked chicken or to sell cooked chicken during COVID. And so people just said, well, we don't care. We're just going to do what we want. And so there was a massive

civil disobedience phenomenon in South Africa during the COVID lockdown. And so I think people have learned, and the government couldn't do anything about it. I think people have learned that you can actually do a lot if you just don't comply with these completely ridiculous, irrational laws. That sounds, I mean, I don't live in South Africa, but again, I have lived in Washington, DC. So that sounds totally right to me. I, though, about what you said when we first started talking about this, about the mob justice. That does sound scary to me. I think that's a bigger threat. What do you do about that?

How do you live in a country where, you know, like your neighbors could rise up against you? Yeah, so we've had some examples of this. It started with the Rhodes Must Fall movement. Oh, the Rhodes, oh, Cecil Rhodes. Cecil John Rhodes, yeah. So this one guy defecated on Cecil John Rhodes' statue at, was it UCT? What university was it in Cape Town? And then they started this movement.

He defecated on it. Yeah, yeah. That's attractive. Well, that's kind of like the level, actually, that you're dealing with. Just shit on it. They started this movement of tearing down statues, which eventually boiled over to America,

and that's how it got to America. It started in, and it boiled over to Europe and so forth. But it started with that, this targeting of statues. I think it was 2012 or something. It was maybe before that even. And it became a mob. And they wore t-shirts with slogans like kill the whites, like on the t-shirt. And it became very violent and very overtly racist.

And it was students running around just setting you know, setting things on fire, burning down buildings and stuff like that. So that is a real threat. And then later we had the fees must fall movement that was university students demanding that education must be free. You shouldn't pay to go to university. And it was the same thing. And now we've had these, more recently, we've had political parties sort of taken up that thing this kill the boer and so forth and so i honestly think in south africa the threat of mob violence is a bigger threat than the government of course it is um of course it is and you know that's where you get killed the situations like that i think so what do I mean, you have to be pretty well organized, pretty well armed.

Well, the thing is, there's no silver bullet. There's no one thing that we can do to make sure that we're equipped to withstand that. But if there is a silver bullet, it would be, or the closest to it, it would be what I mentioned earlier is well organized communities, communities that have a sense of community, that recognize that you have a sense of responsibility, not just towards yourself and your own family, but towards your community. And that you have some form of a communal identity that is under threat, that is being targeted. And you have to protect yourself. You have to fulfill a bunch of functions that the government is not fulfilling. Even though you're paying them to do it, they're not doing it.

So you have to look after your own safety. You need to have a gun. You need to have a bulletproof vest. You need to have, or if you don't, then at least a significant amount of people in your community must, especially those who are more interested in this type of thing. You need to be well organized. You need to be prepared if something bad happens in your community, if the mob comes, if they set the shopping mall on fire, or if they come for people's houses, that in a very short time frame,

you can get a whole bunch of people mobilized to protect their community. And with these riots in 2021, that was a good case study because some communities were completely unprepared and they were virtually destroyed. And some communities were very well prepared. And when the mobs arrived, there was a bunch of people with guns waiting for them. Well, I saw a video of the South Asian communities in Durban. The big South Asian, big Indian community there. And I don't know if this is representative,

but the videos I saw, man, they were not putting up with it at all. Yeah, they were very well armed. Yeah. it's like some heroic indians out there yeah there was one i think some guy with something that looked like a minigun on the back of a pickup truck i don't know where they got that but i don't know but that's that's an example it was another is that you know these videos are all out of context i'm not enduring this but i just they got some brave ind. Yes, we do. We have some brave Indians.

We do. But, and there were other examples. One was a, the mob was approaching a town and the people were waiting for them on a bridge. And then they got there. They just couldn't enter because the people had just cordoned off their own town, their own village or community. And they weren't able to enter. So we've had some case studies of this. South Africa is a fascinating case study for a lot of things.

It certainly is. It certainly is. Can I just ask a dumb question, a childish question? If I'm the governor of South Africa, it's like, why are you going after productive people, for one thing, the most productive? And that would include the Indians, the Afrikaners, by the way, some of the black African immigrants, Zimbabweans, these are like are some of the most productive people. Why not just live in harmony, actually? Wouldn't it be better for everybody? Of course. Of course it would be better.

I think it's because when they took power in 1994, they explicitly said, we are not a political party. We are not a government in terms of what people think a government should be. We are a liberation movement committed to the promotion of socialism and committed to the promotion of black nationalism. And that's their ideology. They said that in 94. Yeah, they even said that before 94. They published it. So it's just, I know I'm going back to the same themes. I'm getting older, sorry. But like, no, but I mean, I actually did know that. Because as I said, I've always been interested. And I knew people there.

But nobody in the American press mentioned that. Not one person. There's a well-known book that was an international bestseller. My Traitor's Heart by a guy called Rian Malan. It's sort of his autobiography. I've read it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay.

And so there's one section in that book. I know Rian. I know the author. He's a great guy. But in the book, he writes about… In English, I don't know if he wrote it in Afrikaans originally, but it's a beautifully written book. It's very well written. He's a very nice writer.

He speaks like he writes as well. Oh, he does? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's one part in the book where he talks about picking up the New York Times. And I'm sort of saying this from memory from reading the book. But broadly speaking, what he says is he picks up the New York Times in, I don't know, 1992 or something in New York or wherever. And there's two stories next on the same page. The one is about the ANC and Nelson Mandela coming to save South Africa. And then the other story is a somewhat smaller story about a guy being necklaced in a local community, a guy being viciously attacked and killed.

And so he writes in that book that what concerned him was that the New York Times was not able to connect these two stories to each other. They didn't recognize that it's part of the same story. It's presented as two completely different stories. I think they knew exactly. I think it was very obvious. So I was 25 in 1994, and it was very obvious to me. And I don't think I have any special powers of insight. I think you would have to be lying to yourself or

lying to your audience not to acknowledge it. And by the way, it's 1994. That's less than 20 years after the Khmer Rouge took power in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia. That was while the Rwandan genocide was happening. It was the same year as the Rwandan. It was later that year. It was the same month, even. The election, at least. Was in July? April, May. May, okay, right. Yeah, I remember them both very well, and I knew people in both places at the time. But I remember thinking, obviously, what happened in Kilgali is way worse, in Rwanda is way worse than anything that's happened in South Africa, thank God.

But bottom line, when bad people with bad motives stated publicly take power, it's not good. So, like, I don't know. That's not hard. Well, there's a story from Rwanda that I keep mentioning in the same time. I think Linda Melvin wrote a book called Conspiracy to Murder, which is about, I think she lived in Rwanda and she's a journalist and she wrote about what happened. And she writes about a meeting, it must have been a party in Washington between American diplomats and government officials from Rwanda in the run-up, I think, to the genocide. And it was just a big celebration and everyone was happy because Rwanda was in the process of becoming a democracy. And then afterwards, someone asked one of the Americans, but did you not know what was happening in Rwanda, that they were on the verge of committing genocide? And he said,

the American diplomat said, yes, we knew, but we were so excited about democracy and Rwanda becoming a democracy. We didn't want to spoil the mood by confronting them. That sounds like an American diplomat. Yeah. So that's very, very alarming, this idea of being so excited about a potential idea that you are not willing to confront the realities that's happening or that could potentially unfold. Or being unwilling to clearly define your terms.

Like, what is democracy, actually? Yeah, well, I think that's an underlying... It's an underlying problem. Yeah, right. And it's a problem that's only surfaced in this country in the last couple of years. Can I give you an example of that from the South African perspective?

So, I mentioned the name changes. It's a big thing in South Africa. I'm sure that'll fix your problems. Will that bring electricity and water back? No, obviously. So, there's a town called Amanzamtoti, which is on the east coast of South Africa. The main street was named Kingsway. They changed it to Andrew Zondu Street. Now, Andrew Zondu is really only known for one thing. He was a member of the ANC Youth League, and I believe it was 1985. He planted a bomb in a shopping center, and he killed, I think, five people and injured 40.

All of the people who were killed were women and children. That's the only thing he did. And he was a member of the ANC Youth League. The ANC regards that event as something that they claim as an act of heroism. So they named the main street after him. And so there are people in that town who drive to work in a street named after the person

who killed their children. And now they would say that they need to do these name changes to make sure that they get rid of offensive names. Offensive names are Afrikaans names, names linked to South Africa's past. And so I was at, again, a summit where this was discussed. And I mentioned this i said so you you say then in pretoria church street is an offensive name and has to be changed in amanzam toti you change king's way to andrew zondu and i tell this story and i said so who decides if it's

if it's offensive or not and the guy said oh well that's easy the majority decides um and so but it's not even the majority. It's just the government. The government decides because they believe they are the majority. So, we have these extremely offensive things happening under the banner of promoting. Well, they're murderous. I mean, again, I just, yeah. I think it's, the picture is really, really clear.

You know, it couldn't be clearer. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. How do you is you're staying yeah no definitely yeah we'll stay you guys must love your country yeah we really do i mean in south africa everyone who's been to south africa would say it's an incredibly beautiful country and it truly is and it's a country that unfortunately has suffered so much under this current government and has suffered so much in the past.

One of our Afrikaans philosophers, a man named N.P.V. Van Wyklo wrote, I think in the 1930s or something, that you love a people not so much for their accomplishments as for the hardships that they've had to endure. That's right. And I think that's true for South Africa. South Africa has endured many hardships and also for our people, the Afrikaans people, as with many other peoples all over the world, have endured many hardships. And it's through these hardships and maintaining our sense of identity that we really love our history and our tradition and our culture. You came in the first place because you were an oppressed minority, correct? Yep.

I know the French did. Yes, the French Huguenots, yes. It was the fleeing the religious wars in Europe. Of course, they were getting did. Yes, the French Huguenots, yes. It was the fleeing the religious wars in Europe. Of course, they were getting killed. Yes, in big numbers. That's how, that's part of our origin story, how we came to be. Well, it's also factually true.

It's part of history. I mean, it's not a myth, it's real. Yes, yes, absolutely. So, do you think, I don't know what the resolution will be, and I'm certainly rooting for all South Africans of every color. But fervently. But I got to think that being able to say certain obvious truths out loud helps. Yes.

Do you think? Well, the problem is if you do that, you get bashed quite aggressively. Yeah, but like compared to what? They just said we're taking your land because your skin color is so white. Well, the alternative is worse. It's just living the lie. It's much worse than getting bashed for telling the truth. Can I tell you a quick story or a quick reference about courage?

Of course. So it's somewhat philosophical, but I'll make it practical. So Odysseus is on his way back from the Trojan War. And he has all these hardships and he's trying to get home. And he gets told that the only way for him to get home

is to face Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla is this six-headed sea monster. And Charybdis is a monstrous whirlpool that swallows ships whole. And the only way for him to get home is he has to navigate through these two monsters, which he eventually does. He decides it's better for him to sail his ship closer to Scylla, the sea monster, than the whirlpool.

And a whole lot of his people die, but he reaches his destination. And so Aristotle writes about this in the Nicomachean Ethics. And he talks about when he talks about the golden mean, and he says any virtue is about finding the balance between having excess of it and having a deficiency of it. And so this goes to courage. Courage is a good example. If you have excess courage, you become reckless. Yes. And if you have a deficiency, then you are a coward.

And so the point of having courage is finding the balance between cowardice and recklessness. And what's great about the story of Odysseus is Odysseus discovers that he cannot simply go exactly in the middle between the two. He has to be closer to the one threat than to the other, because if he goes too close to the whirlpool, these old ship gets swallowed up. And so the point here, and Aristotle says this as well, it's not to find the exact middle point. It's to find the appropriate balance between the two extremes. And so the one extreme is recklessness, and the other extreme is cowardice. And I honestly think in the situation we are in, it's better to err on the side of being too bold

than to err on the side of being too bold than to err on the side of having not enough courage or trying to find some form of solution through appeasement. And so we make mistakes in the process and sometimes you say something wrong or you do something wrong. But I'm very much convinced that if we're on this course and we try to pursue what we are trying to pursue, rather err on the side of having too much boldness and too much courage and facing the consequences than having to face the consequences of having a lack of courage. I love that. The two most impressive groups I meet everywhere my whole life around the world, both groups living in exile in large numbers, are the South Africans and the Lebanese. Oh, really? Yes, yes.

I've never met one of either group I didn't like and didn't admire. I don't think I've met one in either group. And the thing that they have in common is they live in beautiful, volatile countries that they really love, but they're very hard to live in. And so they're caught between that tension, you know, cowardice and recklessness, and they're making that calculation every single day. And they're living so thoughtfully and so purposefully and in such a, I don't know, just an admirable, noble way. I've just noticed that. Oh, I appreciate the comment. Just an observation, but I've thought about it many times.

Last question. What, where can people who have made it this far into the interview and are interested in what's happening in your country and happening to your group, how can they follow it? How can they be helpful? How can they learn more and be supportive? Well, I think there are many ways. The one way is just to follow what's happening in South Africa and speak about it. Because we've had this incredible barrage of communications coming, just telling us again how wrong we are. This narrative is this zeitgeist in a certain sense.

It's really like a monster that you have to fight this, you know, that you're not allowed to say, speak certain truths, even though the truths are self-evident. So I think one thing is if people just can help spread the message, help take some interest in South Africa, because what's happening in South Africa is also of interest to the rest of the world. I think it is. In many ways, South Africa is the future of the Western world. I know. In terms of the problem and the solution, I know. And I think in terms of the US government, if the US government is willing to do something, as it seems that they are, I think the most important thing that they could do is a combination of pressuring the South African government away from these destructive policies, but also supporting communities, local communities or minority communities or nations, you should

say, who are committed to finding some form of self-determination. Amen. Well, Godspeed. I hope to see you again. I hope you'll come back. Oh, thank you. I hope so too. And then I have to thank you for, not just for this interview, but also for the focus you've been putting on South Africa in the past. It's just so interesting and it reveals so much about us. I'm American and it reveals a lot about our leadership class and I think it's important to say it. Yeah. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify company that we use every day. We know the people who run it, good people. While you're here, do us a favor, hit follow and tap the bell. So you

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