The larger meaning of South Africa’s astronomical rape and murder rates

Responding to our discussion about the news that 25 percent of South African men admit to having committed rape, the Dutch blogger “Snouk Hurgronje” writes:

Perhaps one of the worst effects of the end of segregation for white South African is that they have to send their children to integrated schools. Where they are often a minority. And where they will not be safe from teachers and classmates sexually predating on them.

By the way, in many African countries schools maintain good relations with politicians by supplying them with the prettiest schoolgirls. I am not sure if this is also the case in South Africa.

Under these circumstances staying in South Africa and having a family is not an attractive option for young whites. The number of white South Africans is rapidly dwindling. Without the expertise of the whites the country will in the long run not be able to maintain its semi-European and by African standards advanced society.

Not just the rape rate is very high amongst black Africans. The murder rate exploded after the end of white rule and its security arrangements in 1994. From around 7,000 murders per year to 24,000 per year. That is an additional quarter of a million people killed over would have been if white rule had continued.

J.M. Coetzee wrote a disturbing novel about being white in South Africa under black rule, “Disgrace.” [See Carol Iannone’s devastating article on the book, and two brief mentions of it here and here.] The book is being turned into a film now. The message of the film is that white women simply have to put up with getting raped and robbed and that older whites with liberal illusions such as the main protagonist of the story have to come to terms with that.

This is a completely different picture from the multiracial and multicultural utopia that liberals foresaw in the time of the fight against white rule and Apartheid. But the fact that liberals find nothing wrong with this message hints at the fact that liberals do not really care about the utopian picture. What liberals really care about is European societies submitting to the Other, never mind whether the Other is black, Mexican or Muslim.

June 23

Charles T. writes:

This quote from Carol Iannone’s article on Coetzee’s book “Disgrace” is very telling about the author:

Be that as it may, extrapolating from the remarks of the Nobel Committee and Swedish Academy, we can see “Disgrace” as offering guilty white readers the opportunity to indulge in self-hatred and to savor the pleasure of contemplating the abasement of Western man and woman, while imagining a spiritual reward for doing so. (In his own life, as we have noted, Coetzee has foregone this bracing humiliation and has sought safety in the “cosmetic morality”—not to mention the physical safety and comfort—of the West).

Exactly.

If debasement and humiliation is good, why isn’t Coetzee participating?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 22, 2009 02:32 PM | Send