By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
March 8, 2001
It has been my opinion for several years in watching the creeping anarchy that is inflicting nation after nation that the traditional left-wing globalists of the world, many of whom are in the media, totally lose interest in a nation as soon as their side captures the government of a country and the inevitable social and cultural disintegration begins taking place.
So, I was surprised at a fleeting report on Fox News last night about conditions in South Africa. Now that the whites are ousted and the blacks are entrenched, thanks to the financial and military support over the years by Western socialists and sanctions by the United Nations, what has happened?
According to the predictably left-wing Mail and Guardian, famine now looms over most of Southern Africa. And, those left standing after the famine, it would appear, are in danger of dying from AIDS. Ten years ago about this time, when I arrived in South Africa to serve an 18 month Mission for my Church as public affairs director, the AIDS virus was just beginning to become an issue. Today, twenty percent of South Africa's adults carry the virus and rampant crime, including what is probably the highest rape rate in the entire world, combined with a precipitous drop in the value of the nation's currency is driving out many of the educated and the managerial class.
The primary reaction of the Mbeki government to the social disintegration of the nation was to stop allowing government crime reports to become public so he wouldn't be blamed for the chaos.
Before America's Democrats overrode Ronald Reagan's veto of a bill to force sanctions on South Africa for having a white government, the rand was approximately equal to a dollar. By the time I arrived, thanks to the sanctions which forced US countries to sell their South African holdings, often for 10 cents on the dollar, the value of the rand had dropped to about 63 cents. Today, after five years of control by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, which was and still is largely controlled by communists, the rand is worth 12.6 cents.
Remember a few years ago the trip President Clinton made to Africa, when he urged Americans to invest their money in South Africa? Anyone foolish enough to follow Clinton's financial advice has lost their investment by now.
In neighboring Zimbabwe, where evil white commercial farmers have had their land confiscated by the Mugabe saintly socialist government, guess what is going on? According to the Mail and Guardian, the once food exporting nation this year has about 50% of the corn crop it needs to feed its own people. But they don't mention the land confiscation. They blame the problem on the weather:
"In Zimbabwe, SADC (Southern Africa Development Community) said commercial farmers had cut their hectarage under maize by 50% from last year due to fuel shortages, lack of credit schemes to buy inputs and low producer prices."
Socialist newspapers don't want to admit that the real problem in Zimbabwe is exactly what the farmers warned would occur. Threatened as they were by the Mugabe government with confiscation of their farms, many farmers didn't plant. Those who were not threatened with the loss of their land often had problems borrowing money for financing the planting season because the banks, threatened by Mugabe with the specter of absorbing huge losses when the mortgaged white farms were confiscated, without payment, didn't have money to lend.
Zimbabwe, which has seen its currency drop by 70% and inflation nearing 40% in 1998, during Robert Mugabe's reign, has been able to rely on food from South Africa in recent years to hold off famine. This year, The Mail and Guardian reports:
"While South Africa had "excellent conditions" for planting, maize was down 20% as farmers battled with increased costs due to the fall of the local currency and stagnant producer prices."
That's not the only thing South African white farmers are battling. They are spending considerable amounts of time and energy and money just trying to stay alive. The Mbeki government does little to protect its citizens, especially the white farmers, from assassination attempts. The farmers have formed their own militias to patrol their lands to stop the armed attacks. This year, it doesn't look promising for South African farmers to breach the gap in the food supplies for the region.
There have been problems in parts of Africa with flooding due to heavy rains. In Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe thousands of acres of farmland have been flooded. On top of all that, the wars in Angola and the Congo have decimated those countries and their crops.
And it all comes at a time when the Western world is showing clear signs of compassion fatigue where Africa is concerned. AIDS has already reduced life expectancy in several African countries and has wiped out the 20-50 age group population, leaving only the children and the old in many communities. The combined problems of AIDS and famine does not bode well for the future in Africa.
And what is the left wing response to all this disaster? It's pretty much the same old outdated thinking that is inflicting the Democrats in Congress as they react to the Bush tax cut - doctrinaire, traditional socialism. Famine and the AIDS Pandemic in Africa, according to the left-wing, are not the inevitable results of the flaws in the socialist-communist system. It is caused by unrepentant white folks with too much money.
Larry Elliott, writing for the Mail and Guardian puts it this way:
"India's Minister of Finance Yashwant Sinha told the (World Economic) Forum that nobody in developing countries challenged the potential benefits of globalisation, but that the rich countries needed to learn some facts of life.
"First, it was impossible to achieve globalisation in an unequal world. Second, environmental problems were not caused by consumption patterns in the South but by the lifestyles of people in the North. Finally, the West needed to do something about its skewed approach to migration since the system involved poaching the brightest and the best from poor countries and putting up barriers to the rest.
"The question is whether the West is capable of change. This is possible, provided economics plays second fiddle to politics.
They are trying to set the stage for a globalized communist revolution. In South Africa, the Communists have never faulted their system. They think that Stalin and Lenin and Mao Tze-Tung just didn't implement it correctly and the solution to AIDS is not changing the rampant sexual experimentation that is taking place on a worldwide basis, but forcing drug companies to give away the drugs they have developed to combat AIDS for free to the rapists and the promiscuous who are spreading the disease.
We are being told that, by adopting the policies that have caused the chaos in Africa, Indonesia, Eastern Europe, the chaos will be miraculously eliminated. Somehow, I don't think so.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
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