Go, Andries, Go - the story of Andries Wilhelmus Jacobus Pretorius

[Angst]

fascinating thread, great read. not because of the weird op but because of the non-avunculars sharing some good notes.

 

[Uncle Paul]

Regarding land, let us not bicker and moan about who killed who.
What is obvious is that after WW2, when most countries were realizing "hmm, maintaining colonial rule and denying people equal citizenship and suffrage is a bad look", South Africa decided to do a 180 and clamp down hard on equal citizenship.
So let's focus on that, a time when people should have known better.

No, colonialism ended because WW2 bankrupted the European powers, and they could no longer afford their colonies.

Well, more like the Cold War was over so the United States didn't see any need to continue dealing with the international embarrassment South Africa had turned into; a country that was routinely mocked on primetime British TV as being full of ignorant bigots.

A double standard, where it's considered fine to mock Afrikaners as ignorant bigots, but no TV series these days would dare mock black South Africans as ignorant tribesmen...either all groups can be mocked, or no groups can. It's only fair.

That is like, completely and utterly at odds with what has been observed in 'tribal' societies in the modern day and throughout history - including early medieval Anglo-Saxon England and Scandinavia.

Tribesmen had a very low standard of life before colonization. No actual medicine, only pseudoscientific folk remedies, poor nutrition (proven by the fact that they were much shorter then than they are now - bad nutrition growing up stunts your growth), no literacy, no high culture or fine art, no education in intellectual subjects, only basic survival skills...they weren't living great lives, they were living subsistence lifestyles. Now, they can go to school, to university, read books, learn history, etc...pretty much all of their energy was devoted to merely surviving, they had very little time/energy left over to thrive.

Are there a lot of Afrikaners in Namibia too?

There are, but I can't find precise statistics.

Dude, SA is no longer a pariah state because the government finally got rid of its disgusting apartheid system. Your country has issues just like any other country. To be crystal clear, I don't condemn SA -- changing government policy is easier than changing hearts and minds. My country is still dealing with racism despite government policies. I just disagree with your views.

The point I was making is that apartheid South Africa was far more of a pariah state than regimes that were a million times worse, such as the USSR or the PRC, probably because it was an easy way for US politicians to attract black voters without doing anything for black Americans. Part of the reason I have a negative view on the US is because it is always meddling in the affairs of other countries.