OUT TO LUNCH

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Andrew Kenny’s piece “Should whites go?” which was published on Politicsweb last week had clocked up over 700 comments by Sunday evening which is almost certainly a record. My relationship with Andrew goes back eleven years, although I had read his articles in The Spectator magazine before that.

When I got booted from the Sunday Times for “that column” Andrew gallantly leapt to my defence and wrote the editor a letter saying “Bullard’s sin was to treat blacks as adults. He laughed at the crimes, follies and ignorance of black men in the same way he laughed at the crimes, follies and ignorance of white men”.

I met him on a couple of occasions, the most recent when the Danish journalist Flemming Rose was invited to address an IRR sponsored event after having been “no-platformed” by that feeble minded and invertebrate teaching establishment UCT. He was to have delivered the T B Davie Memorial lecture in 2016 but the wank-puffins at UCT decided that his decision to publish a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed back in 2005 made him exactly the sort of dangerously opinionated person any left thinking university should avoid at all costs.

We subsequently enjoyed a dinner together and a very convivial evening quaffing wines and putting the world to rights.

The fact that his “Should whites go?” column garnered so many comments shows how pertinent the issue is. As we listen to our current President singing the praises of Robert Mugabe and telling us what a fine fellow he was one cannot but wonder what the future has in store for those of us with a white skin.

However, it’s perhaps important to step back occasionally and take a sober look at events rather than be affected by the clickbait driven opinions of the main stream media and the hysterical over-reaction from social media . For example, Cyril Ramaphosa would have had to be an extremely brave and principled man to have stood in front of a black audience and told the truth about Mugabe and the wreckage of a country he has left behind while amassing huge wealth for himself and his cronies.

I’m quite sure Cyril is well aware that pretty much every Zimbabwean working in South Africa would strongly disagree with him when it comes to lauding Mugabe but who cares? Zimbabweans don’t have votes here and the audience Cyril is playing to do; therefore Mugabe was an inspirational African leader who knew how to make life very unpleasant for the white man.

The clear message is that the brave, anti colonialist policies of Zimbabwe ought to be applied here in South Africa. As leading parliamentarians frequently remind us, whites are land thieves and the descendants of rapists and murderers and “the only white man you can trust is a dead white man”.

Certain members of the media have gleefully bought into this narrative and pretty well every new “policy” of the ANC is designed to raise the hackles of the white minority. Obviously expropriation without compensation (called land grabs in Zimbabwe) was going to get their backs up but the suggestions that the Reserve Bank should be nationalized, that prescribed assets should be introduced and that private medical care should be made illegal and replaced with a state run NHI were all bound to upset whites even more than BBBEE and our absurdly inflexible labour laws.

Small wonder then that the majority of responses to Andrew Kenny’s column were from those who had left, those who had family who had left and those who were thinking of leaving. The mood, it has to be said, was generally pessimistic and this would have gladdened the hearts of any white haters reading those comments.

Which is precisely why I would counter that whites should stay, even if it is just to annoy the ANC and EFF white haters. One of the problems with leaving SA is deciding where to go. Back in 1994, when it was predicted by pundits that there would either be mass slaughter of whites or a right wing uprising, you could get a sheet of A4 paper and write down a list of places you might like to live. That list is substantially shorter these days and there are very few places in the world that would offer the quality of life that “white privilege” affords in SA.

However, disparate times call for desperate measures (to scramble a well known saying) and I can’t blame any young family for looking into the immediate future and deciding that there is no hope for the white man in South Africa. But is it any better elsewhere?

Unfortunately the rise of anti white sentiment is now a global trend and the reason is very simple. On a very overcrowded planet with only twelve years still to go unless we all stop emitting carbons there is irrational panic and where you have irrational panic you need somebody to blame. The manifold past achievements of people with paler complexions - building businesses, constructing extraordinary buildings, inventing things, advancing medical science and heaven knows what else – has brought with it a long trail of resentment and jealousy, which is now being exploited by the unscrupulous.

Instead of learning, adapting and improving on what already exists it’s much easier to persuade people to destroy what has been created. Or it would be if people were universally stupid. Fortunately, they’re not.

The Institute of Race Relations has produced research over the years to prove that “racism” is way down the list of most South African’s concerns. This research doesn’t sit well with the left wing members of the media because it upsets the white blame narrative but the reality is that the majority of South Africans of all colours get on well together and enjoy healthy mutual respect.

A fire in an informal settlement will always result in clothing and food being donated by neighbours of a different race group. And, in my personal experience, the kindness cuts both ways with black South Africans just as ready to rush to the aid of their fellow citizens.

Foreign visitors frequently comment on how friendly South Africans are and how welcome they feel here. Our human capital is the strongest part of our national balance sheet. What a pity the ANC has done everything it can to destroy it over the past 25 years.

So here are three good reasons for whites to stay in South Africa. First and foremost, for the political laughs. Where else could you lead what, to all intents and purposes, is a western life style and still have politicians who call one another comrade?

Clearly nobody told them that the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. But it isn’t just the clinging on to outdated and provenly unworkable Marxist policies that is so hilarious. It is the disastrous implementation of those policies and the trail of corruption, ineptitude and sheer stupidity that should bring a sardonic smile to your lips. And then there’s the cadre sideshow with hilariously comic characters like Hlaudi Motsoeneng to keep you smiling. Who needs Charlie Chaplin?

Not to forget a cabinet minister who travels all the way to a mining conference in Australia to brag about our vast reserves of “hazenile”, a fictional mineral dreamt up in an April fool’s day spoof. You couldn’t make this stuff up. If white South Africans didn’t have such a well developed sense of the ridiculous most of them would have left long ago.

Second is the country itself. Breathtakingly beautiful and diverse and unequalled anywhere else on the planet. We should be attracting ten times the number of tourists we are currently attracting but our government policies and current hostility towards foreigners is hardly conducive to a booming tourist industry. So since we have the place to ourselves get out and enjoy it.

Third is opportunity. Forget about getting a BBBEE scorecard and doing business with the government because the chances are you won’t get paid unless you’re crooked and offering a kickback. Rather concentrate on filling the gaps that will inevitably be left by those who are emigrating.

Do what we have been doing best for the last 25 years; build businesses, create employment and wealth and work together for a more prosperous non racial South Africa.

Far from having a moral duty to emigrate, whites have a moral duty to remain in South Africa, to fight the nonsense known as transformation and to help create a society where there is hope of a better life for all. Knowing that the government will be against them in everything they do won’t be easy but white South Africans can generally rise above such ignorance and make the best of things.

To regard it as a moral duty to leave is to wave the white flag of surrender and that’s not really our style is it?