Excellent New Russian Documentary About the Disaster Facing the White South African Minority (Video)
25 years after the end of apartheid, South Africa has managed to build an equal society where everyone has a right to be poor regardless of the color of their skin.
This post first appeared on Russia Insider
This is a 15 minute excerpt from a new documentary film about the disaster facing White South Africans, made by the main Russian state television company.
It gives a great summary of the ethnic tension in South Africa in the post-apartheid state, and how the situation has changed to “a reverse apartheid”.
The white minority at about 10% of the population now faces political marginalization which pushes them into slums, crime rates are skyrocketing, and the country's economic progress is declining.
The racial attacks are horrific. In some cases young children are even boiled alive. A Russian woman can’t even operate a hair Salon in Pretoria without facing robberies and death threats.
Some of these whites resort to arming themselves and learning self-defense, some try to peacefully resettle exclusively white African towns like Orania, while others look to emigrating to white majority countries.
We’ve written about the Russian involvement to support relocating these white farmer descendants before:
Two centuries ago, pressure from the British Crown forced the Boers to leave their coastal settlements and migrate further inland to settle Pretoria and Johannesburg. Today it is pressure from the black majority pushing a new Great Trek as the Boers look to relocate to Australia and Russia.
Transcript below:
Transcript:
https://russia-insider.com/en/excellent-new-russian-documentary-about-disaster-facing-white-south-african-minority-video/ri25730The Republic of South Africa is the most economically developed country in Africa. Now it's a BRIC and G20 state friendly to Russia. However, until the end of the last century, it was under international sanctions approved by the UN due to the official policy of apartheid: the discrimination of the black majority by the white population.These are the Englishmen and the Afrikaners, descendants of the Dutch. Apartheid was ended only in the 1990s as the result of the fight of generations of black people for their rights.Now that victory has been achieved, there's another problem. Illiteracy among the black population, meaning poverty, which gives birth to crime.On the one hand, the apartheid regime limited black people's access to the education, but on the other hand, not going to school and not being taught by white teachers was considered to be an act of patriotism.As soon as the generation of those deprived of education and patriotic drop-outs grew up many of its representatives had no choice but to take to high road.Our special correspondent Alexandr Rogatkin has studied the problem on location and prepared a long film that inspires compassion both to the white and the black population. Here's the naked truth.But before you see it, remember just one number: less than 10% of the population in South Africa is white. Watch now a segment from Alexandr Rogatkin's film.Local defense troops are the last chance for survival of the Afrikaners in South Africa as they don't trust the authorities or the police. They only trust the good old shotgun which, for 150 years now, still remains their best friend on the Dark Continent.South Africa is witnessing an ongoing war for the right to live in this rich land. White farmers are killed almost every day. The Afrikaners have to unite to patrol the area every day. The police, as self-defense commander Ross Welsh says, hardly respond to the attacks on farmers on the grounds of the lack of cars or gasoline. Some stories are just hard to believe.ROSS WELSH: “They came running to the house, they shot the father and the husband in front of the wife and children, then they tied the child with wire and boiled him alive.”The suburbs of Pretoria, a previously expensive and prestigious residential area. Now it's deserted and ruined. As recently as two weeks ago, it was a luxurious residency with a huge garden and a huge pool.But due to the repeated attacks, the owners had to abandon their house after futile attempts to sell it. The residence was raided a few days later. It looks like they left in a hurry, abandoning even the family photo album.ROSS WELSH: “This house used to cost eight million rands. Today, it's worthless.”Vandals removed and sawed apart the wooden roof, and broke the statues and furniture. Even the electrified fence was cut and prepared to be removed. Suddenly the patrol commander spots a marauder amidst the ruins.The adjacent farm is still inhabited by a retired couple. We were greeted by a very lively old woman with a holster on her belt. They don't put their revolvers aside even at night.PETRA LEMMER: “I love this place. There's peace in my soul and God resides in my heart. I'm a Christian but they'd better not bother me. The man who stole my husband's revolver attacked my neighbor. She said she couldn't stay in this place. On the day when she left some people started to break into her house.”She's 74 and she sure knows how to put rounds into the cylinder. Her life turned upside down, what used to be white became black. But Petra Lemmer still looks on the bright side.PETRA LEMMER: “In fact, we're not attacked often, people know us. I'd say, we've had only five attacks so far.”Even the road signs warn you that you're entering a criminal area. They recommend not stopping. They live behind tall fences with barbed wire and under an electric current.“Welcome!”18 years behind bars, the Russian Style hair salon owned by Olga Primakova, is face to face with local criminals.OLGA PRIMAKOVA: “My salon was burglarized twice. They took everything, leaving nothing, they took even the sockets. The police came, had a look and left, and I heard nothing from them ever since.”A metal club and an electric shocker are essential for doing business in the Pretoria suburbs.OLGA PRIMAKOVA: “A Russian blond, everybody tells me to get out of here. It's our country.”Olga's car features a patriotic license plate, AK-47. But for the locals to have respect for you, you need to have at least a Kalashnikov in the car.OLGA PRIMAKOVA: “Actually, we live like we're at war here. We're always ready for anything that may happen. I always have pepper spray. A razor. Being a hairdresser, I have an open razor in the glove compartment. Here! A razor! I have a knife. Here it is, right here. That's how we drive in the car, just in case.”- Hello!When Russian Style is in danger, Russian Combat System comes to rescue. The Russian self-defense system taught in Johannesburg by a famous stuntman and former airborne forces officer Vadim Dobrin.VADIM DOBRIN: “I've been attacked 13 times with firearms, with knives. They've never attacked one-on-one.”Vadim Dobrin has lived in South Africa since 1991. At first, he was very annoyed by the criminals, but then he realized that he could earn good money due to the criminals if he started to teach the locals to defend themselves correctly.VADIM DOBRIN: “One time, I was attacked by a lot of people. It was a very unpleasant situation. I grabbed him, shouted, and said, "This one is going straight to the morgue. So are you and you. As for the rest, I'm not sure. We'll see. But I'm definitely sending the three of you to the morgue, Forget the intensive care unit." And somehow they changed their mind.”“We're going to a gas station to buy some gas to burn the whites.”The label on his chest is a black fist nailed to the ground with a red star. On his back, there's an intimidating slogan: "Land or death."TIDISO TIMO, Black First Land First Organization: “Our motto means, "Land or death," we're ready to kill for our land.”During their actions and meetings, they demand that the government immediately adopt a law to expropriate the land belonging to the white population without any compensation.TIDISO TIMO: “What is there to talk about? They stole this land from us. They killed our ancestors to get this land. That's why it's our right. What compensation should we pay if we have nothing to pay with? It's our right. We'll kill for it if needed.”“One bullet, one settler.One bullet, one settler.”This slum is a place that accommodates those who were forced to leave their houses and farms and those who lost their jobs. It's a bottom of South African society, a white one at that. A ghetto for the descendants of the merciless colonizers. An exclusively white slum.25 years after the end of apartheid, South Africa has managed to build an equal society where everyone has a right to be poor regardless of the color of their skin.A house made of metal flooring, boxes, tents, and old trailers. They drown their problems in alcohol. Now, these white people know for sure how to live the black way.“I worked at a meat processing factory. My boss said we overfilled the quotas. There must be just one white person for 100 black people, and we had two. I got sacked.”There are dozens of settlements like this one in the suburbs of Pretoria and Johannesburg yet everything is clean and neat. There's even a flower bed.“It's a reverse apartheid. Since 1994, they've started to infringe on the rights of white people. Ever since, we lived in conditions like this, in settlements like this.”The magnificent monument of Voortrekker has towered over the capital of South Africa for 70 years. It's the main monument of the Boers Afrikaners, who conquered the areas where Pretoria and Johannesburg were built.In the first half of the 19th century, migrants from Holland, Flanders, and France negatively "the Boers" called by the English, which means "peasants", started to leave their Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa. Suffering from constant pressure by the British crown, the Boers declared the Great Trek.On these wooden carriages pulled by oxen, the Boers ventured into the heart of the African continent and founded the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic which were later invaded by the British.Now it's time for the new Great Trek. The Boers are looking to relocate to Canada, Australia, and even Russia. A delegation of Afrikaners visited Stavropol Krai this summer. The Boers were studying the relocation conditions, if they’ll be able to farm in the northern latitudes.VLADIMIR POLUBOYARENKO, Aide to human-rights ombudsman: “Now it's about 200 families. They officially applied to receive Russian residency. I think we'll find jobs for all of them.”Vladimir Poluboyarenko is a human right defender in Stavropol. He met with Boers in Russia and has now come to Africa to summon people to immigrate. He's traveling around Boer enclaves, meeting with farmers.VLADIMIR POLUBOYARENKO: “Your children, grandchildren, and grand-grandchildren will become true Russian Boers. You're welcome!”A fan of colonial style hats, Johannes Du Tois is the most active advocate for emigration to Russia. He hasn't just learned Russian, he even married a Russian woman from Kansk. They recently had a girl and have another on the way.JOHANNES DU TOIS: “When I came to Siberia for the first time I fell in love with it, it's so vast. The taiga, the tundra, a river... We do have rivers in Africa but when I first saw Siberian rivers, I thought, wow! It's a totally different world!”For this world, Johan is ready to abandon the spectacles of Africa, which has recently grown so hostile.JOHANNES DU TOIS: “The problems in Russia are different from those in South Africa. For me, it's a problem when they kill us, violently. It happens every day in South Africa. Every day our farmers are attacked.”The town of Orania is called the last stronghold of apartheid. Well, it's if we literally translate this word from Afrikaans, which the Boers speak, apartheid means "separation". So here, white people live separately from black people.To be precise, there aren't any native people in this town. The Boers regard Orania as a prototype of an ideal nation-state. It has its own blue and orange flag depicting a boy rolling up his sleeves to fight. It symbolizes the Boers' readiness for both labor and defense.SEBASTIAN BILL: “It's a little giant, he's still a boy. But he, like our Orania, will become big and strong in the future.”They've introduced their own currency, the Oro, which equals the South African Rand.“This is our Oro. It has value only in Orania. Any shop will take these bills.”In the hills over the town, there's a monument dedicated to the Boers who became the presidents and prime ministers of South Africa. The only bust missing is Nobel Prize winner Frederik de Klerk who, along with Nelson Mandela, destroyed the apartheid regime.“If we put a bust of de Klerk here, it would be gone in half an hour.”However, the first prime minister of South Africa, Hendrik Verwoerd, who is called the architect of apartheid for creating the harsh system of racial discrimination, is the most popular politician in Orania. Busts of him are scattered throughout the town. There's even a museum.“Of course, there was discrimination and racism, which is not good, but the party's ideology, separate development in equal conditions for everyone, so that everyone has equal opportunities for development, but in their own tribe, in their own culture, with their own people.”The black population of South Africa was deprived of voting rights. The largest people, the Bantu, were relocated to reservations called bantustans. They were allowed to leave only with a special permit.Transport, beaches, benches on the streets, schools, and hospitals were segregated for white and black people. Some white cities were closed for the native peoples. Mixed marriages were outlawed. Sexual contact between black and white people was prosecuted.Verwoerd's grandson, Karl Bosoff, is one of the ideologists and founders of the independent state of Orania. Karl says that now in South Africa they're trying to erase the memory of his grandfather.KARL BOSOFF: “Here I'm sitting on my grandfather's lap when I was little.”The cities and dams named after Verwoerd were renamed. Karl agrees that there was racism, but there was incredible growth of the economy. Roads, factories, and canals were built. That enabled South Africa to become the most developed state in Africa.KARL BOSOFF: “They say he was a criminal, that's now the official point of view. But they forget that it was he who granted education to black people. He developed the areas for black people, even to a larger extent than those for white people.”Now, Orania is to become a small economic copy of South Africa in the 1960s. But exclusively for the Boers. New migrants from all over the country come to Orania every day. They live in trailers until their houses are built.HRIKKI VAN SCHALKWYK, MIGRANT: “I was seized by two men with a hammer. He started beating me with it. I don't remember anything that happened afterward as I fainted. We're not racists, we forgave the guys who did it to us, to me. My heart is not burning now. I forgave them.”The idea of the independent state for white people is like a red cloth for a bull to the black majority.TIDISO TIMO: “The white people are racists. They organized an enclave on our land. It belongs to us, therefore we must liberate it. Therefore, we're fighting the racists. This is our land.”In the South African province with the name known to everyone since childhood, Limpopo, there's a memorial to the Boers killed on their farms. Each white cross represents someone's ruined life. Hundreds of small crosses form one big white cross that can be seen from the space, and that the descendants of the white colonizers continue to bear.
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