Our national anthem ought to be “Send in the Clowns”.

<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXXyDAcFu_RhBLv54i4oPAdaAjlXu8Mor9aanHatGaQ7cPMyIj-7cAtSBJ7-VbW-NPy3YsZK-khdxJdL3peCP2okvdnXQLKjd-h7cVfVoYsIlv7JLxrgCpuxlsmGplKCq9_huv_L6iJBrl/s1600/failing+SA" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="441" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXXyDAcFu_RhBLv54i4oPAdaAjlXu8Mor9aanHatGaQ7cPMyIj-7cAtSBJ7-VbW-NPy3YsZK-khdxJdL3peCP2okvdnXQLKjd-h7cVfVoYsIlv7JLxrgCpuxlsmGplKCq9_huv_L6iJBrl/s640/failing+SA" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By David Bullard</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These days I find myself standing back , shaking my head and having a quiet chuckle at the many economic problems South Africa faces. I’ve even been known to silently mouth the words “told you so”. I realise this is not a good thing but I think it’s got something to do with age and the fourteen odd years I spent “farting against thunder” as a newspaper columnist. I was re-reading my first book, </span><a href="http://www.newstime.co.za/column/DavidBullard/SA_is_the_Amy_Winehouse_of_global_economies/9/3735/"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Out to Lunch</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, which was published almost ten years ago, and what I was writing about then I am still writing about today. Nothing has changed. We have learnt nothing and we still seem set on a course of self destruction. We are the Amy Winehouse of global economies.</span> <br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, pointing this sort of thing out inevitably leads to one being labelled a “racist” which is the predictable reaction one can expect from people too stupid to debate important issues. Launch into an attack on our government’s economic non-performance and you’re bound to be accused of wanting the black man to fail/not believing that the black man is entitled to wealth/not having made the transition to a new South Africa etc etc. It’s the biggest load of horse shit you can imagine but what more can you expect when first world thinking has to co-exist with the majority of a country still stuck in the middle ages? Because, let’s be brutally honest here, we may be the Cradle of Mankind but the early settlers certainly didn’t stumble across anything approaching a sophisticated and developed society (over to Biko Lives). After all, why invent the wheel when you don’t plan on going anywhere?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, the confusion comes when a country like South Africa pretends that it wants to play with the big boys in the global playground but doesn’t have the stomach for it. Our latest and, to date, most embarrassing example is the way our government is treating the Walmart deal. Having eventually given a qualified go ahead for the US retailing giant to invest in SA it seems as though our Economic Development (sic) Minister Ebrahim Patel has changed his mind and now wants to put a permanent stain on Walmart’s reputation. This means that, even if the deal does come off, it will always have a taint. One wonders how a buffoon like Patel can hold such an important position but nothing surprises me these days. Most of those holding high office in this country I wouldn’t trust to put bread in a toaster without fucking it up. Our national anthem ought to be “Send in the Clowns”.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I heard on the radio last week that foreign investment had fallen 70% in the past year. Is it any wonder when we are so hostile to anyone who comes knocking on our door keen to do business? But is there any point in any of us suffering high blood pressure because of this? Absolutely not. The best course is to hedge your bets by getting money offshore and to significantly reduce the amount you pay to the taxman. If you have a small business here then wind it down before it gets seized, taxed or legislated out of existence. Why would anyone want to deal with a lazy and uncommitted unionised workforce and a government openly hostile to capitalism? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Forget all the bullshit about the ANC wanting to create jobs. That’s just a guilt trip being laid on the dwindling minority of the economically active. The government’s task is to create an environment conducive to job creation and economic prosperity. They’re clearly too dumb to understand that so why on earth would private enterprise want to try and help when it’s quite clear that the government is going to screw them over?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you run a hospital you tend to put people with medical experience and knowledge in key positions. If you run a university, hopefully you would appoint well respected academics (although that clearly doesn’t apply at some of our Universities so it’s not a great example) as heads of faculties. When you run a country you would hope that people who have some experience or understanding of the business world would be given key cabinet positions but that doesn’t happen. Instead we have a clutch of luxury car driving halfwit Commies with lunatic ideas who simply cannot grasp the fact that we are sailing merrily on to failed nation status and are deaf to advice.</span><br /><br /><strong><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Link: </span></em></strong><a href="http://www.newstime.co.za/" style="color: #0e774a;" title="Http://www.newstime.co.za"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.NewsTime.co.za</span></em></a><p>

Our national anthem ought to be “Send in the Clowns”.

By David Bullard These days I find myself standing back , shaking my head and having a quiet chuckle at the many economic problems South Afr...

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South Africa "just another country" in Africa

<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRfxFSgieXBcKeLYG2wPXL6WZTVX8Gm69iDF5jAwrRT8nYjwnzPOKj1gfjPcqLF90_usSg680Duf45s5VLDVm2Xc5JBT2f6xUBfT8MofKcDp429rbLLVp07La-WcvV8GUmATCOP8WzRvH/s1600/boilingfrog.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5634904617678309154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRfxFSgieXBcKeLYG2wPXL6WZTVX8Gm69iDF5jAwrRT8nYjwnzPOKj1gfjPcqLF90_usSg680Duf45s5VLDVm2Xc5JBT2f6xUBfT8MofKcDp429rbLLVp07La-WcvV8GUmATCOP8WzRvH/s400/boilingfrog.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 266px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 400px;" /></a><span style="color: #990000;"><strong><span style="font-family: arial;"><em>There are lots of South African articles doing the rounds, this is one of the best.</em></span><br /></strong></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><em><span style="color: #990000;"><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><strong> I have always tried to understand why Africa has not prospered with all the mineral wealth and available labour. This is without a doubt the most plausible explanation for me. I do hope I am completely wrong.</strong></span> </span></em><br /><br />I expect, like me, you are aware that there has never been a prosperous black-led country, but perhaps it’s just because of “bad luck”, or whatever, for that incontrovertible fact.<br /><br />Take Haiti as an example. Before the black slaves revolted and killed all the whites and half castes Haiti had a GNP greater than most of what is now the USA . It supplied 60% of all the sugar used in Europe. Today it is a wasteland. Apparently if you Google Earth the place you see is a sere, brown coloured landscape compared to the neighbouring Dominican Republic which is green and verdant. Twice the USA has occupied Haiti , building roads, ports, hospitals and schools while putting in a functional society. The moment the Americans left they reverted to dictatorship, voodoo, witchcraft, corruption and barbarism. They did not stagnate, they regressed to the primitive savagery of their forefathers<br /><br />Since the 1960s, when the Congo expelled the Belgians this has been a mirror of African regression, moving steadily southwards until the example of Zimbabwe . Once a prosperous, well educated exporter of food the population now eat rats to survive.<br /><br />Will SA go the same way?<br /><br />There are those optimists who say “No, we have such a strong economy, such sophisticated infrastructure, such a talent pool, that we can never sink”.<br /><br />My belief is that they have not considered the root cause of Africa’s failure. A cause that is not spoken about as it is fearfully politically incorrect, and probably illegal to speak about. That cause is the deficiencies of the black ”mentality”, for want of a better word.<br /><br />Are there differences between races, or is race just a meaningless social construct? Until recently, I believed all races were the same under the skin variations, and that perceived differences were only the result of cultural differences. I believed in a common and equal humanity.<br /><br />But things did not always ring true, observable anomalies were inexplicable if all men are the same.<br /><br />Why, under apartheid, did the Indians prosper, become doctors, scientists, educators, merchants and professionals while the vast majority of the equally oppressed black Africans remained hewers of wood?<br /><br />Why can black Africans run, jump and throw better than honkies, but why, out of a billion of them, have they never invented a single thing of any worth? Why have they, collectively, contributed absolutely nothing to the advancement of humanity.<br />Well the physical thing, the running, throwing bit is easily and uncontroversial answered. Simple, people of African descent (especially the Jamaicans) are genetically better equipped in this regard. Their muscle fibres are different and the typically have 15% more free testosterone than other peoples. Acknowledging this is regarded as racism. Unfortunately, racist or not, that is proven and a fact. Google it and you will find that for over 70 years, in test after test, done by dozens of university professors and Nobel laureates plus USA government studies, most people of African descent trail other races by a wide margin.<br /><br />Of course I.Q. tests have been attacked, especially by those who perform badly at them, as one might expect them to do. Detractors claim cultural bias, dysfunctional families, past oppression, poor schooling and a host of other reasons for poor black performance, but the professors defend their contention that I.Q. is largely an inherited trait; that differences are inherent, built into a person’s inherited DNA.<br /><br />For every argument attacking the validity of these tests they have a host of results confirming their accuracy and typicality. Fascinating stuff if you are interested in reading up on it.<br /><br />The effect of high/low I.Q. has also been studied in depth, with fairly predictable results. Low I.Q. individuals performed badly in social class, family stability, income, educational levels, illegitimate pregnancy, single parent families, rate of prison incarceration, rape, violent crime etc. etc. etc.<br /><br />I.Q. measurement measures different facets of intelligence and mental competence. Sadly it is in the absolutely vital sphere of cognitive ability that blacks score worst. This means they score abysmally in things like forward planning and anticipating the consequences of their actions.<br /><br />It is this I.Q. (and testosterone) disparity that is blamed for the fact that African Americans are 5 times more likely to be imprisoned than white (including Hispanic) Americans, 9 times more likely than Americans of Asiatic descent. All in line with I.Q. distributions.<br /><br />Once imprisonment for violent crimes are computed the numbers become stratospheric. These are American government collated statistics, so pretty accurate. Our government in SA do not, for obvious reasons, publish similar stats, but a pound to a pinch of salt they are even more astounding.<br /><br />So why the lecture on I.Q.?<br /><br />Well for a start you must understand that our ruling party are voted into power by a largely moronic plebiscite. I choose the word moronic intentionally. If the cut off point for moronic is an I.Q. of 70, half the voting population would be classified as such.<br /><br />Only one in 40 black South Africans achieves the average I.Q. of his white fellow citizens. One in a hundred have the I.Q. to achieve university entrance requirements. That is why only one in ten blacks pass our dumbed down Matric (with a pass percentage of 30% in many cases). One in 6000 black grade one learners will pass Matric with both Maths and Science.<br /><br />Simply put, they are bloody stupid, and they rule us. Furthermore Zoooooma says they will rule us until the second coming. I believe him.<br /><br />This explains why the ANC have such idiots in their positions of power and influence, the likes of Zuma, Malema, Khomphela and Cele. They are, unfortunately, the best they have! Well, they are the best blacks they have. All the critical positions in government are held by Indians, coloureds or whites, something I am grateful for but which pisses Malema off big time .<br /><br />Will this last? I doubt it. The black/white polarisation is growing and the rhetoric is becoming more extreme. Listen to the pub or workplace chatter, read the blogs and comments sections of the newspapers and it becomes obvious. Whites are gatvol at the waste, corruption and stupidity of the black elite. Blacks are demanding, as their right, the wealth of the whites by means of redistribution of assets. No matter that they have not worked for those assets, they claim them as the spoils of war.<br /><br />Just in the past week the Mayor of Pretoria, Malema, a minister and Winnie have gone on record as blaming whites for sabotaging redistribution and exploiting blacks. Malema calls out “Kill the boers for they are rapists” to thunderous applause by university students Four influential ANC opinion makers who are echoing the groundswell of mutterings in the ghettoes. The natives are getting restless.<br /><br /><br />Things are not going to improve. They cannot, there is no reason to believe our slow slide into a failed state can be reversed with our current regime, and there is no prospect whatsoever of there being a change to governance based on meritocracy. Anyone who believes otherwise, or that the ANC can mend their ways, is living in LaLa land. They do not have the intellect.<br /><br />Like the proverbial frog in the slowly heating pot we have become inured to the slow collapse of our hospitals, schools, courts, water supplies, roads, civil service and service levels. They will become totally dysfunctional shortly. Inevitably so. Those in charge do not have the mental capacity to organise things.<br /><br />Our economy and Rand is reliant on short term “hot” funds from overseas that can flee at the touch of a computer button, and probably will if our Rand weakens. Conversely we need a weaker Rand to encourage exports.<br /><br />6 million taxpayers support 12 million recipients of social grants, and that figure is set to rise this year. The National Health Insurance scheme will happen, no matter how unaffordable. That will push our social grant costs up to four hundred billion Rand. Four hundred billion Rand which produces absolutely no product. Inflation is set to stay and worsen. The consequence of being the biggest socialist state on earth. I do not believe the ANC has the intellect to conceptualise how big a billion is, let alone 400 billion, or what effect this will have on the economy.<br /><br />You do not believe Malema’s call to nationalise the mines? This guy articulates what the hoi polloi are thinking, but the ANC leadership will not say yet. The tactic is to set the bar high, then lower it and the victims will sigh with relief and say it could have been worse. So perhaps it will not be total nationalisation but rather 51%, a’ la Zim. Just look north for revelation, Zuma does.<br /><br />Who would have believed that this country would ever be headed by an unschooled, rape accused, adulterous, corrupt, sex obsessed bigot like Zuma. Anything is possible with the ANC.<br /><br />Summary.<br /><br />You have few years left to enjoy what is left of the glorious SA lifestyle, especially in the Cape , but understand it is not permanent. The end could be sudden as the tipping point is reached, just as it was sudden for those Zim, Zambian, Mozambican or Angolans whites. It could, conceivably, be as bloody as the Hutu/Tutsi uprising when primitive tribal bloodlust overcomes a thin veneer of inculcated civilisation.<br /><br />Enjoy it while you can, and enjoy it in the Cape where the population mix is more favourable, but be aware that change is inevitable. Your children must get a world class education, because they will not be adults in SA. Get assets stashed offshore, you and your children will need them there.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><p>

South Africa "just another country" in Africa

There are lots of South African articles doing the rounds, this is one of the best. I have always tried to understand why Africa has not p...

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Julius Malema's erectile dysfunction

<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The antics of Julius Malema may be good for a laugh now but they remind me of the early days of Idi Amin. Young JuJu is already allowed to travel in a car with no number plates with no fear of prosecution. He refuses to give answers to the media as to how he acquired such wealth in such a short time and he may even enjoy special status with the Receiver of Revenue. In the face of overwhelming evidence that he's a sleazebag the ruling party remain silent. Perhaps they have their own plans for JuJu but maybe they are quietly chuckling to themselves and saying "that's my boy". If it's the latter then we really are up shit creek without a paddle. We will look back on 2010 not as the year we hosted the FIFA World Cup but as the year the cancer that destroyed the country was first detected and identified. We've had some low lifes before, and many of them from the ANCYL, but Malema's combination of stupidity, greed and arrogance plus his willingness and ability to lie with a straight face make him a man to be feared. We may be chortling at his antics now but we won't be laughing when his goons start kicking in the heads of his political enemies. If JuJu wants something JuJu gets it so there'll be no argument about the nationalisation of the mines whatever JZ may have said to Gordon Brown. It won't be JZ's government any more so it will have been no lie for him to say that "my government have no plans to nationalise the mines". Things change quickly in Africa and a verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.   </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaSWcLWLvsN3PhTpKr9BFxWOY20gZa8ewy54Vh4I5PlHZ-NrA44G0-_KrQeEyHSdsrL5SoIAuXsAoj-KJl8yLF9_xcqhZBQlOJTJYt_m1MiaTLUQDnSWooUq1VOS6pCc2YZcOyKNPLfRJN/s1600/julius-malema-kill-the-whit.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaSWcLWLvsN3PhTpKr9BFxWOY20gZa8ewy54Vh4I5PlHZ-NrA44G0-_KrQeEyHSdsrL5SoIAuXsAoj-KJl8yLF9_xcqhZBQlOJTJYt_m1MiaTLUQDnSWooUq1VOS6pCc2YZcOyKNPLfRJN/s640/julius-malema-kill-the-whit.gif" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the media won't fare too well either. JuJu will by that time have declared himself emperor for life and will be throwing huge parties and feeding the likes of <a href="http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/article/2011-02-09-state-of-the-malemanation-address-the-way-it-is">Stephen Grootes</a> and Justice Malala to his pet lions and videoing it for YouTube.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you think Malema is a joke look at his supporters. Are they livid that he has bilked the poor and lives a life of luxury? Of course not. To them he is the man who, along with people like Jimmy Manyi, is finally going to put the whites in their place. These are the chaps whose destiny it is to foment racial hatred. It's only a matter of time before white bank accounts will be frozen and redistributed to the needy. The argument will be typical Malema logic....you can't need the money if you leave it in the bank earning interest. Whites will not be allowed to leave anything to their descendants and white businesses will need to be black owned. No sorry.....my mistake....we already have that one don't we? Rather like the Jews before World War 2, whites will look back and wonder why they never saw it coming. Well they probably did but they were too timid to speak out for fear of being labelled racists.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial;"><em><a href="http://moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page292681?oid=473275&sn=2009+Detail&pid=292677">By David Bullard</a></em></span><p>

Julius Malema's erectile dysfunction

The antics of Julius Malema may be good for a laugh now but they remind me of the early days of Idi Amin. Young JuJu is already allowed to t...

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How Apartheid South Africa was unfairly demonized

<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXpP3cM1NKaUK3PkJefHhqy09Y2YUZPsyjbHtDGeHDpwLlkBD0-cw28VgOKHNpK9CZRszHcvaPe5ZK6165faxz9y-nMilRtYlF_OTn_Qw8sEVTkNw7G5dOzVCncC1bc2qUwVOAA5li91U3/s1600-h/apartheid_Township_Violence_in_South_Africa.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326167622297777442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXpP3cM1NKaUK3PkJefHhqy09Y2YUZPsyjbHtDGeHDpwLlkBD0-cw28VgOKHNpK9CZRszHcvaPe5ZK6165faxz9y-nMilRtYlF_OTn_Qw8sEVTkNw7G5dOzVCncC1bc2qUwVOAA5li91U3/s400/apartheid_Township_Violence_in_South_Africa.jpg" style="float: left; height: 271px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 399px;" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;"><strong><span style="color: #990000;">The Afrikaner, or Boer, people of South Africa were internationally demonized like no other people in history.</span></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />The Afrikaners began to settle in South Africa in the 18th century, fleeing religious persecution in Europe. They established two prosperous states which created job opportunities for blacks, who began pouring in from adjacent areas. The United Kingdom unleashed two devastating wars on them — the Anglo-Boer wars. The British used scorched-land methods and invented the concentration camp, in which 15% of Afrikaners from both republics died.<br /><br />When Afrikaners finally obtained independence, they understood that only a strong Afrikaner state would prevent further massacres. The Republic thus created was not perfect, granted; the blacks, coloreds and Indians were discriminated against. But the world obsessively focused on the Afrikaners’ errors, leaving no stone unturned in their drive to demonize them.<br /><br />South Africa was uniquely singled out for criticism. Not a word was said about the enslavement of the Pygmies in the Central African republics, yet the public yelled “Apartheid!” every time an Afrikaner showed up at an international event. The Chinese occupation of Tibet concerned no one, but the South African treatment of nonwhites –who enjoyed freedoms Tibetans could never dream of, either then or now– was severely chastised.<br /><br />Under the Afrikaners, the blacks enjoyed a standard of life far above that of any other African state. By any measure –infant mortality, literacy, life expectancy, you name it– South African blacks were better off than their neighbors — so much so that the latter began to leave their civil-war torn countries for peaceful South Africa.<br /><br />But not content with taking advantage of the Afrikaner-created wealth, the blacks began a terroristic campaign by the African National Congress that killed thousands. Where was their Gandhi? They bombed public places, mined roads killing innocent civilians and sabotaged productive infrastructure. Although the government reacted to this, most deaths were caused by black-on-black violence. A particularly barbaric murder method was approved of by the wife of Nelson Mandela — the necklacing, a summary execution carried out by forcing a rubber tire, filled with gasoline, around a victim’s chest and arms, and setting it on fire. This was used against opponents in internecine ANC warfare.<br /><br />The Afrikaners only wanted peace, which was offered multiple times to the blacks. After being met with ever more terrorism, Afrikaners diesngaged from 20 areas that were designated as black homelands. Each of these territories was offered full independence; four of them took it — Transkei, Venda, Bophuthatswana, and Ciskei. But instead of focusing on building their nations, the blacks continued to resort to terror.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the international community shunned South Africa — but not Saudi Arabia, a theocracy where converts from Islam face capital punishment; or East Germany, where people who tried to leave the country were shot dead; or Kampuchea, where Pol Pot perpetrated a genocide of more than 1 million people. Only South Africa, where less than 2,000 blacks were killed by a government faced with guerrilla warfare, was subjected to UN sanctions — but not Angola, where civil war killed hundreds of thousands.<br /><br />International hypocrisy peaked in the 70s and 80s. When the South African rugby team (the Springboks) toured Australia in 1971, the leader of the Labour Party, Gough Whitlam, opposed the tour and declared: “Australians should never let an afternoon’s entertainment blind them to a lifetime’s repression for another nation.” This, said by a politician from a country that dispossessed and mostly exterminated its Aboriginal population. Huge and widespread protest also occurred in New Zealand in 1981 against a Springbok tour — that, in a country that committed cultural genocide against the Maoris, whose language is in a terminal state.<br /><br />An automatic anti-Afrikaner UN majority recommended several times economic sanctions against South Africa, and third world countries were quick and happy to implement them. Even the US disgraced itself by applying economic sanctions it never imposed on far worse human-rights offenders like Mozambique or the Congo. Of course, none of those countries stopped using South African diamonds or gold, which are key to high-tech industries, or performing heart transplants, an Afrikaner-invented medical procedure.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 85%;"><em>by </em></span><a href="http://thehasbarabuster.blogspot.com/2009/01/on-how-apartheid-south-africa-was.html"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 85%;"><em>The Hasbara Buster</em></span></a><p>

How Apartheid South Africa was unfairly demonized

The Afrikaner, or Boer, people of South Africa were internationally demonized like no other people in history. The Afrikaners began to settl...

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