I really appreciated that this article went into the fact that a police state is bad for everyone and that the reason Apartheid ended isn't just that resistance and sanctions worked - everyone wanted it ended. If anything, the real tragedy of South Africa is that the promise of the 90s and 00s hasn't truly come to fruition, but national trauma on the scale of South Africa is hard to recover from.
Thank you for sharing! I really enjoyed the article!
Eh, this is the same crowd that believes Christians in the US are persecuted & under attack, so I’m not surprised. It’s obv. dumb as hell, but it seems on brand.
How many white South Africans have come to the US as refugees under the Trump administration and actually stayed in the US? Didn’t a bunch of them go back home because they were disappointed by the lack of social services here? Are white South Africans still the only ones being granted refugee status in the US?
lol I think the US far right has been pushing that myth since Mandella. It wouldn't surprise me if there was an interim period in which South Africa actually ended up unearthing and re-buying the myth from Americans
This is a very common Apartheid era propaganda that you will find has spread all over Reddit.
It's called the Empty Land Myth.
It is usually deployed as a motte-and-bailey. When you point out how insane that is, they retreat to saying that the Cape was not inhabited. When you point out that's false, they concede that the Khoisan were there but they don't count for whatever reason. And it just goes on like this until it reduces to something trivially true like 'not every square inch of the country had a permanent settlement on the scale of a modern city'
seems akin to the Israeli claim that the lands of Palestine were barren and infertile before Jewish settlers worked them into profitable agriculture. Also spurious
As an American, I didn’t learn anything about South Africa in school. The knowledge I did have was from Nelson Mandela media coverage. But my white supremacist dog whistle senses were ringing at a 10 when I heard that. Looked it up later once I was on WiFi and Empty Land Myth was the first result. I called him out the next day and he did not take it well lololol
Honestly, you see variations of that myth in the us too.
Usually framed as “the white settlers didn’t displace/drive out native people. Their population was so destroyed by smallpox and other old world diseases that although the land used to be inhabited by the time settlers got there it was empty and fair game.”
This one is popular I think because it builds a false political narrative, “white people didn’t displace the indigenous peoples”, on a historical fact, “smallpox killed nearly whole communities”. Since many people know that root fact is true they just kind of accept the political argument without thinking about whether one actually leads to the other. Makes it effective propaganda. Plus the narrative is well established enough that many Americans literally learned versions of it in school and have just never given the subject much thought as an adult.
I mean, there have been a lot of attacks on white farmers. There’s literally a popular political song “kill the boer”. All of this is documented and easily verifiable so not sure why anyone would attempt to deny it?
So, I went looking up information on "Kill the Boer", which one side argues is an incitement of violence, and the other side argues is just a "struggle song" similar to "Fuck the Police"-type rapping about fighting back against the power. The counter-argument was that this seems false in the context of "high rates of farmer murders" so I decided to look up the so-called high rates of farmer murders, and found this:
>The South African Police Service’s official statistics on rural safety for the fourth quarter of the 2024/2025 Financial Year (1 January 2025 to 31 March 2025) demonstrate this reality. A total of 6 murder cases were reported in farming communities. A breakdown of the victims reveals that these crimes are not targeted against a single racial group:
>3 victims were employees
>1 victim was a farm dweller
>2 victims were farmers.
>These figures underscore that violent crime in rural areas affects everyone who lives and works on farms and related rural areas. While the loss of any life is a tragedy, these statistics do not reveal a pattern of action driven by inflammatory racial rhetoric against a specific community.
Now, admittedly, I am one of those pesky Americans who has not been privileged to do much international travel, so I'm only learning the best I can from things I've read and history I've learned. If this is incorrect or untrustworthy information, I'm happy to hear it and learn from that. But DIRCO specifically calls out incorrect reports made by the US government about high rates of racially-motivated violence, so they don't seem to agree with that assertion themselves.
Sure! This article actually outlines a rise in farm murders corresponding to major incidents of hate speech against farmers: https://antiek.afriforum.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Kill-the-farmer.pdf
This is an article unpacking how harmful the South Africans governments repeated denial/covering up of the racial dynamic of the farm murders has been: https://www.artikels.afriforum.co.za/en/farm-attacks-afriforum-slams-government-for-again-choosing-denial-despite-facts/
I definitely would caution against trusting the South African governments take on this- they know they’re facing international scrutiny for this and have a vested interest in covering it up for multiple reasons. But hopefully those sources will be helpful
American politics lol. No-one cares about what's actually happening in South Africa, so it's more important to say the things that support your side's narrative regardless of what the actual facts are.
Yeah, I think that’s sadly what it is. As someone who lives outside the states, the amount of people who can only run any event through a lense of “trump bad” and American-centric politics is insanely high.
Isn't that exactly what the article at the top of this thread is? A view through the lens of American politics at reports from another country?
And isn't Trump bad? He started a worthless war with Iran just as of late. And all the other things before that...or does his embracing of your narrative make it acceptable to ignore those items?
The war in iran is objectively horrific and monumentally stupid. However, those of us who dont live in the United States are a bit exhausted with everything tracing back to him. There are so many other things going on in the world and Americans do have a tendency to make everything about themselves, which is deeply frustrating to pretty much everyone else.
Quouar | 13 hours ago
I really appreciated that this article went into the fact that a police state is bad for everyone and that the reason Apartheid ended isn't just that resistance and sanctions worked - everyone wanted it ended. If anything, the real tragedy of South Africa is that the promise of the 90s and 00s hasn't truly come to fruition, but national trauma on the scale of South Africa is hard to recover from.
Thank you for sharing! I really enjoyed the article!
Sea-Present-8543 | 15 hours ago
Eh, this is the same crowd that believes Christians in the US are persecuted & under attack, so I’m not surprised. It’s obv. dumb as hell, but it seems on brand.
xbhaskarx | 5 hours ago
How many white South Africans have come to the US as refugees under the Trump administration and actually stayed in the US? Didn’t a bunch of them go back home because they were disappointed by the lack of social services here? Are white South Africans still the only ones being granted refugee status in the US?
latswipe | 18 hours ago
lol I think the US far right has been pushing that myth since Mandella. It wouldn't surprise me if there was an interim period in which South Africa actually ended up unearthing and re-buying the myth from Americans
readingwritingreefer | 13 hours ago
On vacation in Thailand, I met a white south African Gen X guy that tried to tell me there were no humans in South Africa before the Dutch colonized.
Top_Lime1820 | 12 hours ago
This is a very common Apartheid era propaganda that you will find has spread all over Reddit.
It's called the Empty Land Myth.
It is usually deployed as a motte-and-bailey. When you point out how insane that is, they retreat to saying that the Cape was not inhabited. When you point out that's false, they concede that the Khoisan were there but they don't count for whatever reason. And it just goes on like this until it reduces to something trivially true like 'not every square inch of the country had a permanent settlement on the scale of a modern city'
latswipe | 8 hours ago
seems akin to the Israeli claim that the lands of Palestine were barren and infertile before Jewish settlers worked them into profitable agriculture. Also spurious
readingwritingreefer | 21 minutes ago
As an American, I didn’t learn anything about South Africa in school. The knowledge I did have was from Nelson Mandela media coverage. But my white supremacist dog whistle senses were ringing at a 10 when I heard that. Looked it up later once I was on WiFi and Empty Land Myth was the first result. I called him out the next day and he did not take it well lololol
CeramicLicker | 8 minutes ago
Honestly, you see variations of that myth in the us too.
Usually framed as “the white settlers didn’t displace/drive out native people. Their population was so destroyed by smallpox and other old world diseases that although the land used to be inhabited by the time settlers got there it was empty and fair game.”
This one is popular I think because it builds a false political narrative, “white people didn’t displace the indigenous peoples”, on a historical fact, “smallpox killed nearly whole communities”. Since many people know that root fact is true they just kind of accept the political argument without thinking about whether one actually leads to the other. Makes it effective propaganda. Plus the narrative is well established enough that many Americans literally learned versions of it in school and have just never given the subject much thought as an adult.
RockFiles23 | 16 hours ago
So did much of reddit lol
FreeCashFlow | 4 hours ago
I mean "non-white people bad" has been the animating principle of the conservative movement for a century.
greenfrog72 | 15 hours ago
I mean, there have been a lot of attacks on white farmers. There’s literally a popular political song “kill the boer”. All of this is documented and easily verifiable so not sure why anyone would attempt to deny it?
atomicsnark | 6 hours ago
So, I went looking up information on "Kill the Boer", which one side argues is an incitement of violence, and the other side argues is just a "struggle song" similar to "Fuck the Police"-type rapping about fighting back against the power. The counter-argument was that this seems false in the context of "high rates of farmer murders" so I decided to look up the so-called high rates of farmer murders, and found this:
>The South African Police Service’s official statistics on rural safety for the fourth quarter of the 2024/2025 Financial Year (1 January 2025 to 31 March 2025) demonstrate this reality. A total of 6 murder cases were reported in farming communities. A breakdown of the victims reveals that these crimes are not targeted against a single racial group:
>3 victims were employees
>1 victim was a farm dweller
>2 victims were farmers.
>These figures underscore that violent crime in rural areas affects everyone who lives and works on farms and related rural areas. While the loss of any life is a tragedy, these statistics do not reveal a pattern of action driven by inflammatory racial rhetoric against a specific community.
Now, admittedly, I am one of those pesky Americans who has not been privileged to do much international travel, so I'm only learning the best I can from things I've read and history I've learned. If this is incorrect or untrustworthy information, I'm happy to hear it and learn from that. But DIRCO specifically calls out incorrect reports made by the US government about high rates of racially-motivated violence, so they don't seem to agree with that assertion themselves.
greenfrog72 | 4 hours ago
Sure! This article actually outlines a rise in farm murders corresponding to major incidents of hate speech against farmers: https://antiek.afriforum.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Kill-the-farmer.pdf
This is an article unpacking how harmful the South Africans governments repeated denial/covering up of the racial dynamic of the farm murders has been: https://www.artikels.afriforum.co.za/en/farm-attacks-afriforum-slams-government-for-again-choosing-denial-despite-facts/
I definitely would caution against trusting the South African governments take on this- they know they’re facing international scrutiny for this and have a vested interest in covering it up for multiple reasons. But hopefully those sources will be helpful
atomicsnark | 3 hours ago
Thanks, I'll give them a read. Always happy to learn a thing!
m50d | 14 hours ago
American politics lol. No-one cares about what's actually happening in South Africa, so it's more important to say the things that support your side's narrative regardless of what the actual facts are.
greenfrog72 | 12 hours ago
Yeah, I think that’s sadly what it is. As someone who lives outside the states, the amount of people who can only run any event through a lense of “trump bad” and American-centric politics is insanely high.
1hamcakes | an hour ago
Isn't that exactly what the article at the top of this thread is? A view through the lens of American politics at reports from another country?
And isn't Trump bad? He started a worthless war with Iran just as of late. And all the other things before that...or does his embracing of your narrative make it acceptable to ignore those items?
greenfrog72 | an hour ago
The war in iran is objectively horrific and monumentally stupid. However, those of us who dont live in the United States are a bit exhausted with everything tracing back to him. There are so many other things going on in the world and Americans do have a tendency to make everything about themselves, which is deeply frustrating to pretty much everyone else.