Africa – Page 6 – Splendid Isolation

Goat Rodeo

November 10, 2021 Kim du Toit Third World, Travels

So the UK-US “border” is finally opened, and the Brit airines (BA and Virgin) want to make a big deal out of it, so with typical Brit ceremony they schedule dozens of airliners to take off simultaneously from parallel runways, to land at NYFC’s JFK airport, likewise simultaneously.

More than 10,000 passengers flew from London to New York City yesterday on the day the US border was open to international travelers since the coronavirus crisis. British Airways took 8,600 travelers on 26 aircraft while Virgin Atlantic ferried a further 4,500 customers on ten shuttles into JFK as figures soared back to pre-pandemic levels.

And then complain when this occurs:

Hundreds of passengers were left waiting for hours at JFK airport yesterday when three planes reportedly arrived at once on the day the US border reopened. Furious travelers blasted officials for the ‘disgraceful’ planning as the aircraft landed from Manchester and weary customers flooded into customs. One flyer posted footage of the chaos on social media as masked people queued in sprawling lines as they waited to be let into the country for the first time in 600 days.

Here’s the kicker:

It is not clear if airports brought in more staff for the big reopening, but it comes amid warnings they were not ready for the huge influx of tourists.

LOL it’s New York fuckin’ City, already crushed by mandatory facemasks, mandatory lockdowns and mandatory vaccine-related staff shortages: what did you think was going to happen?

I’ve previously stated that JFK is really a Third-World-standard airport — and by that I don’t mean Singapore / Bangkok-type Third World, but the Bangalore / Nairobi kind. So to expect anything other than chaos on a normal day, let alone this one, was simply stupid.

And, of course, everyone needs a kick in the nads for this fiasco: the airlines, for making a grand gesture to overload the airports, the airports for not planning for the influx, and lest we forget, the idiots who just couldn’t wait to get here and had to be on those first flights.

Simple Solution

September 29, 2021 Kim du Toit Good Stuff, Immigration, Marxists, Third World

From this Niall Ferguson article via Insty (thankee, squire) comes a gem:

Last week, the Rhodium Group’s Logan Wright estimated that there was enough empty property in China to house more than 90 million people.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Housing for 90 million dispossessed and poverty-stricken Afghans, Haitians, Venezuelans, Mexicans, Africans and Palestinians?

Could the answer be that simple? Let’s hear the response from the ChiComs…

[exit, cackling like a maniac]

Breaking The Law

September 17, 2021 Kim du Toit Africa, Hunting, The Gun Thing

Question from Reader JockC, via email:

“Did you own any other rifles back in South Africa, or was the Israeli Mauser the only one?”

Getting one gun in those days was relatively easy. As I recall, the license application for the Llama pistol took about a month to be granted, and the Mauser only a matter of weeks. “Self-protection” for the handgun required a background check, but “hunting” and a bolt-action rifle was hardly even scrutinized, as far as I can tell.

Getting your second gun always took longer, as the “Why do you need another gun?” had to be justified, and “Because” wasn’t acceptable. Once again, the hunting thing was much easier, especially if one was applying for a larger- or smaller-caliber chambering. A second handgun, unless for a specific sporting purpose, like a target pistol? Oy. It could take as long as a year for the license to be granted. So I only ever owned one handgun at a time, as did many of us.

Officially, that is.

The only other centerfire rifle I owned back in the old Racist Republic was an Oviedo Spanish Mauser in 7x57mm, similar to the one below except that I had the bolt altered so I could use a scope with the thing.

I have spoken many times before of my affection for the old, gently-recoiling cartridge, seen here alongside the other popular ones in use at the time:

The long bullet of the 7×57 allowed for astounding penetration, which often made a “quartering” shot as deadly as a side-on shot.

The Orviedo Mauser was the Model 1893 (similar to the “Boer” Mauser of later fame), and many was the approving nod I got from Oom (uncle) Sarel and his farmer friends whenever I uncased it.

This was the gun I used for almost all my hunting (a.k.a. poaching), and it was never registered to me under S.A. law because reasons. (I did occasionally use borrowed rifles, but the Spanish Mauser was the main one.) I got it from the estate of an acquaintance who’d been killed in a car accident, and whose father just wanted to get rid of it.

Using the unregistered gun instead of the Izzy (which was registered to me), I had no compunction about tossing it into a ditch should the game rangers ever appear… but fortunately that never happened. Just before I emigrated, I gave it to the farmer on whose farm I did all my hunting out in the Northern Cape.

As to the area where we hunted: yikes. I have no pictures of where I hunted, nor any trophy pictures, because under the conditions I hunted, those could be called “evidence” and used against me. But I found some pictures of the terrain up in the northern Cape Province (as it was back then), and they should give you a glimpse of conditions along the fringes of the Kalahari Desert:

Dry as hell, hot as hell, no place for White men (as the saying goes) and only mad dogs and Englishmen etc. etc.

Despite the harsh conditions, game was relatively plentiful, although we usually only hunted for culling purposes — such as when a springbok herd started grazing on pastures meant for sheep or cattle, and had to be made to fear the area. I myself grazed on springbok biltong for about six months after that occasion. Then there were the lions, who just followed the game onto the farm, and had to be dealt with, in the words of the farmer, “so they don’t develop a taste for beef, sheep and humans.”

I would get an evening call from Oom Sarel the farmer: “Neef (nephew) Kim, do you feel like a bit of shooting this weekend?” and if I was free, I’d load up the car and set off before midnight Friday for the six-hour drive out to Kuruman, the nearest town.

I enjoyed it immensely, as much as for the companionship of those weekend hunts as for the actual hunting. What I learned from those outings was that I wasn’t as good a shot as the farmers — hell, the neighbor’s 17-year-old was death on wheels, and when he shot, he worked his rifle’s bolt so fast it sounded more like semi-auto fire. (It was a Sauer .270 Win, I think, but I do remember that his one-shot kill ratio was well over 75%. Astounding.)

Anyway, that’s the story of my hunting days. There were a couple others, in different areas, but those weren’t as illicit, nor as enjoyable, as the ones out on Oom Sarel’s farm.

Side note: In South Africa, younger people address their elders as “oom” (uncle) or “tannie” (auntie) out of respect, even when not related. In return, the older folks will call the younger ones “neef” (nephew), “seun” (son) or “dogter” (daughter) and “niggie” (niece). It is a very affectionate and respectful custom, and I have to admit that I miss it.

The Afrikaans “g” is pronounced the same as the Scottish “ch” as in “loch”.

100% Funny… And True

July 26, 2021 Kim du Toit Africa, Funny Stuff

Taki’s Mag’s weekly feature “The Week That Perished” is often very funny, as well as irreverent. Last week’s piece was the funniest yet — and as is often the case, the most true. Take for example their explanation of the South African mess:

“ZOOD” AFRIKA
The riots and looting tearing through South Africa simply cannot be happening. The images must be CGI; the news reports fake. Everyone knows that black people only riot and loot because of institutional racism caused by evil whites and their damnable supremacy.
It’s a law of physics, no more violable than gravity.
So no, it’s simply not possible that blacks are rioting and looting in a black nation because of actions taken by the blacks who rule them against other blacks who used to rule them.
In fact, the backstory of the SA riots is so convoluted, only a writer of Marvel blockbusters could’ve come up with it. The origin story involves something called the “Zondo Commission,” which totally sounds like what Doctor Strange or Starhawk would appear before while trying to find the Galubrious Cubes or the Synstricious Stones or whatever inane plot device saves the universe.

And it just gets funnier and funnier from there — and it is 100%, ultra-clean, unvarnished truth. My favorite part, though, is this:

And apparently killing Somalis…for reasons that surely make as much sense as anything else going on in that geographical septic tank. It got so bad that last week Somalian diplomats sent a formal protest to the South African government demanding protection for Somalis living in SA. The Somalian flag is a machete-wielding warlord carving a starving child in half while eating a baby. When your nation has become too extreme for those lunatics, maybe it’s time to dial it back a bit.

I know that there’s a considerable overlap of my Readers and Taki’s, but for those who aren’t, get over there toot sweet.

Thoughts On Mandelaland Part 3

July 20, 2021 Kim du Toit Africa

Boy, they’re coming thick and fast:

What is the point of a government, when we know that it was private security and ordinary civilians who held the line this past week? For all the praise that Cabinet ministers have retrospectively doled out to police and the army, we have all seen the footage of cops responding to the riots with approximately the same urgency as a hungover teenager doing the dishes under duress.
Which was a teeny bit weird, because we’ve all also seen the footage of cops blasting a water cannon on elderly and disabled social grant applicants in January this year after giving them one minute to disperse.
What is the point of a government, when we know that it is warm-hearted citizens and NGOs who will largely be responsible for feeding those who must now go hungry? When Gift of the Givers announced they were on their way to fix things, I can’t be the only one who wished for the hundredth time that we could just chuck the keys to the Union Buildings to Imtiaz Sooliman and be done with it.
And what is the point of a government, when we’ve seen all those heroic ordinary people cleaning up the chaotic aftermath of the riots?

Read the whole article, because one of these days we’re going to be asking these questions of our own government.

Actually, I’ve been doing a lot of that already, and I bet some of you have been too.

Thoughts On Mandelaland Part 2

July 17, 2021 Kim du Toit Africa, Bad News

Another perspective on Seffrica:

Many of you outside of South Africa are wondering what is really going on. So here is a very simple outline. The thing is obviously far more complex and nuanced than can be set out in a brief note but this will give you some picture of what is really happening.

Following the 1994 democratic elections in South Africa, South Africa did really well economically until about 2008. That was also the year that Jacob Zuma was elected president of the ANC. At that point in time, some of us had a sense of disquiet already. But little did any of us understand then the extent of the corruption and weakening of government institutions that would follow. We have no clear idea of the extent of what was stolen during the Jacob Zuma years, other than that it is a stupendous sum of money which this country certainly cannot afford. Eventually however the internal tide within the ANC started to slowly turn against Jacob Zuma. On 18 December 2017 Cyril Ramaphosa was elected as the president of the ANC (and also subsequently became the president of South Africa). But it was a very narrow margin of victory.

The thing about Cyril Ramaphosa is that he is fundamentally a principled man. And certainly, determined to clean up the history of corruption we have seen since 2008. Various steps have been taken by him and the ANC under his guidance to give effect to this. One of the things that was done was to establish a commission chaired by Raymond Zondo, who is the Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa. The purpose of this commission was to investigate the corruption issues and to expose them to the light of day.

Jacob Zuma was required to appear in front of the commission. He effectively refused to do so. He was ordered by the Constitutional Court to do so. He defied the order of the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court in turn ordered his imprisonment for a period of 15 months for contempt of court. This, whatever you call it, is fundamentally the rule of law in action.

Initially there was resistance to imprisonment by Jacob Zuma and his supporters. A week ago, however Jacob Zuma submitted himself to imprisonment. And then all hell broke loose.

What you need to understand is that Jacob Zuma has his powerbase in KwaZulu Natal, where the riots have been at their worst. This is also, as the name will tell you, the home territory of the Zulu nation. And Jacob Zuma is a prominent figure in the Zulu nation. Within the Jacob Zuma camp, individuals set about instigating the so-called protests, riots and looting that you have seen in the media. To a significant extent they leveraged the problems of poverty and inequality in South Africa to achieve their ends. Very often in this country we have areas where many very poor people are resident adjacent to commercial complexes. This was an ideal combination to exploit. In addition to that there are the existing fissures along race lines that exist in our society which were also available to leverage. Audio files doing the rounds encouraged people to attack and destroy what are perceived to be white and white owned businesses. In the end though, many black businesspeople also suffered considerable losses.

The gameplan was to create a situation which would force the hand of the current government. Ideally, it would result in an overreaction by the security forces, with the result that many of the poor and vulnerable would be killed (which is what happened at Marikana a few years back). If that occurred, it would likely force the resignation or removal of Cyril Ramaphosa as president. Meaning the Jacob Zuma camp would have achieved their objective. This is one reason why the security forces have been so careful not to use excessive force in dealing with the riots and the looters.

While there is still a lot of instability in KwaZulu Natal and certain pockets in Gauteng, what is now starting to emerge quite clearly is that the gambit by the Jacob Zuma camp has failed. South African society of all walks has turned its face against this insurrection. In effect, an attempted coup has failed.

South Africans are a strange nation in many ways. They argue and fight amongst themselves but when pushed to the edge, they always pull together for the common good. This has happened again and again over the decades.

This has been perhaps a necessary test of our democracy and of the rule of law. Make no mistake but that South Africa has many very real challenges. But South Africa will pass through this and will put the locust years behind it.”
— Clem Sunter (a scenario planner and strategist whose influential ideas in the 1980s resulted in apartheid South Africa opting for the High Road of political settlement, rather than the Low Road of confrontation and civil war)

I’d like to think that will happen, but it won’t.

Traffic jam of looters’ cars and vans as they try to leave the looted store parking lot: