Wouldn’t it be the supreme tragedy if South African blacks might ponder at some future date, like the animals of Jones’ Manor (George Orwell’s Animal Farm), whether they were better off under apartheid?
Moral crusaders have the habit of heading off to their next crusade without bothering to see whether anything went wrong on their last one. During the ’80s, TransAfrica, NAACP, Black Congressional Caucus, Hollywood glitterati, college students, and other groups held massive protests on college campuses and at the South African Embassy, built shanty towns, and called for disinvestment and sanctions against South Africa for its racist apartheid system.
There’s no longer apartheid and there’s black rule in South Africa, but what’s the story there now? Andrew Kenny writes about it in his article, “Black People Aren’t Animals.” The article appears in the December 15 issue of the British magazine The Spectator, the world’s oldest continuously published English language magazine (est. 1838). Each South African day sees an average of 59 murders, 145 rapes and 752 serious assaults out of its 42 million population. The new crime is the rape of babies; some AIDS-infected African men believe that having sex with a virgin is a cure. Twelve percent of South Africa’s population is HIV-positive, but President Mbeki says that HIV cannot cause AIDS.