Babel Inc

by Kerry Bolton

[87] See following chapter: ‘Apartheid: Lest We Forget.’

  [88] N. R. Mandela, Financial Mail, June 7, 1996.

  [89] D. McDougall, ‘White Farmers “Being Wiped Out,”’ Times (London), 28 March 2010, reproduced on AmericanRenaissance.com, http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2010/03/white_farmers_b.php.

  [90] Ibid.

  [91] D. Black, ‘An Aristocrat of Africa,’ Daily Mail & Guardian, 26 November 1999.

  [92] Hoogstraten nonetheless was ordered to pay the victim’s family £6,000,000 after the family bought a civil case in 2005.

  [93] Claire Davies, ‘Downfall of the Devil’s Dandy Landlord,’ Camden New Journal, 20 February 2003, http://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/archive/r200203_3.htm.

  [94] ‘Jane Kelly meets Nicholas van Hoogstraten,’ The Times (London), 1 August 2006.

  [95] B. Peta, ‘Van Hoogstraten to take over top bank and colliery in Zimbabwe,’ 14 July 2005, Democraticunderground.com, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1627138.

  [96] A. Meldrum, ‘Tycoon Flees Zimbabwe After Falling Foul of Mugabe,’ The Guardian, 9 June 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/09/zimbabwe.topstories3.

  [97] Peta, op. cit.

  [98] D. Ndlela, ‘Hwange Crisis—Gratifying Van Hoogstraten’s Rancour,’ AllAfrica.com, 17 August 2011, http://allafrica.com/stories/201108191237.html.

  [99] Oana, ‘Zimbabwe Dollar,’ http://www.oanda.com/currency/iso-currency-codes/ZWD.

  Apartheid: Lest We Forget (Or Never Knew)

  Again turning to Professor Noam Chomsky, in relation to his previously quoted views on capitalism as ‘anti-racist,’ and desiring to homogenise humanity as economic cogs, he also made some comments on the question of apartheid and its opponents.

  Question: Professor Chomsky, one issue where I’ve noticed that activists get kind of a good press in the United States—and it seems out of sync with what we usually see—is coverage of people protesting South African apartheid. I’m wondering if you have any ideas why coverage of that might be a bit more positive?

  Chomsky: I think you’re right: anti-apartheid movements in the United States do get a pretty good press—so when some mayor or something demonstrates against South Africa, there’s usually kind of a favorable report on it. And I think the main reason is that Western corporations themselves are basically anti-apartheid by this point, so that’s going to tend to be reflected in the media coverage.

  See, South Africa had been going through an internal economic transformation, from a society based on extractive industry to one based on industrial production—and that transformation has changed the nature of international interests in South Africa. As long as South Africa was primarily a society whose wealth was based on extracting diamonds, gold, uranium and so on, what you needed were large numbers of slaves, basically—people who would go down into the mines and work for a couple years, then die and be replaced by others. So you needed an illiterate, subdued population of workers, with families getting just enough income to produce more slaves, but not much more than that—then either you sent them down in to the mines, or you turned them into mercenaries in the army and so on to help them control others. That was traditional South Africa. But as South Africa changes to an industrial society, those needs also are beginning to change: now you don’t need slaves primarily, what you need is a docile, partially educated workforce.

  Something similar happened in the United States during our industrial revolution, actually. Mass public education was introduced in the United States in the nineteenth century as a way of training the largely rural workforce here for industry—in fact, the general population in the United States largely was opposed to public education, because it meant taking kids off the farms where they belonged and where they worked with their families, and forcing them into this setting in which they were basically trained to become industrial workers. That was a part of the whole transformation of American society in the nineteenth century, and that transformation is now taking place for the black population in South Africa—which means for about 85 percent of the people there. So the white South African elites, and international investors generally, now need a workforce that is trained for industry, not just slaves for the mines. And that means they need people who can follow instructions, and read diagrams, and be managers and foremen, things like that—so slavery is just not the right system for the country anymore, they need to move towards something more like what we have in the United States. And it’s pretty much for that reason that the West has become anti-apartheid, and that the media will therefore tend to give anti-apartheid movements a decent press.

  I mean, usually political demonstrations get very negative reporting in the United States, not matter what they’re for, because they show that people can do things, that they don’t just have to be passive and isolated—and you’re not supposed to have that lesson, you’re supposed to think that you’re powerless and can’t do anything. So any kind of public protest typically won’t be covered here, except maybe locally, and usually it will get very negative reporting; when it’s protest against the policies of a favored U.S. ally, it always will. But in the case of South Africa, the reporting is quite supportive: so if people go into corporate shareholder meetings and make a fuss about disinvestment, generally they’ll get a favorable press these days.

  Of course, it’s not that what they’re doing is wrong—what they’re doing is right. But they should understand that the reason they’re getting a reasonably favorable press right now is that, by this point, business regards them as its troops—corporate executives don’t really want apartheid in South Africa anymore. It’s like the reason that business was willing to support the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. American business had no use for Southern apartheid, in fact it was bad for business.[1]

  Chomsky pointed out that a socio-economic-political system that maintains ethnic lines to preserve traditions and identities, especially in a complex mosaic of races such as South Africa, was a barrier to the construction of a nebulous mass of producers and consumers. As a Leftist intellectual although he recognised that opposition to apartheid was serving globalisation, he still could not accept that apartheid was perhaps a more viable system for South Africa than any other. Hence, even as the anti-apartheid demonstrators were serving the interests of the globalist corporations, they were nonetheless ‘right’ (sic) to do so, regardless of the outcome being a ‘docile, partially educated workforce.’ Chomsky seems to have been overcome with ‘doublethink.’

  Chomsky also errs in describing the old mining-based economy as related to ‘traditional South Africa.’ This was never the case. The mainly Jewish mining magnates, especially the Oppenheimer dynasty, which has long owned much of the industry and the press in South Africa, are the implacable enemies of ‘traditional South Africa.’ As will be explained below, apartheid was founded in the aftermath of Afrikaner conflict with these mining interests, which sought to use cheap Black labour against the White miners. As with moneyed interests in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere, cheap labour was sought via immigration. ‘Traditional South Africa’ was fully cognisant of who their real enemies within were.

  In 1962 Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa and generally recognised as the ‘architect of apartheid,’ stated of these anti-Afrikaner forces in a speech before Parliament:

  The directors, when they meet, hold private discussions. In the case of such a powerful body there is also a central body which lays down basic policy. The influence of that central body, to say the least, must be great in our economic life. Nobody knows, however, what they discuss there. In the course of his speeches, Mr. Oppenheimer, the leader, makes political statements; he discusses political policy, he tries to exercise politi
cal influence. He even supports a political party. . . . In other words he has political aims; he wants to steer things in a certain direction. He can secretly cause a great many things to happen. In other words, he can pull strings. With all that money power and with his powerful machine which is spread over the whole country, he can, if he so chooses, exercise enormous interference against the Government and against the state.[2]

  The Oppenheimer dynasty was the Nationalist Party’s primary opponent; it was and is the ‘South African Establishment,’ which has always been the implacable enemy of Afrikanerdom.

  Chomsky also errs in believing that Leftist protest movements show that ‘the people’ can ‘do something.’ As with the anti-apartheid movement, other Leftist and liberal causes, such as feminism, psychedelia, and the New Left, have generally served business interests and have often received CIA funding to move the ‘centre’ of society leftward under the guise of ‘progress.’[3]

  Anglo-Boer War Justified by ‘Uitlander Rights’

  It is of note that the distinctly non-Afrikaner capitalists who coveted the gold of the Transvaal Republic attempted to seize control on the pretext of defending the rights of the Uitlanders (non-Afrikaners) who then outnumbered the Afrikaners in their own land. The Republic denied these Uitlanders, who had no attachment or loyalty to the Boer Republic beyond making money, the right to vote, in order to try to preserve the Boer heritage. The British economist John A. Hobson (after a three month investigation) commented that there was a strong prima facie case for the view that the franchise was entirely a sham grievance. He noted that a ‘larger number of non-British Outlanders [were] mostly Russian, Polish and German Jews, with roving propensities and no strongly rooted attachment to an old country.’[4] Hobson wrote further:

  We are fighting in order to place a small international oligarchy of mine-owners and speculators in power at Pretoria. Englishmen will surely do well to recognize that the economic and political destinies of South Africa are, and seem likely to remain, in the hands of men most of whom are foreigners by origin, whose trade is finance, and whose trade interests are not chiefly British.[5]

  The initial attempt to overthrow the Afrikaner Republic was the Jameson Raid of 600 soldiers who, in 1895, planned to support an Uitlander uprising. The uprising did not eventuate and the soldiers were captured.[6] While the Jameson Raid was abortive, the contrived issue of Uitlander voting rights was used as a pretext for the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). The financial interests that were using the British Empire were determined to subjugate the Afrikaners on the pretext of defending the Uitlanders. Transvaal President Kruger had already offered to lower the residency requirement for voting down to a mere five years, but the position of British officialdom was intransigent.[7]

  What is of relevance is that the cosmopolitan money-grabbers who coveted the gold of the Transvaal used a contrived issue of what would today be called ‘human rights’ and ‘majority rights’ to justify attacking the Afrikaners. Decades later, after the Afrikaners had gained their independence and sought to maintain their identity through apartheid, the same type of rhetoric was used, this time not in the name of the Uitlanders but in the name of ‘Black majority rule.’

  A similar situation can be seen in the globalist war to dislodge the Serbs from mineral rich Kosovo, in the name of assisting the Kosovo Albanians against Serb ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Up until that time, it was the Albanian drug-running gangsters of the Kosovo Liberation Army who had undertaken attacks on the Serb community in Kosovo. In the globalist war against Iraq the claim was that the Kurd minority had to be saved from ‘ethnic cleansing.’ In all cases—South Africa, Serbia, Iraq—the globalist grab for wealth was involved.

  ‘White Workers of the World Unite for a White South Africa’

  How many of those who were committed to the dispossession of the Afrikaner ‘exploiters’ have heard of the epochal 1922 revolt on the Rand? This Afrikaner revolt against the mining interests was the catalyst for the victory of a Nationalist-Labour alliance that inaugurated the first steps towards apartheid.

  In late 1921 the Chamber of Mines announced that 25 semi-skilled job levels reserved for Whites would be given to Blacks, and that there would be thousands of White redundancies. At the same time coal mine owners announced wage cuts. The Mineworkers Union called a general strike. While the Communist Party was involved, the main influences were the Afrikaner Mynwerkersbond; mostly former Boer farmers and war veterans who had been left destitute by the British scorched earth policy during the Anglo-Boer War, and allied Labour Party supporters. When the mineworkers raised their banners proclaiming ‘Keep South Africa White’ and ‘White Workers of the World Unite for a White South Africa,’ the Communists were in no position to object. The coal miners, gold miners, engineers, and power workers on the Rand voted to strike and had the backing of both the Labour Party and the National Party. Prime Minister Jan Smuts urged the Chamber of Mines to negotiate, but they refused, and instead arrogantly announced a new labour ratio of 2 Whites to 21 Blacks, meaning many more redundancies. The Labour Party-backed South African Industrial Federation created a ‘strike commando’ to resist Black scab labour, although resisting calls for a General Strike. Smuts caved in to the demands of the monopolists and ordered the miners back to work. In response, the Miner Councils of Action deployed commandos throughout the Rand. Smuts responded with force and three Whites were killed by police at Boksburg. The National Party demanded a Parliamentary enquiry. The South African Industrial Federation wanted to negotiate but the Chamber refused. Only then was a general strike proclaimed. Armed commandos seized Johannesburg and proclaimed a ‘White Workers’ Republic.’ Mine officials, bosses, and Black scabs were executed. Government forces attacked and the air force levelled the miners’ quarters. On 14 March 1922 the strike headquarters was overtaken and the strike leaders were killed. The last resistance was put down on 16 March.[8]

  Such was the outrage against Smuts that in 1924 the Afrikaner Nationalists, in alliance with the Labour Party, assumed office and, starting with labour laws, the foundations of apartheid were laid.[9]

  Plutocratic Crusade Against Afrikaners

  As in 1922, the primary enemy of the Afrikaner was the Oppenheimer mining, industrial, and media empire, which includes the Anglo-American and De Beers corporations. There was no more persistent enemy of the Afrikaner than the Oppenheimer dynasty, routinely referred to in the early Afrikaner Nationalist press as the ‘Hoggenheimers.’[10]

  The labour movement in Britain was very aware of the actual forces that were trying to control South Africa—to the detriment of the Afrikaners. Justice, the newspaper of the Social Democratic Federation of H. M. Hyndman, stated in 1896 that of the foreign interests, ‘Beit, Barnato and their fellow-Jews [aimed for] an Anglo-Hebraic Empire in Africa stretching from Egypt to Cape Colony.’[11] No member of the House of Commons spoke out more vigorously against the war than John Burns, Labour Member of Parliament for Battersea, who stated in the House in 1900 that, ‘Wherever we examine, there is the financial Jew operating, directing, inspiring the agencies that have led to this war.’ The British Trades Union Congress even passed a resolution in September 1900 condemning the Anglo-Boer war as designed ‘to secure the gold fields of South Africa for cosmopolitan Jews, most of whom had no patriotism and no country.’[12] As in Australia, the labour movement was acutely aware that cosmopolitan finance, whether one calls it Jewish or not, has ‘no patriotism and no country.’ Again, one might be struck by the awareness of the labour movement in identifying capitalism as intrinsically anti-national, unlike today’s labour movement that is itself anti-national.

  Labour Leader, organ of the Independent Labour Party, described the character of what had become of imperialism as being ‘run by half a dozen financial houses, many of them Jewish, to whom politics is a counter in the game of buying and selling securities.’[13] We might see here a gulf between th
e Empire that had been built by merchant-warriors and privateers such as Robert Clive of India and Sir Francis Drake, and the conniving new lords of the empire, who run operations from counting houses and city mansions.

  Oppenheimer

  The head of the Oppenheimer dynasty during most of the apartheid era was Harry F. Oppenheimer. He became a Member of Parliament for the United Party when that party was the main opposition to the Nationalists. When anti-Nationalist veterans founded the militant Torch Commando in 1950, Oppenheimer provided the funding.[14] When the Progressive Party was formed by a breakaway from the United Party in 1959, Oppenheimer became its financial patron. When the Progressives first contested the Coloured seats in 1965, he funded all the campaigns then and subsequently, with 40,000 Rand annually. In 1966 he funded the Progressive general election campaign with 50,000 Rand.[15]

  Something of Oppenheimer’s motives can be discerned from his statement on the formation of the liberal think tank, the South Africa Foundation, in 1960:

  In effect the advent of the South Africa Foundation reflects the return of big business to active politics. Picture the industrial revolution that will take place in Africa if the Black Man’s economic fetters are struck from him! Think of the millions of skilled men who will enter the labour market. Think of the vast new consuming public! I think I can claim the main credit for this exciting vision of the new Africa, yet all that I have done really is to allow myself to be guided by the best interests of Anglo-American.[16]