There is a real genocide happening in the world right now and it is largely ignored. There are also two bogus genocides getting massive attention. The real genocide is in Sudan where hundreds of thousands of poor black Africans are being systematically slaughtered because of their race.
There is a bogus “white genocide” in South Africa; President Trump is talking nonsense here. There is a bogus genocide in Gaza where Israelis are said to be committing genocide against Palestinians, which is also nonsense (but of a different kind).
Let me define genocide. I’ve looked up the UN definition and found it so wide and woolly as to be an insult to the victims of real genocide. Genocide must meet two conditions. First, the perpetrators must intend to kill members of a different race or tribe or nation because they are members of a different race or tribe or nation. Second, they must kill a sufficiently large number of victims. Here are some examples and non-examples.
The three greatest mass murderers of the 20th Century were, in descending order (the number of deaths they caused in brackets): Mao Zedong (65 million); Joseph Stalin (20 million); and Adolf Hitler (10 million). These figures exclude those killed in war (killing the enemy in war is lawful killing, not murder). The first two killed more people than Hitler but they cannot be accused of genocide by my definition, and he can. Hitler’s systematic extermination was the worst genocide I know of. His National Socialists (Nazis) killed Jews because they were Jews. They were very clear about this: there is a terrifying speech by Himmler ordering his troops to kill all Jews, including sweet little children, and explaining why it was necessary to do so. (Please look it up on the web if you haven’t done so.) Zedong and Stalin killed huge numbers of people for ideological differences, not racial differences. Both of them deliberately starved to death tens of millions of people to “achieve socialism”. Socialism and not racism was the reason they killed multitudes.
European conquest of the Americas and Australasia led to the near annihilation (total annihilation in the case of Tasmania) of the indigenous people there. Most of their deaths came from disease, but a good number came from actual murder, which I think justifies the term genocide. South Africa’s greatest killer of black people was King Shaka, and the descendants of the survivors in the tribes he slaughtered might accuse him of genocide. The Turkish killing of about one million Armenians in 1915 to 1917 was real genocide. So was the German genocide of about 75,000 Herero and Nama between 1904 and 1907. I don’t think King Leopold’s atrocities in the Congo Free State (1885 to 1908) amount to genocide; he murdered, tortured and mutilated large numbers of black people, but his intention was to enslave them and exploit them, not to exterminate them.
Slaughter of black people
In sub-Saharan Africa, since the first African country gained independence (Ghana, 1957), the racial killing has been overwhelmingly one black race against another. In Uganda, Idi Amin killed up to half a million black people of different tribes from his own, which I think does amount to genocide, or “partial genocide” at any rate. (In 1975, African leaders rewarded Idi Amin for his slaughter of black people by making him Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity.)
The systematic killings of about 300,000 Hutu by their Tutsi masters in Burundi was also partial genocide. The spontaneous frenzy of killings of Tutsis by Hutu in Rwanda in 1994 must also be counted as genocide, although of a very different kind. (In the first case, the oppressors killed the oppressed; in the second case, the oppressed killed the oppressors). It is very striking that in Africa there has been genocide of blacks by whites and of blacks by blacks, but never of whites by blacks – massacres, yes, but never genocide. And certainly not in South Africa.
I thought the meeting of Presidents Trump and Ramaphosa was a triumph for the latter. He ran rings around Trump. Trump was unbelievably badly prepared – he was too lazy to inform himself about South Africa – and Ramaphosa was well prepared. Taking along John Steenhuisen, Johan Rupert and the two golf players was a master stroke. Ramaphosa has been a disastrous president, passing the most radical, racial, job-destroying laws since 1994. He is more to blame than anybody else for the calamity South Africa finds herself in now, more to blame for the misery of most black people now. But he knows how to look after himself and his rich cronies. He is an accomplished liar and brilliant at presenting himself as a charming and avuncular man of reason and moderation.
Overseas reports said that Trump had “ambushed” Ramaphosa by showing the video of Julius Malema chanting “Kill the farmer! Kill the Boer! Shoot to kill!” in front of a delirious crowd of 100,000. But no doubt Ramaphosa guessed he would do so and was smoothly prepared for it. You see, he explained, Malema leads an opposition party and is no part of the government; yes, there were a large number of farm murders but these were criminal not political. Trump let him off the hook by saying that farmers’ lands had been confiscated after they had been killed, which is easily shown to be untrue.
On 26 September 2018, when over 1,700 farm murders were reported by the South African Police, President Ramaphosa told Bloomberg media, “There are no killings of farmers or white farmers in South Africa.” Why did Trump not accuse him of this outright lie, perhaps showing him the 2018 video where he told the lie in those same calm, reasonable tones. Trump did not do so because he had not bothered to find out about the lie. Ramaphosa lied because he calculated he could get away with it, and he did. Most of the US media are hopelessly woke and eager to believe anything a black leader says when he is criticised by whites. Trump is not woke; he is just lazy and irresponsible.
The worst victims of the ANC are poor blacks, not whites. White farmers are a vulnerable group; they are murdered in disproportionately large numbers, sometimes in the most gruesome ways after prolonged torture; and the nature of their murders does not at all suggest that the motives of the killers are entirely criminal. But there are other more vulnerable groups, such as coloured people living in the gang-ridden Cape Flats. Black children, not white children, are starving to death because of the ANC’s policies. Black victims of the ANC have got a better right to be called refugees than that absurd bunch of 49 whites who were welcomed so extravagantly in Washington. It was a sickening spectacle.
Surprising moment
An interesting, and to many surprising moment came when Trump was asked if he wished the ANC to withdraw its case of genocide against Israel at the ICJ. Trump didn’t seem interested. He just said “no” in a mild voice, and moved on. Julius Malema and many overheated commentators in South Africa had said that Trump’s actions against South Africa were purely because of the ANC’s case against Israel. Not so. This brings me to the bogus genocide in Gaza.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel from Gaza and murdered about 1,200 unarmed men, women, children and babies, mostly Israelis but including other nationalities. They also raped and tortured them. They took about 250 hostages back to Gaza. Hamas made its intentions crystal clear: it was not to liberate Palestinians; it was not to kill Israelis; it was to kill Jews. One of the Hamas terrorists boasted to his mother and father, “Be proud of me, I have killed ten Jews”. His parents were indeed very proud of him. I say again: Jews not Israelis.
Soon after the attack, delighted young white demonstrators at the Sidney Opera House chanted and held placards urging, “Gas the Jews!’ – a deliberate reference to the Nazis’ gas chambers for exterminating Jews. (I wonder if these privileged young Australians were proud of the genocide their ancestors committed against the Aborigines.) By my first requirement for genocide, the intention to kill people because of their race, the Hamas attack on 7 October qualifies as genocide. But it doesn’t qualify on the second. The numbers killed are too small.
On 8 October 2023, Israeli President Netanyahu should have resigned. He should have taken responsibility for the failure of Israel’s intelligence, as Lord Carrington of the UK resigned when his intelligence failed when Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982. Instead Netanyahu stayed on and then ordered the clumsy, stupid and excessive counter-attack against Hamas in Gaza. What should he have done? I don’t quite know but something like, I suggest, a very limited attack against the Hamas leaders and then a massive exercise in international diplomacy. Instead, much of Gaza has been ruined and a lot of people have been killed. Reprehensible but certainly not genocide. Israel was not trying to kill Palestinians. It warned the Gaza people ahead of time to get out of harm’s way. It wanted to attack Hamas, not the Palestinian people. If Israel had wanted to commit genocide she could have quite easily killed everybody in Gaza. She did not want to do so. She would have been horrified at the thought of doing so.
The ANC’s case against Israel at the ICJ is cowardly, immoral and dishonest. When it saw the mobs around the world chanting “Gas the Jews” and hurling curses against Israel, the ANC felt bound to join in. Some people said Iran paid the ANC to go to the ICJ. I’ve got no idea if this is true. They say the ANC was nearly bankrupt and then suddenly it had plenty of money and it came from Iran. Again I’ve got no information on this. But I’ve got plenty of information on the real genocide happening in Sudan, which the ANC ignores or even condones, cementing its appalling record on international human rights.
Since ancient times
Here is a simplified history of Sudan. What is now Sudan was populated by a black African civilisation since ancient times. From about the 15th Century, Arabs from Arabia moved in and occupied the country, conquering the black people. These were the times of a huge Arab and Persian slave trade; they captured black Africans, castrated the men, and sent them to the Middle East as slaves. A long and bloody civil war was fought between Sudan in the north, ruled by Arabs, and blacks in the south. In 2011, South Sudan became an independent country. Meanwhile, in the north there was horrible strife between the various factions, and a concerted campaign by the Arabs against the blacks that eventually turned into genocide. It became the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
By 2015, over 300,000 black Africans in the Darfur region had been slaughtered by Arabs. They were slaughtered because of their race. The Arabs were trying to exterminate the blacks. Thousands of black women were raped. In 2015, the Arab leader of the genocide against black people, Omar al-Bashir, visited South Africa expecting to be warmly welcomed by the ANC government, which then had Cyril Ramaphosa as Deputy President and Naledi Pandor as Minister of Science and Technology. He was indeed welcomed. The International Criminal Court asked the government to arrest al-Bashir. Naturally they did no such thing. They let him go free. I heard not one word of reproach from them about the genocide, nor one word of pity for the black victims.
Al-Bashir was overthrown. The civil war got far worse. The genocide against black people continued. The violence increased. The capital was ruined, there was bloodshed and destruction everywhere, famine affected vast sections of the population, 25 million are said to have been displaced. The worst killer in the civil war and genocide against black people now is Muhammad Dagalo, leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Dagalo was looking round the world, trying to get international support for his war and genocide. Naturally he tried President Ramaphosa and was warmly welcomed by him at his official residence in Pretoria in January 2024.
President Cyril Ramaphosa receives the leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Dagalo, of the Republic of Sudan at the Mahlamba Ndlopfu official residence in Pretoria. (Photos: GCIS) [https://www.flickr.com/photos/governmentza/53443754649]
Ramaphosa gave him a big friendly grin and called him “your Excellency”, even though his terrorist fighters had not yet taken over the country. It must have looked to the world as if Ramaphosa thoroughly approved of the genocide. So, it seemed, did his Foreign Minister Dr Naledi Pandor, who took no action against him at an international court, who spoke no word of criticism about his genocide of black people, who whispered not a word of sympathy for his pitiful, helpless, doomed black victims.
To be fair, the ANC is not alone in ignoring the genocide against black people in Sudan. Trump ignored it too; when he was listing some “bad things” in Africa, he didn’t mention it. Nor did the incoming Pope, who was quick to join the woke mob criticising Israel. Nor do any rich white Western protesters anywhere in the West who scream against Israel. European political leaders ignore it too. The black people of Sudan are all alone.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eu_echo/12100729363/in/photostream/]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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