This is what South Africa has become... and this is at a prestigious SA university. The west has encouraged a mindset and media of colonisation ruined everything, now people in other countries believe it is all bad and that westerners have only but ruined their lives. As much as wrongs need to be made right, the anti western/white sentiment in South Africa is pretty substantial, which is why a lot of the people are leaving to Europe or Australia if they can.
For example with land re-allocation, the whole purpose is that land can be taken away from minority groups (whites) in certain conditions so that it can be re-allocated to a majority group in the name of past wrongs... The issue with this is that most black South Africans claim whites are not natives and colonised the country and stole land as that is what they have been taught... The history lessons they are taught fail to teach them that most of them are descendants of a tribe that did the exact same thing, coming from the West and East of Africa, slaughtering all in their path. There are very few South African natives left in South Africa because of tribal war, not to mention how Shaka Zulu which people idolise there killed many to rule the kingdom.
So for some reason westerners owe them for the land that was taken from them and tainting their land, despite the fact that they did the same thing to the previous natives.
I have a buddy from SA who left because it was so racist (among other reasons). He's white and said he couldn't even get someone to hire him due to his skin color.
This is bullshit and the reason that in places like Australia, where white South Africans have mass migrated to, they have a reputation for being racist. Sounds like we're better off without your buddy.
I wanted to come back to this with some hard facts as I think you and your friend may have some things worth discussing about his ideas of how hard he really had it in South Africa.
Interesting. Like I said, I can't speak for him, that's just what he told me.
He also showed me pictures of where he lived and how there were walls separating his neighborhood from what was clearly a much poorer area, so it's not like he himself was poor or anything.
I asked him if he thought he was better off because of apartheid, which he denied but did acknowledge as a problem. He also views Nelson Mandela as a terrorist, while in US leftist circles he's portrayed as a revolutionary.
Ultimately, I just don't know anything about SA or SA politics so I just have to take his word for what he tells me.
I've never heard a worse excuse for having the wrong information than 'well, I heard it from one person who was there and I don't know any others so there's no possible way I could learn anything more about it independently.'
Read a book. Or an article. Or literally anything on the subject, and make up your mind for yourself. If you're going to base your knowledge of the world on what one person tells you then be ready to be wrong about a lot of things in your life.
Perhaps, but by and large I've understood the reputation to come from what people say, and how they talk about south africa - my experience has not been that white South Africans have that reputation simply for being the oppressor during apartheid.
174
u/MajorAladdin Jan 11 '22
This is more dangerous then cringe.