Re: [OT] Documentary on South African farm murders

On 2025-05-25 3:24 AM, shawn wrote:

On Sat, 24 May 2025 23:28:36 -0400, Rhino
<no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
 

On 2025-05-24 10:22 PM, moviePig wrote:

On 5/24/2025 9:57 PM, Rhino wrote:

I just watched a very powerful documentary about the South African
farm murders that have aroused a flurry of controversy in the legacy
media in the US lately. Frankly, I'm surprised YouTube allowed it,
knowing how squeamish they are about violence. You are warned that
there will be horrific details about what criminals have done to
whites AND blacks in these farm attacks.
>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjBu6VZWE7k [68 minutes]
>
This is not a new documentary - it was made in 2018 - but it got the
journalist in serious trouble with the South African authorities when
she tried to leave, as she recounts in the closing minutes of the film.
>
This film will go a long way to demonstrating that this is not a new
problem: farmers and their employees have been getting tortured,
murdered, raped and killed for years now. It just hasn't crossed the
radar of most Westerners because our media follow other stories. (I
also suspect they secretly wanted the world to believe that South
Africans all lived happily ever after when apartheid ended and didn't
want to undermine that narrative.)

>
Has the end of a civil strife ever precipitated a 'happily ever after'?

>
Philosophical posturing aside, how many stories have YOU heard in our
legacy media about South Africa since apartheid ended? Why do you
suppose that is?

 Legacy media? Not many because it's not a concern to the daily lives
of their viewers and that is all that really matters to them. I did
know about as it was brought up over the years in other media like on
the social platforms. Not that it ever got enough attention to make a
difference but it wasn't unmentioned.

Exactly.
Knowing that the selection of news stories is based primarily on "if it bleeds, it leads", it would be perfectly understandable if the average news consumer who wasn't hearing about South Africa and its problems, then assumed things must be going swimmingly, otherwise the problems would be in the news. Yet we almost never got news from South Africa even though some pretty dire things were going on.
I think it's reasonable to assume that the legacy media was quite aware of what was going on in South Africa but worried that reporting on it might play into what they might call "racist tropes", like the idea that once blacks are in charge of a country, it inevitably becomes a shit hole. That, of course, might give "fuel" to the idea that blacks *here* are a major problem and start to unravel the progress made since the Civil Rights era.
Now, though, the idea that South Africa was a multi-racial success story is revealed to be a lie. The legacy media are AGAIN faced with yet more anger from a public that feels betrayed by their lies of omission, just as they feel betrayed by media efforts to cover up Biden's dubious mental capacity.
The weird thing is that the documentaries I've seen indicate that South Africa was actually working quite well in the 10 or 15 years after apartheid ended; it was only with the election of the third post-apartheid president, Jacob Zuma, that the wheels began to come off. Zuma ushered in an era of massive corruption and the destruction of the country's institutions by replacing competent people with cronies who were kicking back massive sums to Zuma and his inner circle.
If the media had actually reported any of this, it should have become clear that black regimes are not inevitably corrupt since things were on an upswing under the first two black presidents. Instead, the problems begin when crooks like Zuma get elected and might well be reversed if different, more ethical leaders are chosen. I think Ramaphosa was felt to be more in this vein than Zuma but, so far, he has not done a stellar job by any standard and actually lost the ANC majority in parliament for the first time since the end of apartheid.
It's going to be interesting to see how the ANC reacts to the massive setback they experienced at Trump's hands. Will they confront their problems and clean up their act or will they react with anger and/or denial and ramp up the repressions of whites? The media are clearly making every effort to nitpick every slight inaccuracy in Trump's presentation to make this all seem like a "nothing-burger" while utterly failing to disprove the basic contention that South Africa is massively racist against whites (and Indians and Coloured (mixed race) people.
--
Rhino