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Jan. 26, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:09:49
Life and Death in South Africa... Freedomain Call In
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Good morning, everybody.
It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom, Maine, the 24th of January 2021.
I hope you are doing well.
I hope you are staying safe and sane and rational and courageous and smart in these troubled, troubling, yet not entirely disastrous times.
I'll get into that. I'll do another show later today, sort of sharing my thoughts about the current scene.
But we're going to turn to a country I've talked about fairly extensively over the course of the show.
A country that I visited twice, that my father lived and worked in for most of his career.
I am, of course, talking about South Africa.
And we're going to talk to a farmer.
From South Africa and the challenges that he's facing in the world that is down there.
So thank you for taking the time this morning or this afternoon or evening.
So the listener writes, Hi, Steph.
I am a farmer in South Africa and I am at my wit's end.
I don't know if you can help me, but you seem to help so many others on your show.
I've always been the sheepdog keeping everyone around me safe, the type of guy that never got stressed, that could keep a level head in any situation, be it putting out a fire when my neighbor's house burnt down, to swimming out to saving some schoolgirl rowers when a squall came up and they couldn't get back to shore.
I've been held hostage three times in foreign countries, and all this I handled with minimal stress.
The last few years I finally got to achieve my dream of farming, providing healthy food to my community, while restoring degraded land.
About two and a half years ago now, some political parties started pushing the expropriation without compensation narrative pretty hard, and since then my farm has been hit sixteen times.
Equipment and livestock stolen, my whole cattle herd slaughtered, even the young calves that I had raised all by myself over the past five years.
These were like my children.
My fences are also cut almost on a weekly basis.
After that, I took a big hit mentally.
I suffered panic attacks.
Often when I go to bed, I wonder if I'll get killed to my sleep or be woken up by someone coming in to torture me first.
One day last year I was mowing fire-breaks in preparation for our fire season, but my tractor stalled and I could not start it.
Something that before would be a minor in mechanical difficulty sent me into shock.
I barely knew where I was, battling to breathe and bawling with tears.
Since then I have sought therapy, as you suggest, in your shows.
I had all but fully recovered and was focusing on immigration plans.
It looks like I'll be in the UK taking up a job there around March if COVID doesn't close the borders again.
So I thought the worst was behind me.
Well, this evening one of my neighbouring farms was attacked and three of the residents killed.
I now am back where I was before, like I'm in a fog with a gorilla on my chest.
I don't know what I'm hoping for.
Maybe just an encouraging word or maybe just for someone somewhere else in the world to know my story if I'm next on the list of farmers to be killed.
Thank you for trying to bring rationality to this increasingly crazy world.
God knows we need it here.
And thank you for all you do.
Your shows have helped me a lot to see and avoid some potentially terrible relationships.
I'm very sorry to hear about all of this.
I obviously can't say that I'm terribly shocked, but why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your history and where your heart and mind is at right now?
Yeah, well, I grew up in the suburbs.
I don't come from a farming family or anything, but I was always interested in nature and raising good food in it.
I worked in engineering before coming into farming and worked all around the world doing industrial automation and that's where I was held hostage in foreign countries.
I got the opportunity to start farming and I grew my farm from Small spot of land, four square meters, growing tomatoes, and reinvested the money I made from that over and over again, getting into chickens and then into cattle.
So that's the idea of the whites that stole land and stuff.
I definitely worked for everything I built up.
Yeah, no, it's basically all been taken from me.
I'm still in the area but I can't farm anymore.
I was actually making, I was basically losing money so I've had to stop farming because there's no point in buying more livestock in that when they just keep on getting stolen and slaughtered.
I was planning to immigrate, and I had a job offer in the States and in England, but the US has now closed its immigration because of COVID, and the UK job now is looking a bit precarious now too, also with the borders being closed with COVID. So, kind of stuck at the moment, yeah.
How long have you been farming as a whole, and what's sort of the general trajectory of your farm experience been?
I mean, I assume it started off better than it is now, so what's the story of that?
Yeah, so about seven years total farming now.
So it started off very small scale, just like a market garden, and then I grew that to where I could afford to lease a farm and then building that up to the point where I was about a year ago,
two years ago when all this started and then I'm down to how I do bees as well and that's all I'm still doing to honey production.
And as far as the arc of safety goes, you say sort of seven years ago, has it escalated really since this expropriation stuff and the propaganda that whites just invaded and stole all of these wonderfully complex farms?
From the blacks in South Africa, which of course is not true, but is it that narrative that has escalated over the last couple of years, or when did you really start to notice the vandalism and sabotage increasing?
Yeah, the narrative has been going on for probably, I don't know, 20-odd years now, but it wasn't very prevalent in the area where I am.
When I started, when I moved to this area about seven years ago, it was probably one of the safest areas in the region.
The guy that I learned my beekeeping from, my mentor, he's in a different province, and there, seven years ago, they were starting to have, they had basically a murder in their road at least once a week.
Down here, in my province, it was almost unheard of.
But in the last probably three or four years, it's got quite bad.
Well, I assume that the people who want to drive out the whites and take their land, or the farmers, you could say, and black farmers also get targeted, I don't think, quite as much.
But I assume that they're simply targeting...
The areas that are less violent with increased violence, it's going to be a shifting kind of assault, if that makes sense?
It seems to be all over now.
I think there were certain areas that were a bit more political.
My province is not a very politically charged province, but now it's spread to the whole country.
Right. And what happened to your neighbour?
I was out.
I do archery as a sport.
I was out at practice.
I got a message on our area WhatsApp group that there was an attack in progress.
And a few minutes later, I got another message saying not to come because our police are Basically non-existent.
Our local police station has, I think, 12 offices over three shifts.
And they cover an area.
I don't know what the actual physical area is, but there's over a million people in that area.
So yeah, four offices on a shift to cover over a million inhabitants.
So we've got our, we've sort of set up a community watch kind of thing.
And so I got the message and was about to head out there to try help them.
And I got a message about five minutes later saying not to come on the group.
And so I messaged the guy back privately that had sent that.
And he said that the three residents were dead.
They had been chopped up with machetes, and that was apparently over bonuses, was what they said.
The farmer couldn't pay bonuses this year because of COVID. They had still received their full pay and everything, just that they couldn't get Christmas bonuses.
And so the workers had gone home.
Got the machetes and come back and chop them up.
Do you know if there was the attendant torture that often accompanies these kinds of attacks?
or was it a straight-up massacre?
Well, being chopped up with a machete is pretty torturous.
It's not just like they were just Cut down in one or two swings, they were chopped into pieces.
Was it a family or mostly just men?
No, it was the farmer, his wife and his father-in-law, mother-in-law that stayed with them on the property.
And I assume that it's not exactly like the killers are about to be hauled into justice, even though, of course, we assume, given that it's the farmers' workers, there's some idea at least of who they were or who they might have been.
Actually, as bad as it sounds, it's one of the better cases.
Our K-9 unit did actually manage to track them down, and they were arrested.
I'm not sure of the outcome of the...
Well, I presume it hasn't gone to court yet.
So I don't know what the outcome of that is.
But it's the only attack that I know of where anyone was actually arrested.
Okay. Okay.
I see. I see. We've had a couple of others a few months previous.
The whole family is about five, six people.
They were beaten to the point where I couldn't actually identify them.
They had so many stitches and swelling and the sun was shot in the neck.
Luckily they all survived, but there were no arrests made in that one.
Earlier on in our last year, there was a woman and two kids.
People came into the house, pepper sprayed them.
Luckily, she was able to get herself and the two kids in to lock themselves in the bedroom and put a message out on the group.
And that one, luckily, within 5-10 minutes, we had 15 farmers there and we managed to scare them off.
Again, we didn't manage to catch them.
But that could have been a whole lot worse if the community hadn't got there.
Well, and it's pretty horrifying to think that this is what passes for luck these days, right?
Mm-hmm. Right.
So, when did the sabotages and other forms of destruction begin to escalate on your farm?
It was probably about a year after I moved to that piece of land.
So, yeah, about two years ago now.
Was it a slow escalation or was it like a light being turned on, so to speak?
There was a...
It started off just like small bits and a brush cutter yeah and a ladder there and then then escalated to livestock and then eventually like the big stock and that as well started off with just a couple of chickens or whatever and then then the cattle and then whole whole pens of chickens and that was in the The letter or my email to you,
it was, what, 16 at that stage, eventually ended up being 22 robberies in one year.
And every week, at least once a week, the fence was getting cut.
Well, and of course, knowing that people are roaming around your property with significantly ill intent is terrifying.
I mean, it's really... The stuff you talked about before, terrifying though it was, it was what they used to call one and done.
It's one thing and then you're done.
Whereas this, of course, is chronic and escalating, so it's going in the wrong direction.
That, I think, is probably why your fight-or-flight mechanism is not able to calm down because the fight-or-flight mechanism is supposed to calm down when the threat has passed.
You either escape the lion or you don't.
But you don't have the lion hang around for another six months or a year or five years straight in your house.
Then it's a little tough to...
Well, it's impossible really to wind yourself down because you're unconscious.
Your autonomous nervous system is signaling to you and rightly so.
I would imagine that you're in a situation of significant threat, danger.
And you can't really ramp that stuff down in yourself until...
The danger has passed, and given that the danger A is not passing and B seems to be escalating, I don't know that a therapist can talk you out of a kind of anxiety that is kind of there to save your life, perhaps, right? Yeah.
With the therapy, I got to talk about it, which was a little bit of a relief.
But I think one of the big things that helped me at that stage was that we actually caught two guys stealing some of the chicken feeders and stuff on the farm, and they were arrested.
And it was kind of like I could put a face to it, you know, because there's people roaming the property all the time at night.
You just see the effects that they were there.
It's like a lion hiding in the grass.
If you can actually see them, you can defend yourself.
When you can't see the threat, it just makes it a lot more scary.
It's entirely possible that they're probing for defenses.
They're probing to see what kind of defenses you have.
That kind of probing is part of the, perhaps, the escalation that you might be sensing.
Yeah. Right, right.
And in the region that you're in, you say sort of the million people or so, do you, I mean, you must know of other attacks or predations of this kind?
Yeah, I would say there was...
Three fairly close to me in the last six months or so.
And then more in a 100k radius, quite a lot more.
And what are your capacities for self-defense in these situations?
Are people often prosecuted for defending themselves or is it something that's recognized as a right or how does that play?
No, if you defend yourself, unless you can prove that you were under direct threat, you would get charged.
Sorry, I'm getting a bit flustered here.
Even if there's someone in the house with a weapon, unless you can prove that they were actually Coming towards you with it and an immediate threat, you're not allowed to defend yourself.
And how on earth are you supposed to prove that?
That's a problem, yeah.
Right, so you're kind of caged in almost by your own fences, and then your right of self-defense is...
Largely stripped from you.
In fact, it's not even like you don't have a right of self-defense.
It's that your right of self-defense is almost turned against you, often.
And so I don't see any...
Sorry, go ahead. Often, these breakers, they will break in and take firearms and stuff.
Our police station was actually...
There was an attempted robbery at the police station.
A group of people that have been known to be attacking farms.
Tried to rob the police station of firearms.
The only plus to that attack was that the guy who was on duty at that stage was out back smoking and he heard the thing inside and got a drop on him because he wasn't where he was supposed to be basically.
Also, obviously, we don't have any Second Amendment or whatever, so it's very difficult to get firearms, and that's defending yourself when you're alone, especially against a group of heavily armed people.
It's not easy.
As far as defenses, I sleep with a knife and an axe next to my bed, and that's basically all I've got.
I imagine that the sleep is rather in quotes these days, listening for sounds and so on, right?
Yeah, I don't sleep very soundly.
Any sound, and I'll be up and looking around for it.
Even if I have friends stay over, which is not very common anymore because I feel responsible if anything had happened to them, so I don't generally have people out to my home anymore.
And if there's any movement in the house, you hear a rat or something, and I'll be up for the next three hours or so just lying there listening for anything else.
Right. And when did you decide to leave After my cattle were slaughtered, it was quite visceral.
I raised all those cattle myself.
From the calves, three-month-old calves, they probably only weighed 20 kilos, 25 kilos.
There wouldn't even have been any meat on them, really.
So it was just like a senseless slaughter.
And we've We managed to track down where they had herded them away and we found the skins in the heads where they had slaughtered them.
And that kind of just sort of made me crack there.
And these were, as I said, I raised them by hand.
I had no assistance on the farm.
I did everything myself. So when they were sick and that, I don't know, like a cow, if they If they're sick and they can't stand up for more than about 24 hours, the cow will never stand again.
Because their weight, they'll cut off the blood circulation and they'll lose the use of their limbs.
So I'd be like sleeping out in the field, sort of flipping them over and it's like a half ton animal, flip it over every hour or two to keep circulation and that.
So I was very, very connected with my animals and like a family member was killed.
Oh yeah, no, I mean farmers can be closer to their animals than pet owners with their pets, without a doubt.
Because they do require so much maintenance and care and you often will birth them yourself, elbow deep.
heifer and no it's it's a very very i mean it's an intimate relationship sounds like a corny silly joke but uh yeah farmers are very i mean because you know you think oh they're just raised for milk and meat and so on it's like but and maybe that's more true of factory farming but i certainly know that the smaller time farmers are pretty close to their animals and uh try to give them a good life and all of that and so yeah when when they're killed it's not just like
I mean, if you love your car and somebody steals your car and you find it in pieces, that's pretty bad, but it's not a live animal that you've actually had a relationship with.
So yeah, no, it's a very different kind of thing for farmers and their livestock, especially the smaller farmers.
And so the story with...
Because if you're close to leaving...
And, you know, I obviously, as you know, in this show, I never tell people what to do.
There's no point in that.
But I certainly can say that if I were in your shoes, I'd be clawing to get out.
I don't see a future in this scenario.
Or if it is a future, it's probably not a very long one.
And so what's going on?
We said the job in England is looking a little shaky.
Is it COVID-related or is it something else?
Yeah. Yeah, well, there were two issues.
The first company, my stepfather works here, and they said that because there's a family connection that they wouldn't allow that one.
We found another company, another job, which was a possibility, but they don't have as much work at the moment because of COVID. And so they're saying that they might not be able to afford to take on another person now.
So, yeah, we just, it's, where things were looking, a year ago, we're looking, you know, almost a certainty I was going to go within the next 12 to 18 months.
It's now, it's, I'm not sure.
It's kind of all up in the air at the moment.
Well, leaving can be tough.
It can be quite complicated. I mean, even pre-COVID, talking as I have to a number of people from South Africa, both on this show and in person, leaving is pretty tough.
It's quite complicated.
And especially, of course, if you're a farmer, it's not like people are lining up to take that farm off your hands for a fair price, right?
A lot of people want to get into that line of work at the moment.
So... Thankfully, I was just leasing the farm there, so I don't have that issue.
Yes, but even the money you've poured into maintenance, upkeep, livestock, improvements, machinery, and so on, right?
It's not like somebody is going to want to pay you back for all of that, I assume, right?
Yes. My family has been in this country for so many generations now that we don't have any Options of ancestral visas or anything to other countries.
We've got politicians and a lot of the population that say, you must go back to where you came from.
I came from here.
I was born here. My father was born here.
My grandfather was born here.
I don't know where I'm supposed to go back to you.
Well, this is what people don't usually understand because they hear a lot of propaganda.
They don't usually understand that whites have been in South Africa longer than whites have been in America.
And so if you have people who sailed over with the Mayflower and, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years later, they're told to go back where they came from, their descendants, it wouldn't really make a whole lot of sense.
But, you know, the whites in South Africa have always been portrayed as, you know, an invading force that displaced the black population, stole their land and so on, which, you know, you and I and I'm sure a good number of this audience know it's simply a false...
The Marxist narrative being, of course, that everybody who's successful has stolen from people who aren't successful.
South Africa was largely empty when the whites arrived because it was so difficult to farm and there wasn't enough game for the Bantu to live on, who were the blacks to the north.
After the land was settled and it was traded for and it was bought from the leaders of the local tribes, the Khoi and the San, where They were encountered but mostly the land was empty and it was fertilized and irrigated by the Dutch and the British 17th century onwards and it was created out of nothing for the most part,
largely empty land, very low farming potential, very low gain potential and it was transformed into a modern economy and during the process of it being transformed into a modern economy, The Bantu, the blacks from the north, generally fled black rule or corrupt rule from various colonial administrations and were desperate to get into South Africa,
even to the point where they would risk traversing the grasslands and being eaten by lions and other predators, they were desperate to get into South Africa.
And in many ways, they were welcomed, and they got access to modern food levels, modern levels of medicine and education and so on.
And there was, of course, the hope that it was all going to work out.
And we'll never know, of course, whether it could have worked out or not because given the differences between the blacks and the whites as a whole, there are going to be differences in outcome between the groups.
And whether that could have been talked about, discussed, remediated, we'll never know because, of course, the Marxists swoop in and say, ah, all the group differences arise from the evil white people stealing from the noble and virtuous black people.
And, you know, next thing you know, they stoke this kind of violence.
And unfortunately, we'll never know how well we could have gotten along because there are too many sophists in there stoking divisions and hatreds.
So, I'm sorry to take a real sprint through something you know very well, but is there any sort of major thing that I missed out on there?
No, it's very true.
Even down to the, you say, about developing, irrigating and stuff.
Even the piece of land that I was farming, you know, I couldn't afford fertile, well-developed land, so the farm I rented It was pretty degraded, eroding, poor soils.
And through my own management, in the two years that I was farming that land, I tripled the grazing capacity on it by proper management.
So even in modern times, we're still improving land and what would be considered unproductive land.
Some of the other farmers in the area told me I was wasting my time on that farm.
And by the time all this problem started, it was actually becoming quite profitable and that I was almost at a point where I could quit my day job and farm full-time.
Oh, so this was a hobby farm for you initially, right?
Yeah, well, I couldn't afford to do it full-time initially.
So I don't come from any wealth or anything.
So I needed a day job to To be able to feed myself while I started up the farm.
I couldn't afford to buy a farm or lease a farm that was good enough to support me straight out the bed.
So I was working 16-18 hours a day.
I get up at 4 o'clock in the morning, see to my chickens and cows.
Then go to work, work a full eight-hour day, come home, work again until sunset, make myself some dinner, and then I'd work on other projects, building brooders and my beehives and all that kind of infrastructure stuff at night until, I don't know, 10, 11, 12 o'clock at night.
Go to bed and start the whole thing again.
And then weekends, 16 hours on the farm for the weekends.
So yeah, it was two full-time jobs.
Have you talked to your therapist about workaholism at all?
I mean, don't get me wrong. I love a good fellow Protestant work ethic.
I'm down with that. Built the modern world, all kinds of cool stuff like that.
You know, I'm pushing 5,000 shows, so I know what it's like, you know, 10 books and audiobooks and all that.
So I know what it's like to work hard, but man, you've leveled up beyond even the stratosphere that I can see.
And what is the story with this?
Is this something you've done your whole life, this level of work?
Not to that extent.
But this was my passion.
I always wanted to farm.
And that was the only way I could afford to do it, is by working the day job to be able to reinvest the money from the farm back into the farm to get it up and running.
It's not cheap to buy livestock and put in infrastructure and buy implements.
So it probably wouldn't have carried on like that forever as soon as I could have gone full-time on it and that then it would have reduced to a sort of a normal thing once the infrastructure was in place.
I mean, you haven't mentioned anything about a wife and kids and I understand why you'd want to keep some of that information private but is that something you have or aim to have?
It's something I've always wanted.
I've always wanted my wife and children.
One of the reasons I like the idea of farming is that I could then be sort of working from home, that I could actually spend time with my kids when I eventually had them.
My father wasn't, he worked long hours and that, he worked shift and that, so I often didn't get to see him and I didn't want that for my kids.
So I thought farming You know, the kids can be there on the farm and playing around on the farm.
They can have more time to actually spend with them.
And teach them and pass along something of value to them.
Exactly, yeah. But yeah, at the moment, that's one of the reasons I decided to immigrate is because, well, to try to immigrate, Because at this point, I feel that as much as I like nothing in the world better than to have the kids and that I don't want them growing up in this environment.
Even at work now, I get told by my colleagues that I owe them because of my skin colour and stuff.
I don't want my kids growing up and Oh yeah, so just those who don't know, and of course fill me in wherever I go astray, but the black empowerment program in South Africa, even though blacks are by far the majority, in South Africa whites are still discriminated against when it comes to hiring policies.
So affirmative action is not based upon white majority status because whites are a minority now and are still heavily legally discriminated against when it comes to getting Work to the point where hundreds of thousands of whites are functionally unemployable and living in shanty towns and, you know, I guess they say, serves you white for Soweto, but that's a whole other story.
But yeah, so the affirmative action thing doesn't, you know, here in America, Eric Holder not too long ago said, oh, with regards to affirmative action, We've barely even begun!
And, you know, it's been in place for, what, 40, 50 years?
So, yeah, just that there's no illusion, just so there's people under any illusion that affirmative action is going to diminish when whites become a minority.
South Africa is, you know, pretty clear evidence that that's not what happens, and it makes it very hard to get a job as a white man, a white woman.
Even down to the point where now during COVID-19, It was stated categorically by government that white businesses weren't eligible for COVID relief.
So if you were a black business owner, you could get assistance from the government.
And if you're a white business owner, you've got nothing.
Well, and there's none of this self-identifier as a black business owner nonsense, right?
I mean, you've really got to show it pretty vividly.
No, that definitely doesn't cut at you.
Right, right. Now, with regards to where you are as a farmer, I mean, if you were going to...
You said March, which I thought maybe meant this March, but then you also said 12 to 18 months.
So the March thing for the job at the UK, was that this March or next March?
It's supposed to be...
The UK thing that only came through, well that offer only came through late last year, so it was supposed to be March this year.
And that's the one that's kind of uncertain, right?
Yeah. The one in the States, the specific visa thing that the company was applying for, They said that would take about 18 months to go through, but obviously that's all been scrapped now because of the COVID lockdown there.
Oh yeah, no, you're only going to be able to get into the US if you're part of a caravan from Guatemala these days, so yeah, no hard-working people with a resume need apply, right?
Yeah, I was thinking maybe with Biden in now that I need to book a flight to Mexico or something and take a walk up north.
Right, right. Seems the only way in at the moment.
Listen, you're a smart guy, so I'm not trying to solve any of your problems for you because I'm sure you've thought over this.
Just to sort of put my own mind at ease, though, with regards to the UK thing, is there a possibility of, oh, I'll work for free for six months or reduce salary or I'll just take commission so it doesn't cost you unless I make money for you?
Is there any negotiating options for their concerns with regards to the profitability of their firm under the COVID regime?
Yeah, the company itself, they don't really have an issue with, wouldn't have an issue with that.
But according to their visa regulations and that, they don't want people coming in that are going to sort of undercut the local market and that.
So their requirement is that the company has to pay you a certain minimum and it has to be at the going rate.
For the job that you're doing.
Right, okay. Yeah, I assumed that there was some regulation there that would keep you from being able to make those kinds of offers or have those kinds of opportunities.
The other issue, I looked at some other countries and that as well, and as far as farming and that goes, the jobs offers that I've got are both on the engineering side, which is where more of my experience is.
And on the farming side, like there was some thing a while back about Australia wanting farmers and that, but it came down to that they will accept you as a farmer, but they require you to have a degree.
And the reality is, I don't think I know a single farmer that has a degree in farming.
Right, right.
You know, it's kind of something that most guys have learned on the land, you know.
Well, it's like saying, well, there's no way when Steve Jobs was alive, there's no way people would hire him because he doesn't have a degree in software or hardware engineering.
Same thing with Bill Gates and I assume Steve Ballmer and these kinds of people.
So, yeah, the educational requirement is just a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense.
You know, when I was a...
A hiring manager at the software firm that I co-founded, I specifically preferred hobbyists to people with degrees because the people who could say, oh, yeah, I've been programming since I was 10 years old.
I love it. Those are the people who are really passionate about it.
The people who went to get degrees, maybe some of them are passionate, but the vast majority of them, well, this seems like a sensible profession and they don't have the same passion for it that the hobbyists do.
And I don't want to sort of diminish you by saying, oh, you're just a hobbyist, but it is a passion that you learned as an intelligent guy on the fly.
And that is something that's kind of impossible to replicate just with a piece of paper.
Yeah, I've spent thousands of hours studying it myself and reading a lot of books and researching online and doing my own trials and stuff.
So, yeah, I've taught myself.
I've probably spent more hours doing that than I spent actually when I was studying at Technicont.
Right. And as far as other...
Sorry, in terms of our employers in that day, a lot of them would be happy with us as, what you say, as hobbyists.
But it's the actual government, so they won't give you a visa without the qualification.
Yeah, and of course, there's a very strong case, in my opinion, to be made that the white farmers in particular, I think whites as a whole, but white farmers in South Africa fit the definition of refugees, right?
They're specifically target because of ethnic origins.
There is a campaign of legal discrimination against whites as a whole in South Africa.
There is ideological motives behind the attacks.
The attacks generally have a political aim of driving the white farmers off, so it's terrorism.
It's not just people coming to steal stuff.
There is a specific political agenda behind it that meshes with the government agenda of land expropriation, because theft is apparently just too short a word.
And so to my mind, yeah, there is specific terroristic targeting out of an ethnic group based upon ethnicity with political goals in mind.
And this is why I sort of asked about the torture, because You could understand from an evil standpoint, killing someone who's between you and a pot of gold, but leisurely torturing the farmers for some hours or half a day, which has certainly happened in the past, is an act of terrorizing and terrorism rather than simply greed for stuff.
And so I think that the white farmers in particular in South Africa would fit the definition of refugees by any reasonable standard.
But of course, nobody wants to talk about that, right?
Because certainly when I was younger, South Africa was the great evil with apartheid and so on.
And so now saying that all of the – and particularly true of the artists and the filmmakers and so on, I think Peter Gabriel with his warbling songs about oppression in South Africa and so on, I don't think people want to look back and check the rear view and say, hey, how's this experiment going?
What's the value of the rent?
What's the value of the real estate?
What's the economic freedom index?
How are the whites being treated?
People don't want to circle back.
If, of course, the whites in South Africa were classified as refugees, then gates would open to other countries, but there would be a huge PR problem for the leftist media as to what happened in South Africa after this self-righteous chest-thumping of the 80s and 90s.
About how it was going to be a rainbow paradise after apartheid.
And so, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, there's just a lot of political obstacles to what I think would be a just categorization of particularly white farmers as refugees.
Yeah, very true. I think the other reason that they also sort of got away with this is that a lot of the direct sort of hate and The incitement that's been going on is not coming directly from the ruling party,
but from Julius Malema and them in the EFF, which is a sort of breakaway party that broke off from the ruling party, the ANC. And while he still gets away with a lot, Kind of like, well, it's not the official government stance, it's just this other party, the third biggest political party in the country still.
And there was an incident about three or four months ago, where he got up at a rally and was singing a song.
He goes, call the fire brigade, we're going to burn them down.
And the next day, it was something like over 10,000 hectares of farmland was settled out.
They went out to grazing and sheds and everything.
And they said, no, but that wasn't an incitement.
He didn't specifically tell them to go burn it.
And it's like, but there seems a pretty good causal relationship there.
You know, they're trying to say that Trump incited the thing on the Capitol.
And I think there's a much better causal relationship between Singing Burn Them Down and the very next day, you know, over 10,000 hectares being set a lot.
Oh, well, this is like piercing the halo of Saint Nelson Mandela.
I did a whole presentation on this, which I can link to below.
This conversation just about, you know, singing Kill the Boer, which is Kill the Whites, and this terrorism that he engaged in and approved in Marxist history.
I mean, it's a radical Marxist violent guy and, of course, sainted by the leftist media.
And it's one of these situations where you realize, of course, you know this, of course, right?
But you're talking about the comparisons between Trump saying go and protest peacefully at the Capitol and then somehow he's inciting riots, whereas this guy saying burn down the farmland in the very next day, 10,000.
Acres or hectares are burnt down.
Well, this is because, of course, the laws of justice and morality do not operate like the laws of physics.
They are very, very selectively applied and usually used to advance the course of immorality rather than defend any just or virtuous cause itself.
And it's just one of these lessons that humanity seems to need relearning.
Sorry, go ahead. Yeah.
There was an incident where the farmland was burnt down.
They were singing that song about the fire brigade burn it down and they were also singing to kill the Boeh, which is actually in a court case they have sort of certified that Thinking that is considered hate speech, even though no charges have been brought against them.
But that rally where they were singing that was actually they were protesting a court case for two guys that stabbed a young farmer to death and hung him up on a pole so that everyone could see.
And they were protesting the court case against the farm murderers that had been caught.
Right, right. Yeah, because it's my tribe, right or wrong.
Yeah, I mean, that's the vast majority of the world.
It's my tribe, right or wrong. And the right or wrong doesn't really matter.
It's my tribe, right or wrong.
And, you know, whites as a whole have a universal approach or concept to ethics, which, you know, has certainly great value philosophically and culturally and civilizationally, but...
Unfortunately, when you live in a world where tribalism is the norm and you are a universalist, as I've said before, it's like playing a game of football where you pass to the other team but the other team only passes to themselves.
Well, you're not going to win.
It's just game theory at this point outside of universal ethics.
So, yeah, that's where things are.
Now, do you have any other options if the UK thing stalls out?
Do you have any options?
And I don't mean necessarily overseas, but in terms of turning in, and I know it's a very painful thing to talk about, but in terms of turning in your farm and finding maybe a more secure or gated community.
You said you had a day job, of course, as an engineer in the past to get something like that.
potentially again to sort of wait out an exit strategy.
Okay.
Okay, so are you still losing money on the farm as a whole?
No, during lockdown, but yeah, not like it was.
But you still need to have the day job to survive, right?
Yes. I mean, listen, there's passionate affairs and passionate relationships that men have that cause massive self-destruction.
You fall in love with some dangerous woman or you fall in lust with some dangerous woman.
And a lot of men kind of run off the cliff after their rolling testicles and take them on a ride.
From which there is no recovery.
And I just, you know, from the outside, hey, I respect farmers.
I think you guys are fantastic.
I love having food on the table, which, you know, it's not like my podcasting directly summons any crops to stuff down my gullet.
So I'm thrilled.
But if you still have to have your day job and you're significantly at risk, again, you're in a more secure farm, but it's a matter of time, right?
Help me understand this passion for growing things that has you stay out in these remote and pretty vulnerable locations.
I don't know.
It's difficult to explain.
I like, once you've...
I don't know, I just can't...
I find it difficult to be in the city now.
Like, I've got used to the quiet out there.
Like, if I go stay at a friend's place or whatever, there's just so much noise around in that.
And I suppose maybe I get used to it over time.
But, you know, if there's any noise, I'm up all night.
We are up all night anyway.
Yeah. It's just that the noise of the city isn't necessarily people with bachettis.
Yeah. I have been thinking about it lately.
I'm not trying to get between you and your passion.
Lord knows I know a little bit of something about dangerous passions, given that I do what I do for a living.
So I know a little bit about dangerous passions, for sure.
Also, I thought the job in the States and then in the UK and that were sort of short things and coming fairly close.
I figured there was no point in moving and then moving again and then trying to get a short-term lease and stuff.
Yeah, because you thought it might just be a couple of months, right?
Or whatever. Yeah.
Right, right.
But now that it's looking like it might fall through, I have been considering it more.
Right. I mean, it doesn't take...
A genius to know the general trajectory of South Africa is to return to its original state.
If you drive out all of the competent farmers, and what is it?
Each farm feeds like 15,000 people.
It's crazy how productive these farms are.
Of course, the majority of people in South Africa are not farmers and not even employed.
A significant proportion of the population is not even employed.
And the trajectory of South Africa is to return to its original state.
And the original state, by that I mean it actually will empty out, right?
Because the farmers will leave or die or stop being farmers.
And the food production will diminish considerably.
And there may not be a whole lot of international food aid in the time of COVID. I think it's actually probably to a worse state because at least back in the day there was a lot more game in it.
Whereas now that game doesn't exist.
Well, not in the size of herds that they used to, you know.
Well, what I mean by returning to its original state is empty.
Yeah. What I mean is that when the Bantus And the whites first came to this country.
Well, it wasn't a country at that point, but this region, there was a lot of game so that even though they didn't farm, they could feed themselves off of hunting.
And like most of the world, the wild game just doesn't exist anymore in an amount to support a population.
Yeah, that's a very good point, of course.
And how much the game comes back when the land empties out is obviously an open question.
It will certainly come back to some degree if it's still around at all.
But the largely empty land with the Koi and the San people, that seems to me likely how the trajectory is going to go.
I mean, we know for a simple fact that the expropriation of the land and of the farms generally goes through a political crony process where people just sell off the pieces and don't get involved in the farming, which is particularly challenging.
So, yeah, the farms are...
Going to lie fallow, the farms are going to...
And lying fallow doesn't mean that the soil gets enriched, right?
Because when the farms lie fallow, they're not being irrigated and the irrigation is the key in such a dry climate.
So they're going to return to non-farmable status, right?
Topsoil could blow away.
In a brutal climate like this, fallow land actually degrades the desert.
You actually need livestock on the land to be able to recycle those nutrients.
Oh, I get the fertilizer, right?
And the cow manure and all of that.
Yeah. So, and once the topsoil's gone, I mean, it's gone.
I mean, and the desert returns.
And as you say, because there isn't the game there, which used to, of course, at least keep some nutrients in the soil, it could, yeah, you're right, it could return to almost like the moon with oxygen, so to speak, right?
Pretty much that. Yeah, and that is the trajectory, and there doesn't seem to be anything in particular that would interfere with that trajectory.
And whether people will learn anything from that trajectory, I don't know, seems doubtful.
I mean, after looking at the 20th century and how much it cost people to hate particular groups, and now everyone's just doing it again in the 21st century, it just seems like people haven't learned that much.
So, you know, as the old saying goes, in life, the lessons increase in harshness until you either learn the lessons or you're dead.
And so, yeah, as far as the future goes with South Africa, and, you know, it sort of breaks my heart to say this, it is a beautiful country full of some wonderful people.
But yeah, the future is pretty mapped out.
By the way that things are going.
And there doesn't seem to be much pushback against the general Marxist narrative.
And there really isn't much to be done as far as this goes.
And I know that there's pushbacks and I appreciate that of people pushing back the court cases and so on.
But that is a finger in a dike, so to speak, as far as the inevitable consequence goes.
And so, you know, again, were I in your shoes?
It's really hard for me to say because, of course, you're wet to the land as well.
I don't have that same attachment in a sense because my family's history goes back.
I mean, I wasn't even born in the UK. I was born in Ireland.
My father's family in Ireland goes back a thousand years.
My mother's family in Germany goes back at least that far as far as I know.
But for me, that's not the case, right?
Born in Ireland, grew up in England, lived for a little while in South Africa, came to Canada and so on.
So I don't have that same rootedness to the soil, to the land that people who have been in America or South Africa for, you know, three, four hundred years or more.
So I say this with the full understanding that it's a lot easier for me to say, you know, up and move, which, again, I know you've really been considering.
But I just want to make sure I don't leave you with any impression, at least from my standpoint, that there's a redemption arc or a twist at the end of the story of South Africa.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, I agree with you there.
I think it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
What's the getting better scenario that is in your mind?
I don't see it, and certainly you live there and you know the place much, much better than I do.
What's the getting better scenario that you see?
Well, I think, as you said, the arc is back to...
To a much lower population and a lot of people are going to die with no food in it.
So maybe in a couple of generations when it's back to a small population and stuff and people are starving, maybe they'll then see the error in their ways.
But they'll be a long way down the road before that could happen.
Yeah, and until we start to understand more basic facts about the world, it does seem to be the case that even if that happens, people will panic.
Well, you know what happened in Zimbabwe, right?
I mean, in Zimbabwe, they drove out the white farmers.
I don't see it happening in my lifetime.
I'm sorry? I don't see it happening in my lifetime.
Right, right. Yeah, in Zimbabwe, they drove out the white farmers.
They all started to starve to death, and then they begged the white farmers to come back.
But, of course... There were few takers in that scenario.
Unfortunately, it's a longer arc than even a young man these days might be able to live to see.
Until we learn some more basic facts about reality, it's not going to...
It's going to just be another cycle.
You know the way the cycle goes, that smart people gain control of resources, they maximize those resources, and then the sophists move in and say that the rich smart people are only smart and rich because they stole from everyone.
They provoke all of this hatred, and then they decapitate the smart people's access to resources, everything crashes, and then they beg the smart people to take over the resources again, and then the whole damn thing starts all over again.
That's what's going to happen as long as you have a government.
So, yeah, it's not a particularly good arc.
So, yeah, I mean, I want to validate your – there's anxiety that is more internal, you know, like if people are, I don't know, agoraphobic, like fear of open spaces, right?
So, okay, open spaces aren't going to harm you, so it's something that you can work and say, okay, what's the psychological origin of this?
And you can compare it to reality, and you can say it's not a rational fear, which doesn't mean it's not real.
It just means you've got to try and philosophize your way into comparing your – Fear to that which is real in the world, but this is not your situation at all.
There's no such thing as murderous thief-ophobia.
That's not a thing. That's like lion-ophobia, shark-in-the-water-ophobia.
No, that's not a real thing.
I'm not here to talk you out of any anxieties you might be experiencing because Yeah, I mean, you're right.
In my opinion, you're right to feel these things.
You're right to fear these things. And I'm certainly glad that you're in a more secure position now.
And I get that, you know, being in the city can be a drag if you've got used to country living, but some gates and some guards is probably not the worst way to wait out an exit strategy.
But tell me what you, what would be most valuable for you to get out of this, this conversation?
I don't know. I emailed you.
I said, I don't really know if there was a solution or anything.
I just kind of felt like if I did get killed, that someone at least knows what was happening and that it's not just Lost to history, you know, another nameless,
faceless death. So, let's, I mean, if, obviously, everybody on the planet hopes, well, hopefully everybody on the planet hopes this never happens, but if you were to die from this situation, and a speech were to be played at your funeral, what would you want that speech to be?
be?
I mean, if you want to tell me, tell the world as a whole what you want people to understand about what's going on.
I think we've pretty much covered that and what is happening and just that the rest of the world can know about what's happening and not just get the sort of politically correct rainbow nation narrative and and
So your plan is to stay to continue to work for an exit strategy which again I know has made all the tougher through COVID but you're in a more secure location and you said better electric fencing and much less predation so your goal is to stay to continue to work on an exit strategy and that's the plan and certainly I assume that you're feeling slightly more comfortable than your new farm.
Well I was until that A couple weeks back.
With the neighboring farm, right?
Yeah. Right.
I think we've got a meeting with an immigration lawyer.
Well, yeah. Zoom meeting or something.
This week, I think.
So we'll see what happens there.
And depending on that, if we can see a way forward there, Then I'll probably stay on here until I can go.
But if that's not looking good, then I'll probably be looking at moving to town again.
And there are still some safe neighborhoods or gated communities where you can feel some peace of mind?
Better than our child.
The crime rates in South Africa are pretty high.
But it's definitely worse being a farmer.
The one stat I heard was apparently as a South African farmer, the death rate for South African farmers is higher than a deployed Military person in Iraq in it.
Right, right. We have pretty high murder rates and stuff in this country.
Yeah, I think it's like eight times more likely to get killed if you're a white farmer.
Right. Oh yeah, no, it is a brutally targeted group.
And it is part of the Slow suicide of the anti-rational forces, right?
I mean, talk about killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
It is going to be brutally hard for the blacks, right?
I mean, obviously, there's sympathy for the whites, there's sympathy for the blacks as well, because they're swallowing all this propaganda, and of course, most blacks are honorable, decent people, but the extremists are really being motivated by this propaganda to the point where they are going to Cause the deaths of, I would imagine, countless countrymen, both black and white, as a result of food shortages.
You know, I think about this, you know, I wouldn't say continuously, but I think about this like, okay, you need your 2,000, 2,500 calories a day.
That's not easy. It's not easy to get a hold of.
You sort of sit there because I lived in the woods, right?
And so, you know, if you look in the woods, it's like, yeah, that's a lot of berries, man.
It's a lot of roots and tubes and a rabbit or two, but, you know, it's really tough.
Getting that amount of calories a day.
And without farmers, 99% of the population just can't do it.
And we're all in this inverted pyramid resting upon the willingness to work insanely hard that the farmers have.
And when you start targeting and attacking them, it's almost like they're driven by the agenda.
There's this agenda among some people to reduce the world's population significantly.
It's like, well, you couldn't do a better job than convincing people to target the farmers.
I mean, that's going to drop the world population pretty damn quickly, and it's a real shame that it's succeeding so well.
But, you know, again, we can lead a man to water, but you can't make him think.
All right, but listen, will you keep me posted about how it's going with you?
I will obviously think about what's going on, and if there's anybody who has thoughts or experiences or can help, Please contact me, operations at freedomain.com, and keep me posted, and I certainly wish you the very best.
I'm so incredibly sorry about this entire situation.
I'm even more sorry that, though it's inevitable, that the leftist media is covering all this stuff up, and it just shows the hatred.
There's a lot of anti-white hatred that's out there at the moment, anti-Christian hatred, I think, to be more specific, so I'm I'm sorry about all of this.
I certainly wish you the very best.
Obviously, I hope desperately that you stay safe.
If there is anybody out there with expertise in this area, then let me know.
Also, listen, just a personal offer from me to you.
If there is some cash that you need for an immigration lawyer, I know you lost money on the farm and all of that.
If there's money that you need to help you get out, please, please, please, I beg you, email me And I'll sort it out for you.
And you can consider it a loan, a gift.
It doesn't really matter. But if there's some amount of money that you need in order to get out, please let me know and we'll get you out, all right?
Thank you very much, Steph, for that offer.
Actually, I've got reasonable savings for that the last year, especially with the lockdown.
I haven't been able to spend much money, and so I've been able to put some away, and then not being farming anymore, and not being able to socialize, I've spent a lot more time doing private engineering jobs and that as well, so I've been able to put some aside for that.
Good. I'm certainly glad to hear that.
And this is going out to everybody who's trying to get out of South Africa.
If it's a big money thing, just let me know and we'll see what we could do.
So, all right. Well, listen, keep in touch.
Thank you so much for keeping us up to date on the situation.
This is the kind of information that people really, really desperately need.
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