South Africans Fear for the UK’s Future

The glorious vistas of the Great Karoo, South Africa’s semi-arid desert, are an unforgettable vision to behold. Across the rust-coloured plateaus and mountains, plants tussle to grow between ironstone boulders, many of which have Stone Age art or symbols scratched onto them. The descendants of English and Afrikaner settlers somehow farm this seemingly unfarmable earth and frequently venture up onto the mountainsides to hunt impala and kudu—essential for land management and local food security in what is one of the most hostile environments on earth.

Over the last couple of years, I have got to know a number of farming families in this region. They strike me as providing a window into an older world. The manners and conduct of empire persist in the Great Karoo, where people customarily say grace before meals, introduce themselves to each other with “How do you do?”, and gather to watch cricketers on the green arrayed in their neatly pressed whites. They gather in old colonial clubs in the evening, often under a bust of Queen Victoria flanked by the hunting trophies won by prior members; ladies and gentlemen in khaki suits and silk neck scarves discuss the virtues and disadvantages of Angus cattle compared to indigenous breeds whilst sipping G&Ts or swigging pints of Imperial IPA. Within the UK, the country’s native culture is rapidly vanishing, but it apparently lives on in the Commonwealth. 

On my most recent visit to the Karoo, what surprised me was the anxiety of South Africans of European heritage regarding the future of the United Kingdom. “What the hell is happening to Britain?” and “How can you all just let your country be destroyed?” were common questions to which I had to come up with some hasty, tentative answers as I spoke with friends and new acquaintances.

They are, it transpired, far more fearful about the future of the UK than the future of South Africa. As far as they are concerned, South Africa is on the up. Race relations have improved a little. ‘Black’ South Africans of Xhosa, Zulu, Cape Coloured or other heritage increasingly seem to appreciate that where South African society is relatively stable, or where politics functions as it ought, it’s because South Africans of European heritage are heavily involved—either directly or as advisers, councillors, lawyers, employers, or in some other way. Over recent decades, so-called ‘whites’ have been made to feel unwelcome, but by now, those who might have left have already gone, and those who remain are there to stay. Generally speaking, they stay in South Africa with every intention of building it up, whether they feel unwanted or not.

Much work is being done in South Africa to expose financial and political corruption and to punish those behind it. Especially in the Karoo—perhaps more there than elsewhere—I witness significant collaboration and sympathy between South Africans of different ethnicities, whilst not diminishing their differences or unique cultures, of which they’re rightly proud. Again, among those ‘white’ South Africans with whom I’ve spent time, the concern was not for their country but for mine. They love Britain, its history, its customs and traditions, which characterise the way of life of many South Africans.

Nearly all conversations about the future of the UK orbit the issue of its demographic transformation due to a migration policy (or lack of policy) against which Brits have voiced their opposition time and again, to the utter neglect of their political class. But the question may reasonably arise in our minds: if these South Africans are so against the arrival of foreigners in Britain, aren’t they hypocrites for remaining in South Africa, where they are supposedly the foreigners?

The fact is, however, that Dutch and British settlers were buying land from natives and beginning to farm it as early as the mid-17th century, long before the Bantu expansion took the ancestors of the Xhosa and Zulu people, who together now make up at least half the population, into the area. The original people of South Africa, namely the San and Khoekhoe peoples, were mostly driven into what’s today Namibia and Botswana by the Bantu invaders. Thus, if there were any attempt to kick out ‘non-natives’ from South Africa, strictly speaking, nearly the entire population would have to leave. 

All that, though, is an issue for historians to think about. For, during my conversations with South Africans, it became evident that their concern was not one centred on the history of racial or ethnic groups, but rather on a cultural and civilisational issue. They do not talk of the challenges facing the UK as one of native versus foreigner, but rather about societies that function well and societies that do not. In their view, networks of rape-and-torture gangs, and frequent machete assaults, acid attacks, and honour killings should not be part of British life. These are social dynamics that have been—wholly against the overt wishes of the British citizenry—imported, and they think such behaviours do not belong in the British Isles.

Tribal violence is a part of African society. The African continent has had a grave problem with hyper-violent behaviour since time immemorial. Indeed, The UN has continued to publish material, even in the last two decades, on cannibalism recurrently breaking out in African countries. It should go without saying that cannibalism, for example, is among those behaviours whose importation will not aid the flourishing of the United Kingdom.

The South Africans with whom I converse do not want Brits to lose the civilisation whose gifts they themselves are striving to maintain and foster in Africa, often against considerable trials. Nor do they wish Brits to import the barbarity and violence with which they so frequently have to contend. With the benefit of distance, they see that with the rise of African violence, Islamic colonisation and jihadism, and Middle Eastern women-hatred will come the destruction of Britain. They lament such an outcome because living amid the challenges of life in South Africa, they know what a massive achievement the settled British culture and way of life is—or was—and how crucial it is that that way of life be recovered.

We have much to learn from our Commonwealth friends who share our Western heritage. It is sobering to think that South Africans, living in a country infamous for its instability and tensions, are often more optimistic about their country’s future than they are about the UK’s. That should certainly encourage Brits to take stock and consider what future they want, while the choice is still available to them, if indeed it is.