Amerika

The Mandela idea of forcing White supremacists to pay reparations to their victims has become omnipresent in America.  This is the inverse of what reparations originally were, where in previous conflicts the vanquished had to pay the victor reparations for damage. This was generally not in the form of land, but more in terms of trade benefits.

But this reversed after the Anglo-Boer War when the victor paid the vanquished:

Despite this, the treaty of Vereeniging, in May 1902, was a unique example of reparations in reverse. Britain paid £3m for the war damage it had caused and it agreed not to impose taxes on the Boers to pay for the war. All Boers who surrendered were not to be deprived of liberty or property, nor to suffer reprisals. The Dutch language was permitted in schools and law courts and Britain undertook to move from military to civil administration and thence to self government within the empire as soon as possible. That took place in 1907.

Despite the establishment of apartheid policies under the auspices of Great Britain, it was then Britain that decided that apartheid reparations to Mandela were the sole responsibility of those pesky Boers, using the earlier inversion as precedent:

South African President Thabo Mbeki has said his government will make a payment of 30,000 rand ($3,890) each to more than 19,000 people identified by the commission as victims of gross human rights violations. However, Mbeki said the government would not follow a recommendation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to levy a wealth tax on South African business to help pay for reparations.

Since the political party that initiated the apartheid policy did not exist anymore, the only way to address complaints was to literally identify every single victim on a personal level and let the State pay compensation, but not businesses. The point, however, was that a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established where the Boers could confront their fears of being racist.

This discussion is currently happening in the US and South Africa wants to teach America about reparations :

Reparations can work, but only if we start telling the truth about racism and slavery.

The thorny issue however, is not that White supremacists must pay Blacks some amount, but how big this can of worms can become. For example, how much should the US should pay Korea, Vietnam, Mexico, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya etc. Then the last question must surely be: How much must the US pay its own citizens for intentionally failing wars?

Will the extraordinarily successful BLM claim reparations for every Black life lost in war, and what if they claim reparation for every black Baby lost in abortion?

The lesson from the recent history of the post-Mandela democracy is that Whites will never stop paying. whether in trade or property or with their lives. Money flows only one way in an egalitarian state, from the producers to the consumers, and Whites will be on the hook for as long as they survive.

Tags: reparations, south africa