Antarctica University Online Courses: GST 303: The Rest and the West

What does it mean that America is an experiment. Why was it ever put that way? A political and social experiment emerged in the founding of the United States, and it has led to a completely new sort of national entity, based on the Latin motto E Pluribus Unum- out of many, one.

American exceptionalism (cf. "exceptionalism") has been historically referred to as the belief that the United States differs qualitatively from other developed nations, because of its national credo, historical evolution, or distinctive political and religious institutions. The difference is often expressed in American circles as some categorical superiority, to which is usually attached some alleged proof, rationalization or explanation that may vary greatly depending on the historical period and the political context.

However, the term can also be used in a negative sense by critics of American policies to refer to a willful nationalistic ignorance of faults committed by the American government.^[1]

Dorothy Ross, in Origins of American Social Science (1991), argued that there are three generic varieties of American exceptionalism:

The term was first used in respect of the United States by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831.^[2] American exceptionalism is close to the idea of Manifest Destiny, a term used by Jacksonian Democrats in the 1840s to promote the annexation of much of what is now the Western United States (the Oregon Territory, the Texas Annexation, and the Mexican Cession). The term was later used in the 1890s by Republicans as a theoretical justification for U.S. expansion outside of North America.

The term has also come to describe the belief that the United States has an exceptional position among countries, and should not be bound by international law except where it serves American interests. This position is driven by a (usually implicit) premise that the United States cannot violate international law (and in particular international human rights norms) because of the view that America itself was largely responsible for instigating those norms in the first place. This view has come under stress due to international condemnation of U.S. human rights practices under the doctrine of War on Terror. (Also see: Human rights and the United States.)

The basis most commonly cited for American exceptionalism is the idea that the United States and its people hold a special place in the world, by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from a unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals that are focused on personal and economic freedom^{[citation needed]}. It is therefore used by United States citizens to indicate a moral superiority of America or Americans. Others use it to refer to the American concept as itself an exceptional ideal which gives the country a privileged position, and which may or may not always be upheld by the actual people and government of the nation. Researchers and academics, however, generally use the term to strictly mean sharp and measurable differences in public opinion and political behavior between Americans and their counterparts in other developed democracies.

Opponents of the concept of American exceptionalism believe it to be little more than ethnocentrism and propaganda.^[3] ^[4] In their arguments, they often compare the US to other countries that have claimed an exceptional nature or destiny. Examples in more recent times include Great Britain at the height of the British Empire, Israel, the USSR and Nazi Germany, while many historic empires such as Ancient Rome, China, and a wide range of minor kingdoms and tribes have also embraced exceptionalism. In each case, a basis was presented as to why the country was exceptional compared to all other countries, drawing upon circumstance, cultural background and mythos, and self-perceived national aims.

In essence, it characterizes the course of American history as a "deliberate choice" of "freedom over tyranny" which was properly made, and was the central reason for why American society developed "successfully."^{[citation needed]} With this in mind, American exceptionalism is just one of many national exceptionalist movements.

The earliest ideologies of English colonists in the country were embodied by the Protestantism of Puritan settlers of New England. Many Puritans with Arminian leanings embraced a middle ground between strict Calvinist predestination and a less restricting theology of Divine Providence. They believed God had made a covenant with their people and had chosen them to lead the other nations of the Earth. One Puritan leader, John Winthrop, metaphorically expressed this idea as a "City upon a Hill" — that the Puritan community of New England should serve as a model community for the rest of the world. This metaphor is often used by proponents of exceptionalism.

Although the world-view of New England Puritans changed dramatically, and the strong influence of other Protestant traditions in the Middle Colonies and the South, the Puritans' deep moralistic values remained part of the national identity of the United States for centuries, remaining influential to the present day. Parts of American exceptionalism can be traced to American Puritan roots.

A milestone in the history of American Exceptionalism is the American Revolution. The ideas that created the American revolution were derived from a tradition of republicanism that had been repudiated by the British mainstream. Thomas Paine's Common Sense for the first time expressed the belief that America was not just an extension of Europe but a new land, a country of nearly unlimited potential and opportunity that had outgrown the British mother country. These sentiments laid the intellectual foundations for the Revolutionary concept of American exceptionalism and was closely tied to republicanism, the belief that sovereignty belonged to the people, not to a hereditary ruling class.

Alexis de Tocqueville stressed the advanced nature of democracy in America, arguing that it infused every aspect of society and culture, at a time (1830s) when democracy was not in fashion anywhere else.

A core argument of exceptionalism is that America is unusually attractive to immigrants from all parts of the world for two reasons. First, advocates of American exceptionalism say that economic and political opportunities are unusually high, and that the United States possesses a high degree of social mobility. Since its founding, immigrants such as Andrew Carnegie and Carl Schurz have risen to the top layers of the economic and political system. The "American Dream" describes the perceived abundance of opportunities in the American system. Second, unlike many old world countries, immigrants can become Americans by adopting American culture and values.

Critics point out that America is now hardly unique in its appeal to immigrants, and that many countries like Australia, Canada and New Zealand are at least as popular and welcoming to immigrants.^[5]^[6]

American exceptionalism during the Cold War was often cast by the mass media as the American Way of Life personifying liberty engaged in a battle with tyranny as represented by communism. These attributions made use of the residual sentiment that had originally formed to differentiate the United States from the 19th century European powers and had been applied multiple times in multiple contexts before it was used to differentiate capitalist democracies (with the United States as a leader) from communist nations. American exceptionalism during this period also manifested itself in an anti-internationalist streak as part of which the United States rejected participation in international institutions which it could not control. The Bricker Amendment movement, for instance, rejected the adoption of international human rights conventions by the United States.

Proponents of American exceptionalism argue that the United States is exceptional in that it was founded on a set of republican ideals, rather than on a common heritage, ethnicity, or ruling elite. In the formulation of President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, America is a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". In this view, America is inextricably connected with liberty and equality. It is claimed that America has often acted to promote these ideals abroad, most notably in the First and Second World Wars, in the Cold War and today in the Iraq War. Critics argue that American policy in these conflicts was more motivated by economic or military self-interest than an actual desire to spread these ideals, and point to an extensive history of using South American nations as slave economies, suppressing democratic revolutions against US-backed dictators when necessary.

The United States' policies have been characterized since their inception by a system of federalism and checks and balances, which were designed to prevent any person, faction, region, or government organ from becoming too powerful. Some American exceptionalists argue that this system and the accompanying distrust of concentrated power prevent the United States from suffering a "tyranny of the majority", and also that it allows citizens to live in a locality whose laws reflect that citizen's values. A consequence of this political system is that laws can vary greatly across the country. Critics of American exceptionalism maintain that this system merely replaces the power of the national majority over states with power by the states over local entities. On balance, the American political system arguably allows more local dominance but prevents more national dominance than does a more unitary system.

Proponents of American exceptionalism often claim that the "American spirit" or the "American identity" was created at the frontier (following Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis), where rugged and untamed conditions gave birth to American national vitality. However, this 'frontier spirit' was not unique to the United States - other nations such as Canada, South Africa, Argentina and Australia had long frontiers that were similarly settled by pioneers, shaping their national psyches. In fact, all of the British Imperial domains involved pioneering work. Although each nation had slightly different frontier experiences (for example, in Australia "mateship" and working together was valued more than individualism was in the United States), the characteristics arising from British attempting to "tame" a wild and often hostile landscape against the will of the original population remained common to many such nations. Of course, at the limit, all of mankind has been involved, at one time or another, in extending the boundaries of their territory.

For most of its history, especially from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries, the United States was exceptional in its occupational and physical mobility. America is known as the "land of opportunity" and in this sense, it prided and promoted itself on providing individuals with the opportunity to escape from the contexts of their class and family background. Examples of this social mobility include:

The United States still has remarkable class mobility, however, a 2005 study showed that children born into poverty in Europe and Canada were more likely to find prosperity than children born into poverty in the United States^[7].

The American Revolutionary War is the claimed ideological territory of "exceptionalists". The intellectuals of the Revolution, such as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, arguably shaped America into a nation fundamentally different from its European ancestry, creating modern constitutional republicanism as we know it. Others counter that there is nothing unique about the revolution — the English "Glorious Revolution" was nearly a century prior to the American revolution and led to constitutional monarchy. The French Revolution also arguably led to a form of modern democracy.

In the book The Broken Covenant Bellah argued that America has experienced three periods when a large number of Americans were cynical about the American creed:

Bellah's ideas about civil religion were not novel. Before Bellah wrote his paper in 1967 coining the term "American civil religion" several prominent scholars had alluded to the concept. But there was no common conceptual term to describe, interpret or analyze civic religious faith in America.^[4]

Scholarly progenitors of this idea include John Dewey who spoke of "common faith" (1934); Robin Williams's American Society: A Sociological Interpretation (1951) which stated there was a "common religion" in America; Lloyd Warner's analysis of the Memorial Day celebrations in "Yankee City" (1953 [1974]); Martin Marty's "religion in general" (1959); Will Herberg who spoke of "the American Way of Life" (1960, 1974); Sidney Mead's "religion of the Republic" (1963); and G. K. Chesterton advanced the thesis that the United States was "the only nation...founded on a creed" and also coined the phrase "a nation with a soul of a church".^[4]^[5]

In the same period, several distinguished historians such as Yehoshua Arieli, Daniel Boorstin, and Ralph Gabriel "assessed the religious dimension of 'nationalism', the 'American creed', 'cultural religion' and the 'democratic faith'".^[4]

Premier sociologist Seymour Lipset (1963) referred to "Americanism" and the "American Creed" to characterize a distinct set of values that Americans hold with a quasi-religious fervor.^[4]

Today, according to social scientist Rondald Wimberley and William Swatos, there seems to be a firm consensus among social scientists that there is a part of Americanism that is especially religious in nature, which may be termed civil religion. But this religious nature is less significant than the "transcendent universal religion of the nation" which late eighteenth century French intellectuals such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about.^[5]

Ronald Wimberley (1976) and other researchers collected large surveys and factor analytic studies which gave empirical support to Bellah's argument that civil religion is a distinct cultural phenomena within American society which is not embodied in American politics or denominational religion.^[5]

Examples of civil religious beliefs are reflected in statements used in the research such as the following:

Later research sought to determine who is civil religious. In a 1978 study by James Christenson and Ronald Wimberley, the researchers found that a wide cross section of American citizens have civil religious beliefs. In general though, college graduates and political or religious liberals appear to be somewhat less civil religious. Protestants and Catholics have the same level of civil religiosity. Religions that were created in the United States, the Mormons, Adventists, and Pentecostals, have the highest civil religiosity. Jews, Unitarians and those with no religious preference have the lowest civil religion. Even though there is variation in the scores, the "great majority" of Americans are found to share the types of civil religious beliefs which Bellah wrote about.^[5]

Further research found that civil religion plays a role in people's preferences for political candidates and policy positions. In 1980 Ronald Wimberley found that civil religious beliefs were more important than loyalties to a political party in predicting support for Nixon over McGovern with a sample of Sunday morning church goers who were surveyed near the election date and a general group of residents in the same community. In 1982 James Christenson and Ronald Wimberley found that civil religion was second only to occupation in predicting a person's political policy views.^[5]

The American Dream can be described as a belief in freedom that allows all citizens and residents of the United States of America to achieve their goals in life through hard work. Today, in America it generally refers to the idea that one's prosperity depends upon one's own abilities and hard work, not on a rigid class structure, though the meaning of the phrase has changed over America's history. For some, it is the opportunity to achieve more prosperity than they could in their countries of origin; for others, it is the opportunity for their children to grow up with an education and career opportunities; for others, it is the opportunity to be an individual without the constraints imposed by class, caste, race, or ethnicity. While the term "American Dream" today is often associated with immigrants, native-born Americans can also be described as "pursuing the American Dream," "living the American Dream" or "living the Dream."

The American Dream is the fulfillment of America's promise, of equal freedoms, equal opportunities and equal protections.

The generic definition of the term "American Dream" appears in a history book by James Truslow Adams entitled The Epic of America (1931):

The American Dream is deeply rooted in the concepts found in liberal thought. It is an American adaptation of the norm of private property as a means of liberty, ultimately bringing happiness to the individuals. Classic liberal thought stipulates that liberty is guaranteed by free trade and competition, as these conditions let all individuals maximize their gains, derived from their needs and desires, through trade (the market). Furthermore, there is the hypothesis that all citizens are born with equal rights and opportunities, and only effort (work) differentiates them in the long term, hence the saying that those with will succeed and those without do not. This excerpt of the United States Declaration of Independence is an excellent formal example of the origins of the concept:

Balkanization is a geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other.^[1]^[2] The term has arisen from the conflicts in the 20th century Balkans. The first balkanization was embodied in the Balkan Wars, and the term was reaffirmed in the Yugoslav wars. The amount of "Yugoslavian" territory officially controlled by Belgrade has been reduced piece by piece since 1991.

The term is also used to describe other forms of disintegration, including, for instance, the subdivision of the Internet being divided into separate enclaves^{[citation needed]}, and the breakdown of cooperative arrangements due to the rise of independent competitive entities engaged in "beggar-thy-neighbor" bidding wars. Balkanization is sometimes used to refer to the divergence over time of programming languages and data file formats (particularly XML). The term has been used in American urban planning to describe the process of creating gated communities.

There are also attempts to use the term balkanization in a positive way equating it with the need for sustenance of a group or society. Current research on the positive aspects of Balkanization is carried out by Srđan Jovanović Weiss with Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College.

The term has also been used by conservative gay rights activist Andrew Sullivan. He referred to civil unions as adding to the "cultural balkanization that already plagues American public life." ^[3] In January 2007, regarding a rise in support for Scottish independence, Gordon Brown talked of a "Balkanisation of Britain".^[4]

The Future of America is not a totally open question. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/by/robert_d_kaplan

The European dream is a suggested European Union alternative to the classic American Dream of the United States.

The European dream is an idea first stated and published by American author Jeremy Rifkin. In his book "The European Dream", it is painted in terms of opposition or contrast with traditional American values and goals. Where the American dream emphasises homogeneity of culture, the European dream seeks to conserve diversity. And where the American dream emphasises rugged individualism, the European dream puts more weight on community. Personal development and quality of life are emphasised over personal wealth.

The European dream is largely connected to the European Union. In fact, the development of the EU made it possible for Europeans to begin to believe in a pan-European identity. The European identity was hit after the ratification of the EU-constitution. A number of European intellectuals think a European enlarged identity is based on transcendent values.

Other cities represent the EU-government, they are considered EU- capitals but exert only a limited influence in developing a transnational European identity:

. Brussels (Seat of the European Council) . Strasbourg (Seat of the EU parliament)

Many people resist European politics because of old friction and international rivalries, language barriers, as well as on the basis of social concerns. Job worries play an important role. Many people, young and old, shun the concept of a "European identity", claiming their identities to be exclusively national (e.g., British, German, French, Portuguese, etc.).

'Islamofascism'
Beware of a religion without irony, By ROGER SCRUTON

The term "Islamofascism" was introduced by the French writer Maxine Rodinson (1915-2004) to describe the Iranian Revolution of 1978. Rodinson was a Marxist, who described as "fascist" any movement of which he disapproved. But we should be grateful to him for coining a word that enables people on the left to denounce our common enemy. After all, other French leftists--Michel Foucault, for example--had welcomed the revolution as an amusing threat to Western interests. It is only now that people on the left can acknowledge that they are just as much a target as the rest of us, in a war that has global chaos as its goal.

The word has therefore caught on, not least because it provides a convenient way of announcing that you are not against Islam but only against its perversion by the terrorists. But this prompts the question whether terrorism is really as alien to Islam as we should all like to believe. Despite his communist sympathies, Rodinson was a peaceful soul, who spent seven years teaching in a Muslim school in Lebanon and wrote a biography of Muhammad in which the prophet is portrayed as a mild-mannered campaigner for social justice. But this biography was denounced by the Egyptian authorities as an offense to Islam, was withdrawn from the curriculum of the American University in Cairo, and has ever since been banned in Muslim countries.

This readiness to take offense is not yet terrorism--but it is a sign of the deep-down insecurity of the Muslim psyche in the modern world. In the presence of Islam, we all feel, you have to tread carefully, as though humoring a dangerous animal. The Koran must never be questioned; Islam must be described as a religion of peace--isn't that the meaning of the word?--and jokes about the prophet are an absolute no-no. If religion comes up in conversation, best to slip quietly away, accompanying your departure with abject apologies for the Crusades. And in Europe this pussyfooting is now being transcribed into law, with "Islamophobia" already a crime in Belgium and movements across the continent to censor everything at which a Muslim might take offence, including articles like this one.

Now of course it is wrong to give gratuitous offence to people of other faiths; it is right to respect people's beliefs, when these beliefs pose no threat to civil order; and we should extend toward resident Muslims all the toleration and neighborly goodwill that we hope to receive from them. But recent events have caused people to wonder exactly where Muslims stand in such matters. Although Islam is derived from the same root as salaam, it does not mean peace but submission. And although the Koran tells us that there shall be no compulsion in matters of religion, it does not overflow with kindness toward those who refuse to submit to God's will. The best they can hope for is to be protected by a treaty (dhimmah), and the privileges of the dhimmi are purchased by onerous taxation and humiliating rites of subservience. As for apostates, it remains as dangerous today as it was in the time of the prophet publicly to renounce the Muslim faith. Even if you cannot be compelled to adopt the faith, you can certainly be compelled to retain it. And the anger with which public Muslims greet any attempt to challenge, to ridicule or to marginalize their faith is every bit as ferocious as that which animated the murderer of Theo Van Gogh. Ordinary Christians, who suffer a daily diet of ridicule and skepticism, cannot help feeling that Muslims protest too much, and that the wounds, which they ostentatiously display to the world, are largely self-inflicted.

To recognize such facts is not to give up hope for a tolerant Islam. But there is a matter that needs to be clarified. Christians and Jews are heirs to a long tradition of secular government, which began under the Roman Empire and was renewed at the Enlightenment: Human societies should be governed by human laws, and these laws must take precedence over religious edicts. The primary duty of citizens is to obey the state; what they do with their souls is a matter between themselves and God, and all religions must bow down to the sovereign authority if they are to exist within its jurisdiction.

The Ottoman Empire evolved systems of law which to some extent replicated that wise provision. But after the Ottoman collapse the Muslim sects rebelled against the idea, since it contradicts the claims of the Shariah to be the final legal authority. The Egyptian writer and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, went so far as to denounce all secular law as blasphemy. Mortals who make laws for their own government, he argued, usurp a power which is God's alone. And although few Muslim leaders will publicly endorse Qutb's argument, few will publicly condemn it either. What to us is a proof of Qutb's fanaticism and egomania is, for many Muslims, a proof of his piety.

Whenever I consider this matter I am struck by a singular fact about the Christian religion, a fact noticed by Kierkegaard and Hegel but rarely commented upon today, which is that it is informed by a spirit of irony. Irony means accepting "the other," as someone other than you. It was irony that led Christ to declare that his "kingdom is not of this world," not to be achieved through politics. Such irony is a long way from the humorless incantations of the Koran. Yet it is from a posture of irony that every real negotiation, every offer of peace, every acceptance of the other, begins. The way forward, it seems to me, is to encourage the re-emergence of an ironical Islam, of the kind you find in the philosophy of Averroës, in Persian poetry and in "The Thousand and One Nights." We should also encourage those ethnic and religious jokes which did so much to defuse tension in the days before political correctness. And maybe, one day, the rigid face of some puritanical mullah will crack open in a hesitant smile, and negotiations can at last begin.

Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls. "Flashmobs" - groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.

This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces. It includes an "analysis of the key risks and shocks". Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the MoD's Development, Concepts & Doctrine Centre which drew up the report, describes the assessments as "probability-based, rather than predictive".

The 90-page report comments on widely discussed issues such as the growing economic importance of India and China, the militarisation of space, and even what it calls "declining news quality" with the rise of "internet-enabled, citizen-journalists" and pressure to release stories "at the expense of facts". It includes other, some frightening, some reassuring, potential developments that are not so often discussed.

An electromagnetic pulse will probably become operational by 2035 able to destroy all communications systems in a selected area or be used against a "world city" such as an international business service hub. The development of neutron weapons which destroy living organs but not buildings "might make a weapon of choice for extreme ethnic cleansing in an increasingly populated world". The use of unmanned weapons platforms would enable the "application of lethal force without human intervention, raising consequential legal and ethical issues". The "explicit use" of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and devices delivered by unmanned vehicles or missiles.

By 2035, an implantable "information chip" could be wired directly to the brain. A growing pervasiveness of information communications technology will enable states, terrorists or criminals, to mobilise "flashmobs", challenging security forces to match this potential agility coupled with an ability to concentrate forces quickly in a small area.

"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx," says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest". Marxism could also be revived, it says, because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the "sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism".

By 2010 more than 50% of the world's population will be living in urban rather than rural environments, leading to social deprivation and "new instability risks", and the growth of shanty towns. By 2035, that figure will rise to 60%. Migration will increase. Globalisation may lead to levels of international integration that effectively bring inter-state warfare to an end. But it may lead to "inter-communal conflict" - communities with shared interests transcending national boundaries and resorting to the use of violence.

The global population is likely to grow to 8.5bn in 2035, with less developed countries accounting for 98% of that. Some 87% of people under the age of 25 live in the developing world. Demographic trends, which will exacerbate economic and social tensions, have serious implications for the environment - including the provision of clean water and other resources - and for international relations. The population of sub-Saharan Africa will increase over the period by 81%, and that of Middle Eastern countries by 132%.

The massive population growth will mean the Middle East, and to a lesser extent north Africa, will remain highly unstable, says the report. It singles out Saudi Arabia, the most lucrative market for British arms, with unemployment levels of 20% and a "youth bulge" in a state whose population has risen from 7 million to 27 million since 1980. "The expectations of growing numbers of young people [in the whole region] many of whom will be confronted by the prospect of endemic unemployment ... are unlikely to be met," says the report.

Resentment among young people in the face of unrepresentative regimes "will find outlets in political militancy, including radical political Islam whose concept of Umma, the global Islamic community, and resistance to capitalism may lie uneasily in an international system based on nation-states and global market forces", the report warns. The effects of such resentment will be expressed through the migration of youth populations and global communications, encouraging contacts between diaspora communities and their countries of origin.

Tension between the Islamic world and the west will remain, and may increasingly be targeted at China "whose new-found materialism, economic vibrancy, and institutionalised atheism, will be an anathema to orthodox Islam".

Iran will steadily grow in economic and demographic strength and its energy reserves and geographic location will give it substantial strategic leverage. However, its government could be transformed. "From the middle of the period," says the report, "the country, especially its high proportion of younger people, will want to benefit from increased access to globalisation and diversity, and it may be that Iran progressively, but unevenly, transforms...into a vibrant democracy."

Casualties and the amount of damage inflicted by terrorism will stay low compared to other forms of coercion and conflict. But acts of extreme violence, supported by elements within Islamist states, with media exploitation to maximise the impact of the "theatre of violence" will persist. A "terrorist coalition", the report says, including a wide range of reactionary and revolutionary rejectionists such as ultra-nationalists, religious groupings and even extreme environmentalists, might conduct a global campaign of greater intensity".

There is "compelling evidence" to indicate that climate change is occurring and that the atmosphere will continue to warm at an unprecedented rate throughout the 21st century. It could lead to a reduction in north Atlantic salinity by increasing the freshwater runoff from the Arctic. This could affect the natural circulation of the north Atlantic by diminishing the warming effect of ocean currents on western Europe. "The drop in temperature might exceed that of the miniature ice age of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Eurabia is a political neologism that refers to a scenario where Europe allies itself to and eventually merges with the Arab World.

The term was popularised by writer Bat Ye'or, whose family lived in Egypt until 1957. She suggested an European-Arab hostility to Israel and European (European Community) support for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Since then, its meaning has expanded and shifted. It is now primarily used to describe an alleged transformation of the European Union, where Islam and Sharia become the dominant value systems, and where the population consists increasingly of Muslims. The term is generally used in combination with dhimmitude, another term introduced by Ye'or, denoting an alleged attitude of concession, surrender and appeasement towards Islamic demands.

There is no specific name for belief in the Eurabia scenario, and no official ideology of "Eurabia-ism." Those who see the scenario as true, generally believe that Islam is hostile to, and incompatible with, the values of the Western world, that there are substantial numbers of Muslims in Europe whose presence there is part of a deliberate conspiracy by Muslims, that Muslims will form a demographic majority within a few generations, that all or most Muslims seek to Islamise Europe, and that part of the European political and cultural elite supports this goal. Many tend to be euroskeptic, since the EU is seen as implementing the strategy.^[1] Eurabia is used by some to denote a conspiracy, and their version can be described as a conspiracy theory: Oriana Fallaci referred to those behind the Eurabia strategy as "the biggest conspiracy that modern history has created".^[2]

Eurabia was originally the title of a newsletter published by the Comité européen de coordination des associations d’amitié avec le monde Arabe.^[3] According to Bat Ye'or, it was published collaboratively with France-Pays Arabes (journal of the Association de solidarité franco-arabe or ASFA), Middle East International (London), and the Groupe d’Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient (Geneva).^[4] There is no group of this name at the University of Geneva, but there is a Groupe de recherche et d'études sur la Méditerranée et le Moyen Orient (GREMMO) at the Université Lyon 2,^[5] and one of its members is the Institut universitaire d'études du développement (IUED) at the University of Geneva.^[6]

During the 1973 oil crisis, the European Economic Community (predecessor of the European Union), had entered into the Euro-Arab Dialogue with the Arab League.^[7] Bat Ye'or later used the journal title Eurabia, to describe the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) and associated political developments. The term originally had no pejorative intent, and no connotation similar to its present usage: Bat Ye'or was the first to use it in that way, especially in her 2005 book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. (In Germany, 'Eurabia' is used in the names of several businesses, such as the Eurabia Schifffahrts-Agentur GmbH and Eurabia Tours).

Bat Ye'or sees Eurabia (the political process) as the result of a French-led European policy originally intended to increase European power against the United States by aligning its interests with those of the Arab countries, and regards it as a primary cause of European hostility to Israel. She describes it as follows:

Current usage of the term is wider than the version given by Bat Ye'or, with less attention for Franco-Arab relations, and more for immigration and Muslim demographics. Others, such as Bernard Lewis and Bruce Bawer have presented comparable scenarios, for which the term 'Eurabia' is now also used^{[citation needed]}.

The term Eurabia has gained currency^[who?], partly because it reflects a more general political tendency, which sees Islam as a major threat to Europe and its values. Justin Vaisse, who is sceptical of the claimed transformation into Eurabia, spoke of this mood at the Brookings Institution (spelling corrected):^[10]

Others who have supported the Eurabia theory, and express related views, include Fjordman,^[11] Oriana Fallaci,^[12] Robert Spencer,^[13] Daniel Pipes,^[14] Ayaan Hirsi Ali,^[15] Melanie Phillips,^[16] and Mark Steyn.^[17]

In an article in the Melbourne Age discussing Raphael Israeli's call for controls on Muslim immigration to Australia lest a "critical mass" develop, Waleed Aly says that "Israeli's comments matter because they are not as marginal as they are mad". Aly mentions that Israeli's latest book "is an unoriginal appropriation of the "Eurabia" conspiracy thesis of Jewish writer Bat Ye'or: that Europe is evolving into a post-Judeo-Christian civilisation increasingly subjugated to the jihadi ideology of Muslim migrants" and that the theory has received "enthusiastic support" from intellectuals in Europe and activists in the USA^[18].

The Eurabia theory construes the expanding Muslim population of Europe, and the religious demands thereof, as a subversive and insidious threat to Western European civilization. Lars Hedegaard of the Danish 'Free Press Society' sees Europe possibly fragmenting into enclaves:^[19]

Not all supporters of the theory see 'Eurabia' as inevitable. Some advocate the prohibition of Islam,^[20] and some advocate a direct confrontation. In an article entitled Confrontation, not appeasement, Ayaan Hirsi Ali demands a confrontational policy at European level, to meet the threat of radical Islam, and compares non-confrontational policies with Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler.^[21] Specifically, she proposes:

One proponent of this view, Dave Gaubatz, who has attracted controversy for his controversial assertions about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, is creating a list of all Islamic schools and mosques in the United States.

The first academic work to address the Eurabia thesis is Integrating Islam Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France, by Brookings scholars Justin Vaisse and Jonathan Laurence. Professor Laurence begins:^[22]

Justin Vaisse says the book intends to debunk "four myths of the alarmist school." Using Muslims in France as an example, he says:

Conservative essayist Andrew Sullivan has written that "the comical shrieking about “Eurabia” and such is but thinly veiled Islam-bashing by primitives in the U.S. know-nothing media."^[23]

Due to its purported harsh, ethnically charged language and conspiratorical tone, the theory of Eurabia has been compared to Anti-semitic writings by some writers.

Journalist Johann Hari calls the two "startlingly similar" and says that "there are intellectuals on the British right who are propagating a conspiracy theory about Muslims that teeters very close to being a 21st century Protocols of the Elders of Mecca."^[25]

In Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, journalist Andreas Malm claims that Mark Steyn advocates genocide and highlights the cospiratorical claims against Islam as a whole made by the Eurasia writers.^[26] In a follow-up article, journalist Eva Ekselius claims "Like the Jews were depicted as the foreign, the other, onto which one could project all the traits the culture wants to deny in themselves, so the 'muslims' now get to take over the second-hand props of anti-semitism" and makes a direct comparison to pre-war Europe.^[27]

The Australian Dream or Great Australian Dream is a belief that in Australia, home ownership can lead to a better life and is an expression of success and security. Although this standard of living is enjoyed by many in the existing Australian population, rising house prices compared to average wages are making it increasingly difficult for many, especially those living in large cities. It is also noted as having led to urbanisation (or more specifically suburbanisation), causing extensive urban sprawl in the major cities.^[1] The concept of homeownership for all is also found in very similar terms in New Zealand, which shares many cultural and social values with its larger neighbour.

The origin of the Australian Dream date back to the period of reconstruction following World War II. The dream flowered in the 1950s and 1960s due chiefly to the expansion of Australian manufacturing, low unemployment rates, the baby boom and the removal of rent controls.^[2]

There is some evidence, however, that the vast open spaces of early colonial Australia first instilled the notion in the early generations Australian families. It was certainly aided by the widespread ownership of the automobile. Even as it was growing, the aspirational dream became an occasional object of ridicule in art and literature, some of the strongest criticism appearing in the mid 1950s paintings of John Brack, the celebrated novels of Australian manners They're a Weird Mob (1957) by Nino Culotta (John O'Grady) and My Brother Jack (1964) by George Johnston, and Robin Boyd's fierce critique of Australian architecture The Australian Ugliness (1960).

Typically the Australian Dream focused upon ownership of a detached (often single storey) house on a Quarter Acre suburban block, surrounded by a garden, which featured in the back a Hills Hoist and a barbecue. Notably, this mirrored the fact that while almost 50% of Australian households owned their homes through the first half of the century, the proportion jumped to more than 70 per cent in the 20 years after World War II. While many Australians saw home ownership as a domestic ideal to aspire to, artists sometimes viewed it as representing a deadening conformism and narrow-mindedness - a critical perspective advanced by Brack's bleak images of uniform box-like houses surrounded by almost identical gardens, as well as Johnston's literary depiction of a rigidly uniform suburbia where neighbours try to police one another's behaviour.

If financial independence and the possession of a house were important, the Australian Dream was chiefly identified with embracing a particular lifestyle. Those who had achieved the dream also followed a set of urban rituals, including taking an annual summer vacation by the sea, living within a nuclear family, as well as - for male bread-winners - weekly lawn-mowing (preferably with a Victa mower) and washing the family car (either a Ford or a Holden) on Saturday mornings. These unspoken yet rigid social customs were actually the focus for the comic novel They're a Weird Mob, a simulated autobiography by a fictitious Italian migrant who struggled to understand the often baffling ways of urban Australians. The novel is resolved when the protagonist adopts the same values by marrying an Australian girl, buying his own quarter acre block, and building his home on it. From the 1970s, the Australian dream expanded to cover possession of a swimming pool in the back-yard, a second family car, and, for the affluent, either ownership of a beach-house or taking an annual overseas holiday.

Despite the decline of the Australian Dream due to modern planning policies, house prices and the influence of immigration on demographics and culture, many observers still consider ownership of a dwelling as important to many Australians even if they cannot achieve it.

As soon as I qualified as a doctor, I went to Rhodesia, which was to transform itself into Zimbabwe five years or so later. In the next decade, I worked and traveled a great deal in Africa and couldn’t help but reflect upon such matters as the clash of cultures, the legacy of colonialism, and the practical effects of good intentions unadulterated by any grasp of reality. I gradually came to the conclusion that the rich and powerful can indeed have an effect upon the poor and powerless—perhaps can even remake them—but not necessarily (in fact, necessarily not) in the way they wanted or anticipated. The law of unintended consequences is stronger than the most absolute power.

I went to Rhodesia because I wanted to see the last true outpost of colonialism in Africa, the final gasp of the British Empire that had done so much to shape the modern world. True, it had now rebelled against the mother country and was a pariah state: but it was still recognizably British in all but name. As Sir Roy Welensky, the prime minister of the short-lived and ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, once described himself, he was “half-Polish, half-Jewish, one hundred percent British.”

Until my arrival at Bulawayo Airport, the British Empire had been for me principally a philatelic phenomenon. When I was young, Britain’s still-astonishing assortment of far-flung territories—from British Honduras and British Guiana to British North Borneo, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland—each issued beautiful engraved stamps, with the queen’s profile in the right upper corner, looking serenely down upon exotic creatures such as orangutans or frigate birds, or upon natives (as we still called and thought of them) going about their natively tasks, tapping rubber or climbing coconut palms. To my childish mind, any political entity that issued such desirable stamps must have been a power for good. And my father—a communist by conviction—also encouraged me to read the works of G. A. Henty, late-nineteenth-century adventure stories, extolling the exploits of empire builders, who by bravery, sterling character, superior intelligence, and force majeure overcame the resistance of such spirited but doomed peoples as the Zulu and the Fuzzy-Wuzzies. Henty might seem an odd choice for a communist to give his son, but Marx himself was an imperialist of a kind, believing that European colonialism was an instrument of progress toward History’s happy denouement; only at a later stage, after it had performed its progressive work, was empire to be condemned.

And condemned Rhodesia most certainly was, loudly and insistently, as if it were the greatest threat to world peace and the security of the planet. By the time I arrived, it had
no friends, only enemies. Even South Africa, the regional colossus, with which Rhodesia shared a long border and which might have been expected to be sympathetic, was highly ambivalent toward it: for South Africa sought to ingratiate itself with other nations by being less than wholehearted in its economic cooperation with the government of Ian Smith.

I expected to find on my arrival, therefore, a country in crisis and decay. Instead, I found a country that was, to all appearances, thriving: its roads were well maintained, its transport system functioning, its towns and cities clean and manifesting a municipal pride long gone from England. There were no electricity cuts or shortages of basic food commodities. The large hospital in which I was to work, while stark and somewhat lacking in comforts, was extremely clean and ran with exemplary efficiency. The staff, mostly black except for its most senior members, had a vibrant esprit de corps, and the hospital, as I discovered, had a reputation for miles around for the best of medical care. The rural poor would make immense and touching efforts to reach it: they arrived covered in the dust of their long journeys. The African nationalist leader and foe of the government, Joshua Nkomo, was a patient there and trusted the care implicitly: for medical ethics transcended all political antagonisms.

The surgeon for whom I worked, who came from England, was the best I have ever known and a man of exemplary character. Devoting his enormous technical accomplishment to the humblest of patients, he seemed not only capable of every surgical procedure, but he was a brilliant diagnostician, his clinical intuition honed by a relative lack of high-tech aids: so much so that others in the hospital regarded him as the final court of appeal. I never knew him to be mistaken, though like every other doctor he must have made errors in his time. He saved the lives of hundreds every year and inspired the most absolute trust and confidence in his patients. He never panicked, even in the direst emergency; and he knew what to do when a man had been half eaten by a crocodile or mauled by a leopard, when a child had been bitten in the leg by a puff adder, or when a man appeared with a spear driven through his skull. When called in the early hours of the morning, as he frequently was, he was as even-tempered as if attending a social event. Greater love hath no man. . . .

He was not a missionary, however; he was infused by nothing resembling a religious spirit, only by a profound medical ethic and an enthusiasm for his art and science. He wanted a varied and interesting surgical practice, and he wanted to save human life; and the Rhodesia of the time offered him ideal conditions for using his skills to maximum benefit (even the best of surgeons relies on a well-organized hospital to achieve results). Within a short time of the political handover in 1980, however, he returned to England—not because of any racial feeling or political antagonism but simply because the swift degeneration of standards in the hospital made the high-level practice of surgery impossible. The institution that had seemed to me on my arrival to be so solid and well founded fell apart in the historical twinkling of an eye.

In leaving Zimbabwe and returning to England, he accepted a much reduced standard of living, whatever the nominal value of his income. Talleyrand said that he who had not experienced the ancien régime (as an aristocrat, of course) knew nothing of the sweetness of life. The same might be said of him who had not experienced life as a colonial in Africa. I, whose salary was by other standards small, lived at a level that I have scarcely equaled since. It is true that Rhodesia lacked many consumer goods at that time, due to the economic sanctions imposed upon it: but what I learned from this lack is how little consumer goods add to the quality of life, at least in an equable climate such as Rhodesia’s. Life was no poorer for being lived without them.

The real luxuries were space and beauty—and the time to enjoy them. With three other junior doctors, I rented a large and elegant colonial house, old by the standards of a country settled by whites only 80 years previously, set in beautiful grounds tended by a garden “boy” called Moses (the “boy” in garden boy or houseboy implied no youth: once, in East Africa, I was served by a houseboy who was 94, who had lived in the same family for 70 years, and would have seen the suggestion of retirement as insulting). Surrounding the house was a red flagstone veranda, where breakfast was served on linen in the cool of the morning, the soft light of the sunrise spreading through the foliage of the flame and jacaranda trees; even the harsh cry of the go-away bird seemed grateful on the ear. It was the only time in my life when I have arisen from bed without a tinge of regret.

We worked hard: I have never worked harder, and I can still conjure up the heavy feeling in my head, as if it were full of lead-shot and could snap off my neck under its own weight, brought about by weekends on duty, when from Friday morning to Monday evening I would get not more than three hours’ sleep. The luxury of our life was this: that, our work once done, we never had to perform a single chore for ourselves. The rest of our time, in our most beautiful surroundings, was given over to friendship, sport, study, hunting—whatever we wished.

Of course, our leisure rested upon a pyramid of startling inequality and social difference. The staff who freed us of life’s little inconveniences lived an existence that was opaque to us, though they had quarters only a few yards from where we lived. Their hopes, wishes, fears, and aspirations were not ours; their beliefs, tastes, and customs were alien to us.

Our very distance, socially and psychologically, made our relations with them unproblematical and easy. We studiously avoided that tone of spoiled and bored querulousness for which colonials were infamous. We never resorted to that supposed staple of colonial conversation, the servant problem, but were properly grateful. Like most of the people I met in Rhodesia, we tried to treat our staff well, providing extra help for them for the frequent emergencies of African life—for example illness among relatives. In return, they treated us with genuine solicitude. We assuaged our conscience by telling ourselves—what was no doubt true—that they would be worse off without our employ, but we couldn’t help feeling uneasy about the vast gulf between us and our fellow human beings.

By contrast, our relations with our African medical colleagues were harder-edged, because the social, intellectual, and cultural distance between us was far reduced. Rhodesia was still a white-dominated society, but for reasons of practical necessity, and in a vain attempt to convince the world that it was not as monstrous as made out, it had produced a growing cadre of educated Africans, doctors prominent among them. Unsurprisingly, they were not content to remain subalterns under the permanent tutelage of whites, so that our relations with them were superficially polite and collegial, but human warmth was difficult or impossible. Many belonged secretly to the African nationalist movement that was soon to take power; and two were to serve (if that is the word to describe their depredations) as ministers of health.

Unlike in South Africa, where salaries were paid according to a racial hierarchy (whites first, Indians and coloured second, Africans last), salaries in Rhodesia were equal for blacks and whites doing the same job, so that a black junior doctor received the same salary as mine. But there remained a vast gulf in our standards of living, the significance of which at first escaped me; but it was crucial in explaining the disasters that befell the newly independent countries that enjoyed what Byron called, and eagerly anticipated as, the first dance of freedom.

The young black doctors who earned the same salary as we whites could not achieve the same standard of living for a very simple reason: they had an immense number of social obligations to fulfill. They were expected to provide for an ever expanding circle of family members (some of whom may have invested in their education) and people from their village, tribe, and province. An income that allowed a white to live like a lord because of a lack of such obligations scarcely raised a black above the level of his family. Mere equality of salary, therefore, was quite insufficient to procure for them the standard of living that they saw the whites had and that it was only human nature for them to desire—and believe themselves entitled to, on account of the superior talent that had allowed them to raise themselves above their fellows. In fact, a salary a thousand times as great would hardly have been sufficient to procure it: for their social obligations increased pari passu with their incomes.

These obligations also explain the fact, often disdainfully remarked upon by former colonials, that when Africans moved into the beautiful and well-appointed villas of their former colonial masters, the houses swiftly degenerated into a species of superior, more spacious slum. Just as African doctors were perfectly equal to their medical tasks, technically speaking, so the degeneration of colonial villas had nothing to do with the intellectual inability of Africans to maintain them. Rather, the fortunate inheritor of such a villa was soon overwhelmed by relatives and others who had a social claim upon him. They brought even their goats with them; and one goat can undo in an afternoon what it has taken decades to establish.

It is easy to see why a civil service, controlled and manned in its upper reaches by whites, could remain efficient and uncorrupt but could not long do so when manned by Africans who were supposed to follow the same rules and procedures. The same is true, of course, for every other administrative activity, public or private. The thick network of social obligations explains why, while it would have been out of the question to bribe most Rhodesian bureaucrats, yet in only a few years it would have been out of the question not to try to bribe most Zimbabwean ones, whose relatives would have condemned them for failing to obtain on their behalf all the advantages their official opportunities might provide. Thus do the very same tasks in the very same offices carried out by people of different cultural and social backgrounds result in very different outcomes.

Viewed in this light, African nationalism was a struggle as much for power and privilege as it was for freedom, though it co-opted the language of freedom for obvious political advantage. In the matter of freedom, even Rhodesia—certainly no haven of free speech—was superior to its successor state, Zimbabwe. I still have in my library the oppositionist pamphlets and Marxist analyses of the vexed land question in Rhodesia that I bought there when Ian Smith was premier. Such thoroughgoing criticism of the rule of Mr. Mugabe would be inconceivable—or else fraught with much greater dangers than opposition authors experienced under Ian Smith. And indeed, in all but one or two African states, the accession to independence brought no advance in intellectual freedom but rather, in many cases, a tyranny incomparably worse than the preceding colonial regimes.

Of course, the solidarity and inescapable social obligations that corrupted public and private administration in Africa also gave a unique charm and humanity to life there and served to protect people from the worst consequences of the misfortunes that buffeted them. There were always relatives whose unquestioned duty it was to help and protect them if they could, so that no one had to face the world entirely alone. Africans tend to find our lack of such obligations puzzling and unfeeling—and they are not entirely wrong.

These considerations help to explain the paradox that strikes so many visitors to Africa: the evident decency, kindness, and dignity of the ordinary people, and the fathomless iniquity, dishonesty, and ruthlessness of the politicians and administrators. This contrast recently struck me anew when a lawyer asked me to prepare a report on a Zimbabwean woman who had stayed illegally in England.

She was in her forties and clearly in a disturbed state of mind. Mostly she looked down at the floor, avoiding all eye contact. When she looked up, her eyes seemed focused on infinity, or at least upon another world. She spoke hardly a word: her story was told me by her niece, a nurse who had come (or fled) to England some years before, and with whom she now stayed.

During the war of “liberation,” her brother had enlisted in the Rhodesian army. One day the nationalist guerrillas came to her village and commanded her parents to tell them where he was, that they might kill him as a traitor to the African cause. But not knowing his whereabouts, her parents could not answer: and so, in front of her eyes, and making her watch (she was 17 years old at the time), they tied her parents to trees, doused them in gasoline, and burned them to death. (At this point in the story, I could not help but recall the argument, common among radicals at the time, that those African countries that liberated themselves by force of arms faced a better, brighter future than those that had been handed independence on a plate, because the war of liberation would forge genuine leadership and national unity. Algeria? Mozambique? Angola?)

Whether or not it was witnessing this terrible scene that turned her mind, she was never able thereafter to lead a normal life. She did not marry, a social catastrophe for a woman in Zimbabwe. She was taken in and looked after by a cousin who worked for a white farmer, and she spent her life staring into space. Then the “war veterans” arrived, those who had allegedly fought for Zimbabwe’s freedom—in reality, groups of party thugs intent upon dispossessing white farmers of their land in fulfillment of Mr. Mugabe’s demagogic and economically disastrous instructions. The white farmer and his black manager were killed and all the workers whom the farm had supported driven off the land. Hearing of her aunt’s plight, her niece in England sent her a ticket.

This story illustrates both the ruthless appetite for power and control unleashed in Africa by the colonial experience—an appetite made all the nastier by some of the technological appurtenances of the colonialists’ civilization—and the generosity of the great majority of Africans. The niece would look after her aunt uncomplainingly for the rest of her life, demanding nothing in return and regarding it as her plain duty to do so, also asking nothing from the British state. Her kindness toward her aunt, who could contribute nothing, was moving to behold.

My Zimbabwean experiences sensitized me to the chaos I later witnessed throughout Africa. The contrast between kindness on the one hand and rapacity on the other was everywhere evident: and I learned that there is no more heartless saying than that the people get the government they deserve. Who, en masse, could deserve an Idi Amin or a Julius Nyerere? Certainly not the African peasants I encountered. The fact that such monsters could quite explicably emerge from the people by no means meant that the people deserved them.

The explanations usually given for Africa’s post-colonial travails seemed to me facile. It was often said, for example, that African states were artificial, created by a stroke of a European’s pen that took no notice of social realities; that boundaries were either drawn with a ruler in straight lines or at a natural feature such as a river, despite the fact that people of the same ethnic group lived on both sides.

This notion overlooks two salient facts: that the countries in Africa that do actually correspond to social, historical, and ethnic realities—for example Burundi, Rwanda, and Somalia—have not fared noticeably better than those that do not. Moreover in Africa, social realities are so complex that no system of boundaries could correspond to them. For example, there are said to be up to 300 ethnic groups in Nigeria alone, often deeply intermixed geographically: only extreme balkanization followed by profound ethnic cleansing could have resulted in the kind of boundaries that would have avoided this particular criticism of the European mapmakers. On the other hand, pan-Africanism was not feasible: for the kind of integration that could not be achieved on a small national scale could hardly be achieved on a vastly bigger international one.

In fact, it was the imposition of the European model of the nation-state upon Africa, for which it was peculiarly unsuited, that caused so many disasters. With no loyalty to the nation, but only to the tribe or family, those who control the state can see it only as an object and instrument of exploitation. Gaining political power is the only way ambitious people see to achieving the immeasurably higher standard of living that the colonialists dangled in front of their faces for so long. Given the natural wickedness of human beings, the lengths to which they are prepared to go to achieve power—along with their followers, who expect to share in the spoils—are limitless. The winner-take-all aspect of Africa’s political life is what makes it more than usually vicious.

But it is important to understand why another explanation commonly touted for Africa’s post-colonial turmoil is mistaken—the view that the dearth of trained people in Africa at the time of independence is to blame. No history of the modern Congo catastrophe is complete without reference to the paucity of college graduates at the time of the Belgian withdrawal, as if things would have been better had there been more of them. And therefore the solution was obvious: train more people. Education in Africa became a secular shibboleth that it was impious to question.

The expansion of education in Tanzania, where I lived for three years, was indeed impressive. The literacy rate had improved dramatically, so that it was better than that of the former colonizing power, and it was inspiring to see the sacrifices villagers were willing to make to enable at least one of their children to continue his schooling. School fees took precedence over every other expenditure. If anyone doubted the capacity of the poor to make investments in their own future, the conduct of the Tanzanians should have been sufficient to persuade him otherwise. (I used to lend money to villagers to pay the fees, and—poor as they were—they never failed to repay me.)

Unfortunately, there was a less laudable, indeed positively harmful, side to this effort. The aim of education was, in almost every case, that at least one family member should escape what Marx contemptuously called the idiocy of rural life and get into government service, from which he would be in a position to extort from the only productive people in the country—namely, the peasants from whom he had sprung. The son in government service was social security, old-age pension, and secure income rolled into one. Farming, the country’s indispensable economic base, was viewed as the occupation of dullards and failures, and so it was hardly surprising that the education of an ever larger number of government servants went hand in hand with an ever contracting economy. It also explains why there is no correlation between a country’s number of college graduates at independence and its subsequent economic success.

The naive supposition on which the argument for education rests is that training counteracts and overpowers a cultural worldview. A trained man is but a clone of his trainer, on this theory, sharing his every attitude and worldview. But in fact what results is a curious hybrid, whose fundamental beliefs may be impervious to the education he has received.

I had a striking example of this phenomenon recently, when I had a Congolese patient who had taken refuge in this country from the terrible war in Central Africa that has so far claimed up to 3 million lives. He was an intelligent man and had that easy charm that I remember well from the days when I traversed—not without difficulty or discomfort—the Zaire of Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko. He had two degrees in agronomy and had trained in Toulouse in the interpretation of satellite pictures for agronomic purposes. He recognized the power of modern science, therefore, and had worked for the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, and was used to dealing with Western aid donors and investors, as well as academics.

The examination over, we chatted about the Congo: he was delighted to meet someone who knew his country, by no means easily found in England. I asked him about Mobutu, whom he had known personally.

“He was very powerful,” he said. “He collected the best witch doctors from every part of Zaire. Of course, he could make himself invisible; that was how he knew everything about us. And he could turn himself into a leopard when he wanted.”

This was said with perfect seriousness. For him the magical powers of Mobutu were more impressive and important than the photographic power of satellites. Magic trumped science. In this he was not at all abnormal, it being as difficult or impossible for a sub-Saharan African to deny the power of magic as for an inhabitant of the Arabian peninsula to deny the power of Allah. My Congolese patient was perfectly relaxed: usually, Africans feel constrained to disguise from Europeans their most visceral beliefs, for which they know the Europeans usually feel contempt, as primitive and superstitious. And so, in dealing with outsiders, Africans feel obliged to play an elaborate charade, denying their deepest beliefs in an attempt to obtain the outsider’s minimal respect. In deceiving others about their innermost beliefs, often very easily, and in keeping their inner selves hidden from them, they are equalizing the disparity of power. The weak are not powerless: they have the power, for instance, to gull the outsider.

Perhaps the most baleful legacy of British and other colonials in Africa was the idea of the philosopher-king, to whose role colonial officials aspired, and which they often actually played, bequeathing it to their African successors. Many colonial officials made great sacrifices for the sake of their territories, to whose welfare they were devoted, and they attempted to govern them wisely, dispensing justice evenhandedly. But they left for the nationalists the instruments needed to erect the tyrannies and kleptocracies that marked post-independence Africa. They bequeathed a legacy of treating ordinary uneducated Africans as children, incapable of making decisions for themselves. No attitude is more grateful to the aspiring despot.

Take one example: the marketing boards of West Africa. Throughout West Africa, millions of African peasants under British rule set up small plantations for crops such as palm oil and cocoa. (Since cocoa trees mature only after five years, this is another instance of the African peasant’s ability both to think ahead and delay gratification by investment, despite great poverty.) Then the British colonial governments had the idea, benignly intended, of protecting the peasant growers from the fluctuations of the marketplace. They set up a stabilization fund, under the direction of a marketing board. In good years, the marketing board would withhold from the peasants some of the money their crops produced; in bad years, it would use the money earned in the good years to increase their incomes. With stable incomes, they could plan ahead.

Of course, for the system to work, the marketing boards would have to have monopoly purchasing powers. And it takes little imagination to see how such marketing boards would tempt an aspiring despot with grandiose ideas such as Dr. Nkrumah: he could use them in effect to tax Ghana’s producers in order to fund his insane projects and to subsidize the urban population that was the source of his power, as well as to amass a personal fortune. A continent away, in Tanzania, Nyerere used precisely the same means to expropriate the peasant coffee growers: in the end causing them to pull up their coffee bushes and plant a little corn instead, which at least they could eat, to the great and further impoverishment of the country.

The idea behind the marketing boards was a paternalist colonial one: that peasant farmers were too simple to cope with fluctuating prices and that the colonial philosopher-kings had therefore to protect them from such fluctuations—this despite the fact that it was the simple peasants who grew the commodities in the first place.

After several years in Africa, I concluded that the colonial enterprise had been fundamentally wrong and mistaken, even when, as was often the case in its final stages, it was benevolently intended. The good it did was ephemeral; the harm, lasting. The powerful can change the powerless, it is true; but not in any way they choose. The unpredictability of humans is the revenge of the powerless. What emerges politically from the colonial enterprise is often something worse, or at least more vicious because better equipped, than what existed before. Good intentions are certainly no guarantee of good results.

When a country begins sliding into oblivion it really is the little things that get to you. You wake up in the morning and turn to see what time it is. The clock is off. The electricity is off again. Sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for a few hours, but it seems to happen more regularly than before.

You pick up the phone at work to make a call. Nothing. Your neighborhood is without telephone service again. You breathe a sigh of relief—at least if all the phones are out, they'll do something relatively soon to fix it. If it's just your own line, it can take days before they'll do anything.

After the power comes on, you turn on the television to watch a favorite program, and hope you get the right sound with the right picture. Sometimes you get the sound of one show with the picture of another. Sometimes it's just the one or the other. Or a radio station instead of the soundtrack. You've read the papers—a large number of the "old" employees have walked out of the broadcasting studios. They couldn't take it anymore. And since television is an arm of the government, their replacements are appointed politically, not because of their experience or ability.

You drive home after going out for dinner. Entire neighborhoods are without street lights. Well, to be more accurate they are without lights that work. And the lights have been out for months. The city has said it won't fix them.

These are the little things in South Africa today. These are the things that annoy. The big things are too frightening even to consider.

Kafkaburg
For two years I couldn't get a water/electricity/tax bill from the city of Johannesburg. Water and electricity are socialist enterprises here. I didn't have an account number, nor did I know how much to pay. I tried calling the bureaucrats, but no help there: they said they'd get back to me, but they didn't.

On September 25th, they showed up to turn off my electricity for failure to pay. The city workers refused to show identification, wouldn't say whose account they were turning off, and wouldn't show any legal authorization to do so. In fact, they told me they didn't have to speak a language I understood (English). I called the police. I have a videotape of these civil servants telling me they aren't obligated to identify themselves, and that if I refused to allow them on the property they had the right to tear down my gate. When I asked one of them for anything that would show them to be city workers, he replied, "This isn't America you know." I know! I know!

I told him, "It's not Nazi Germany, either." He later chastised me for running down "Nazi Germany." "I'm sorry," I said, "I didn't realize you were a Nazi."

I went to the city hall and waited hours for someone to see me. I was finally told to make a plan to pay the account. I was willing. I had R7,000 (7,000 rand) cash on me. But the bureaucrats wouldn't let me pay or make a plan. They had forgotten to transfer the account to my name, you see; it was still in the old owner's name and the bill was going to the wrong address. I was ordered to wait until they changed it over and sent me a statement.

I pay a R700 deposit and go. Two days later they turn on the electricity. Two months later, and still no statement has arrived. I call and call. "I'll call you back," they say. They don't. I keep calling. Finally I get a sour bureaucrat who tells me I'll have to pay R9,000 immediately and the rest over six months. I asked about the year payment plan. That was discontinued in November. "But I wanted to pay in October and you people wouldn't let me," I protest. "That's your problem," she says.

Back at city hall, I see another woman who spends the entire time screaming at everyone who comes near her. She screams in the phone. She screams at the switchboard for "bothering" her with phone calls. She informs me that it's my obligation to pay my account whether or not the city sends me a statement. It doesn't matter if I don't know the amount owed. It doesn't matter if I don't have an account number to which the money is to be credited. My obligation is to pay an unknown sum into an unknown account, and if I don't get it right they'll turn off my electricity.

I got off relatively easy, though. Today's newspaper told of one man who received an account for R500,000 in water use. The man owns a well and doesn't even use city water. When he went in to talk to the bureaucrats, they were very sympathetic. They told him to pay 50 percent now or have his electricity cut off.

The Rise of Violence
Recently, I went into a print shop to get some flyers printed. The woman there was quite pleasant and we talked about the short blackout that day. She asked what I was doing in South Africa and told me that she and her family want to flee. Her family originally immigrated from India; like some Indians she was quite dark. Clearly she was not a member of the class "privileged" by apartheid. But what she said surprised me.

"My husband and I decided we were better off under apartheid. Sure now we can live next to white people and ride the same bus. But those things aren't important."

Today, the murder rate is ten times greater in South Africa than in the United States. One world atlas reports: "South Africa is the world's most dangerous country (beside war zones), with 40,000 murders a year." It wasn't this way four years ago, before the ANC took power. But the government says the murders are a "legacy of apartheid."

That's part of the problem. Everything that goes wrong is "a legacy of apartheid." The violence in the rest of Africa is a "legacy of colonialism." It's a legacy that has gone on for almost 40 years. Every time something goes wrong (and that happens constantly), the same litany of excuses are recited. "We inherited this problem from the corrupt apartheid regime."

I lived for thirty-some years in the U.S. and never met anyone who had been shot. I was never near a bank robbery. Never heard of a friend's car being hijacked. Only one person I knew suffered a burglary.

In the last two years many people I know have been burglarized. In fact, burglary is so common that people have stopped talking about it. One of my friends was hit six times in one year. The last time I saw him I asked what he had done that day. "I got a new TV," he said. "Oh, how generous of you," I replied. He has since left for England.

White farmers in particular are being targeted. Some, like Werner Weber, president of the Agricultural Employers Organization, believe there is an orchestrated campaign to force whites off the land so it can be redistributed. Farm attacks rise almost every year: 92 killed in 1994, 121 in 1995, 109 in 1996 and 140 last year. In some attacks people are murdered but nothing is stolen, indicating that robbery isn't the motive. Farmer Dudley Leitch told an AEO meeting that while the murder rate among South Africans in general is 13 per 100,000, it is 120 per 100,000 for farmers.

A major cellular phone company placed an anti-crime ad in a newspaper saying, "President Mandela—you were in prison. Now we all are." A top official of the bureaucracy that regulates telephones called the company and the ad was withdrawn. I guess it was too rude to state the obvious.

In America, you don't see what's happening. I know; I watch CNN. It doesn't even come close to telling the truth about the decline and death of South Africa. The American media can't tell the truth now—they have invested too much in telling everyone what a saint Mandela is.

Meanwhile, we live in prisons. My house has a set of bars on the outside of the windows and another set inside. I have a Rhodesian ridgeback dog patrolling the yard. I had a big, spiked, remote-controlled gate put in the drive. I can't afford the precautions that others are taking. You now see individual homes with security guards. Walls over eight feet tall are common, with barbed wire or spikes on top. Across the street, my neighbors put an electric fence on the wall—now a commonplace sight. People are armed and have hired private security companies. In the U.S. following all these precautions would be considered paranoid. Here it's average.

Police Story
On the street where my bookstore is located, a grocery has been robbed a couple of times. So were the post office and bank.

In the last few months, four of my customers have been hijacked by armed gangs, one of them in my parking lot. One was shot through the leg, another was shot at but missed. Another was beaten and spent weeks in the hospital. Well over 3,000 hijackings are reported each year. A family driving to Durban for holiday pulled to the side of the road so the two little boys could get out and take care of business. Several hours later the police found the two children sitting against the bodies of their dead parents; murdered for a car.

The new president of the ANC, Terror Lekota, told the press that the hijackings are the fault of apartheid. He claims the "apartheid regime" gave immunity from prosecution to hijackers in exchange for "intelligence" gathering on the ANC. Last year, another top government official blamed the spate of hijackings on whites. He said there was no crime wave at all, and that whites were inventing crimes just to collect insurance.

The acting head of the Licensing Department for the Johannesburg area, Gerrie Gerneke, issued a report in July 1997 confirming that the department was in the control of criminal syndicates. He said that half of all cars stolen in the Johannesburg area are "legalized" with new official documents within 30 days of being stolen. He said that cooperation between criminal gangs and union members has made it impossible for senior staff members or security staff to take any action. After Gerneke's report to the government was made, two anonymous letters accused him of being a racist. As a result of these anonymous complaints, Gerneke was suspended for five months. A year later Gerneke says the government has not acted on any of his recommendations to deal with corruption. When a car theft ring was recently exposed, five of the 16 individuals arrested were policemen. The chief investigator said, "We found that policemen were receiving stolen cars and then selling them to their clients."

In 1997 corruption reached such a level that Mandela appointed a Special Investigating Unit to look into the matter. According to Judge Willem Heath, head of the unit, there are currently more than 90,000 cases under investigation. If Heath and his crew manage to resolve one case of corruption per day, including weekends and holidays, it will take about 247 years to clear the current backlog. This doesn't include any new cases that will arise. Heath thinks the cases involve a sum of around 6 billion rand.

In 1997 approximately 2,300 police officers were charged with corruption —just about one every three hours. Almost 500 police officers have appeared in court on charges of working with criminal gangs. In the Johannesburg area alone 700 police officers are facing trials for committing crimes ranging from murder to burglary. And everyone assumes this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Over the last two years, there have been dozens of major highway robberies. In broad daylight gangs of a dozen men armed with AK-47s and other "military" weapons attack security trucks carrying large amounts of cash. These robberies have netted millions for the gangs. Government officials blame security companies, banks, and anyone else they can think of. But some arrests have finally been made, the ringleaders have turned out to be ANC activists. The leaders who were arrested were officials in the so-called "armed wing" of the ANC, Umkhonto weSizwe. One gang leader had been Youth League secretary for the Johannesburg area. A close associate of his, also a gang leader, was arrested but "escaped" from jail. Both were recent guests at the birthday party of Peter Mokaba, Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. There is evidence that Umkhonto weSizwe activists are not only behind some of the robberies, but that they are working with other armed cadres associated with so-called liberation movements from bordering countries.

In 1997 alone, there were 465 bank robberies. In all about $40 million was taken. Banks are raising their fees substantially to compensate for the losses.

Crime seems to be the only thing that works in South Africa—the risk of being arrested, tried and convicted is minuscule. In 1997, only 14.6 percent of murders led to arrest and conviction. Of 52,110 rapes there were only 2,532 convictions—about 6.7 percent. For the 330,093 burglaries there were 15,710 convictions, about 4.8 percent.

Experienced prosecutors have quit their jobs, replaced by novices who owe their positions to affirmative action.

During the 1997 Christmas season, the police and prisons "lost" almost 300 prisoners. In one instance a policeman took two prisoners to a bar for drinks. One of them borrowed his keys and returned to the jail to release 23 other prisoners. At another jail nine prisoners walked out, leaving behind a note: "We are out for Christmas and will be back on January 3." (They didn't come back.) Several prisoners left a police van when guards didn't bother locking it.

In 1995, Sylvester Mofokeng was taken out of his cell for a soccer game. When he was returning to prison, he simply jumped out of the truck and ran through gates that were left unlocked. He was rearrested three months later, but in August 1996 he escaped again. Somehow he obtained a gun from a visitor and used it to force guards to release him.

Josiah Rabotapi is believed to be the leader of an armed robbery syndicate involved in the theft of up to $14 million in 30 armed robberies. He is also wanted for 16 murders. So far he has been arrested three times and escaped every time. Jan van der Westhuizen, a convicted murderer, has escaped from prison or police custody seven times.

When the police aren't "losing" criminals, they are killing them. A recent government report showed that one person dies every twelve hours either while in police custody or as a result of police action. Two-thirds of these deaths take place during apprehension. According to one report, "an overview of 100 shooting incidents between police and civilians" showed a heavy "imbalance in casualties." David Bruce, a researcher for the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation said, "In only five of the cases was a policeman hurt, and in one case a policeman was killed."

In the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, citizens are fighting back. In some areas they have put security guards at the entrance to a subdivision. Entrances are closed off with gates to control who comes in and who goes out. Criminals can no longer simply load their cars with stolen goods and speed out when security guards stop them at the gate. These areas have seen dramatic reductions in crime. But the ANC has ordered the gates removed. It claims these efforts force crime away from white areas and are therefore racist.

I've lived in South Africa for six years and I've seen a lot of changes. Even a few for the good. But the standard of living has declined. And people's attitudes have changed: hope is gone, replaced by fear, anxiety, even horror. There is a joke going around: Americans have Bill Clinton, Johnny Cash and Bob Hope. South Africans have Nelson Mandela, no cash and no hope.

The Return of Apartheid
Another popular joke is that Mickey Mouse has a watch with the picture of our Ministers of Finance. In the six years that I have lived here the South African rand has depreciated by 50 percent. In just the last year it has dropped 30 percent.

The government has conducted a massive "jobs" program. But since the ANC has taken power the number of jobs has declined, despite sanctions being lifted and increased trade with the rest of the world. The only job increases are in government departments.

South African workers are not particularly productive. But the government has been pushing new labor legislation that continues to drive up the cost of South African labor. No wonder that fewer and fewer South Africans are employed.

The ANC is pushing a new "Equity Employment" bill through Parliament. This bill will force all employers to reserve a number of jobs for blacks. Businesses that don't comply with the mandatory racial quotas face heavy fines. And so apartheid is back—the old laws in new packaging.

Recently, ANC members of Parliament have announced that they intend to introduce legislation applying racial quotas to sports. Specifically, the government wants to control rugby, a sport played traditionally by whites (unlike soccer, which is dominated by blacks). Mandela ordered a commission to investigate racism in the South African Rugby Football Union. SARFU took the issue to court and the court ruled against the commission. ANC officials then proclaimed the judge an unpatriotic racist for requiring Mandela to testify on why the commission was created.

ANC MPs, unable to get control of rugby legally, resorted to intimidation. They announced on the floor of Parliament that unless the leadership of SARFU resigns, ANC members will forcibly close airports to prevent other rugby teams from entering South Africa. Major corporations, all fearful of the ANC, threatened to remove financial support from SARFU unless the ANC got its way. Rugby head Louis Luyt, who had defeated an ANC partisan for the job, was forced out by the threats. After Luyt resigned, SARFU apologized to Mandela for making him go to court.

Communists in Government
The government of South Africa is actually a coalition of three groups. The ruling triple alliance is made up of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the African National Congress (ANC), which leads the coalition. The SACP has a lot of influence in COSATU and together they exercise a great deal of control over the ANC. Thabo Mbeki, who just replaced Mandela as leader of the ANC, and is pegged to be president of South Africa when Mandela steps down, was trained in Moscow. His father, Govan, is an old line Marxist and SACP activist. At a recent ANC conference the hard left solidified its control over the ANC by capturing nine of its eleven top positions. Of the ANC's 240 MPs in Parliament, 80 were appointed by the SACP. The ANC and COSATU also used some of their quotas to appoint SACP members to Parliament.

When Chris Hani was assassinated by Janus Waluz, a Polish immigrant, CNN called Hani, "a top ANC official" or "anti-apartheid activist." But CNN didn't mention that Hani was the head of the Communist Party and that Waluz was a refugee from communism. Instead, the impression was given that Hani was another Martin Luther King.

In the same way, many facts about Mandela and the ANC are never reported by the media. For example, Mandela awarded South Africa's equivalent of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom to Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi. Mandela has publicly said that Cuba is a model for a free, democratic society that is, in fact, more democratic than the United States. Castro has been here for friendly visits. When U.S. officials complained about Mandela's cozy relationship with dictators, Mandela said that no other nation has the right to interfere in South African affairs—this from the man who supported sanctions against the old government. Curiously, Mandela dropped recognition of Taiwan at the demand of Communist China.

The ANC's Bill of Wrongs
Gay rights are now enshrined in South Africa's Bill of Rights. Gay publications around the world have praised the ANC for this. But in fact gay sex remains illegal. The government has taken no practical steps to legalize homosexuality. When a gay rights group took the sodomy laws to the Constitutional Court, the government opposed its effort. After a world-wide outcry, the government backed down. It appears the ANC is hoping the courts throw out the law, thereby taking credit for being pro-gay while not being responsible for the change. Yet the South African government continues to deny foreign gay partners of South Africans the right to stay in the country legally. The issue is in court, but the government is opposed to changes in the policy.

The ruling ideology is that "there are no absolute rights," so the ANC put "weasel" clauses into the Bill of Rights. Any right guaranteed by the Constitution can be ignored. For instance, the right to engage in enterprise is absolute—unless infringed "by law." Thus the government can do what it wants since it passes the laws. Other constitutional clauses say rights can be limited by government consistent with the operation of an "open" and "democratic" society. And remember, Mandela considers Cuba democratic.

The bill of rights negotiated by various political parties guaranteed freedom of speech. Repressive censorship laws were relegated to the dustbin. But the ANC has been pulling them back out and wiping them off.

A bill to repeal censorship was introduced in Parliament. I even testified in favor of it. The bill was mediocre but livable. Later, the ANC rewrote it in secret and passed it without making a written version available. The new bill actually creates a censorship body. All videos and films must be approved by the censorship board before they can be distributed. So-called "x-rated" material can be sold only in licensed adult shops. Anything deemed "hate speech" is illegal. The new "obscenity" standard is that anything "degrading" is illegal. Another victory for clear, concise legal concepts.

Lindiwe Sisulu, deputy minister of home affairs, said the government "tries" to balance free speech with the rights of "society, in reality, however, there can never be an absolute balance." This means "not all speech can be equally protected." Sisulu interprets the new censorship legislation much more strictly than in the past. She claims that "anyone who downloads pornography from the Internet will commit an offense." Note that she has broadened this beyond the act which banned "degrading" pornography, bestiality, child porn, and hate speech. Now she says that any downloaded porn is illegal. Expanding the prior censorship of films and videos, Sisulu says all photos must be classified by the government before distribution. "No person may screen a film or photograph, including on a computer screen, which has not been classified by the Publications Board. This means that anyone placing material on the Internet must have a classification certificate for that material." In other words the government now claims the right to classify—and ban—all photographs before they are distributed to anyone.

Yet the ANC stills finds the bill of rights too restrictive of government. Peter Mokaba recently gave a speech in a black area demanding that all blacks vote for the ANC so it can get two-thirds control of Parliament. He said this would allow it to rewrite the constitution and end all restrictions on government power. ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe said that if the ANC won two-thirds control in the next election, it could govern "unfettered by constraints."

Supine and Pusillanimous
In the last four years, the nation's largest string of newspapers has lost its independence from the government after being taken over by Irish press baron Tony O'Reilly. O'Reilly's Independent group is cozy with the ANC. An article in The Times of London says O'Reilly has been criticized for "his unhealthily close relationship with the ANC government. He began by appointing an advisory board stacked with ANC supporters and has been vocal in his support for all manner of ANC causes and watchwords." Journalists have been unhappy that O'Reilly brought in his biographer, Ivan Fallon, to run the newspapers because Fallon "is disliked for his refusal to stand up to Government attempts to bully the press into uncritical support."

According to The Times O'Reilly's newspapers have downplayed scandals within the ANC government. In the Virodene scandal, ANC politicians promoted—and still promote—the so-called AIDS drug. Documents show that the company producing the drug was planning to offer a six percent share of the profits to the ANC. O'Reilly's papers "have played down the whole matter, neglecting to cover key press conferences."

Other newspapers, however, still manage to criticize the government, and the ANC and Mandela don't like it. Mandela constantly attacks the press for being "opposed" to the "transformation." In fact the press, on the whole, was staunchly critical of apartheid. Still, Mandela says the media, with the exception of television, are racist. In the next few years, legislation directed against the newspapers is almost certain. Mandela's hero, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, wiped out recalcitrant newspapers by simply turning them over to the government.

Television is exempt from Mandela's criticisms because the three main television stations are already controlled by the government. ANC officials run the stations and they are often deathly silent about the problems in South Africa. But they do have time for endless documentaries on Mandela and the ANC, with titles like "Our Heroes." One new news director is a long-time ANC supporter with no broadcasting experience.

Two new mini-series have been produced for the coming season: one is a glowing film about the life of communist Helen Joseph and her fight for the ANC, and the other is about ANC partisan Bishop Tutu. A new television series, funded by the Labour Ministry, is called "Let's Talk." A recent episode showed the workers, all of whom are called "comrades," on strike. The owner of the factory, who for some reason had an American accent, locked out the strikers. But the company management didn't know how to build their own product, houses, and built them upside down! The government and the trade unions seem to believe that entrepreneurs and management are useless, and that all productivity comes from labor.

The South African Broadcasting System's political allegiances are no secret: one station's promotional commercial shows its on-air talent in "rainbow" clothing and marching with colorful flags to triumphant music. Several flags feature the face of Mandela. In another Stalinoid presentation, the television producers' award show included a musical number with the chorus, "Oh, Mandela, we sing praise to you." Not long ago, the son of the former president of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, who hosts an SABC talk show, ran an hour-long special praising media mogul Tony O'Reilly. No doubt the fact that O'Reilly has cuddled up to the ANC had nothing to do with the praise heaped upon him.

Fascism, South African Style
Civil society is being politicized. Everything must be solidified in the hands of the State and the State must be in the hands of the ANC.

Last year the government nationalized all water resources in South Africa. Under new legislation it will be illegal to dig a well without prior approval from the central government. The ANC attacked critics of the legislation as "racist whites" who want to protect their luxury swimming pools. Meanwhile the new rulers admit they can't find 45 percent of all the water shipped to Johannesburg. Only 55 percent of the water is metered out—the rest simply disappears. But considering that meters are found almost exclusively in white areas, while black areas have unmetered taps, this should be no surprise.

But water is only the camel's nose in the tent. The ANC Minister of Mineral Affairs, Penuell Maduna, called for the nationalization of all minerals, saying that "private ownership of mineral rights is unacceptable to the government." Government spokesmen call private ownership "racist" because not everyone owns mineral rights in a private system. Maduna previously floated the idea that the government should also control all oil companies. Under the current system, price competition in petrol is forbidden and all prices are set by the government.

The hospitals in South Africa have become nightmares. Two years ago Mandela announced free medical care for children. The hospitals are now filled with unemployed women and their children. They sit there for hours to have a cough or a runny nose checked.

Dr. Zuma, Minister of Health, seems determined to make health care in South Africa equally bad everywhere. She has conscripted all medical students to be servants. They are to give two years of their lives to the State, to do what the State orders, anywhere the State orders. The legislation doesn't even specify that the service has to be in South Africa. Speculation is that at least some will be assigned to Cuba.

When it was pointed out to Zuma that huge numbers of doctors and medical students are now emigrating, she called them "traitors," and attributed their fleeing to "racism." Wits School of Medicine reported that 45 percent of all students who graduated in the last 35 years have already left the country. A recent survey of the top doctors in South Africa revealed the almost unanimous opinion that Zuma is destroying the nation's health-care system. The Independent wrote, "Many doctors said that Zuma's apparent intention to introduce a communist or socialist national health system was stifling private practice and initiative. This, coupled with excessive control and interference, has left doctors despondent." A spokesman for Zuma responded by saying that if the proposals are "seen as socialist, then we will continue to do so and offer no apologies."

The destruction of health care has even affected the food supply. Vaccines that are urgently needed to protect livestock have run out. The only legal source for purchasing the vaccines in South Africa is through the government, and the government labs are empty. Farmers who send in their checks to buy the vaccines have the money returned. The top veterinary scientists are also leaving the country. At the Onderstepoort Research Centre only one of the original six specialists is still there. Onderstepoort, once considered one of the best research centers in the world, is now limping along. Scientists say there is a good chance that mutated viruses will decimate the beef, pork, and lamb industries before new vaccines can be developed. They warn that the public should expect a shortage of meat and milk as a result.

Under the old apartheid regime, government schools in black areas were woefully deficient. When the ANC took over the education system things changed. Now all the schools are woefully deficient.—equality has been achieved. But the number of students graduating from high school has declined under the ANC. Those who do well in school prosper only if they are the right color. The student who passed more courses with distinction than any other student in South Africa can't even get a scholarship. Each application he has made has been rejected because he's the wrong color. He has the best scholastic record in the country but no one cares. It isn't wise to give money to anyone not approved by the ANC.

In the Eastern Cape, near Port Elizabeth, is the impoverished Khwezi Lomso Comprehensive School. The principal is Cecilia Behrent. During her tenure the school has achieved a pass rate of 84 percent, well above the national rate of 47 percent and double that of the provincial pass rate of 42 percent. The teachers' union, in cooperation with the government, has been trying to have a union official replace Behrent, who is white. Her ouster is opposed by almost every one of her 1,100 students, almost all the teachers, and over 700 parents who have signed a petition on her behalf. The government refused to accept the petition.

Johannesburg Besieged
Johannesburg was a relatively safe and clean city when I moved here. I moved into a racially mixed area in the city center. I left a year later. Today, I won't drive there in broad daylight. The streets are controlled by criminals. Some gangs sit at street corners and rob passing motorists. They break the car window, take what they want, pile it on the curb, and then wait for another car. They don't even run with the stolen goods. They don't need to; no one will arrest them.

Residents of my old neighborhood, Hillbrow, have discovered a new game: take cans of trash and throw them from 15th floor windows at pedestrians. The streets are filthy and reek of urine. Businesses are moving out. The luxury Carleton Hotel held on for awhile but finally gave up the ghost. No one would stay there, so the hotel closed its 200-plus rooms, and now sits empty.

Mayhem reigned on New Year's Eve. In the Hillbrow section of the city, nearly 200 police officers patrolled an area of just a few square blocks —to no apparent effect. Three people were murdered on the streets that evening. Police who tried to stop looters were pelted from the high-rise apartment buildings. Paramedics were attacked when they tried to aid the injured.

So the ANC took action. Johannesburg is a massive city, and the ANC promised to break its management into several regions. "Local control" would then be achieved with four gerrymandered districts. Each district was drawn in the most convoluted way possible, ensuring that each had enough blacks. The ANC knows where its voters live.

The city hired thousands and thousands of new bureaucrats. In many cases two people did the same job—one black worker with the title and one white worker to do the work. Money was redistributed to the "previously disadvantaged." While black townships haven't improved, white areas have declined. Now Johannesburg, once the wealthiest city in Africa, can't pay its bills, and can't get bank loans. It went from budget surplus to bankruptcy in just two years. More ANC magic.

This black magic is being worked throughout South Africa. The British-based Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy recently said that 281 municipalities in South Africa are now technically bankrupt. That's one out of every three cities in the country.

Public parks are now squatter camps. Broken water mains gush for days before they're fixed. Pot holes remain unrepaired. The city budget allocates less than $100,000 for street repairs for the entire city! Inefficiency reigns. Under questioning in Parliament, ANC officials admitted that roads in Gauteng have deteriorated under their management. Transport Minister Mac Maharaj admitted that only 37 percent of the roads were in good or very good condition in 1997 where this was true of 80 percent of the roads in 1985.

The Political Struggle
In Johannesburg the opposition party to the ANC is the Democratic Party DP). Once a leading anti-apartheid party, it is now the only real opposition to the ANC left, and it has become increasingly libertarian. It supports the rights of gay people and free enterprise. It opposes affirmative action and censorship.

The northern suburbs are now staunch DP territory. And they are in a tax revolt. The government responds by sending in armed goons to terrorize elderly couples. The ANC isn't happy. My area is the one area where the ANC doesn't have a clear majority. It can't institute one party rule here, so it intimidates, punishes, and withdraws basic city services.

To counter the opposition, the ANC now plans to make the entire Johannesburg area a "mega city." No more regions. The DP areas will be swamped "democratically" by ANC supporters, allowing the ANC to continue to steal from DP voters and give to ANC bureaucrats.

Critics of the mega city were, of course, branded "racists". (Today, that term has lost all meaning in South Africa. In fact, if you're not labeled a "racist" one time or another, you're simply not a decent human being.) Various community groups asked for a referendum. The ANC said that was undemocratic, and wouldn't have it.

Local DP politician Frances Kendall called for a private referendum. Hundreds of voting booths were established throughout the city. The ANC ordered its supporters not to vote. In black areas voting booths were harassed and intimidated into closing. Then the ANC said the vote didn't count because there weren't enough voting booths in black areas. Just under 100,000 people voted. The vote was overwhelmingly against the "mega city". The ANC said it didn't care and would ignore it. After all the poll only expressed the views of racists.

When the ANC won power, the election was declared "free and fair" by European Community observers. One observer admitted to a Federal Party official that the election would be declared corrupt if judged by European standards, "but this is Africa." For instance, more voters voted than existed. A recent census showed the population at under 39 million, not 44 million as previously claimed. Since more than half the population consists of children, there can't be more than 19 million voters in the country. Yet more than 19 million cast ballots. No one seems to care that the ANC was elected with millions of fraudulent votes.

I was receiving hourly vote tallies by fax from the Independent Electoral Commission. I remember my amazement when I noticed that the vote total for the Federal Party was higher at 6 p.m. than at 7 p.m. Votes were disappearing. Vote counting went on for days when suddenly it stopped. For two days no results were released. IEC officials met with political party officials behind closed doors before the final results were negotiated and announced.

For the last several years the ANC has done everything possible to manipulate the voting system to increase its totals. First, it proposed that the voting age be reduced to 14 years since the overwhelming majority of youths are black. Public ridicule has quashed this proposal for the time being. Next, the ANC tried to change the laws so that non-citizens could vote provided they were from "neighboring," i.e. black, countries. Because most white non-citizens are from England, Canada, the United States, etc. the white vote wouldn't have increased. Opposition parties managed to kill this proposal as well.

Instead, the ANC achieved the same goal through the back door. The vast majority of "illegal" immigrants in South Africa are blacks from neighboring countries. The ANC granted them immediate citizenship. Meanwhile, "legal" immigrants, who are mainly whites from Western countries, find it increasingly difficult to stay in South Africa. Permanent residency for "legal" immigrants has become more difficult to receive, and the cost of simply applying has increased from less than $100 to over $1,400.

The National Party (NP), once South Africa's dominant party, is fast losing support. It has never really opposed the ANC on anything, and it has made numerous backroom deals with the ANC to retain privileges for its leaders. The job of standing up to the ANC is filled by the "liberal" Democratic Party.

The DP has contested by-elections recently in several NP strongholds. In each case the DP handily beat the NP candidate. White voters no longer trust the NP, and with good reason. In the most recent local election the DP garnered 90 percent of the votes. Just before the election a top NP official said this seat was the NP's "safest" in the country. But the ANC is launching a counter-offensive.

DP activists, many of whom were arrested for denouncing apartheid, are now branded racists by the ANC. ANC media mouthpieces refer to the "liberal racists" of the DP. ANC officials call liberals "bigots" and use the term "conservative liberals" to denegrate ANC critics. Party officials regularly give speeches denouncing critics as being "unpatriotic." And recently they have started claiming that whites are preventing its programs from succeeding.

Mandela openly denounces the DP as racist. His objective is to sideline the DP. Of all the opposition parties—outside the Inkatha Freedom Party, which is strictly Zulu-based—only the DP has a hope of attracting black support. It must be destroyed if a one-party ANC state is to be constructed.

What happens depends largely on how the rest of the world views South Africa. If there is sufficient criticism and publicity, the would-be ANC dictators will back down. They have before and will again. But the ANC is whittling away at the rule of law and the world isn't saying very much. The ANC won't ban its opposition outright—at least not in the immediate future. Total government control of all the media isn't in the cards yet either—but the newspapers will be attacked in the guise of promoting "diversity." But there is a hope. International pressure and continued support for the DP may at least hold things off.

But the odds are against it. South Africa will most likely walk the road to misery, corruption, despair and destruction. Give it time. It won't be any different here than in the rest of Africa.

Why I'm fleeing South Africa
by Anne Paton (widow of Alan Paton)
London Sunday

I am leaving South Africa. I have lived here for 35 years, and I shall leave with anguish. My home and my friends are here, but I am terrified. I know I shall be in trouble for saying so, because I am the widow of Alan Paton.

Fifty years ago he wrote Cry, The Beloved Country. He was an unknown schoolmaster and it was his first book, but it became a bestseller overnight. It was eventually translated into more than 20 languages and became a set book in schools all over the world. It has sold more than 15 million copies and still sells 100,000 copies a year.

As a result of the startling success of this book, my husband became famous for his impassioned speeches and writings, which brought to the notice of the world the suffering of the black man under apartheid.

He campaigned for Nelson Mandela's release from prison and he worked all his life for black majority rule. He was incredibly hopeful about the new South Africa that would follow the end of apartheid, but he died in 1988, aged 85.

I was so sorry he did not witness the euphoria and love at the time of the election in 1994.But I am glad he is not alive now. He would have been so distressed to see what has happened to his beloved country.

I love this country with a passion, but I cannot live here any more. I can no longer live slung about with panic buttons and gear locks. I am tired of driving with my car windows closed and the doors locked, tired of being afraid of stopping at red lights. I am tired of being constantly on the alert, having that sudden frisson of fear at the sight of a shadow by the gate, of a group of youths approaching - although nine times out of 10 they are innocent of harmful intent. Such is the suspicion that dogs us all.

Among my friends and the friends of my friends, I know of nine people who have been murdered in the past four years.

An old friend, an elderly lady, was raped and murdered by someone who broke into her home for no reason at all; another was shot at a garage.

We have a saying, "Don't fire the gardener", because of the belief that it is so often an inside job - the gardener who comes back and does you in.

All this may sound like paranoia, but it is not without reason. I have been hijacked, mugged and terrorised. A few years ago my car was taken from me at gunpoint. I was forced into the passenger seat. I sat there frozen. But just as one man jumped into the back and the other fumbled with the starter I opened the door and ran away. To this day I do not know how I did this. But I got away, still clutching my handbag.

On May I this year I was mugged in my home at three in the afternoon. I used to live in a community of big houses with big grounds in the countryside. It's still beautiful and green, but the big houses have been knocked down and people have moved into fenced complexes like the one in which I now live. Mine is in the suburbs of Durban, but they're springing up everywhere.

That afternoon I came home and omitted to close the security door. I went upstairs to lie down. After a while I thought I'd heard a noise, perhaps a bird or something. Without a qualm I got up and went to the landing; outside was a man. I screamed and two other men appeared. I was seized by the throat and almost throttled; I could feel myself losing consciousness.

My mouth was bound with Sellotape and I was threatened with my own knife (Girl Guide issue from long ago) and told: "If you make a sound, you die." My hands were tied tightly behind my back and I was thrown into the guest room and the door was shut. They took all the electronic equipment they could find, except the computer. They also, of course, took the car.

A few weeks later my new car was locked up in my fenced carport when I was woken by its alarm in the early hours of the morning. The thieves had removed the radio, having cut through the padlocks in order to bypass the electric control on the gates.

The last straw came a few weeks ago, shortly before my 71st birthday. I returned home in the middle of the afternoon and walked into my sitting room. Outside the window two men were breaking in. I retreated to the hall and pressed the panic alarm.

This time I had shut the front door on entering. By now I had become more cautious. Yet one of the men ran around the house, jumped over the fence and tried to batter down the front door. Meanwhile, his accomplice was breaking my sitting- room window with a hammer.

This took place while the sirens were shrieking, which was the frightening part. They kept coming, in broad daylight, while the alarm was going. They knew that there had to be a time lag of a few minutes before help arrived - enough time to dash off with the television and video recorder. In fact, the front-door assailant was caught and taken off to the cells. Recently I telephoned to ask the magistrate when I would be called as a witness. She told me she had let him off for lack of evidence. She said that banging on my door was not an offence, and how could I prove that his intent was hostile?

I have been careless in the past - razor wire and electric gates give one a feeling of security. Or at least, they did. But I am careless no longer. No fence - be it electric or not - no wall, no razor wire is really a deterrent to the determined intruder. Now my alarm is on all the time and my panic button hung round my neck. While some people say I have been unlucky, others say: "You are lucky not to have been raped or murdered." What kind of a society is this where one is considered "lucky" not to have been raped or murdered - yet?

A character in Cry, The Beloved Country says: "I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving they will find we are turned to hating." And so it has come to pass. There is now more racial tension in this country than I have ever known.

But it is not just about black-on-white crime. It is about general lawlessness. Black people suffer more than the whites. They do not have access to private security firms, and there are no police stations near them in the townships and rural areas. They are the victims of most of the hijackings, rapes and murders. They cannot run away like the whites, who are streaming out of this country in their thousands.

President Mandela has referred to us who leave as "cowards" and says the country can do without us. So be it. But it takes a great deal of courage to uproot and start again. We are leaving because crime is rampaging through the land. The evils that beset this country now are blamed on the legacy of apartheid. One of the worst legacies of that time is that of the Bantu Education Act, which deliberately gave black people an inferior education.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that criminals know that their chances of being caught are negligible; and if they are caught they will be free almost at once. So what is the answer? The government needs to get its priorities right. We need a powerful, well-trained and well-equipped police force.

Recently there was a robbery at a shopping centre in the afternoon. A call to the police station elicited the reply: "We have no transport." "Just walk then," said the caller; the police station is about a two-minute sprint from the shop in question. "We have no transport," came the reply again. Nobody arrived.

There is a quote from my husband's book: "Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much."

What has changed in half a century? A lot of people who were convinced that everything would be all right are disillusioned, though they don't want to admit it.

The government has many excellent schemes for improving the lot of the black man, who has been disadvantaged for so long. A great deal of money is spent in this direction. However, nothing can succeed while people live in such fear. Last week, about 10km from my home, an old couple were taken out and murdered in the garden. The wife had only one leg and was in a wheelchair. Yet they were stabbed and strangled - for very little money. They were the second old couple to be killed last week. It goes on and on, all the time; we have become a killing society.

As I prepare to return to England, a young man asked me the other day, in all innocence, if things were more peaceful there. "You see," he said, "I know of no other way of life than this. I cannot imagine anything different." What a tragic statement on the beloved country today. "Because the white man has power, we too want power," says Msimangu.

'Islamofascism'Beware of a religion without irony, By ROGER SCRUTON

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