By Curtis Scoon
On May 10, 1994, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first Black president, officially ending the country’s apartheid era. Apartheid was the racial segregation policy the white minority had imposed on the overwhelmingly Black majority since 1948. Mandela wasted no time praising the African nations that had hosted African National Congress (ANC) training bases, where the ANC’s freedom fighters trained alongside local forces. The notable frontline states providing military and logistical support were Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Botswana, Lesotho, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. A host of other African nations also provided critical economic and diplomatic support. The continent had united behind Black South Africans in a way it never had before.
Shortly after his release from prison in 1990, Mandela visited Nigeria to thank the government for the “Mandela Tax” — better known as the South African Relief Fund (SARF), money deducted from Nigerian workers’ pay to fund the ANC’s fight against apartheid. Nigeria even offered academic scholarships to South African exiles. Fast forward to 2026, and a large share of South Africans have been manipulated into blaming African immigrants for their dire conditions. Decades after apartheid ended, the promises of majority rule have fallen short for most of the Black population. A staggering 51.7% of South Africans are under 30 — too young to have been alive when the continent coalesced to help liberate them.
The end of apartheid did not deliver the wealth redistribution many had anticipated. South Africa regularly ranks as having the worst wealth inequality in the world. The Black population faces an official unemployment rate of 35.8% and an unofficial one of 47.5%. Black South Africans own just 4% of the land despite being 82% of the population, and they account for 96% of all people living with HIV. These conditions have left the Black majority increasingly frustrated and vulnerable to social manipulation, both from within and outside the country. In desperate need of a scapegoat, the disenfranchised have turned to Afrophobia as a coping mechanism. The irony is that the African immigrants being targeted are themselves largely poor laborers and vendors. South African Blacks are blaming former allies instead of the government that failed to address their needs.
My personal introduction to the African continent wasn’t the classroom, but the old black-and white Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller that I watched as a child. Tarzan is the fictional tale of a white infant, orphaned in Africa, who is raised by apes. He grows so strong and mighty that even the wild beasts bow to his authority, while the indigenous Africans kowtow at the mere sight of him and call him “bwana” — Swahili for “master.”
Tarzan’s domination of Africa and its inhabitants sums up and symbolizes the narrative of European history in what is today called sub-Saharan Africa. Europeans arrived knowing little of the terrain before subjugating and partitioning the entire continent. Their pursuit of riches and power unleashed some of Europe’s most heartless men on the indigenous people, who were raped, pillaged, and enslaved with impunity. The Europeans were masters of fostering internecine tribal warfare to divide and conquer — a ploy that has repeatedly worked to the detriment of Africans, then and now. Consequently, roughly thirteen million Africans were enslaved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries. The human capital was merely the appetizer; the continent’s natural resources proved to be the long-lasting main course.
Among the worst perpetrators of European barbarity in the post-trans-Atlantic-slavery era were King Leopold II of Belgium and British mining magnate Cecil Rhodes. Unlike Leopold, who terrorized central Africa in what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rhodes made his mark in South Africa. He traveled there in 1870 at the age of 17 to join his brother Herbert’s struggling cotton business in Natal. The discovery of diamonds a few hundred miles inland, in a place called Kimberley, caused the brothers to abandon agriculture and turn to mining. The ambitious Rhodes wanted to consolidate all of the competing diamond mines in Kimberley into a single entity, devising a strategy to create a monopoly that would control the global supply of diamonds and fix their price. A key component of that strategy was the displacement of indigenous populations from their land through what can only be described as unadulterated genocide. Rhodes’ private mercenary army eventually seized 3.5 million acres of African land. With the financial backing of the powerful Rothschild banking house, Rhodes’ vision of a diamond monopoly was complete by 1888, when De Beers Consolidated Mines was formed. Although Nathaniel “Natty” Rothschild was the largest shareholder, Rhodes remained the public face of the company. By the early 1890s, De Beers controlled an estimated 90% of global rough diamond production.
South Africa’s abundant mineral and gold deposits attracted many British subjects seeking to strike it rich. The majority Dutch settlers, who had been on the continent for generations, referred to them as uitlanders, a Dutch word meaning “outsider.” Even among the European colonizers and settlers there was division and competition for land and resources. These rivalries often led to violent disputes settled militarily, as was the case with the two Boer Wars.
The word “Boer” literally means “farmer” in Afrikaans, a derivative of Dutch spoken almost exclusively in southern Africa. Dutch settlers fought the British in the First Boer War for political sovereignty and control of the land vital to their existence. That war started in 1880 and ended in 1881, with the Boers prevailing. However, the discovery of the world’s largest gold deposits in the Witwatersrand Basin of the Boer-controlled Transvaal in 1886 pitted British mining interests against the Dutch farmers a second time. Diamonds became a sideshow. The Second Boer War that followed in 1899 made the first one seem like a skirmish. The British embarked on a scorched-earth strategy, burning some 30,000 Boer homes and farms to prevent them from supplying Boer guerrilla fighters with food, essentials, and intelligence. Boer women and children bore the brunt of it, placed in concentration camps where roughly 28,000 succumbed to the squalor of their environment. More Boer civilians died in the war than Boer combatants.
It’s important to note that in the Second Boer War, Cecil Rhodes represented British interests on the ground with financial backing from Natty Rothschild. There was a lot at stake, and an estimated 365,000 imperial soldiers deployed directly from Great Britain once it became apparent that Boer resistance was greater than expected. Upon arrival, they were joined by 83,000 colonial volunteers from British colonies around the world, and even more native African auxiliaries, used as scouts, laborers, and armed fighters. Oddly enough, the British didn’t just burn Boer farms and homesteads — they burned and cleared native-owned African farms as well, to prevent them from supplying the Boers. Moreover, 100,000 native Africans were placed in segregated concentration camps, where many died. Africans, it turns out, fought on both sides of the war. The causes of racial, ethnic, and national conflicts usually come down to greed and wealth, and South Africa is a clear-cut example of how economics is always the underlying factor.
Four days after the Boers totally capitulated to the British in the Second Boer War on May 31, 1902, the first gold mine on the Witwatersrand reopened. To this day, 40% of all gold ever mined in the world has come from the Witwatersrand Basin. Always follow the money. What the British did to the Boers was a prelude to what the Boers would later do to the native population — for the same reason.
After vanquishing the Boer republics, the British proceeded to establish the Union of South Africa in 1910. This act unified four distinct territories — two internationally recognized Boer republics and two British colonies. To appease the defeated Boers, Britain agreed with the new government to completely disenfranchise the majority Black African population, explicitly excluding them from the political process. What some called “the 1910 Compromise” laid the structural framework for what would evolve into apartheid. Predictably, excluding Blacks from the political process was nothing but a passive way of stripping them of any rights or protection under the law. Shortly thereafter, the Union ratified the Natives Land Act of 1913, a law designed to strip African wealth by revoking their right to own land outside designated reserves. History has repeatedly shown that when Europeans make peace among themselves, non-Europeans pay the price.
African farmers committed no offense other than outperforming white commercial farmers. These African farmers were called “Amakholwa,” Zulu for “the believers.” They had become the Black elite through their adoption of Christianity and European culture. Assimilation into the dominant culture is how defeated people have historically curried favor with their conquerors and colonizers. To understand the sudden contempt for the Amakholwa, you have to consider how the concept of “white supremacy” actually functions: it is, first and foremost, a means of economic exploitation, by any means necessary. Losing the Second Boer War diminished Boer power in South Africa’s economic food chain. Now, under British rule with an 82% African population, the Boers risked having to compete with the natives. To retain some semblance of their previous status, they had to ensure the native African farmers could not surpass them — economically or politically. So, the Africans were stripped of any possibility of amassing economic or political power. Racism is always about power, and power is maintained through economic dominance buttressed by violence. In a quote often attributed to President Lyndon B. Johnson:
“Nothing angers a white man with a nickel more than seeing a nigger with a dime.”
The seizing of land from the Amakholwa is reminiscent of the United States reneging on the “40 acres and a mule” promised to freed slaves after the Civil War. Too many whites didn’t own 40 acres, and having freed slaves who were more financially stable than poor defeated whites posed an unanticipated problem. The last thing any ruling white elite wants, anywhere, is a racial system that average whites lose faith in. To maintain a hierarchical racial order, a permanent underclass must be constructed so the preferential demographic always feels accomplished and satiated. Propping up mediocre whites is just as important as suppressing and undermining Black progress in such a system. The similarities between the American Civil War and the Second Anglo-Boer War are subtle but plain. In America, the industrialized North defeated the agrarian South much the way the industrial British defeated the agrarian Boers. Southern whites in America sought to reestablish their supremacy through racial segregation with Jim Crow laws. In South Africa, the defeated Boers likewise went out of their way to reinforce their domination over the native African population with unjust racist laws. Compounding matters, after forfeiting prime farmland, the Amakholwa were limited to land ownership on native reserves that amounted to just 7% of the least fertile land.
Boer covetousness did not go unchallenged by the Amakholwa. Among them emerged a representative well versed in the ways of European culture: John Langalibalele Dube, South Africa’s equivalent to America’s Booker T. Washington. Non-threatening and culturally refined, Dube impressed Christian missionaries with his intellect so much that he was sent to America to study at Oberlin Preparatory Academy in Ohio. There he discovered his role model, Booker T. Washington. Inspired by Washington’s emphasis on education and economic self-reliance, Dube returned to his homeland with a similar blueprint. In 1901, he founded the Ohlange Institute, modeled after Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. Understanding the power of media as well, Dube co-founded South Africa’s first Zulu-language newspaper, Ilanga lase Natal — “The Natal Sun” — in 1903. Dube worked tirelessly to advocate for his people, but it was all for naught.
The 1910 Compromise forced the Amakholwa to mobilize politically to preserve any semblance of the rights they had left. They responded with the formation of the African National Congress (ANC), and Dube was elected its first president, serving from 1912 to 1917. Alas, their actions proved to be too little, too late. Despite tremendous injustice against the Amakholwa, Dube remained an ardent proponent of non-violence. Ultimately, in an all-white general election held on May 26, 1948, the Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP) — Afrikaans for “Reunited National Party” — took power. They institutionalized racially oppressive apartheid laws and sought to end ties with the British Crown. Left with no other options, the ANC turned to armed resistance in 1961.
Coincidentally, less than two weeks before the Afrikaner electoral victory in 1948, the Jewish state of Israel was established. The significance of the timing is that both nations would later forge a secretive military alliance and nuclear cooperation agreement in the 1970s that eventually made them both nuclear powers. Mineral-rich South Africa possessed massive raw uranium reserves, while Israel had developed advanced technological capabilities. This symbiotic arrangement made South Africa the only African nation to ever cross the nuclear threshold. By 1987, pressure on Israel from the United States brought the relationship to a close. Roughly three years later, in early 1990, President F.W. de Klerk ordered the dismantling of South Africa’s nuclear weapons program and the destruction of the nation’s six nuclear bombs. The writing was on the wall, so to speak — apartheid was ending, and majority rule was imminent. Once Nelson Mandela was released from prison that same year, preparations for the transfer of power were put in place. It is inconceivable for an African nation led by indigenous Africans possessing nuclear weapons for obvious reasons. To this day, South Africa is the only nation in history to build its own nuclear arsenal and voluntarily destroy it. Presumably, the decision to denuclearize was ultimately made by forces beyond South Africa’s borders that remain in the shadows.
Israel’s past relationship with the apartheid regime has not been forgotten by the current ANC government. Nelson Mandela is quoted in 1997 as saying, “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people.” When the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2024 for war crimes against the people of Gaza, South Africa strongly supported the ruling. President Cyril Ramaphosa has continued the decades-long history of mutual support between the Palestinian people and the ANC, framing the ICC decision as vital to global consistency and arguing that powerful or Western-backed leaders should face the same judicial scrutiny as everyone else. Further heightening tensions between South Africa and the West is its economic alliance with Russia, China, and other nations in the BRICS bloc, which challenges the reserve status of the American dollar. Key American officials across the executive branch and Congress have pushed back hard against South Africa for its alignment with BRICS and its support of the ICC.
In February 2025, newly re-elected U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.” Trump and his advisors accused the South African government of turning a blind eye to the genocide of white farmers. In the months that followed, the United States began receiving white South African refugees. Then, in a tense May 2025 meeting with his South African counterpart at the White House, Ramaphosa was blindsided when Trump dimmed the lights and played video evidence he claimed proved a white genocide. The so-called evidence turned out to include an unrelated image from the Democratic Republic of Congo and footage of a symbolic protest along a South African highway. In attendance was South African-born billionaire and top Trump adviser Elon Musk. Whether Trump was misled and manipulated, or was doing the misleading and manipulating himself, is up for debate. The historical record shows the only confirmed victims of genocide in South Africa’s history are native Africans. White South Africans are, by the numbers, the safest people in a country with consistently high murder rates.
Following the diplomatic debacle at the White House, South Africa began experiencing internal unrest as the native African population mobilized against the immigrant African population. A vigilante deadline of June 30, 2026, was set by the Afrophobic group “March and March.” African immigrants without documentation had to self-deport or face violence. Roughly 25,000 heeded the warning and left, with more following since. The protests took a toll on documented immigrants too — many lost their jobs or were evicted by landlords fearing retribution from angry mobs. Unfortunately, this is the sort of division among African peoples the world has come to expect. The timing of this appears to be anything but coincidental. Zulu cultural activist and media personality Nkosikhona Ndabandaba emerged as one of the most prominent faces of the “March and March” anti-immigrant campaign. The immigrants were being blamed for the country’s high crime rate. However, empirical data tells a different story: undocumented immigrants have accounted for roughly 2% of criminal convictions in South Africa in recent years, and international migrants broadly made up about 12% of sentenced inmates as of 2025 — far below the outsized blame placed on them.
Not surprisingly, the movement has drawn support from the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), among other parties. The IFP has a controversial track record tied to black-on-black violence. Inkatha initially aligned with the ANC against the apartheid regime, but once the transfer of power became imminent, the two turned adversarial. A low-grade civil war between the two powerful factions ensued, resulting in a reported 20,000 Black lives lost between the mid-1980s and the transfer of power in 1994. Declassified evidence has since shown that the apartheid regime covertly funded, trained, and armed IFP paramilitaries. The apartheid government engineered the violence to destabilize the ANC and weaken Nelson Mandela at the negotiating table. To accomplish this aim, the white government also employed Angolan mercenaries known as the Buffalo Battalion, or 32 Battalion, led by white officers. Brutal rapes and murders were committed under their direction. Whenever Black people target each other in an organized manner, one need look no further than the usual suspects.
A conspiratorial mind might connect the recent wave of Afrophobia and false claims of white genocide to retribution for the ANC’s vocal support of the ICC warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ScoonTV sources on the ground in South Africa allege that Israeli digital diplomat David Saranga played a key role in sowing seeds of discontent in the country. He traveled to South Africa’s Eastern Cape, meeting with King Dalindyebo of the AbaThembu people and others offering water infrastructure and aid, bypassing the country’s official diplomatic channels in the process. His actions only intensified dissatisfaction with the government. He departed the country in early 2026, but the damage was done. While these allegations have not been fully substantiated, they’re certainly plausible given the sequence of events.
Targeting the most vulnerable group in any country is not a show of strength but one of cowardice, if not ignorance. African immigrants wield no political or economic power in South Africa, unlike whites, Lebanese, Indians, and Asians. These ethnic groups often arrive with limited means and work their way into the top 10% of wealth fairly quickly — accomplishing in South Africa what they couldn’t do in their place of origin. This would not be possible without the benefits of systemic racism. The Lebanese, for example, were reclassified as white rather than Asian in 1914, granting them full access to the privileges of whiteness. Today, they are one of the more affluent ethnic groups in the country. There are benefits to being white, and not just in South Africa. The only thing being Black assures you anywhere is hardship. Nothing has ever been done to correct the wealth disparity along racial lines. Blacks were given the vote and not much else. The result is a disgruntled people looking for someone to blame.
Concurrently, something similar is happening in America, where Black Americans are targeting Black immigrants online. A handful of online paid agent provocateurs blame Black immigrants for their struggles — this, in the midst of an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants from Latin America entering the country during the previous Biden administration. No matter the continent or the country, when Black people are left with nowhere to turn, count on us to turn on each other.
Curtis Scoon is the founder of ScoonTv.com Download the ScoonTv App to join our weekly livestream every Tuesday @ 8pm EST! Support true independent media. Become a VIP member www.scoontv.com/vip-signup/ and download the ScoonTv App from your App Store.
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