Immigration - the scourge of the whole world

You know what’s ruining this country – no, the entire blerrie world? Immigrants. Guest Writer Johan Van Eksteen tackles this uncomfortable topic, showing us the truth behind something many people are hesitant to talk about frankly and honestly.

Immigration, my friends. Is it just me, or does this problem seem to be getting worse and worse every year? It seems that no matter where you go, you can’t even move without bumping into someone who isn’t from here. With xenophobic attacks so recurrent and regular that Somali shopkeepers could set their fiscal calendars by them, I decided to look at this issue. And let me tell you, it’s a lot more complicated than it at first seems.

Now, immigration has long been a problem in almost all societies. Immigration goes as far back as the unwanted and dirty flood of Jews and Irish and Poles into America in the 19th and 20th centuries. Hell, we could go one step further and say that this scourge was affecting societies even as far back as the Southwards migration of Zulu and Bantu peoples into XhoiSan territories in South Africa in the early AD, or the northwards migration of Homo Habilus and other pre-modern humans nearly 70 000 years ago, or even the ugly, unstoppable wave of society-leeching primordial fish-lizard creatures that crawled unwelcomed and unwanted onto the prehistoric marshes of Pangea hundreds of millions of years ago.

Of course, today the problem is far, far worse, because back then there were no jobs or healthcare to steal.

Yes, friends, it might shock you to hear this, but immigrants are taking our healthcare and our government grants: you know, those things that are supposed to be reserved for South Africans, that our hard-working tax payers shell out for after they’ve finished handing billions of Rands to Zuma for his giant luxury Palacemansioncompound?

I remember a time when I used to think “but surely getting healthcare requires a valid ID and many documents proving your status as a tax-paying citizen? Surely getting the laughably paltry handouts that thousands of below-the-breadline South Africans survive on every month is a bit more difficult than just walking into a SASSA office and putting out your grimy, Zimbabwean hands?” Turns out I was wrong, friends. And that’s scary, because I’m never wrong.

And it doesn’t stop there: our jobs are being thrown out the window and into the laps of Malawian borderjumpers. “But that makes no sense,” I hear you predictably retort, “Johan, wouldn’t most companies be hesitant to give scarce jobs to what you have on many, many occasions, called ‘a bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing unskilled thieves who don’t even speak our language’? Surely any employer would want to avoid huge legal ramifications and massive fines for breaking labour laws by making sure to go Proudly South African?” Well, to that I say “that’s the kind of senseless, contradictory society we live in.”

However, the damage goes beyond just the financial: what’s being hurt even more is our national culture and identity. All these immigrants make no effort to fit in, to try and be a part of South African society.

You know, every day I drive from my job at a single-language newspaper back to my home in that gated, all-white, English-Afrikaner closed community in Sandton and I pass these Somali or Zimbo neighbourhoods, these anti-nationalist, unpatriotic attempts to stick to one culture without embracing the beautiful diversity of South Africa. It’s sad and sickening. The put themselves behind these walls and barriers, and don’t even try to mix with everyday South Africans. Hell, they don’t even make an effort to try and learn any of the 11 official languages of South Africa, for example English, or Afrikaans, or, er, one of those other ones. Even the Zulu security guy who mans the barbwire, electrified gate of my suburb comments on it sometimes.

Or at least, I think he does. I don’t speak Zulu.

But what I can’t stand most of all is the pretence they put up, the lies and excuses they tell me to try and make us feel sorry for them. They put up this sad story of running away from hateful or outright murderous political regimes or iron-fisted dictatorships; they give us these sop tales of “brutal police” and “racist officials and harsh, anti-human immigration laws”; they wax lyrical about having left everything – their language, their home, their history, their culture, their families, their entire way of life and identity – just to live in fear and poverty in a country that despises and assaults them just for wanting a better life for them and their children. And why? Well, so that you won’t complain when they take that below-minimum-wage, no-security job that rightfully belongs to people born here!

You know, it’s exactly for this reason that I stopped my application to live and work in England or Australia. All I want is to go there, trade in my green passport, and live and work in peace: but how can I move overseas to live on greener pastures when all these bloody immigrants are stealing the jobs that I want, taking the healthcare and government grants that I’ll need when I get there? It’s absurd.

This, my friends is why I congratulate the ANC on at least one thing: that they’ve stood up for South Africans’ rights everywhere. You know, silly organisations like the Human Rights Watch, or so-called Amnesty International, might condemn South Africa’s diplomatic and political stance on human rights atrocities in other African countries, and her harsh, “unjust, retrogressive” immigration laws that miss opportunities to integrate trained professionals such as teachers, scientists and skilled workers into our society to better serve our people, but I say “well done.”

As tempting as it is to enjoy the cheap labour these guys offer (and that cool perk of being able to fire them at will, which forces them to never complain about how little you pay them for fear of you reporting them to the police on trumped up charges of theft) we need to stick to a strong code of national pride and moral integrity, to support - and ardently defend the rights of - those human beings who share a birthplace with us.

After all, how can we possibly have a better South Africa if it’s full of Zimbabweans?

Johan is a guest columnist at Muse and Abuse. Widely renowned for his non-nonsense approach to controversial topics, Johan shines a blinding light of truth on subjects like why white people should vote ANC, why Blackface isn't the real racist problem in SA, and how Black Privilege is an ugly truth that no one wants to admit. He also thinks gay marriage should have been outlawed years ago.
He also doesn't know his editor and employer is Zimbabwean.

Black privilege: South Africa’s dark secret

We’ve all heard about white privilege – but how many of us know about how black people unfairly benefit from their skin colour? Guest Writer Johan Van Eksteen shines a light of truth on this phenomenon that many will refuse to admit exists.

My fellow South Africans, there is a troubling part of our society that none of us ever acknowledge or talk about. Right at the middle of the centre of our country’s core, there is a phenomenon that many will try to tell you is “absurd” or “totally misinformed and misguided” to talk about.

Black Privilege.

Now, we’ve all heard about White Privilege. It’s boring. It’s old. It’s not even worth talking about any more. It doesn’t even exist – some people say that my skin colour gives me unearned benefits and privileges. But this just isn’t true. Every day when I came into work at my father’s company (this was just after I’d finally finished my degree after switching courses three times at UCT and I’d turned down several other job offers and taken up my dad’s offer) my pa would tell me “Johan, lots of people will think you’re going to become the General Manager here in three years’ time because you’re my son, or because you’re white, or even both.”

I knew then that I had to work extra hard to make sure my rightful place wasn’t given to some random. My whiteness disadvantaged me. Every day, I set the alarm on my iPhone 6 half an hour earlier. Every day, I ate low-fat organic yoghurt with a quick smoothie when everyone else was having their morning fry-up. Every day, I made sure I was out my four-bedroom apartment and in my Audi in N7 traffic before everyone else. Every day I had to make it look like I was working harder than everyone else, even when I wasn’t.

It was exhausting. It was difficult.

But I did it. I managed to excel despite my skin colour.

But Universities and so-called “academic thinkers” will never admit this simple truth to you: there are certain unspoken social and economic privileges that black people get and white people don’t just because the system favours black skin.

Ready to have your mind blown?

#1: Black people can make black people jokes

Let’s look at so-called “comedians” like Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. If they make jokes about black people it’s “hilarious”. But if I tell a real knee-slapper about Phineas walking into a bar and asking for a job, it’s “racist” and “disgusting”.

I’ve spoken about this hypocrisy before.

It’s “racist as hell” when I apply half a tin of Kiwi shoe polish onto my cheeks and put on a pair of overalls, but when little boys paint their faces in disgusting ‘whiteface’, it’s “their culture” and a “Xhosa rite of passage to finally becoming a man”.

Hell, I can’t even use the word ‘n*****r’. I can’t even say it aloud, or even explain to you what word that is that I’m hiding behind stars. I have to say, like, “the N-word”. I can’t tell you how oppressive it is to have to go “uh” or “mmm” or make a strange bleeping noise during my favourite N****rs With Attitude song.

#2: Black people get jobs easily

This is the ugliest part of it. If I want to get a job, I have to work hard for years and years at a high-grade private school and with my private weekend tutors so that I can get a good chance to get into UCT or another tertiary institute. Then, I have to ask my parents for tens of thousands of Rands just to get my Master’s degree and then, even after all this, I still have to put in at least two years, bare minimum, at my father’s company just to make it onto the Board of Directors as a lowly Chief Manager of National Divisions' Procurement.

But look at our President or a lot of politicians. They didn’t get their Matric, and some of them even failed Woodwork, and they’re all employed.

“Oh, Johan,” I hear you rascal ‘intellectuals’ and ‘academics’ retort, “this is aimed at addressing the inequalities of the past. Black people used to suffer disadvantage because of their skin colour, so it’s an attempt at social justice.” And I reply: thank you for proving my point. You’re saying they get jobs because they are black. Checkmate.

#3: Black people get social benefits

Today, all across South Africa, thousands of black and coloured people have access to government RDP housing, government healthcare, and unemployment benefits. But just because most white people I know have homes and jobs and money and health insurance, does that mean that they should suffer this ugly system of reverse racism? Whatever happened to the vision of true equality that Nelson Mandela had for us all? If I want Comprehensive International Platinum membership Full Cover with Cashback guarantee after six years and no limits of hospital or doctor choice, I have to pay thousands of Rands for it. This is disgusting. I believe in equal opportunities for all, regardless of your skin colour or how many thousands of rand you earn per month.

#4: Black people get automatic sympathy

We all know that our local media is a sick-lie-birthing nest of incestuous, revolting snakes writing in pools of their own corrupt, foetid shit, but what we never talk about is how much it prefers stories about black people. Every time there’s a shooting or tragedy or political scandal involving black people, you’ll guarantee that they’ll have front page coverage every single time without fail. But if a white guy commits a crime, for him to get attention he has to shoot his model girlfriend and be handicapped - and even then, all he gets his is own channel on DSTV.

Where is the extensive coverage of the billions of white lives lost just this year alone in farm murders in South Africa? Where was the six-page analysis of beloved artists like Steve Hofmeyr having their constitutionally-enshrined Freedom of Speech violated on Twitter?

This might sound like I’m repeating myself, but if a black person says a white oke called him a K-bomb (oh look! Another word white people arent’ allowed to use! Doesn’t this censorship make you feel sick?!) everyone will believe him, but if I say that a Muslim oke is going to blow up a plane, or a Romanian is going to steal my job, or that suspicious black guy in my gated community is doing reconnaissance to rob me blind, it’s “racial stereotyping” and “terribly racist”.

#5: Black people get justice

Every day we see scores of black families see justice. People who rob them or murder their family members are thrown straight in jail, often without any real trouble or controversy or even a lawyer to play lawyer tricks. That's true justice.

But where was the justice for Reeva Steenkamp’s family? You see how the system favours giving speedy, same-day justice to black families, but not to white families.

I’m going to stop now, but I think we can all agree that I’ve only revealed the head of the ugly three-kilometre snake. I look forward to the day that we all receive true equality – black or white. Previously Disadvantaged or Currently Disadvantaged.

If you want to read how to reach this futuristic utopia, perhaps you, too, should vote ANC, like me.