The Boeremag were always doomed

"However unpalatable the fact, the real reason why we have wars is that men like fighting, and women like those men who are prepared to fight on their behalf."

- Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War

Men love war. For most men, it has a romantic appeal. An appeal to something deep within themselves. Of those men who have experienced the horrors of war, many still crave it. This is a fact of nature.

And so, I can empathise with people like the convicted Boeremag men. They identified an injustice, and planned actions to rectify the situation. You don't have to agree with their opinion about whether whites are persecuted, to put yourselves in their shoes. It is easy to get swept up in the idea of starting a war to make the world better. It happens to all men, from lowly farmers to presidents.

But my empathy doesn't make their choice wise or prudent. Let's look at the situation the Boeremag found themselves in. They are members of a minority, less than 9% of the population, assuming you count all whites. Of those whites, only about 60% are Afrikaners. The Bantu majority are almost 80% of the people. We can safely assume practically every non-white person in South Africa is opposed to a violent white rebellion. Anecdotally, I would say at least three quarters of all non-Afrikaner whites would also be opposed, and about half of the Afrikaners as well. A bit of arithmetic puts that around 3.5% in favour of a white rebellion, against 96.5% opposed. In a strictly conventional fight, confined to the first three generations of modern warfare, those odds are pretty insurmountable.

No matter how skilled the white rebels are militarily, those numbers mean they only have the ability to win tactical engagements. At the operational and strategic levels, they are almost certainly doomed. "Quantity has a quality all its own." I have previously discussed how the dilute dispersion of whites throughout the country isn't in their favour. It is even less so during a war. When you are outnumbered globally, your only hope is to concentrate your forces and outnumber the enemy locally. But at close to 30-to-1 odds, with whites not having a local majority anywhere, that concentration is unlikely.

But luckily for our subjects, it's a 4th Generation Warfare world we live in. Unluckily, that has implications that make their erstwhile plan even worse. In the other generations of war, you only consider the tactical, operational and strategic levels. In 4GW, you must also consider the physical, mental and moral levels. Just as winning tactically doesn't trump losing strategically (as the German Blitzkrieg didn't counteract their two front war against major powers), so winning physically doesn't trump losing morally, or even mentally. Ask the 1970's American military, bewildered at their loss in Vietnam despite their dominance on the battlefield. Or ask an ex-SADF troop, who wonders how the ANC came to power when their military wing was so worthless.

As van Creveld says, there comes a point where the usual calculus of war inverts. Where being a tiny minority gives you more power. Unfortunately for white South Africans, that point hasn't arrived for them yet. The vast majority of blacks in South Africa still see whites as the powerful ruling class. The vast majority of the world still sees whites, no matter where, as powerful oppressors.  And so any violence by whites against another group is seen as immoral. Justified or not. Even many whites seem to feel that way, whether they've been shamed into feeling that way or are trying to signal their virtue. When even your own side sees you as the oppressor, you need to focus on changing the narrative more than plotting to blow stuff up.

And so, for now, violence is not the answer. With luck and wisdom and hard work and God's grace, it may never be. This is not to say that you should not arm yourself and defend yourself if attacked. I am not a pacifist, and violent crime is still a problem. This is to say that a violent rebellion at this point in history is doomed to failure. Even if it isn't betrayed from within, as it seems was the case with the Boeremag. The time for principled defeat, if there ever was such, is not now. Plan for victory.

But a victory requires at least two things. First, a clearly defined goal, so that you know when you have won. And second, the goal must be achievable. The Boeremag had a goal: overthrow and replace the ANC government with a Boer government. That goal is clearly defined, but it is not achievable. There is no sense hoping for the impossible. One must be more realistic. Controlling the entire country with a minority less than 10% of the population is not likely in the foreseeable future. But peace, self-determination and freedom are perhaps possible. Even if you have to cede most of your historical territory to other nations to achieve it.

And while I specifically addressed the Boeremag here, this also applies to many people I've sat around a braai with. The windgat bravery and murkily remembered diensplig training don't change the facts, and won't achieve much if that's all they have to offer. I pray they have more during this Fourth Turning.

The Fourth Turning is Identity War

Strauss and Howe in The Fourth Turning describe the historical concept of the saeculum, a period of four generations which repeat themselves through history. Each generation goes through a certain phase of life during the four different stages, or turnings, of the saeculum. The turnings last around 20 to 25 years normally, so a saeculum usually lasts around 80 to 100 years.

The turnings are named High, Awakening, Unraveling, and Crisis. They can best be imagined as equivalent to spring, summer, autumn and winter. A High is when life is improving after the last Crisis, political institutions have been reformed and life is good. An Awakening is when a moral reformation occurs, while, or perhaps because, the political order remains stable. During an Unraveling, the political order starts to destabilise, usually related in some way to the changes that occurred during the Awakening. A Crisis occurs thereafter, leading to a political re-organisation. The Anglo-American Crises they list go back a half a millennium: Great Depression and World War Two (1929 - 1946); Civil War (1860 - 1865); American Revolution (1773 - 1794); Glorious Revolution (1675 - 1704); Armada Crisis (1569 - 1594); Wars of the Roses (1459 - 1487).

The saeculum is usually specific to a society or culture. There is no requirement that the saecula of different nations or peoples align. However, the closer any two nations are to each other, politically or geographically or socially or however, the more their saecula will align. Much like women's cycles. The most recent Crisis affecting the European peoples, the Great Depression and World War Two, synchronised all of their saecula. All white nations of the world seem to have started their most recent High somewhere around the mid to late 1940's.

Strauss and Howe wrote their book in 1997, and predicted the next American Crisis would start around 2005, with it possibly being sparked off by a financial crash, a presidential election, or an action along the lines of the Boston Tea Party. Well, in 2007 the Global Financial Crisis happened. In 2008 America elected Obama, who holds the record for most children killed by a Nobel Peace Prize winner. And around 2009 the Tea Party movement arose. Sparks aplenty for a Crisis, and we see how the political landscape is changing dramatically.

Trump is the polar opposite of Obama. The identity cracks, barely noticeable in the 1990's and early 2000's, widened under Obama and became gaping chasms during the 2016 election. Which, in hindsight, is definitely a result of the moral reformation which occurred during America's last Awakening, from 1964 to 1984 by Strauss and Howe's reckoning. The mid 1960's brought the Immigration and Nationality Act and Johnson's Great Society. Whether the goals were noble, self-serving or something else, these seminal events were definitely about identity. The Immigration and Nationality Act reformed the idea of what it means to be an American, allowing in non-Americans in such numbers that they would not be able to assimilate, even if they wanted to. It brought in foreigners from cultures totally alien to America's, making assimilation even less likely. And the Great Society tried to eliminate poverty and racial injustice, using programmes that only an academic could convince himself to believe effective. The moral reformation said people are all the same, and where they are unequal it must be rectified.

In the wake of the conquering ethnic nationalism of the WWII bad guys, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, it is perhaps unsurprising that the moral reformation which followed was about equalising all peoples. The political re-organisation of the Crisis moved the world from many heterogeneous nations to two competing globalist systems, relatively homogeneous internally: the capitalist First World and the communist Second World. After the ease and comfort of the High, came the moral reformation of the Awakening. The world did not long stay divided into First World and Second World spheres of influence; soon the Third World became a focus. Decolonisation made the savage nations of the world the moral equivalent of the civilised nations. Equality became the goal, even though there were some like Enoch Powell who foresaw "Rivers of Blood" in the forthcoming Crisis because of this. And others, like Kurt Vonnegut, who mocked the idea.

The First World nations now all have identity at the root of their incipient wars. America is full of blacks, Hispanics and Muslims who don't consider themselves American. They have leftists whites who see whites as bad, and they have right wing whites who see whites as the in-group. Europe is full of Muslims and Africans, who the native Europeans increasingly see as invaders, and who increasingly want to change Europe into something else. The Second World has largely escaped this, as Russia and the Visegrad Group seem to have resisted equalism - perhaps the horrors of equalist communism taught them enough to dampen their Awakening turning, and thus their Crisis turning.

In South Africa, the white population's saeculum remains closely timed to the First World's. After WWII came the High of the start of apartheid, great wealth and stability. From the 60's through the 80's came the Awakening, with anti-apartheid uprisings and the Bush War and international sanctions all reforming morally to say the races are equal. From around 1989 to 2009 was our Unraveling. De Klerk, Mandela and Mbeki presided over the end of apartheid and the start of the rainbow nation. The equality of the races was enforced, with compromises and negotiations. But since shortly after Zuma was elected, the inherent tensions have been pulling the country apart along racial lines. Whites are no longer accepting of second class political status due to affirmative action and BEE, not after the innocent white Born Free generation came of age. Blacks are no longer accepting of second class economic status, not after decades of being told the only reason they weren't as wealthy as whites was white oppression. And the violent crime rampant in the country gets blamed by both on the other: whites say blacks are violent criminals by nature; and blacks say their white-caused poverty is the root of the problem.

The Civil War saeculum in America was anomalous and abbreviated. It caused America to skip over their Hero generation. The Civil War was the bloodiest war America has fought. It pitted brother against brother. It was a short and extremely violent Crisis, and it is not surprising that there was no Hero generation following it. But from this we learn that our choices still matter. History is not foretold. The future is not set in stone. The saeculum will keep turning, no matter what. It is the nature of the world. It is the nature of mankind. But man is not a machine. There is freedom to choose. The choices we make can cause a Crisis to be better or worse. The choices we make can determine which side wins the war, and shapes the next saeculum. As biologists can predict the life cycle of a bee colony, without knowing where they will build their hive or where they will find food, so the saeculum can predict the cycle of history without knowing how it will turn out or which side of a war will win.

How to start from nothing

Some trades are payment first, then delivering value, be it goods or services. An example of this would be buying groceries. Other trades deliver value first, then payment is made. An example of this is eating out at a restaurant. There is another type of trade, exemplified by Stefan Molyneux and Jordan Peterson and others like them, where the seller delivers value first, with no obligation on the part of the buyer to make any payment. Molyneux and Peterson give away knowledge and understanding and advice. They ask you to support them with donations, but they can't make you. Much like a Renaissance lord patronising an artist, those who make payment subsidise the artist and allow the freeloaders to benefit. I'm not sure if that counts as charity, but it certainly makes the world a better place at least some of the time. If nobody patronises the artist, then it's charity by the artist for the freeloaders. If there are patrons, it's charity by the patrons for the freeloaders. With charity either by or for the artist, depending on how much he receives compared to the value he delivers, assuming some mystical 'just price' exists for his art.

Most politicians are like grocery stores. With a poor returns policy. You pay first by giving them political power, based usually on some form of false advertising. Then they deliver, well, let's not call it value. But they perform actions that they will tell you are of value. Unlike the grocery store, you can't return a rotten apple for your money back on the same day. You have to wait years to dispose of the bad apples, and you get nothing back for those who didn't act as advertised. It's the equivalent of having to wait years to throw rotting fruit into the garbage.

What if a politician was willing to deliver value in the same way as an artist in search of a patron was? This may not be as feasible on the larger political stages, but it certainly can be done at the local level. Think of the prosecutor who makes a name for himself by locking up bad guys before running for office. He has shown you the goods he delivers, and you are free to decide if you want to pay for them with your future vote. Or the businessman who brings jobs and prosperity to a town. He has delivered his goods as well, with no obligation on you to pay.

There are now political parties in South Africa without any political power, because they hold no elected offices. Some (see here and here) align with my suggestions for a more peaceful, prosperous and free South Africa. But they can do nothing without political power, be it the ballot box or the bullet box. Media interviews and social media campaigns will only take them so far. They need to deliver value to the people they hope to represent, first. And thereafter ask for payment in votes.

My suggestion is for the secessionists in the Cape to identify ways to deliver value on behalf of their parties, and go out and do just that. There are two big issues in the Cape currently which could be the answer. The water crisis is the first, and for most people the more pressing need. But without government money and political power, it will be hard to make an impact.

The second issue is where the real potential lies. Cape Town has some of the most violent crime in the country, and it is concentrated in the townships. A political party hoping to represent selected ethnic groups could benefit greatly by improving the violent crime rates amongst their peoples. When looked at in this light, the problem appears more manageable. The goal is not to reduce all crime in all of the provinces. It is not even to reduce all crime in all of Cape Town. It is to reduce violent crime in the white and Coloured populations. And since these parties have limited numbers and limited money and limited power, the goal should be to focus their forces as much as is necessary to achieve the goal at a Schwerpunkt. Instead of diluting their efforts to the point of failure.

These parties should ally with one another for the purposes of secession. They should identify a violent ward, in a poor Coloured area, where they have the most community support available. And in that single ward all of their resources should be devoted to improving the violence. But only that ward. Their focus must not spread itself thin. The only reason to look outside that ward is if the nature of the conflicts requires it. This must be their main effort, indeed their only effort. Once that ward has seen the value these peacemakers can provide, the people there will vote them into a seat of power. The first step of a thousand mile journey.

This is not a time for simple solutions which haven't ever worked, like more visible policing or anti-drug presentations at schools. These parties must learn the nature of these violent gangs. Why are there gangs to begin with? Why are they more violent than the norm? How are they financed? How do gang loyalties relate to family loyalties and racial loyalties and national loyalties and religious loyalties? Achieving this goal is a 4th Generation War. It must be fought as such. Just as winning at the strategic level trumps winning at the tactical level, so winning at the moral level trumps winning at the physical level. And what could be more moral than less crime and more peace?

There may be police raids. There may be realpolitik advancement of one gang over others for a Pax Romana. There may be negotiated agreements between them. There may be formation of non-state conflict resolution methods, like a Mafia don refereeing between two of his captains. There may be all of these things or none of these things. But this is the value the political parties need to deliver. If they fail, then they are no worse than the ANC or DA or EFF who haven't solved the problem either - so there is limited downside to this. But if they can solve this problem, then they prove they can do that which the larger parties cannot. That is a huge upside. That is the antifragility they need to grow into a force capable of actually seceding.

And since the antifragile ideal involves having many options with a large potential upside and a small potential downside, the secessionist parties could still try to help with the water problem. This would of necessity be on a small scale. But if they look at the model formed during the recent electricity load shedding, some possibilities present themselves. Shopping centres throughout the country pooled their tenants' resources to buy generators and fuel supplies for use during blackouts. Could businesses or gated communities or some other group of people or businesses pool their resources to buy or hire small scale desalination plants? In theory they could, but they face the problems of water use licensing and pumping and piping costs to get the water from the point of abstraction to the end users. Though this hasn't stopped the V&A Waterfront from providing land for free for such a plant. If these parties become organisers who improve the lives of the people, they prove themselves as leaders worth voting for.