Stellenbosch, South Africa

Source: Bigstock

In contrast, white monopoly capital really is a thing in South Africa, which was home to the world’s most famous monopoly since the 1911 breakup of Standard Oil, the De Beers diamond firm, which was founded by Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Beit. Until De Beers pled guilty to price-fixing in 2004, its executives could not set foot in the U.S. because they would have been arrested for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

De Beers was long controlled by the Oppenheimer family, which got into a public feud with the Guptas a year ago.

In general, it’s not a good idea to get on the wrong side of somebody named Oppenheimer. As Hindus, the Guptas should have been familiar with the most famous thing anybody named Oppenheimer ever said: Quoting Vishnu, atomic-bomb creator J. Robert Oppenheimer (probably not a close relation to the South African Oppenheimers, but still…) proclaimed, “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.”

The Jewish role in South Africa’s “white monopoly capital” is not insignificant (nor likely irrelevant to Mr. Segal’s point of view). Paul Johnson wrote in A History of the Jews:

But Jews had always been involved in precious stones (especially diamonds) and bullion, and they played a notable part both in the South African deep-level mines and in the financial system which raised the capital to sink them. Such men as Alfred Beit, Barney Barnato, Louis Cohen, Lionel Phillips, Julius Wehrner, Solly Joel, Adolf Goertz, George Albu and Abe Bailey turned South Africa into the world’s largest and richest mining economy.

The South African Jewish Report estimated in 2016 that Jews still make up 26 percent of the 250 richest people in South Africa, despite constituting only 0.14 percent of the population.

Also, nobody really believes that blacks in the U.S. are numerous enough, serious enough, or competent enough to actually threaten white monopoly capital here. While Black Lives Matter can get Ferguson convenience stores looted and Dallas and Baton Rouge cops murdered, it can’t directly destroy the country. (It can’t, right?)

On the other hand, South Africa has the alarming example of neighboring Zimbabwe. A half century ago, Harare, Zimbabwe was known as Salisbury, Rhodesia. Salisbury was a sort of real-life Wakanda, a technologically advanced city in the heart of Africa.

The black takeover in 1980 was not immediately disastrous. The rechristened Zimbabwean economy wasn’t ruined until Robert Mugabe, needing reelection support, unleashed his thugs against white farmers in 2000.

Eventually, Zimbabwe’s economy was so wrecked by antiwhite racism that the government was printing up one hundred trillion dollar bills. But Mugabe hung around for another seventeen years in power, being deposed only last year at age 93.

Zuma, who enjoys leading his supporters in singing about shooting Boers with machine guns, might look upon Mugabe’s 38 years in power as an object lesson in prudent self-preservation.