Name: How Race-Based Policies Are Harming South Africa: Ernst Roets
Uploaded: 2025-11-25T11:47:25.000Z
Description: “South Africa moved from one race-based system to another race-based system. … We need to move away from race-based systems,” argues Ernst Roets. He’s the Founder and Executive Director of Lex Libertas, an organization that advocates for constitutional reform and more decentralized governance in South Africa.

Jan Jekielek is a senior editor with The Epoch Times, host of the show “American Thought Leaders” and co-host of “FALLOUT” with Dr. Robert Malone and “Kash’s Corner” with Kash Patel. Jan’s career has spanned academia, international human rights work, and now for almost two decades, media. He has interviewed nearly a thousand thought leaders on camera, and specializes in long-form discussions challenging the grand narratives of our time. He’s also an award-winning documentary filmmaker, producing “The Unseen Crisis: Vaccine Stories You Were Never Told,” “DeSantis: Florida vs. Lockdowns,” and “Finding Manny.”

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[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “South Africa moved from one race-based system to another race-based system. … We need to move away from race-based systems,” argues Ernst Roets. He’s the Founder and Executive Director of Lex Libertas, an organization that advocates for constitutional reform and more decentralized governance in South Africa.

While many have highlighted the killings of farmers in recent years, this violence is emblematic of broader problems in South Africa, he says.

South Africa’s murder rate is among the highest in the world—more than seven times higher than the global average. And race-based policies and distribution of wealth are having a serious deleterious effect, Roets says.

In this episode, he breaks down why he believes South Africa’s current political system is fundamentally not sustainable, and how anti-Western influences, including the Chinese Communist Party, are influencing the direction of South Africa.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of NTD.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:

Ernst Roets, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Thank you very much. I’m very happy to be here. Thank you for speaking with me.

So what’s happening in South Africa?

There’s a lot happening in South Africa. I would say the most important thing to be said about South Africa is that it’s failing. And it’s failing on a variety of levels. We’ve just published a report on this, which is why I’m here in Washington speaking to you. But I would say, according to our report as well, the failure is evident in three areas.

The first is the very disastrous policy framework that we have in South Africa, including a bunch of laws and legislation aimed at race-based redistribution of property and then proclaiming that that would lead to prosperity. So it’s socialism, claiming that you will become wealthy and affluent as a result of these policies. So a destructive policy framework is the first.

The second is just general state failure. It’s not able to keep people safe. We have a murder rate in South Africa of 45 per 100,000 per year. The global average is six. In America, I think it’s four or five per 100,000. More than 27,000 murders occur every year in South Africa. It’s an extremely violent country.

But also, when we talk about the government failing, the government isn’t able to fulfill its most basic responsibilities, such as providing electricity or water. Forty percent of water in South Africa is lost due to leaks, 46 percent of water is contaminated, and two-thirds of water treatment facilities in South Africa are on the verge of breakdown. So the extent of state failure is very serious.

And then the third is the persecution of minorities, which we see with this vast network of more than 140 race laws in South Africa aimed at targeting the white minority in particular, including the Afrikaners as a sort of ethnic community in South Africa. We also see this with the threats to property rights, not just threats by the government; they are actually following up on these threats to confiscate private property, especially belonging to white people and to farmers, and redistribute this, again, with the promise that that would lead to prosperity.

We also see persecution in terms of hate speech. And when we say hate speech, it’s not just hate speech; it’s actual incitement of violence against minorities with chants such as kill the boer, kill the farmer, which isn’t just metaphorical because the farmers are actually being attacked and killed while these politicians chant this. Not only are they chanting this, but they are protected by the justice system.

So with that said, our argument is that these things I’ve mentioned are actually symptoms of a deeper rooted problem. The deeper rooted problem is that the political system is not sustainable. And the solution, we would say, is to rethink the political system in South Africa.

And just one comment. I remember fairly recently, this kill the boer, kill the farmer chant was assessed as not being hate speech by the top court in the country, if I understand that correctly.

Yes. It’s very alarming the extent to which the persecution of minorities, the targeting of minorities, and the double standards in all of this are being entrenched by the justice system in South Africa. Julius Malema from the Economic Freedom Fighters, who used to be with the ANC [African National Congress], but ideologically is very much aligned with the ANC. A few years ago he made a comment.

He said that he’s not calling for the slaughtering of white people, but he might do so in the future. He was then taken to the Human Rights Commission in South Africa, which is this watchdog institution that is supposed to ensure that human rights are protected. The Human Rights Commission then found, in a ruling in 2019, that this comment is acceptable. It’s not hate speech; it’s defendable, it’s acceptable speech.

The reason why is because he is black. And because when someone is accused of something, you need to consider the race of the person. If it would have been a white person, by implication, that person would have been targeted or prosecuted or whatever. But because he’s black, he’s protected. And because he’s targeting white people. So it is extremely alarming that the Human Rights Commission in South Africa is taking that stance.

But then furthermore, as you mentioned, just this year, this kill the boer chant ended up in the Constitutional Court, which is the Supreme Court in South Africa, the highest court, which found that it’s perfectly acceptable speech. In fact, they went as far as saying they’re not even going to hear the matter. They’re not even going to hear arguments because they can already say that it is acceptable speech. And again, it’s not just a metaphor. Their argument is that it’s a metaphor. It’s a celebration of the struggle against apartheid and so forth.

But the fact is that farmers are literally being attacked and killed. The fact is that there is evidence that chants like these, and this chant in particular, have led to murders. And the fact is that at many of these attacks, we see the perpetrators making political statements, saying things like viva Malema, making derogatory racial statements. So there is a political dimension to these crimes. But the court isn’t interested in that. The court just says that’s acceptable.

Yes, I mean, this is obviously incredibly disturbing to hear. I mean, you know, chants about killing. When it comes to minorities being targeted, you’re not just talking about whites.

Yes. First, South Africa is very big. In terms of size comparison, you can pretty much compare South Africa to Western Europe. If you take out Spain and England, the rest is more or less the size of South Africa. It’s twice the size of Texas. But it’s one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the world, with the constitution recognizing 12 official languages. One of the 12 is sign language, but the others are all different cultural communities, different nations.

So the appropriate way to think about South Africa is not simply to think of it as a country with a nation, but as a region. North Africa is a region with several countries. East Africa is a region with several countries. West Africa, Central Africa, but then you have South Africa as just one country, one big country, which ironically became this big country during this process of colonization after the Anglo-Boer War. Before that, it was a variety of Boer republics, British colonies, and African kingdoms.

So it’s very big, it’s exceptionally diverse, not just in terms of cultures, but also different civilizations living in South Africa. So we have Asian communities, we have a Jewish community, we have, you could say, Westerners; the Afrikaner people are Westerners. We have a white Anglo community in South Africa that are also Westerners in terms of our sort of outlook on life, and then we have a wide network of African nations, including the Zulus, the Sotho, the Venda, and the Tsonga. That’s important to understand.

Unfortunately, with regard to South Africa, this narrative became established that it’s simply a matter of black and white, and the apartheid government is partly to blame for this, even though the apartheid argument was that there should be homelands for the different nations. But the current government and the ANC especially, because it’s incentivized for them—the ANC is the ruling party in South Africa—it’s incentivized for them to simply say it’s just a country of white people and black people. Because then they could get the black communities and nations to sort of unite under the banner of being black and target white people under the banner of being white.

But the truth of the matter is that it’s much more nuanced than that. And I think it’s a disservice to everyone that lives in South Africa, especially from a cultural perspective, to simply look at the country from a racial lens without recognizing the vast cultural diversity that we have in South Africa.

But I guess what I understood, just from some of my coursework and actually a recent interview I did with Rob Hersov, is that there are blacks being persecuted. There’s, I think, what you call colored people being persecuted. And that’s people who are a mix of different races.

Yes, absolutely. So we still have a serious problem in South Africa with political assassinations. It’s happening all the time. Just, I think, yesterday I saw a news report about some politician who was murdered. And historically also, and that’s also in terms of the lesser-known part of South African history of the 1980s especially, was the extent to which there was rival warfare among different black groups in black townships in South Africa in the struggle against the apartheid system, which wasn’t really a struggle against the apartheid system.

There was no war between white and black people in South Africa. But there was a war between the ANC and Inkatha, the ruling party and the Inkatha movement of Mangosuthu Buthelezi. And so we have the targeting of people based on their political affiliation, especially if they are against the ANC and especially if they are black. That is a dimension to the crisis in South Africa.

But another dimension that I think is fundamentally important that isn’t spoken of enough is black African nations living in South Africa who have a particular affinity for protecting their culture, preserving their way of life, who are completely being marginalized, or you could even say targeted by the South African government. It’s that old communist trope of seeing any issue with regard to which people have a degree of authority that is not the state, to regard that as a threat. We know the story of how communist-aligned countries targeted religion and targeted culture. We have this in South Africa—black nations, black communities who have traditional leaders, who have kings or queens, who live in a particular area, who have their own cultures.

But the South African government doesn’t like that. In theory, if you read the constitution, it’s protected. But in practice, they’re not recognized at all. They don’t get any recognition. They don’t get any assistance. And there’s a lot of pressure put on them to disband this, because the argument is that if you have an affinity for your culture, that’s a backwards way of thinking. It’s a globalist thing. So it’s getting rid of culture, getting rid of tradition, getting rid of who you are naturally, and saying that we need to adopt this new identity, and then that would lead to some utopia.

Fascinating. I remember, you know, celebrating the end of apartheid. That itself was a highly race-based system.

Yes.

And I mean, because a couple of times you talked, you offered some nuance to what apartheid was. And I just want to kind of get you to comment on that.

There’s this false dichotomy in South Africa that there’s only two political options. There’s apartheid and there’s the current political system. And if you criticize what’s happening in South Africa now, that by definition means you want to return to the apartheid system, which of course is ludicrous because there are many political systems to choose from. And the apartheid system was just a disaster in many ways.

Our concern is that there is this narrative in South Africa at the moment that you can say absolutely anything you want that is derogatory towards white people. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You can say apartheid was a genocide and then people would celebrate you for saying that. But it wasn’t that. You should criticize it for what it actually was.

The correct criticism of the apartheid system is that it still had a highly centralized government. It was paternalistic. It was white people saying to black people to a large degree how they should govern themselves, how they should organize their own affairs, and then presenting that as good neighborliness. And also the way it became implemented was just so, so unjustifiable.

When they started putting up benches saying, you know, here’s a bench for white people and here’s a bench for black people, or this is a beach for white people and this is a beach for black people. There’s just no way that something like that could work. The more they went down that route of trying to implement that system, the worse and worse it got. This is also a fact that isn’t recognized sufficiently.

The Afrikaner people and white people in South Africa agreed that this isn’t working. It has to change. The metaphor that was used at the time was it’s like getting off the back of a tiger. We need to get off this tiger. But the question is how do you get off without getting eaten.

So I don’t think we should ever return to that system. Philosophically speaking, you could say it was very rationalistic. It was some philosopher or some thinker sitting in his study room writing plans on how the country should be governed. It was very theoretical, but wasn’t connected to on grassroot realities. So we need a solution in South Africa that is not the apartheid system, but that is also not the current globalist system that we have.

But basically you’re saying it was a race-based system. You’re saying you don’t want a race-based system.

Yes, exactly. It was a race-based system. So South Africa moved from one race-based system to another race-based system. And the point is that we need to move away from race-based systems. And that doesn’t mean pretending that there are no differences between people. So recognizing culture is a good thing and recognizing that people have an affinity for protection of their culture, preserving their languages and so forth, that’s good.

But simply saying that we need to categorize people as white people and black people is destructive for a variety of reasons and it hasn’t worked. The English tried that in South Africa, it failed. The Afrikaners tried that in South Africa, it failed. The Afrikaners tried that in South Africa, it failed. And now the ANC is trying that and it failed again. And so we need to move away from that.

The thing that a lot of the people in our audience will be most familiar with in terms of the news cycle in South Africa is these discussions of the farm murders and this increased murder rate. And can you just briefly explain the reality of that?

Yes. So the farm murders are a very serious problem in South Africa. The response to that is to say, well, there are many problems in South Africa, so why are you pointing to this one? But the fact of the matter is that it’s a very unique problem, and it’s a problem that could only be prevented or combated by a unique counter-strategy. And there are a few things that make the farm murders unique.

One is the extreme frequency at which it’s happening. Just the sheer numbers, thousands of people having been murdered on farms, many of them tortured. In many of those cases, nothing is stolen. They just come in, they torture the farmers for several hours and then they leave. They would steal a cell phone and a car, and then they would, but they steal the cell phone so that people can’t call the police. And then they would leave the car by the wayside when they leave. So the numbers, just the numbers is very alarming.

The second is the brutality, the high levels of torture that we see. And it’s any torture method you can imagine has been employed in these farm attacks. And it’s the most grotesque torture you could think of in many of these cases. And like I said, many of oftentimes for hours.

The third is the unique economic impact, because farmers are skilled people. They are employers. They provide food for the country. So it would have disastrous consequences for the nation at large, and it already has.

The fourth is just the fact that farmers live in unique circumstances. They live far away from police stations, far away from their neighbors. Oftentimes it’s dirt roads. Oftentimes it’s a bad cell phone signal. So that alone says that you need a unique counter strategy to fix this, even though the South African government doesn’t want to recognize this.

But then on top of this, what makes the farm murders exceptionally unique is that it’s a very serious crime phenomenon that is also actively encouraged by politicians. So we have a problem in South Africa with violence against women and children. But you would never hear politicians, you know, say, you know, we need to go out and beat women. And we need to go, you know, you know, if you see a child, you should kick the child or something. You know, we have a serious problem in terms of poaching. You don’t hear politicians encouraging poaching. We have a serious problem in terms of copper cable theft. You don’t hear politicians encouraging that.

But when it comes to farm murders, we continuously hear politicians and very senior politicians actively chanting about killing the farmers and so forth. And so this has become a very, it has become a metaphor for the crisis in South Africa. And I think it’s important to take note of.

And that’s even though it’s not a major part of this giant murder rate, frankly.

Yes, exactly. South Africa has a very high murder rate because it has a very big problem in terms of violent crime in general. It especially has a problem with gang-related violence. So there are some parts of the country that are so dangerous. If you’re not a member of a gang, you don’t go there and that also increases the murder rate. There are some areas of the country that are fairly safe.

I live in Pretoria. You can have a pretty normal life in Pretoria, except for all the legislation and the bureaucracy. If you know it’s not a good idea to drive at night and there are some areas that you shouldn’t avoid, but the murder rate is pushed up by the extreme frequency of murders, for example, happening in certain areas. There are other problems as well, but I would say gang-related violence is a very serious problem that partly overlaps with the farm murders problem. And then farm murders are also a very serious problem.

So tell me a little bit about your background and how you’ve come to be doing this, actually. And I understand your emphasis has always been on the value of culture.

I was born in Pretoria but I was very young when the political transition happened in South Africa. Around that time, we moved up to a town called Tzaneen in the north of South Africa. It’s an agricultural community. It’s a beautiful town, a beautiful area. There, I grew up in a family that wasn’t very political, but was very cultural. So we would participate in cultural activities. We would talk about culture and so forth and discuss history. I was always very drawn to the cultural side of things from a very young age. To me, that was the beauty of my childhood.

I would say the dark part of my childhood was being exposed to the harsh realities of South Africa from a very young age, realities that the world didn’t want to talk about. For example, I started being exposed to the farm murders in South Africa, because the area where I grew up had many farm murders. It wasn’t just about people being murdered; it was about people being tortured in some of the most grotesque ways imaginable. I grew up with that reality.

I also learned about what was happening across the border in Zimbabwe, as that was occurring while I was in high school, and I saw just how disastrous those policies were. This increased pressure was placed on the Afrikaner people—not just the Afrikaner people, but from my perspective as an Afrikaner—that you could not be an Afrikaner anymore.

The new South Africa meant that you had to abandon your cultural identity or, you could say, your nationality, your natural nationality; just who you are is not acceptable anymore. Your language and so forth all had to change. You had to leave behind who you are and adopt this new, more globalist identity.

I experienced that as a threat, which is why, when I became a student at the University of Pretoria, I immediately became involved with activist student movements and things like that. I studied law. I never became a practicing attorney. I’m an attorney in terms of the legislation in South Africa, but I became involved with what I’m doing now immediately after finishing university.

So now, I mean, you’re with Lex Libertas. I’m going to have you tell me what that is. But before that, you’re with a group called AfriForum. Just explain to me the work you did there.

When I was at university, I founded AfriForum Youth. AfriForum is where I became involved, let me just say that, as a volunteer through the youth movement. I eventually became an employee. AfriForum is a civil rights organization in South Africa, especially aimed at ensuring that there’s a future for the Afrikaner community in South Africa. It also works on court cases and litigation in South Africa, for example, getting communities organized in terms of public safety initiatives. It’s an incredibly important organization. It still is. I was involved there for quite some time. I’m still a member of AfriForum, although I’m not an employee anymore.

I started this new initiative, Lex Libertas, which is a combination of a think tank and an advocacy group. It’s a much more narrow focus. The focus is to say that the political system in South Africa is not sustainable, and we need to work towards a more viable political system. You could say my focus now is very much on a macro political solution, as opposed to the very important work that other institutions in South Africa are doing regarding particular policy issues and getting people to look after their own safety on a more practical level.

Fascinating. In the past, you also worked on looking at the Chinese Communist Party’s encroachment into Africa and South Africa.

Yes, that is a very important thing. I think also from an American perspective, with this Belt and Road Initiative, China is playing the long game when it comes to Africa. The extent to which China is strengthening its grip on the African continent, and especially in South Africa, is concerning. I’m not sure how noble or genuine their relationship with these African nations is. It seems to be much more opportunistic than real friendship. From the African perspective, they are very open to this.

There was a scandal in the African Union headquarters a few years ago, which was built largely by China. It came out that early in the mornings, after midnight, all the information was downloaded from the databases and sent to a server in Shanghai, I believe. This was revealed, and everyone was angry about it, but nothing really happened afterward because I think they were just so grateful for the financial support from China.

It’s also happening with South Africa. Part of the reason is access to mineral resources. It is very clear from what is happening that China is very interested in Africa’s mineral resources. What is particularly alarming, and I think also important from a Western and American perspective, is that many of these leaders in African countries, especially in South Africa, see China as a sort of net that would help them, that would catch them if everything comes crashing down.

Some of them publicly say this. They would say, well, if the economy crashes, China will come in. China will pick up the pieces. They sort of gloat about that. But that would lead to a significant international strengthening of China from a geopolitical perspective, which is certainly not in the interest of the West. That’s why—and we can talk about that—this refugee program by the US is, even though it’s good if people want to leave the country and have the opportunity to do so, that’s fine, that’s good.

But I think the U.S. must be careful not to do only that in a way that would actually facilitate more destabilization in South Africa, which would lead to destabilization not just for South Africa, but for the Southern African region and eventually for Africa. This would lead to waves of illegal immigration to Europe and North America, Western countries. But that’s one part of it. The other part is the extent to which it would open the door for China to come in and strengthen its grip on the African continent.

If I’m extrapolating here a little bit, I think you’re saying you’re worried about a brain drain from South Africa to America through this program, right? There’s something like that.

So the brain drain is a very serious issue. There’s no clear data regarding how many people have left South Africa. Some sources say more than a million people. South Africa is a very big country, very poor, with very high levels of unemployment and very few people proportionally who actually pay tax. If you just consider how many people pay income tax and what percentage of income tax is paid by what percentage of the population, it’s extremely skewed. But those are the people who are leaving the country because of the extent to which they are targeted.

It’s sort of a more extreme version of what we’re seeing in the U.S. with people leaving certain states and moving to other states. From a revenue perspective, it’s bad for South Africa. But not just that; from an employment and economic perspective, it’s the employers who are leaving the country. This would certainly lead to higher levels of instability. We need to find a solution that would enable good people who love Africa, who have been in Africa for ten generations, whose identity was forged in Africa, to have a future in Africa as their past is in Africa, and to be able to start businesses to employ people and so forth. We don’t have that, and we need to get to that.

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