THE CHRISTIAN AFRIKANERS - The Works of F. N. Lee

From 1900 to 1935, after the Anglo-Boer War, the White South Africans were defeated andeconomically ruined. A very massive amount of them became impoverished "Poor Whites" - withvery little to lose but their chains (as Karl Marx might have said about them, had he lived at thattime). But then, there was the establishment of the economic rehabilitation schemes such as Dr.John Kestell's Reddingsdaadbond.Yet later, the Broederbond was established by Afrikaners particularly to bring about the economicresurrection of the Afrikaner. So we find the development of large Afrikaner commercialenterprises such as Volkskas (the banking system) and Federale Mynbou (or Federal Mines) -- untilthe Afrikaner had more and more begun to achieve economic clout in his own land.One of the previous State Presidents, Dr. Diedrichs, taught Economics at the Orange Free StateUniversity and was also an authority against communism. He and Senator Horwood, the presentMinister of Finance and previously Rector of the University of Natal, have more and more beensteering South Africa away from the remnants of a certain amount of economic state socialism --and toward private enterprise. Today it may possibly be that South Africa is one of the freestcountries in the world as far as private enterprise is concerned -- and, in some areas at least, evenahead of the United States. For there has been a continuing socialisation of the American economy,particularly over the last seventy years, after a strong position of free enterprise previously.At any rate, there are only a handful of countries in the whole world that produce enough food tofeed themselves and to export to others. One, of course, is the United States; the second is Canada;and then (fascinatingly) the two desert countries, Australia and South Africa. After that, you haveto scratch your head to find countries that can feed themselves -- quite apart from those that havemassive agricultural exports!I think there is a direct relationship between historic Calvinism's influence on a nation's origin andits continued on one hand -- and its ability to produce and to keep on producing especially in thearea of agriculture on the other hand. Here Max Weber was right, and Karl Marx was wrong!But last, I must disclose that South Africa is also a mineralogical power -- perhaps the mostsupreme mineralogical power in the world. I am not here referring so much to South Africa'sproduction of gold (some 75% of the free world's supply); nor to her diamonds (90% of the freeworld's supply); nor to her platinum as a necessary ingredient of silencers on motor cars (some 95%of the world's supply); nor to her copper (a huge slice of the world's supply). But here I amreferring to far more crucial minerals than these!I am referring to those rare metals which are absolutely essential for the manufacture of steel. I amreferring to South Africa's chrome (up to 90% of the world's supply); to her cobalt (77% of theworld's supply); to antimony, to vanadium, to molybdenum, to manganese, and to other vitalingredients needed to manufacture steel.In addition to all of those, with South Africa controlling the vast majority of the percentages ofworld supplies, you also need iron to manufacture steel. And some of the biggest deposits of iron inthe whole world are in South Africa too.Japan, almost devoid of iron and certainly devoid of these other rare metals that you need tomanufacture steel, imports vast quantities of iron and these other metals from South Africa. Japanis now vastly ahead of the United States, western Germany, the Soviet Union and Britain -- in themanufacture of huge steel items such as ships. More ships are being made by Japan than by anyother nation -- and most of them are being made with South African iron and steel.