A Portrait in Predation by Dr. David Livingstone in 19th Century Bechuanaland, Southern Africa

 

One of the most descriptive vignettes of the predator behavior of populations representing the worst of White Supremacy was made by Dr. David Livingstone as he watched them cannabalized the environment of southern Africa during his travels across central Africa in the mid-1850s. He was not writing about Americans, but he was writing about the same type of people, and he remarks on that fact. Read this very carefully.   

It is difficult for a person in a civilized country to conceive that any body of men possessing the common attributes of humanity (and these Boers are by no means destitute of the better feelings of our nature) should with one accord set out, after loading their own wives and children with caresses, and proceed to shoot down in cold blood men and women, of a different color, it is true, but possessed of domestic feelings and affections equal to their own.

   These Boers were not just randomly slaughtering Africans as some type of wild beasts, they were also enslaving African children.  

I saw and conversed with children in the houses of Boers who had, by their own and their masters' account, been captured, and in several instances I traced the parents of these unfortunates, though the plan approved by the long-headed among the burghers is to take children so young that they soon forget their parents and their native language also. It was long before I could give credit to the tales of bloodshed told by native witnesses, and had I received no other testimony but theirs I should probably have continued skeptical to this day as to the truth of the accounts; but when I found the Boers themselves, some bewailing and denouncing, others glorying in the bloody scenes in which they had been themselves the actors, I was compelled to admit the validity of the testimony, and try to account for the cruel anomaly. They are all traditionally religious, tracing their descent from some of the best men (Huguenots and Dutch) the world ever saw.  Hence they claim to themselves the title of "Christians", and all the colored race are "black property" or "creatures".

   Dr. Livingstone reveals how predaceous humans rationalize their carnage by creating a “religion” to justify their ungodliness towards other humans. Note that it is not a religion of love, but of hate and evil. It is not a religion of inclusion, but of domination.  

They being the chosen people of God, the heathen are given to them for an inheritance, and they are the rod of divine vengeance on the heathen, as were the Jews of old. Living in the midst of a native population much larger than themselves, and at fountains removed many miles from each other, they feel somewhat in the same insecure position as do the Americans in the Southern States. The first question put by them to strangers is respecting peace; and when they receive reports from disaffected or envious natives against any tribe, the case assumes all the appearance and proportions of a regular insurrection. Severe measures then appear to the most mildly disposed among them as imperatively called for, and, however bloody the massacre that follows, no qualms of conscience ensue: it is a dire necessity for the sake of peace. Indeed, the late Mr. Hendrick Potgeiter most devoutly believed himself to be the great peacemaker of the country.

   Next, Dr. Livingstone raises a question that perplexes humanists even today. How is it that single globe-trotting European males, like himself, could travel among so-called savages in a harsh land without being eaten? See if you can guess who the heathens really are. Hint: The local African populations are not the heathens.  

... how is it that the natives, being so vastly superior in numbers to the Boers, do not rise and annihilate them? [My emphasis] The people among whom they live are Bechuanas [present-day Botswana], not Caffres, though no one would ever learn that distinction from a Boer; and history does not contain one single instance in which the Bechuanas, even those of them who possess fire-arms, have attacked either the Boers or the English.  If there is such an instance, I am certain it is not generally known, either beyond or in the Cape Colony. They have defended themselves when attacked, as in the case of Sechele[1], but have never engaged in offensive war with Europeans. We have a very different tale to tell of the Caffres, and the difference has always been so evident to these border Boers that, ever since those "magnificent savages"* obtained possession of fire-arms, not one Boer has ever attempted to settle in Caffreland, or even face them as an enemy in the field. The Boers have generally manifested a marked antipathy to any thing but "long-shot" warfare, and, sidling away in their emigrations toward the more effeminate Bechuanas, have left their quarrels with the Caffres to be settled by the English, and their wars to be paid for by English gold. (David Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, 1857)

   Also note that Dr. Livingstone had the same problem that the American electorate currently has with respect to rightwing conservatives that dominate the Republican Party in Congress, and the Federal Government — an inability to call a spade a spade. Because they may look like some of the readers, that they may have some of the same customs and habits, that they may even eat with utensils and chew their food 28 times before swallowing, experience should tell you that they are not the same type of humans. Current policymakers in Washington, DC have chosen a path of lies, violence, and deceit. Hopefully, they will be made accountable for their transgressions.  

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1. The great Chief of the Bakwena in present-day Botswana, Kgosi Sechele I, who ruled his people between 1833-1892.