The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
538. South Africa: What the West Needs to Learn | Dr. Ernst Roets
Mon, 14 Apr 2025
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with South African filmmaker, author, and activist Dr. Ernst Roets. They discuss the genetic and cultural hyper-diversity of Africa, the early settlement patterns of South Africa, the origin story of the Boers, how forgotten history breeds rhyming conflicts in the present, and the complex needle that must be threaded for shared prosperity. Dr. Ernst Roets is an Afrikaner activist, author and filmmaker from South Africa. He serves as Executive Director of the newly established Pioneer Initiative, which seeks to promote a more sustainable political dispensation for South Africa, based on the principles of decentralization and self-governance. Dr Roets is the leading expert on the topic of farm murders in South Africa. His book, Kill the Boer: Government Complicity in South Africa's Brutal Farm Murders is an international bestseller on Amazon. He is also the producer of several documentary films. He regularly appears in the media - both in South Africa and the international media - about issues relating to South Africa and he regularly speaks at international conferences, including CPAC and NatCon. He is a leading advocate for the protection of free speech and property rights in South Africa, and for farm murders to be regarded as a priority crime. This episode was filmed on March, 14th, 2025. | Links | For Dr. Ernst Roets: On X https://x.com/ernstroets?lang=en On YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@ErnstRoets Read “Kill the Boer: Government Complicity in South Africa's Brutal Farm Murders” https://a.co/d/cMWyuMH
Chapter 1: What is the history behind the settlement patterns in South Africa?
I mentioned this story about the vow that was made in 1838. And he went to negotiate with the Zulu king, King Dungan. They signed a treaty. The king said, we need to celebrate this, but leave your weapons outside. And so during the celebration, the Zulu king chanted, kill the wizards. And they slaughtered them. We need to retaliate. We need to attack back.
And so they had a command of about 300 to 400 people. They were completely surrounded by about 12,000. A man named Sadal Saliha, he was the religious leader. And he said, we need to make a vow to God. Some people say that's the origin story of our people.
Let's flip to the modern time. What was the relationship between the apartheid state per se and this notion of separate homelands?
The argument was that South Africa should be thought of as Europe. The single biggest problem in South Africa, it's the triangle of unemployment, poverty and inequality. Ironically, they've gotten to a point where they can only think about inequality.
It looks to me like the cost of innovation is inequality. Okay, now your book is entitled Kill the Boar. There's a reason for that. Hello, everybody. I've watched over a very long period of time the political and economic situation in South Africa both heat up and destabilize, and that's... taken somewhat of an accelerating turn in the last few years.
And because of that, I've become increasingly interested in delving more deeply into the history of South Africa to understand the context and then also the political situation on the ground in that country now. And I came across the work of Dr. Ernst Rutz, who wrote this book called Kill the Boer, this book, which was published in 2018. Now, he's also a filmmaker.
He made a film called Tainted Heroes, which is about the apartheid era. in 2016 and another one called Disrupted Land. And I hoped to talk to Dr. Roots about South Africa, about its history and about, well, about its current situation and about hopes and concerns for the future. And that's exactly what we did. And so...
The first thing I wanted to do was to delve a little bit into the history of the origin of South Africa, because there's a narrative in the West that the evil white Europeans came to a land dominated by black Africans and colonized it in their brutal and murderous fashion. And, well, any...
territorial dispute has its bloody edge, let's say, but the truth of the matter is that the settlement of South Africa is a hell of a lot more complex than that, and that the two primary racial groups that exist there today weren't the original inhabitants of the land, whether they're black or white, and so just knowing that is useful, and we spent the first
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Chapter 2: How did the apartheid state influence modern South Africa?
It's much more humid and that's where the most productive farming land is and so forth. The Western part is arid, it's more deserts and dry and so forth. So they lived mostly in the East? Yes, but they don't anymore.
And that's important because, so if you go to the Eastern parts, like the Drakensberg, you would find the cave paintings of the Koi in the sand, but they don't live there anymore because they were pushed out by groups coming in from the North who it has become a controversial term, although I don't know what the appropriate term then would be, by the Bantu people.
So the word Bantu is a word that means people. It just means people.
Like that's typical anthropologically. Most tribes refer to themselves as the humans, as opposed to everyone else who aren't the humans.
Exactly. So they've been known as the Bantu speaking groups, but today it's controversial to use that term. Why is that? because it's a term that refers to black people. And I think some people have used the term in the context of making derogatory remarks or something to that effect. I see, I see.
Okay, okay.
So, but that's how they were known historically. And that's the Zulus and the Khozas and the different groups that we know in South Africa today. And they came down from the north and pushed out the Bushmen. They came down from the north and they pushed out the Bushmen.
Right. Now, also the Bushmen, from what I understand, and like I don't know lots about the Bushmen either, although what I do know about them is that they were basically hunters and gatherers and trackers and that they were very sophisticated. Very nomadic. They had those little lightweight bows and arrows and the poison darts. Yes. And they're very good at running down prey, right?
And they can live where no one else can live. But also they weren't agriculturalists from my understanding. there were no places where the Bushmen produced like cities or dense population centers. Correct.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the Battle of Blood River?
Yeah, so the argument is if something like, if you have walked over a mountain once, then that mountain belongs to your tribe, something along those lines. Which is playing out in Australia, for example, right now in a major way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And in Canada, for that matter.
But this is a classic example of what Huntington would call the clash of civilizations. It's just different perspectives on, for example, the issue of property rights, the notion of what does ownership mean, different cultures, different communities, but also different civilizations have different perspectives on that.
And now we're sort of in this place now where the Western perspective has become the dominant perspective.
Right, and so it looks self-evident.
Yes, yes, exactly. But yeah, the fact of the matter is there were large tracts of land that wasn't inhabited.
Well, and there's also a really complicated question here too, which is there was a very small population in South Africa in consequence of the Bushman's lifestyle. So then you ask yourself, well, is there any net good, absolutely speaking, in generating a technological revolution that radically increases the carrying power of the land? Because that's the question about agriculture.
That's the question about domesticated animals. It's certainly the question about industrial civilization. And I guess the answer would be something like you'd hope that if there were hunter-gatherers and then agricultural people came along or industrial people came along, that in optimal circumstances there would be a series of treaties and the treaties would hold.
and everybody could have their cake and eat it too. There's going to be conflict because there's always conflict between, well, herders. There's certainly conflict between hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, herders, and industrialists, right? So those conflicts are going to emerge. You could imagine a series of treaties that would mediate that.
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