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Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 11, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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"The Afrikaner is never happy if he can see the smoke of another man's fire" was a saying from the period. Another way to put it is that the Afrikaners, as the name suggests, were not European colonists who expected to someday just go home, or jaunt off to another part of their Empire. They'd severed their ties to the metropole, struck out inland, and developed the culture necessary to survive without imperial support (this happened in other places, too, particularly inland regions disconnected from maritime trade - think the Rhodesians, or the French plantation in the director's cut of Apocalypse Now - but Afrikaners did it earlier and in much harsher conditions, so their society changed more).

As to the point about Apartheid coming later than expected, Apartheid was also a reaction to urbanization and migration of black workers to the cities. The old system of a farmer having patriarchal authority over his farmhands and a mining company over its miners, worked fine for a rural economy, but once SA's cities started growing, and hordes of unmarried young men came to work there (with all the problems that has always implied in history even before you get to the racial factor), the National Party decided they needed a system that would work for controlling cities as well as the countryside. The "Swart Gevaar" doesn't really exist before urbanization - rural unrest can always be put down but urban riots get out of control - hence why Apartheid comes later than the colonial systems of control.