The scale of recent social problems in South Africa needs another explanation than the glib "nurture" argument with which we have been fed ever since World War II. This makes Rushton's book so relevant to understanding our situation. Despite huge efforts and money spent on black education, not only in separate schools under apartheid, but now, less than 50% of black children obtain the most basic school-leaving qualification.
In fact, Rushton refers to some IQ testing done in conjunction with psychologists at the local liberal University of the Witwatersrand which shows that the mean IQ of first-year black university students is 84, conistent with the mean for the population at large of 75.
All of Rushton's theory can be corroborated by everyday experience in South Africa: extreme violence and aggression displayed by young black males of low intelligence and high sex drives. This country has the highest rate for murder and rape in the world, 50 per 1000 members of the population, as against 8 per 1000 in the US, and about 4 for Britain.
Also differential levels of demographic expansion predicted by his theory fits the SA case perfectly: over the past century blacks multiplied by 20, whereas whites only trebled (with the help of outside immigration of Europeans).
Despite a high degree of initial scepticism (I have also been trained in the liberal, politically correct mode of thought), I found all of Rushton's arguments very convincing, as well as the theory of the evolutionary split 110 000 years ago between Africans and the rest, and 40 000 years ago between Caucasians and Mongoloids. With my current knowledge of evolution, the latter was both fascinating and highly plausible.
Holding views like Rushton's in contemporary South Africa under black rule will probably land one in prison or at least make one liable for a large fine. And yet, given the level of violence experienced by whites who are being killed by the thousands in so-called "criminal" attacks, the tendency of different races towards aggression needs to be held up in broad daylight.
The issues addressed by Rushton - he does not at all come across as a right-wing fanatic, rather more like a cool scientific mind - are of such relevance for South Africa and the rest of the world that it reminds one of Galileo confronting the Catholic Church to say that the earth revolves around the sun and being damned for it. Despite the fundamentalist outrage at this kind of reasoning, courageous people everywhere need to get a serious, scientific debate about race going. Rushton has already made a significant contribution.