Not the case here at all. While mining is important to the overall GDP in the country, the major cause here is 99% due to corruption and underinvestment in infrastructure.
I think the implication is that was sustained by the cash from mining. Now that cash is less flush you can’t have corruption and a working government. It is obvious which was more important to them now.
The problem with corruption is that it gets worse in a situation like this. When there's scarcity of money and opportunity (often caused by corruption), people get even more corrupted to make sure they take care of themselves before anyone else. Which makes things even worse.
How does one even break out of that cycle? Who is the first one to say "I'll give up my corrupt riches so everyone can have a more functioning society?"
Exactly, I'll also add failed social policies to this list. The economy of Johannesburg goes well beyond gold. The country has amazing natural resources and some very smart people, but sadly the smart ones are in the minority.
My brother in law does land evaluations nation-wide. One of many examples he gave me was that there is a program there to expropriate farms from white land owners and give them to blacks (I'm not referring to the expropriation without compensation FYI). The idea behind this was to give the blacks a way to earn money by being able to have land. He personally observed farms that had been expropriated and it's effect. Before the expropriation they were productive thriving operations, afterwords many ended up ceasing to produce anything and the properties went into dis-repair.
Farms, beyond supplying the country with food provide a valuable export.
Similar story in Venezuela. It's a political idea to 'give the land back to the people'. But the people they give it to haven't the training, equipment nor financial reserves to actually work the land.
Big farms have become big, to compete on margins. Splitting them is a recipe for disaster. No surprise when it goes sour, quickly and decisively.
See "The Resource Curse" in Economics which predicts that when mining and other extractive industries are important to a countries GDP it will heavily predispose a country to "corruption and underinvestment in infrastructure".
> It is found that South Africa has experienced many of the symptoms outlined in the resource curse literature including relatively slow GDP growth, gross inequalities, entrenched poverty and the creation of a rentier state. Overall, it is concluded that South Africa has failed to benefit from natural resource wealth and can be classified as a resource cursed state. Not only has mineral wealth failed to benefit much of South Africa's population, sections of society have actually been harmed through the process of mineral extraction
I don't know enough about SA to agree or disagree with your analysis, but if anyone wants more info on the "one-function town" idea, see these articles :
The serpentza YouTube channel has an interesting perspective from a South African native on how the country has become a failed state and why he left. I've never been there myself so I don't know whether his claims are accurate.
I remember watching some BBC documentary on the ANC and South Africa a while back, and there was a clip where some reporter in a news conference asked some minister how he could afford some multi-million dollar house on an official salary of 100k (or whatever). This minister's answer was a classic... "Why don't you just go mind your own business!".
Corruption seems like it's become endemic, and with it the infrastructure, economy, etc.
The previous president, Zuma, constructed a lavish swimming pool at his private residence with public funds. When pressed on it he said it was a fire pool and went so far as to bring in a group with pumps to demonstrate pumping the water out of the pool to put out a fire. Everybody knew it was BS and akin to saying that you swimming pool is a fire prevention tool but...
Odd usage of the term "South African native"? He's just simply South African.
Either way - he's spot on, this entire country has been crumbling since the mid 90's and the only thing keeping it from becoming another Zimbabwe or Somalia is the sheer momentum of the invested capital and the stubbornness of the productive individuals here. Many of which simply emigrate year after year, making the problem worse as the ratio of unproductive to productive grows greatly.
I've been watching it first hand since I moved here almost 2 decades ago. Unfortunately it's a very nice country, so much potential for year-round farming, so much solar, enterprising and self-sufficient populace, rich culture, etc, so it's sad to watch it become this way.
There is a certain stickiness to people who have lived for a few generations. Unfortunately for South Africa, once those disappear having them back is guaranteed to be impossible.
Ironic that you say that second sentence after saying the first :-)
Because that's _exactly_ what we'd say about those other countries. Stay out of the dodgy areas etc, the gang violence etc is typically hyper local and worst in certain neighborhoods.
Stats don't say everything, and doesn't negate my opinion of the place where I currently live. Most of those murder stats are unfortunately from poor areas and affecting the poor populace. Us in the middle and upper class don't get affected as much by the crime, we live in protective cages, gated communities, have private healthcare, don't use public transport and have 24/7 security.
I'm not saying SA doesn't have crime, I'm saying it's easy to avoid and I prefer it this way vs what is present in supposedly western countries.
Ohh it is. Racially charged farm attacks are in the news, but apart from that, violence is very high in the country. Murder and rape crime statistics are some of the highest in the world. And that is after allegations of corruption and underreporting of crime.
> Violence wise, I'd rather live here than in places like London or most of the places in America with high thug-culture populations.
If you have a preference for living in higher violence areas, that's your choice, but I don't think many will share that view.
As one other comment had pointed out, the murder rate in SA is about 40 times that of England. It isn't even comparable, so I don't see how one can make a solid argument for "but violence-wise, SA is better despite having an x40 murder rate".
When I moved to London ~18 years ago I lived with White South Africans and got to know them and their friends. All were in the UK to get ancestry passports to let them into Australia. All but one eventually moved to Australia, and that one went back to SA. He’s no longer alive.
Seems they all knew the writing was on the wall even back then.
Moved away 5 years ago. I've been back to visit 1-2 times every year since. Over the last year or so it felt that things have massively deteriorated. I guess that's the only feeling you can get when you have no electricity most of the day.
The thing about wonderful, sophisticated, complex systems like a modern city, is that you need to be able to maintain them. If you aren’t capable of doing that, for whatever reason, then they rapidly become a sort of trap. This is what has happened to South Africa. I think there’s a non-zero chance it becomes the first anarchy of this present age. A pity, because it could have been a paradise.
I do not know what you mean by country, but South Africa is one of the most gorgeous places I have been. It can compete with California. It has natural resources, great climate, flora, history, and by and large, my interactions with people of all stripes were positive. I would even retire in Cape Town, if it were politically stable.
I think Somalia is close, as close as any. At one point a couple of years ago I thought Venezuela might take the “prize” or even El Salvador, although the leadership there is cleaning house with a very stiff broom currently. Afghanistan, no, although the national army collapsed within a couple of days, there was a strong and organised force to take over.
Ah, that is an interesting theory: anarchy will always result in spontaneous organization of factions, usually repressive and holding power by pure force.
What the hell does the Overton Window have to do with corruption? Corruption isn't limited to one political party, and I'm willing to bet 95% of the people reading this have no idea how to even apply the Overton Window to South African politics.
The only thing I can take from this is that the GP meant "yeah we all know Africans are corrupt, DUH, but we can't say it because of political correctness." I don't know that that's what he meant, but when you're like "well we could discuss the root of this but it's recently become socially unacceptable to do so" of course people are going to assume the worst thing possible.
I don't know enough about South Africa to comment, but I can confidently say that in Zimbabwe the black citizens of the country now have less economic prosperity and less political freedom/equality than they had under the Rhodesian government.
Rhodesia never had any racial requirements for voting/representation, at least not until the British insisted on special representitives being created for the black population as a condition of independence (source: Ian Smith's memoirs). They had educational and income requirements in order to vote, and were actively building more schools in majority black areas in order to increase the ability of black citizens to vote (and to have a better education/life in general).
His post is basically "we all know why this is happening, we just can't say it. You know what I mean. Wink wink. Nudge nudge."
First of all, as an outsider, no, I don't know why it's happening. Secondly, the way it's carefully couched to avoid stating an actual reason, appealing to how they're "not allowed to say it", makes it sound like the real thing they want to say is something over-simplistic and extremely bigoted like "It's because of all the Blacks." So I'll leave my downvote, thank you.
The answer is never "blacks" that's just not an actionable thing.
If you think crime then the problem then you can come up with suggestions to improve things (policing perhaps? Gun control? reducing poverty?), those improvements really have nothing to do with the skin color of anyone though, just a distraction.
I'm not a moderator -- I'm not banning anything. You literally stated no reason. You asked no question. Why are you telling me that I can't handle the question when you haven't even hinted at what the real question is?
And if the question you think we should be asking is "Is it because of all the Blacks?" then the reason that's not taken seriously is because it's (a) obviously false and (b) obviously asked in bad faith.
Why aren't we allowed to bring up the possibility that it's because of the world cabal of Pashtun lizard-humans using their space laser to destroy society so we don't figure out the dark secret that the Earth is actually toroidal!?
This is a common fallacious defense. You expressed an opinion about a particular example of dishonest criticism, and then were criticized. There is no "proof" that the latter criticism is also dishonest. It's OK to criticize an opinion, even if that opinion happens to be about criticism.
Also, it's hard not to point out: "Just asking questions" is such a common bad-faith tactic in the vein of "I'm not saying that it's X, but it's X" that it has actually become a meme/joke. It's absolutely valid, assuming honesty! But as a phrase it has no legs.
Okay so I will pose a simple question and see how quickly I get downvoted to oblivion.
Why is the town of Orania so beautiful, clean, and prosperous while the rest of South Africa is like this? You can watch videos of it on YouTube, it is very nice. Compare it with black towns or major cities in greater South Africa.
Orania is a “whites only” town of about 2500 people. They don’t abuse or extract resources from blacks, they just live separately.
This is the kind of dangerous question that GP is saying one is generally not allowed to ask.
That doesn't seem to be the case there. From the wiki:
"The average wage in Orania was estimated at approximately R94,036 per annum in 2019, low by White South African standards. In 2016, CNN reported unemployment in Orania at 2%. In 2015, a visiting journalist estimated the poverty rate at 70–80%"
That seems to be similar:
"Annual household income for blacks stood at an average of 92,893 rand (about $7,000)"
The second sentence of your link literally says the average income for white people was four times higher than black people.
Orania has 2066 people, and a third of them are children. That leaves 1363 adults. The official stats say there are only 609 people employed there, which means less than half of the adults work. Combined with making their own currency, elections, not having any real police force or public services, and the rest of SA basically leaving them alone, this all screams "racist white people with a lot of money who want to roleplay Fallout mixed with Atlas Shrugged".
> The second sentence of your link literally says the average income for white people was four times higher than black people.
How is that relevant when GP was saying that it's wealth that makes the difference, but the stats show equivalent wealth between the two groups we were talking about: Oranians and black South Africans.
The point is that by the data, these two groups aren't wealthy, there's nothing to suggest that Oranians have "a lot of money", and thus GP's assertion is incorrect and was just a random claim not backed by the data.
I'm not sure I follow. Oranians are 98% white. Black South Africans I assume are 100% black. Oranians are therefore part of the white group that make 4 times as much. And while not backed by data, there are assumptions that can be made (that i laid out) to suggest that Oranians do have a lot more wealth than SA on average
Referring to your own impending downvotes in the opening of your post is a form of antagonism that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The idea is usually that you can then use the downvotes as "evidence" of your correctness (of course, that's fallacious - downvotes can be for anything, and an antagonistic tone combined with portraying yourself as the underdog is one of the most prominent examples, regardless of the content of your post). And if you don't get downvoted - even better for your case! It's a cheap win-win for you.
> Why is the town of Orania so beautiful, clean, and prosperous while the rest of South Africa is like this?
because it's a tiny, self-selecting intentional community? i hate to feed the troll, but it's pretty obvious why a small, singular ideology-driven community might appear more "beautiful, clean, and prosperous" than a large metropolis
Just to play devils advocate here, I don't have a dog on this fight and I basically agree with you, but Johannesburg is/was a large metropolis and was once "beautiful, clean and prosperous", so I wouldn't say it's obvious.
I think just having the idea of “South Africa seems to have been generally better off under Apartheid” is pretty scary for most people.
So, they won’t even approach a conversation trying to determine the actual causes of decline because they feel any possible explanation is going to be racism-adjacent.
>I imply nothing and the statement is a simple, albeit troubling, fact
Words have implications. This is one of those fallacious "but it's true" things, where it honestly becomes difficult to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt - i.e. that you think the phrase "South Africa was [insert anything positive] under Apartheid", by itself, has no possible implications.
It's unreasonable to expect people to take a statement in support of a fundamentally racist institution as not being racist. People aren't "triggered" for making that connection and they aren't "shutting down the conversation" for calling out the racism inherent in such a statement.
It's incredibly easy to have a conversation about how to improve SA without taking needless diversions to support racist institutions. All you have to do is talk about potential solutions to current problems. That's it. That's all it takes.
Bringing up historical racist institutions is a good way to derail and shut down reasonable discussion.
>Because saying that is stupid since Apartheid is the source of these problems?
Other African nations that didn't have Apartheid or similar institutions have similar economic and political results. And even the one sub Saharan nation that didn't experience colonization, Ethiopia, isn't screaming ahead of its neighbors economically or otherwise. Its GDP per capita is slightly ahead of Uganda's and fairly far below Kenya's.
Knowing approximately nothing about Ethiopia, is there any generally accepted (or at least considered) reason for this? It's landlocked but has rivers, climate and geography seems sufficiently diverse to support industries. Is it completely devoid of natural resources or something?
It's really hard to form stable, wealthy countries in general.
Countries that have developed in the last 60 years tend to have strong authoritarian leaders and the favor and interest of Europe and the United States.
Ethopia does have natural resources but it doesn't have a strong central government, partly because the warring factions want control of the resources. Places like UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar had strong dictators before they developed the petroleum industry. African states that have oil tend to be too weak politically to resist outside interests taking the wealth by paying bribes and funding warring factions.
It's fair to say ending apartheid created all of these problems. The people in control are now from the low educated group you mention. Not surprising things are falling apart. It would be a surprise if it didn't. There needed to be a generational long effort to equalize the populations before you removed aparthheid.
Wow. Just let racism run rampant for, what, an entire generation? To make the transition more comfortable for armchair sociologists?
Sometimes when the house is on fire, you just get everybody out. Instead of 'waiting for the fire brigade' or 'somebody smarter than you needs to make that decision'.
I'd hate to be that generation of young people condemned to a violently racist system because, it was going to be difficult for the rich to adjust.
Your analogy is flawed.
A more apt analogy would be, that only white people were allowed in the fire brigade(which was also founded by white people).
Now diversity quotas have been implemented and the fire brigade is mostly non-white.
And now, Joeburg is on fire and the fire department is no longer able to put out the fire because of incompetence and mismanagement.
No, that's exactly it. The new generation needs to be educated and trained. What they don't need is, to remain forbidden from that in a violently racist system. What they have now is to be preferred, even if it takes time to work out.
But you want to skip training and put them in charge. That's what happened and now the place is on fire. You can clutch to your old dogma and let everyone burn because that is what you preferred or be responsible. You wouldn't give a baby a gun but you are because of the color of their skin.
"The country was doing fine when it was a racial caste system centered on extracting and exporting natural resources to the metropole" is definitely a hell of a take. Sure the British kept the city nice for themselves when they were getting approximately free mining labor out of the bargain. Shockingly there hasn't been stability during the transition away from this model; post-colonial regimes are unstable, welcome to world history. What if Europe repatriated some of the wealth that was extracted at gunpoint over the last two centuries? Maybe that would stabilize things somewhat.
I agree with the other poster: what, exactly, is your point? I agree that the Overton Window is probably stifling some crucial conversations here, but your comment, as is, leaves open many racist implications.
Racism is incorrect. It's simply false. Average differences between races are dwarfed by individual differences between humans. This is not an assumption that the past is morally inferior. It is a simple observation that when you eliminate confounding variables, racial differences simply don't account for differences in group behavior and outcomes.
You'd have better luck grouping humans by height, saying that we all know that a society full of people taller than 6' simply cannot govern themselves. We could group humans by whether they're left-handed or right-handed, whether they like cilantro or think it tastes like soap, whether they can smell asparagus in their urine, whether they have that widow's peak thing in their hairline or not, the shape of their ear, or the color of their skin. There is no evidence that skin color is more meaningful than any of those other groupings: it's simply more obvious and carries enormous historical weight.
You're wrong that the question can't be asked: it can. I've seen it discussed in the context of professional sports, where it may play an actual part -- nobody was banned for that. As far as societies effectively governing themselves, the question has been asked, again, and again, and again, and again. The answer is always the same: race isn't what matters. And every time someone decides we need to figure this out again, millions have to suffer and die. If you have new evidence, present it.
> a question leading to a racist conclusion disallows the questions entirely
This is called "proof by contradiction". Any answer to a question that leads to a known-false conclusion is therefore not the right answer to that question.
>Progressive ideology fundamentally assumes that the past is morally inferior and thus it is unthinkable to question if things were better in previous times
What are you talking about? The progressive left frequently talks about the past be being better when it comes to the worlds increasing wealth inequality and how wages stagnated.
Can you stop speaking in strawmen and make an actual point? Are you dancing around an assertion that apartheid was better for South Africa?
It is not liked by the Left but easy to say:
Most countries once managed successfully or not so successfully by "Whites" or yes, even plundered by them took a nosedive towards reduced productivity, neglected maintenance, incompetence, infighting, embezzlement, dictatorship, cultural / tribe / religious clashes after handover to local authorities happened.
Just look how economically thriving Mozambique and Angola were, and what happened after they gained independence from Portugal.
South Africa is another example in that long list.
Hell, just look what happened with Libya and Iraq after their dictators, who subdued the masses but kept the peace, were disposed of respective being helped in their disposal by the US government.
Singapore did rather well after the British, Lee Kuan Yew was an intelligent man with a plan and the energy and conscientiousness to execute. Likewise, even Chiang Kai Shek in Taiwan, who was facing total defeat at the hands of the Communists. African countries have not fared so well.
This is needlessly tribalistic. This is "not liked" by some people, because of the implications for which it is most often used as a stand-in. Even the right-wingers I know admit this dishonesty when they see it committed. In other words, they "don't like it". (I'm not accusing you of this particular dishonesty - I'm just criticizing your framing)
Don't need to bring tribal politics into it. SA suppressed something like 90% of the population for decades, and then handed over control. Now the government is completely dominated by a single party. That's a recipe for disaster no matter what color your skin is, or what region you live in.
Singapore is effectively a single party system too, but look how well they live. It's definitely a mentality / cultural / tribal / ethnicity thing; btw just look within the US: Blacks don't do well, but Asians do. Regardless of how many parties participate in decision-making.
Given my own experiences from travelling to 43 countries, the difference in drive, willingness to work, abilities or lack thereof / lazyness shown in daily life is certainly very visible between Africa and Asia, Europe, America.
Have you considered that skin color is more than just skin color? That a people, a culture, is more than the amount of melanin they have?
The idea that everyone is a blank slate wrapped in different colors of skin seems quite reductive, if not insulting to the beauty of human diversity, given the real science behind genetics.
The left often doesn’t want to critique ideas because they conflate that with cultural bigotry, especially if the ideas are linked to things like religions. The right doesn’t like the ideas explanation because they believe in biological determinism and think it must be race.
Find an image of North and South Korea from space. Those people are genetically almost identical. What’s the difference? Ideas.
Why did Europe suddenly become the worlds powerhouse right after the enlightenment when before it was poorer than many places in Asia and the Middle East? The ideas changed.
Have the dominant ideas and mentalities in South Africa changed? How? That’s the question I would ask.
I think this is a useful framing. North Koreans have the brains, the organisational skills, and the drive to build an ICBM and a bomb, in spite of the fact that most of the rest of the world is against them, and most of their own people don’t even have enough to eat. Rather like the last white South African administration in that regard (although I believe they had some help from a friend with their free fall bombs), who had enough to eat but were sanctioned heavily but still managed to operate functioning cities.
I'm assuming (and hoping) you mean culturally identical because all humans are nearly genetically identical.
>Those people are genetically almost identical. What’s the difference? Ideas.
And trade sanctions, and the support of super powers.
>Why did Europe suddenly become the worlds powerhouse right after the enlightenment when before it was poorer than many places in Asia and the Middle East? The ideas changed.
I guess it was a 'change in ideas', it also might have had to do with colonization of the practice of exploiting poorer countries and repatriating their wealth.
> In the 1980s, South African libertarians set up a deregulated zone that they sold to the world as ‘Africa’s Switzerland’. It was a sham, but with its clusters of sweatshops, it was very modern – and in some ways it anticipated the world we live in today
It's tricky talking about racial stuff though I'd say the difference between the Afrikaans/Dutch origin government and the current African one is more culture than skin colour.
It's complicated but from centuries of history I guess. An interesting argument why the area around the Med developed before Africa is it was easy to get around by boat and spread ideas and culture - you can sail quite easily between Egypt, Israel, Italy and Greece. On the other hand sub Saharan Africa was hard - you mostly had to walk. Now of course travel and communication is easy with modern tech which I suspect will level things up.
I visited South Africa in February. You can tell crime is rampant by how every home has 2m walls with barbed wire or electric fencing on top.
Most of the country was still very beautiful, but man Johannesburg is really run down. My father was there 30 years ago and he couldn't get over how this once beautiful city could have come to this. Vacancies and broken windows everywhere right in the city center.
If you're just looking to go on vacation in the general region, Namibia is a better option in my opinion.
A fun game to play on Google Maps Street View is to go to Johannesburg or Cape Town and time how long it takes to find a home that doesn't have a spiked/barbed-wire/etc. fence or wall.
In my slightly upmarket Johannesburg suburb I would guess about 80% of the houses have electric fences. You can figure out how old the installation is by the number of strands the fence has. It varies with fashion.
The other fun game is swapping stories about the dumbest way you have shocked yourself on your own fence. Mine was by trying to lift a branch of my fence while barefoot using an aluminum pool pole. I thought my wife had turned the fence off.
A big part of it is years of ANC. They essentially rode the wave of Nelson Mandela (who’s biggest mistake probably was limiting himself to one term, not that he didn’t deserve his rest after decades in prison) ever since the end of apartheid, and especially the poorest kept voting for them. No matter how much corruption they openly showed.
And those outages affect the poorest more than anyone else. My wife is from SA, her family is far from rich, but well off enough to afford a generator. It’s not always on, but it really helps bridge the outages when you really need the power.
And before the usual white supremacists show up, yes, it was better during apartheid. Fascinating how you have no issues when you can just cut the power and water etc. to all the blacks in their townships.
The people who vote them in are often the poorest and least educated, who don’t benefit from corruption. Though tbf I’m also not sure how great the alternatives are, it’s hard enough keeping up with parties here in Germany ;)
>Fascinating how you have no issues when you can just cut the power and water etc. to all the blacks in their townships.
And when you aren't legally mandated to hire a certain percentage of black employees at the power company, regardless of how many have the proper education and training. And then spend even more bringing in foreign contractors to fix their mess.
their government is doubling down on the policies that got them here, it's only going to get worse. The state owned power company has admitted there is a chance their grid could completely fail which would turn this into a full fledged humanitarian crisis. They've been warned about this for decades and did nothing, it's not going to get fixed now
this was after being warned years prior and having similar issues as early as 2008. SA is going to collapse and my bet is China will buy everything up for pennies like they've done in other countries. SA citizens will probably be better off honestly
I mean, when you have the levels of inequality anywhere, shits bad. Now if you have that inequality on racial lines, shit is *really really bad*.
Mix that with globalization and the fact that the only "profitable" industries are the ones that are mainly for white workers, you end up with a situation you can't really "fix".
The end of South African apartheid put the people least qualified in charge and they have been profiting off Nelson Mandela name/party ever since.
All of the pressure on South Africa in the 80s to end the apartheid and once it happened those countries abandon South Africa aside from leaders appearing in photos with Mandela.
No one is allowed to question the governing party and pressure to reform doesn't exist from external countries for fear of being labelled racist. In the end the poorest suffer.
What exactly would you like external countries to do? The USA at least has no compelling national interest to get involved there. And when we try to coerce other countries into acting more like us it always seems to result in blowback and unintended consequences.
This is a problem that South Africans need to work out themselves. I wish them success.
When I visited SA and Johannesburg in Jan 2020 it seemed dangerous but alive and turning. From everything I've heard of SA the current political situation is tricky. I was told that the ANC earned "lifetime loyalty" from many as they were the party of Nelson Mandela and ended Apartheid. The problem, as I was told, is this unconditional loyalty has allowed the party to rot thoroughly and so the democratic process is simply unable to do its job. I'm sure that's one aspect of many, but what are the other factors? There is still massive mining potential, but nobody wants to invest given the state of affairs. There is still huge agricultural potential, but again outsiders don't want to invest given the threat of land appropriation for reparations, and those given the land are (again, from what I was told) more often than not poor stewards of it.
SA is a truly beautiful and complicated place, I really hope they find their way out of this crisis.
>I'm sure that's one aspect of many, but what are the other factors?
You really don't need any more factors than Arpatheid put the country in a bad place and a government that has no interest in fixing anything will not fix that.
Things actually worked quite well under the white government and black africans used to immigrate a fair bit from neighbouring countries as things worked better in SA. Now SA is becoming a bit more like the neighbours like Zimbabwe, for better or worse.
I'm not trying to justify racism or oppression, but I had a Zulu friend who told me that he preferred it under apartheid. Anecdotal I know, but he said that the main thing was he couldn't go to certain places without a work permit. There was little corruption and the place was well maintained. He said now nobody is free, you have to bribe someone to accomplish anything, the government still abuses everyone but the only difference is they aren't white people. He's a political refugee now fleeing political violence.
These things are very complicated. I dont think ZA or any society should be under apartheid. They could have a popular government and work well, but for some reason they haven't accomplished that. What has to happen I don't know, but I do know that the racists use it as an example to agitate for apartheid again and eventually people are going to get tired of it and attempt to resolve the problems in some way. Ignoring them or simply blaming them on apartheid will only ensure that the wrong solutions are the ones that get implemented. Nobody is willing to have an honest discussion about these problems, they just scapegoat their political opponents, and this is what will prevent a proper solution to anything.
Interesting comments. I would have thought the average HNer would understand why systems fall into disrepair without having to resort to old and tired racist tropes.
We're best positioned to rise above the racist stereotypes yet here we are struggling. We know operations is hard, really hard, and that it's oftentimes harder to keep systems running than it was to build them. Part of it is funding was allocated for the building (wealthy people built it) and we often lack funding for maintenance (poor people trying to maintain) and the system falls into disrepair as a result. Most of us here see this in our work everyday, so I'm curious as to why we can't recognize that same pattern when it's happening with real objects instead of our abstract ones?
Dude, we evolved on different continents for 50,000 years. We look different. Our bodies' biochemistry differs (different medications for whites + blacks for blood pressure). Why do you think brains came out the same? They didn't, and all the hard data, and all the evidence of everyone's eyes - how black vs white, or other populations, live, shows that. It's ugly, it's not nice, people don't know what to do about it, it's a can of worms, but it's true.
One interesting data point for example - African Americans in general earn less that whites but Nigerian Americans earn more. Probably because they have selected the highly educated ones rather than genetics.
I'd encourage you to read reputable research on this more. Especially ones on intelligence between races if that's where your mind is going. At one point I thought I also had some "facts" about this that were founded in science, but after more careful reading recently in my life I realized the "science" I had vaguely remembered around this was actually racist, unscientific garbage.
essentially graft on an enormous scale so that after $40B of investment, the monopoly power company generates significantly less power than 15 years ago. Meanwhile, the entirety of society has had to structure itself to accommodate 4-6 hours of blackouts per day, with a stunning level of required individual investment in batteries, solar, generators, etc.
And now the power company is struggling to just regularly have 4-6 hours of blackouts per day.
The ruling ANC is a 3 way alliance between the actual ANC (Nelson Mandela's party) , the largest trade union, and the South African Communist Party. They believe in heavy handed intervention to help the economy grow.
Amongst many other problems this includes a policy of cadre deployment. I.e the party faithful running all state institutions which are legislated to be monopolies as much as possible. Naturally the party faithful have zero skill in running the institution and need to deal out massive amounts of patronage to keep in favor. This includes all senior members of the justice cluster as well obviously. Even a saint would be corrupt in this environment.
The old apartheid government were also heavily corrupt but managed to at least make sure state institutions were run by semi competent people and kept a limit on the amount of corruption.
The ANC is also learnt from the apartheid government and like the good racists they have become have also steadily replaced staff of the wrong race in those institutions but haven't bothered worry about knowledge transfer so all the old seniors engineers who knew how and why things work are gone.
I remember someone -- I think an econ professor? -- say something that struck me as smart. There's lots of corruption, but it's pretty important whether the service is provided.
It's one thing if government is corrupt, and the brother / kid is getting kickbacks, and maybe users pay 20 or 30 or even 100% more than it should ideally cost. That's a problem. It's a whole different story if the government is corrupt, and you're paying the corrupt price, and you don't even get the electricity.
There Are No Successful Black Nations | And the indignity and helplessness of blacks in America won’t end until we have a first-world African nation to lift up our people.
150 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 227 ms ] threadHow does one even break out of that cycle? Who is the first one to say "I'll give up my corrupt riches so everyone can have a more functioning society?"
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/S_...
My brother in law does land evaluations nation-wide. One of many examples he gave me was that there is a program there to expropriate farms from white land owners and give them to blacks (I'm not referring to the expropriation without compensation FYI). The idea behind this was to give the blacks a way to earn money by being able to have land. He personally observed farms that had been expropriated and it's effect. Before the expropriation they were productive thriving operations, afterwords many ended up ceasing to produce anything and the properties went into dis-repair.
Farms, beyond supplying the country with food provide a valuable export.
Big farms have become big, to compete on margins. Splitting them is a recipe for disaster. No surprise when it goes sour, quickly and decisively.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
> It is found that South Africa has experienced many of the symptoms outlined in the resource curse literature including relatively slow GDP growth, gross inequalities, entrenched poverty and the creation of a rentier state. Overall, it is concluded that South Africa has failed to benefit from natural resource wealth and can be classified as a resource cursed state. Not only has mineral wealth failed to benefit much of South Africa's population, sections of society have actually been harmed through the process of mineral extraction
https://youtu.be/jHxh_sQHH0E
Corruption seems like it's become endemic, and with it the infrastructure, economy, etc.
Either way - he's spot on, this entire country has been crumbling since the mid 90's and the only thing keeping it from becoming another Zimbabwe or Somalia is the sheer momentum of the invested capital and the stubbornness of the productive individuals here. Many of which simply emigrate year after year, making the problem worse as the ratio of unproductive to productive grows greatly.
I've been watching it first hand since I moved here almost 2 decades ago. Unfortunately it's a very nice country, so much potential for year-round farming, so much solar, enterprising and self-sufficient populace, rich culture, etc, so it's sad to watch it become this way.
Violence wise, I'd rather live here than in places like London or most of the places in America with high thug-culture populations.
Because that's _exactly_ what we'd say about those other countries. Stay out of the dodgy areas etc, the gang violence etc is typically hyper local and worst in certain neighborhoods.
South Africa murder rate 2022/23: 46 per 100,000 (https://www.groundup.org.za/article/how-bad-murder-in-south-...)
England and Wales murder rate 2021/22: 11 per million (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand....)
I'm not saying SA doesn't have crime, I'm saying it's easy to avoid and I prefer it this way vs what is present in supposedly western countries.
There is nowhere in London, or in the UK, that I cannot walk. I'm not sure how you are imagining Western societies.
Ohh it is. Racially charged farm attacks are in the news, but apart from that, violence is very high in the country. Murder and rape crime statistics are some of the highest in the world. And that is after allegations of corruption and underreporting of crime.
If you have a preference for living in higher violence areas, that's your choice, but I don't think many will share that view.
As one other comment had pointed out, the murder rate in SA is about 40 times that of England. It isn't even comparable, so I don't see how one can make a solid argument for "but violence-wise, SA is better despite having an x40 murder rate".
Seems they all knew the writing was on the wall even back then.
I still have people there, and every time I go visit its in an even worse state of disrepair; quite upsetting.
I’m sure the geography and average people are lovely. But it has a hell of handicap to overcome politically.
The country is beautiful, the people are great. The problem is the politicians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter https://bit.ly/448HJVI
Somalia seems to be pretty close to anarchy. Also maybe Afghanistan after the US exited?
South Africa anarchy will not last and turn into factions
The Overton Window[0] is set in such a way to perfectly ensure that the decline continues.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
The only thing I can take from this is that the GP meant "yeah we all know Africans are corrupt, DUH, but we can't say it because of political correctness." I don't know that that's what he meant, but when you're like "well we could discuss the root of this but it's recently become socially unacceptable to do so" of course people are going to assume the worst thing possible.
Rhodesia never had any racial requirements for voting/representation, at least not until the British insisted on special representitives being created for the black population as a condition of independence (source: Ian Smith's memoirs). They had educational and income requirements in order to vote, and were actively building more schools in majority black areas in order to increase the ability of black citizens to vote (and to have a better education/life in general).
First of all, as an outsider, no, I don't know why it's happening. Secondly, the way it's carefully couched to avoid stating an actual reason, appealing to how they're "not allowed to say it", makes it sound like the real thing they want to say is something over-simplistic and extremely bigoted like "It's because of all the Blacks." So I'll leave my downvote, thank you.
If you think crime then the problem then you can come up with suggestions to improve things (policing perhaps? Gun control? reducing poverty?), those improvements really have nothing to do with the skin color of anyone though, just a distraction.
I'm not a moderator -- I'm not banning anything. You literally stated no reason. You asked no question. Why are you telling me that I can't handle the question when you haven't even hinted at what the real question is?
And if the question you think we should be asking is "Is it because of all the Blacks?" then the reason that's not taken seriously is because it's (a) obviously false and (b) obviously asked in bad faith.
Why aren't we allowed to bring up the possibility that it's because of the world cabal of Pashtun lizard-humans using their space laser to destroy society so we don't figure out the dark secret that the Earth is actually toroidal!?
This is a common fallacious defense. You expressed an opinion about a particular example of dishonest criticism, and then were criticized. There is no "proof" that the latter criticism is also dishonest. It's OK to criticize an opinion, even if that opinion happens to be about criticism.
Also, it's hard not to point out: "Just asking questions" is such a common bad-faith tactic in the vein of "I'm not saying that it's X, but it's X" that it has actually become a meme/joke. It's absolutely valid, assuming honesty! But as a phrase it has no legs.
Why is the town of Orania so beautiful, clean, and prosperous while the rest of South Africa is like this? You can watch videos of it on YouTube, it is very nice. Compare it with black towns or major cities in greater South Africa.
Orania is a “whites only” town of about 2500 people. They don’t abuse or extract resources from blacks, they just live separately.
This is the kind of dangerous question that GP is saying one is generally not allowed to ask.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orania
"The average wage in Orania was estimated at approximately R94,036 per annum in 2019, low by White South African standards. In 2016, CNN reported unemployment in Orania at 2%. In 2015, a visiting journalist estimated the poverty rate at 70–80%"
That seems to be similar:
"Annual household income for blacks stood at an average of 92,893 rand (about $7,000)"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-safrica-economy/black-sou...
Orania has 2066 people, and a third of them are children. That leaves 1363 adults. The official stats say there are only 609 people employed there, which means less than half of the adults work. Combined with making their own currency, elections, not having any real police force or public services, and the rest of SA basically leaving them alone, this all screams "racist white people with a lot of money who want to roleplay Fallout mixed with Atlas Shrugged".
How is that relevant when GP was saying that it's wealth that makes the difference, but the stats show equivalent wealth between the two groups we were talking about: Oranians and black South Africans.
The point is that by the data, these two groups aren't wealthy, there's nothing to suggest that Oranians have "a lot of money", and thus GP's assertion is incorrect and was just a random claim not backed by the data.
The idea is usually that you can then use the downvotes as "evidence" of your correctness (of course, that's fallacious - downvotes can be for anything, and an antagonistic tone combined with portraying yourself as the underdog is one of the most prominent examples, regardless of the content of your post). And if you don't get downvoted - even better for your case! It's a cheap win-win for you.
because it's a tiny, self-selecting intentional community? i hate to feed the troll, but it's pretty obvious why a small, singular ideology-driven community might appear more "beautiful, clean, and prosperous" than a large metropolis
So, they won’t even approach a conversation trying to determine the actual causes of decline because they feel any possible explanation is going to be racism-adjacent.
It kept a vast part of the country outside of the education needed to work the jobs that produce the highest values (finance, business, etc).
So yeah the "observation" is correct, except the implication of it is not.
Note that I imply nothing and the statement is a simple, albeit troubling, fact.
How do you propose that the discussion of decline in South Africa is framed so it doesn’t devolve into people screaming “that’s racist!!”?
Words have implications. This is one of those fallacious "but it's true" things, where it honestly becomes difficult to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt - i.e. that you think the phrase "South Africa was [insert anything positive] under Apartheid", by itself, has no possible implications.
Reframe the statement so some discussion on decline can proceed without triggering anyone.
It's incredibly easy to have a conversation about how to improve SA without taking needless diversions to support racist institutions. All you have to do is talk about potential solutions to current problems. That's it. That's all it takes.
Bringing up historical racist institutions is a good way to derail and shut down reasonable discussion.
Other African nations that didn't have Apartheid or similar institutions have similar economic and political results. And even the one sub Saharan nation that didn't experience colonization, Ethiopia, isn't screaming ahead of its neighbors economically or otherwise. Its GDP per capita is slightly ahead of Uganda's and fairly far below Kenya's.
Countries that have developed in the last 60 years tend to have strong authoritarian leaders and the favor and interest of Europe and the United States.
Ethopia does have natural resources but it doesn't have a strong central government, partly because the warring factions want control of the resources. Places like UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar had strong dictators before they developed the petroleum industry. African states that have oil tend to be too weak politically to resist outside interests taking the wealth by paying bribes and funding warring factions.
Also what point are you trying to make here? You seem to be implying a common cause for these results. Care to explicitly state it?
Sometimes when the house is on fire, you just get everybody out. Instead of 'waiting for the fire brigade' or 'somebody smarter than you needs to make that decision'.
I'd hate to be that generation of young people condemned to a violently racist system because, it was going to be difficult for the rich to adjust.
And now, Joeburg is on fire and the fire department is no longer able to put out the fire because of incompetence and mismanagement.
I agree with the other poster: what, exactly, is your point? I agree that the Overton Window is probably stifling some crucial conversations here, but your comment, as is, leaves open many racist implications.
You'd have better luck grouping humans by height, saying that we all know that a society full of people taller than 6' simply cannot govern themselves. We could group humans by whether they're left-handed or right-handed, whether they like cilantro or think it tastes like soap, whether they can smell asparagus in their urine, whether they have that widow's peak thing in their hairline or not, the shape of their ear, or the color of their skin. There is no evidence that skin color is more meaningful than any of those other groupings: it's simply more obvious and carries enormous historical weight.
You're wrong that the question can't be asked: it can. I've seen it discussed in the context of professional sports, where it may play an actual part -- nobody was banned for that. As far as societies effectively governing themselves, the question has been asked, again, and again, and again, and again. The answer is always the same: race isn't what matters. And every time someone decides we need to figure this out again, millions have to suffer and die. If you have new evidence, present it.
> a question leading to a racist conclusion disallows the questions entirely
This is called "proof by contradiction". Any answer to a question that leads to a known-false conclusion is therefore not the right answer to that question.
What are you talking about? The progressive left frequently talks about the past be being better when it comes to the worlds increasing wealth inequality and how wages stagnated.
Can you stop speaking in strawmen and make an actual point? Are you dancing around an assertion that apartheid was better for South Africa?
Just look how economically thriving Mozambique and Angola were, and what happened after they gained independence from Portugal.
South Africa is another example in that long list.
Hell, just look what happened with Libya and Iraq after their dictators, who subdued the masses but kept the peace, were disposed of respective being helped in their disposal by the US government.
This is needlessly tribalistic. This is "not liked" by some people, because of the implications for which it is most often used as a stand-in. Even the right-wingers I know admit this dishonesty when they see it committed. In other words, they "don't like it". (I'm not accusing you of this particular dishonesty - I'm just criticizing your framing)
If you really want to make things better then you focus on the question "How do we make it better from where it is now?"
Given my own experiences from travelling to 43 countries, the difference in drive, willingness to work, abilities or lack thereof / lazyness shown in daily life is certainly very visible between Africa and Asia, Europe, America.
The idea that everyone is a blank slate wrapped in different colors of skin seems quite reductive, if not insulting to the beauty of human diversity, given the real science behind genetics.
The left often doesn’t want to critique ideas because they conflate that with cultural bigotry, especially if the ideas are linked to things like religions. The right doesn’t like the ideas explanation because they believe in biological determinism and think it must be race.
Find an image of North and South Korea from space. Those people are genetically almost identical. What’s the difference? Ideas.
Why did Europe suddenly become the worlds powerhouse right after the enlightenment when before it was poorer than many places in Asia and the Middle East? The ideas changed.
Have the dominant ideas and mentalities in South Africa changed? How? That’s the question I would ask.
I'm assuming (and hoping) you mean culturally identical because all humans are nearly genetically identical.
>Those people are genetically almost identical. What’s the difference? Ideas.
And trade sanctions, and the support of super powers.
>Why did Europe suddenly become the worlds powerhouse right after the enlightenment when before it was poorer than many places in Asia and the Middle East? The ideas changed.
I guess it was a 'change in ideas', it also might have had to do with colonization of the practice of exploiting poorer countries and repatriating their wealth.
The Ciskei experiment: a libertarian fantasy in apartheid South Africa
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/mar/23/the-ciskei-expe...
> In the 1980s, South African libertarians set up a deregulated zone that they sold to the world as ‘Africa’s Switzerland’. It was a sham, but with its clusters of sweatshops, it was very modern – and in some ways it anticipated the world we live in today
Most of the country was still very beautiful, but man Johannesburg is really run down. My father was there 30 years ago and he couldn't get over how this once beautiful city could have come to this. Vacancies and broken windows everywhere right in the city center.
If you're just looking to go on vacation in the general region, Namibia is a better option in my opinion.
The other fun game is swapping stories about the dumbest way you have shocked yourself on your own fence. Mine was by trying to lift a branch of my fence while barefoot using an aluminum pool pole. I thought my wife had turned the fence off.
And those outages affect the poorest more than anyone else. My wife is from SA, her family is far from rich, but well off enough to afford a generator. It’s not always on, but it really helps bridge the outages when you really need the power.
And before the usual white supremacists show up, yes, it was better during apartheid. Fascinating how you have no issues when you can just cut the power and water etc. to all the blacks in their townships.
Better for WHO is the important thing to remember. An unequal society doesn't get to claim it's better just because a part of it was way better off.
And when you aren't legally mandated to hire a certain percentage of black employees at the power company, regardless of how many have the proper education and training. And then spend even more bringing in foreign contractors to fix their mess.
here's an article from nearly 10 years ago warning about a grid collapse - https://mg.co.za/article/2014-12-11-does-south-africa-face-a...
this was after being warned years prior and having similar issues as early as 2008. SA is going to collapse and my bet is China will buy everything up for pennies like they've done in other countries. SA citizens will probably be better off honestly
Mix that with globalization and the fact that the only "profitable" industries are the ones that are mainly for white workers, you end up with a situation you can't really "fix".
All of the pressure on South Africa in the 80s to end the apartheid and once it happened those countries abandon South Africa aside from leaders appearing in photos with Mandela.
No one is allowed to question the governing party and pressure to reform doesn't exist from external countries for fear of being labelled racist. In the end the poorest suffer.
This is a problem that South Africans need to work out themselves. I wish them success.
SA is a truly beautiful and complicated place, I really hope they find their way out of this crisis.
You really don't need any more factors than Arpatheid put the country in a bad place and a government that has no interest in fixing anything will not fix that.
These things are very complicated. I dont think ZA or any society should be under apartheid. They could have a popular government and work well, but for some reason they haven't accomplished that. What has to happen I don't know, but I do know that the racists use it as an example to agitate for apartheid again and eventually people are going to get tired of it and attempt to resolve the problems in some way. Ignoring them or simply blaming them on apartheid will only ensure that the wrong solutions are the ones that get implemented. Nobody is willing to have an honest discussion about these problems, they just scapegoat their political opponents, and this is what will prevent a proper solution to anything.
https://twitter.com/me_uko/status/1650389358187360262
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33684992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33685959
essentially graft on an enormous scale so that after $40B of investment, the monopoly power company generates significantly less power than 15 years ago. Meanwhile, the entirety of society has had to structure itself to accommodate 4-6 hours of blackouts per day, with a stunning level of required individual investment in batteries, solar, generators, etc.
And now the power company is struggling to just regularly have 4-6 hours of blackouts per day.
Amongst many other problems this includes a policy of cadre deployment. I.e the party faithful running all state institutions which are legislated to be monopolies as much as possible. Naturally the party faithful have zero skill in running the institution and need to deal out massive amounts of patronage to keep in favor. This includes all senior members of the justice cluster as well obviously. Even a saint would be corrupt in this environment.
The old apartheid government were also heavily corrupt but managed to at least make sure state institutions were run by semi competent people and kept a limit on the amount of corruption.
The ANC is also learnt from the apartheid government and like the good racists they have become have also steadily replaced staff of the wrong race in those institutions but haven't bothered worry about knowledge transfer so all the old seniors engineers who knew how and why things work are gone.
It's one thing if government is corrupt, and the brother / kid is getting kickbacks, and maybe users pay 20 or 30 or even 100% more than it should ideally cost. That's a problem. It's a whole different story if the government is corrupt, and you're paying the corrupt price, and you don't even get the electricity.
There Are No Successful Black Nations | And the indignity and helplessness of blacks in America won’t end until we have a first-world African nation to lift up our people.
<https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4x2vbu/there_ar...>