17 ms·

The state of South Africa, 28ish years post-apartheid

140 points by awanderingmind 4y ago

xrd 4y ago
Back when I read books, one of my favorites was "My traitor's heart" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Traitor%27s_Heart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Traitor%27s_Heart) which is a riveting, honest and balanced (IMHO) look at post-apartheid from a man who fled the country in the 80s, then returned to revisit his homeland, acknowledging his own family's terrible history in SA. I also found this funny: The SA government became involved to avoid having a hostile Soviet-aligned country on their doorstep facilitating an armed resistance against their rule (at least that’s what they claimed, and there are reasons to believe them) - the ANC was involved, because, well, they saw themselves (and many members still do, as I pointed out above) as a revolutionary member of a community of anti-imperialist forces aimed at the emancipation of the African proletariat. I read over and over about strategists in all governments playing their chess pieces to avoid domination by other world powers. There is no laughable irony in what happened in Afghanistan when you read back about the soviet and US involvement and the revolving door of friendships that turned into enemies, and then back. It seems crazy that we have a bonafide war in Ukraine right now, and so many world powers are avoiding getting involved directly, but are constantly involved indirectly and surreptitiously over and over to great detriment. I wonder how the people in power form their opinions about what actions are necessary, and how the people making these decisions climb higher and higher into positions of power and decision making when the results all seem so awful. I suppose I'm only hearing about the bad outcomes, not the successes. Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity?
- neves 4y ago
  >Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? China. This is the greatest example of all. Search for "Soviet support for Mao"
- Synaesthesia 4y ago
  I wouldn't say that South Africa ended in peace and prosperity, for some yes. It embraced a US style neoliberal solution which led to great outcomes for the top of the population, and probably why it was so praised by elites. But really it's a country with a lot of problems, as the.blog post details. But we still have a lot of advantages which could be to our benefit. I also enjoyed My Traitor's Heart"
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Depends on the definition of “peace”, “prosperity”, and for whom. The French helped out the American revolution and the two haven’t had a major military conflict. Although it did end up bankrupting the French monarchy and causing the Revolution.
  - ununoctium87 4y ago
    Arguably good outcomes for the French as well
    - christkv 4y ago
      Well the French Revolution lead to the Napoleonic wars. While military deaths are invariably put at between 2.5 million and 3.5 million, civilian death tolls vary from 750,000 to 3 million. Thus estimates of total dead, both military and civilian, range from 3,250,000 to 6,500,000.
      - cm2187 4y ago
        It’s what makes me laugh about Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature. He has a whole chapter about how terrible was the spanish inquisition and how life was much better after the enlightments. But if you plot the number of deaths of the inquisition (a few thousands over a century), then those of the french revolution (in the 100ks), napoleonic war, ww1, ww2 and nazism, and then the wider communism, I see an exponential increase. It’s only capitalism and nuclear weapons that brought peace to an otherwise out of control spiral of violence, caused by crazy ideologues.
        Beltalowda 4y ago
        > if you plot the number of deaths of the inquisition (a few thousands over a century), then those of the french revolution (in the 100ks), napoleonic war, ww1, ww2 and nazism, and then the wider communism, I see an exponential increase. That is of course very selective; I have no read Pinker's book, but I don't think he argues that horrible wars never occurred, just less so. It's important to keep in mind that the population has also grown in the intervening period. For example, Caesar's conquest of Gaul cost the lives of about a million Celts, with a further million enslaved (estimates). While "1 million" and even "2 million" seems low compared to, say, the second world war, it was a huge percentage of the population, up to as much as ~25%. There are many such truly staggering figures if you look at history. No one really remembers it in the same way as we do more modern atrocities, which is why we can have fun Asterix & Obelix cartoons about it, but the numbers of historical battles are often truly staggering. I don't know if Pinker was right or wrong, but I do think you really need to actually look at the numbers to get a good overview throughout the centuries and you can't just rely on "armchair analysis" for this sort of thing, as there will be a strong bias towards more recent events.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  Are you suggesting that the US is funding a revolutionary force in Ukraine?
- watwut 4y ago
  Classifying Ukraine war as revolution is a step that not even Russia took. Also, real help for Ukraine started now. The power were happy for Russia to take pieces for years with only token support. Or even, with American president trying to extort Ukrainian president to persecute familly of his political opponents so that he can cheat elections in USA ...
- seydor 4y ago
  > funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? It is "revolution" when it ends in positive (for the west) outcomes It is "terrorism" when it does not
  - the_lonely_road 4y ago
    What about the cuban revolution? This comment is about as low brow as they come.
    - eli_gottlieb 4y ago
      Yeah, everyone knows that it's revolution when the outcomes are positive for (checks notes) the Soviet Union or the Chinese Communist Party.
- colpabar 4y ago
  > I wonder how the people in power form their opinions about what actions are necessary, and how the people making these decisions climb higher and higher into positions of power and decision making when the results all seem so awful. I suppose I'm only hearing about the bad outcomes, not the successes. The simple answer is that the US military industrial complex dominates our foreign policy decisions. "Success" is measured in how much money was given to boeing and how much boeing agrees to give back through political donations and "speaking fees" after the politicians are out of office.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- colechristensen 4y ago
  >Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Western Europe in and post WWII would seem to apply. Israel is pretty prosperous if you're Israeli. The problem is that basically wherever you go in the world, you can find lack of peace and prosperity, and you can usually find some reason or another to attribute some blame to one power or another involved in the last major change. Any location you name will welcome a "what about X!?" The whole world though, the whole of human civilization is now and has been for a long time on a significant upward trend in peace and prosperity. If you smooth out the bumps there is a very significant increase in every metric you could think was positive. Consistently. For centuries. Is that a result of world power using force? Probably to a significant extent.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    "If you smooth out the bumps there is a very significant increase in every metric you could think was positive" The problem here is solid data, but I believe we are at an all time high with the need and use of antidepressants and co. "has been for a long time on a significant upward trend in peace and prosperity" Prosperity paid for with a coming climate collaps and deforestation and constant fear of nuclear holocaust. I am really not an back-to-the-trees kind of guy, but knowing rough and wild nature life and knowing and seeing the systematic suffering in our modern meatfactories (whether for humans or pigs) I remain very sceptical that everything is so much better now, than how it used to be.
    - gumby 4y ago
      > I believe we are at an all time high with the need and use of antidepressants and co. And I am glad people are getting help they need. I wish more were.
    - helloworld11 4y ago
      >I am really not an back-to-the-trees kind of guy, but knowing rough and wild nature life and knowing and seeing the systematic suffering in our modern meatfactories (whether for humans or pigs) I remain very sceptical that everything is so much better now, than how it used to be. Yes, unequivocally, and by every real measure life is better now than it has ever been for more people than ever before. You claim to "know rough and wild nature life" but how do you propose forcing it upon 8 billion human beings with your self indulgent logic? Nothing stops you from living this supposed rough life consistently, yet here you are regularly commenting on HN, participating in tech industries and contributing to the use of a wast, worldwide high technology infrastructure that extracts resources from the Earth to sustain itself. It's not just meat farms that contribute to massive natural resource use. The aside about antidepressant use as an argument against the previous claim about improved living standards is just bizarre, because for one thing it does the opposite of negate a claim of improved conditions for people and secondly, it's such a minor thing relative to billions of people living longer, better, more calorically and medically stable lives than has ever been the case in any previous century.
- lmm 4y ago
  > Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Northern Ireland, although the US funding was always indirect/deniable.
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    Let's be clear (and I'm again proving the point at the top of the thread) the US support for the Provisional IRA didn't cause peace to spontaneously break out in Northern Ireland. That was a bunch of pro democratic forces in both communities, aided by the official US involvement. All the funding of the IRA achieved was pointless, violent deaths.
    - lmm 4y ago
      On the contrary, without the actions of the IRA the UK would never have been willing to offer the kind of equitable terms that make a lasting peace possible. You can see the shift in their negotiating stance. I don't like it but you can't ignore the results.
      - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
        I'm not sure about that, given the existence of the Sunningdale agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunningdale_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunningdale_Agreement
  - MrManBooks 4y ago
    I'm not sure if you are trolling, or unbelievably clueless if you think funding paramilitaries in NI has helped lead to peace and prosperity.
- janef0421 4y ago
  North Vietnam received aid from USSR during the Vietnam war, and that has ended fairly well. Whether it would be appropriate to describe North Vietnam in that time period as "revolutionary" is somewhat more complex, though.
  - throwaway-blaze 4y ago
    In what way would you say it's "ended fairly well"? They are saddled with a putatively communist government that simply rent-seeks bribes and other assorted parasitic encumbrances from the private sector that has grown since liberalization. The people are certainly better off financially, thanks largely to the creativity and drive of entrepreneurs and workers. But go down to the public square and challenge the powers that be verbally. See how that ends for you. Hint: they still send a bill for the bullets to the family.
    - janef0421 4y ago
      You answered the question yourself; People are better off financially. Yes, that is due to entrepreneurs and workers, but the government is essential in creating the environment where that can happen.
- wrp 4y ago
  I may be displaying a shameful lack of knowledge about modern history, but I can't think of any revolution besides the American that didn't result in a worsening of social and economic conditions for at least a generation. The only maybe I can think of is the Meiji Restoration in 19th century Japan, which was not foreign funded and was deliberately not referred to as a "revolution".
  - pirate787 4y ago
    There are internal revolutions and revolutions against a colonial power, which seem to fare better. I think the breakup of the Soviet Empire (the velvet revolution etc) has brought widespread prosperity, if not complete peace. Of the internal kind, there's Augusto Pinochet -- Chile is still the 2nd wealthiest country in Latin America in terms of per capita GDP (Uruguay being 1st)
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      > Chile is still the 2nd wealthiest country in Latin America in terms of per capita GDP (Uruguay being 1st) Do what now? From what I have read it seems like Panama, Chile, and several Caribbean island nations all have higher per-capita GDP than Uruguay.
- refurb 4y ago
  Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Greece? Post-WW2, the US-aligned powers funded a anti-communist drive in Greece, which successfully kept Greece on this side of the Iron Curtain.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mikrotikker 4y ago
  > I wonder how the people in power form their opinions about what actions are necessary, and how the people making these decisions climb higher and higher into positions of power and decision making when the results all seem so awful. I suppose I'm only hearing about the bad outcomes, not the successes. Maybe paying more attention to geopolitics would yield this answer to you. The base of most conflicts is usually a resource war or outright coups to enable imperialism. With your example of Ukraine, the finding of large oil and gas fields under the east, west and Crimean regions in 2012 sealed it's fate. The Maidan revolution 2 years later was nothing more than a coup setup by Jonn McCain and Lindsey Graham. Then Shell moved in to look at how to extract said resources. Then it would have been likely Ukraine would be used as a base to cut off Russia's access to the middle east through the Volgograd Gap in order to more easily topple Assad, allowing the Qatar-Turkey pipeline to complete it's route through Syria, thus giving Europe an out from the Russian gas monopoly. Of course the Russians couldn't stand for any of that, so they formed their own opinions about what actions were necessary. The action they chose ended up hurting them with Germany being forced into, (not even forming their own opinions), the necessary actions of dropping the Nord Stream pipelines, adding $100bn to their military budget and signing a deal with Qatari's for access to the yet to be completed Qatar-Turkey pipeline. Of course all of this benefits the respective populations and corporations allowing them to climb into higher positions of power. We like to think that politicians don't think further than the next election cycle and it's mostly true. But the deeper structures in the respective state, the states needs, and corporate profit ARE in fact playing the long game, causing the politicians to almost stumble upwards in some twisted version of natural selection. When you take into account that US war corps get to test new weapons systems against a near peer adversary without having to sacrifice US lives, it's a perfect storm. Like that old Bill Hicks bit... "Bring up G12 Tommy; says here it destroys everything but the fillings in their teeth!"
tibbydudeza 4y ago
A good on point summary if that was at all possible in a blog post - current game plan is for the kids to finish their education and get the hell out of here as I don't think this mess can ever be fixed.
- awanderingmind 4y ago
  That's not quite what I was going for - I didn't propose any solutions, but that doesn't mean I believe the situation is completely beyond repair. By all means live your life as you believe best, but to anyone else reading this comment, please don't think this is a course I recommend.
  - tibbydudeza 4y ago
    If hope was a currency we would all be millionaires by now - don't see a workable plan of action except empty promises or slogans from either the current govt or the opposition tackling the growing social crisis.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I realise it's a complicated situation, but as an outsider some of this comes across as a bit tone deaf. The bit about the current government blames everything on Apartheid, but it only lasted 50 years ... before that it was centuries of colonial rule that put the basics laws of Apartheid in place feels almost like satire.
- klipt 4y ago
  Russia was ruled by tyrannical czars for centuries before Communism - does that mean the actions of Communist leaders like Stalin were really the czars' fault? For how long can you blame the czars when they're no longer in power? And who does it serve? It seems to me blaming the long gone czars mostly serves as a distraction from corruption in the successor government.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    - wonderwonder 4y ago
      What do you mean by "whiteness itself"?
      - colechristensen 4y ago
        Clearly the mean UV exposure of my ancestors dominates my disposition towards others. If I spend more time in the sun do I become less white, and therefore a more acceptable, kinder, and all together better human? I mean, I am usually a little happier if I remember to get some sun. Maybe I won't find an equatorial people to oppress today, that's really a winter-time activity.
        throwaway0a5e 4y ago
        >If I spend more time in the sun do I become less white, and therefore a more acceptable, kinder, and all together better human? Construction workers are the exception that prove the rule.
nimbius 4y ago
It feels like the root-cause of the decay and ruin is, by the end of the writing, a total lack of qualifying competence in leadership or government. the bungling amentia is so agonizingly glaring as to lead one to question if it, as the casualties pursuant to the fall of the raj in india or the bengal famine, were an intentional petulance...an act of thoughtless spite after having been made to atone for an atrocity and capitulate to the will of a people that had for so long been subservient to you. the ruling party embraces fragments of political systems they observe, as a child might mimic their favourite tv cartoon character, but at the end of the day the jangling discord of kleptocratic nihilism drowns out whatever character features the government hopes to project abroad.
- tiahura 4y ago
  Isn’t the root cause the people and culture that put incompetents into positions of leadership?
  - mousetree 4y ago
    In this case most of the voting population is not educated enough to vote otherwise. There is also strong community/family pressue to continue voting for the ANC - the party that freed the country from apartheid. For many people it would be very difficult to openly vote for another political party. This is notwithstanding the shenanigans that occur at election time. Likely not outright election rigging but there is certainly a lot of pressure and threats of violence on voting day (and also free t-shirts and mattresses). disclosure: I am South African
    - googlryas 4y ago
      How would they confirm you actually voted the right way? Will your ballot get opened up and inspected after you turn it in?
      - zo1 4y ago
        Unfortunately, due to the level of education and overall intelligence of the majority of the voting people here, they will believe what they are told. And they can easily be fooled to think that their "vote" will be "checked" to make sure it's for the right party.
googlryas 4y ago
What happens if SA becomes a failed state? There aren't many nearby states that could handle refugees from a state with 60M+ people (Mozambique seems like the best bet), but not sure about the political implications or will for that to happen.
- andrepd 4y ago
  Well Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in Africa, with problems with Islamic insurgents in the north (Cabo Delgado)... Hardly prepared to take millions of refugees x)
truth777 4y ago
staindk 4y ago
I am South African and absolutely hate load shedding. 2 or 4 hours without electricity every day (when LS is active), often over dinnertime and other times you'd like to use electricity. Makes life much more meh. FWIW I think Texas had rolling blackouts in winter last year, similar to ZA load shedding. Will likely happen again this winter unless they manage to link into other states' grids (IIRC). Would be interesting to see some kind of comparison between the Texas and ZA electricity problems. Undoubtedly also a lot of corruption involved there.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  It happens in California all the time but you only mention it happening in Texas. Why is that? If you were unaware that it happens in California, why is that?
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    This is not relevant to their post. Why is that?
  - mousetree 4y ago
    Perhaps because they are South African? As another South African I have heard of blackouts in Texas (and your Ted Cruz going on holiday) but I haven't heard about anything in California (other than the Enron related power shortages).
  - lmm 4y ago
    The "wrong" party is in power in Texas, so problems there are far more widely reported.
  - staindk 4y ago
    Because it's been in the news I consume, I guess. I saw a diagram like this [1] somewhere, perhaps a John Oliver video. It seems Texas is on their own grid and I think wherever I learned that mentioned that Texas has not been maintaining/upgrading the grid to the degree that they should. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-North-American-electricity-interconnections-Image-is-from_fig1_283018221 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-North-America...
spoonjim 4y ago
An interesting article but kind of doesn't really say outright what needs to be said.
- jl6 4y ago
  Now’s your chance?
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  So, what do you think needs to be said? Say it, instead of just hinting that there's something there.
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    He's clearly talking about the fokken prawns, man!
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - spoonjim 4y ago
    Account will get banned
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- awanderingmind 4y ago
  If you are implying that I am trying make a racist claim you are wrong.
jl6 4y ago
Although the author declines to discuss property crime, it seems as though theft in the general sense is the unifying narrative of the country, from colonial-era and apartheid-era dispossession, through to corruption and kleptocracy in the modern era, looting of state owned assets, looting on the streets as a political weapon, and fraud of every kind.
Beltalowda 4y ago
I've always wondered why the ANC is still in power; they've been the ruling party for 32 years now, and while they've been losing votes in the last few elections, in the 2021 municipal elections they still got ~45% of the votes, with the second party getting ~22%, and in the 2019 national assembly elections they got ~57% (2nd party 22%), so still a comfterable lead overall. I've been reading about the failings and corruption of the ANC for years now. How do they manage to stay in power regardless? Are the other parties even worse? Bias in the political system? Many people genuinely believe in the ANC? Something else?
- rayiner 4y ago
  ANC freed the country from white rule. It will take generations to forget that.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    Maybe, but that sounds a little simplistic to me. People up to ~40 today hardly even remember apartheid. It's probably a factor, but I suspect there are other factors too. It's not really addressed in the article, but the root problem seems to be the lack of a functioning democracy where those in power are held accountable at least to some degree.
    - norwalkbear 4y ago
      Occam's razor
      - Beltalowda 4y ago
        Occam's razor is a rough heuristic, not a law of nature. Sometimes, the more complex explanation turns out to be the correct one. Politics tends to be complex, and while I know next to nothing about South-African politics I have no reason to believe it's any different there. You can't just apply Occam's razor to the first simple explanation that springs to mind.
  - janee 4y ago
francois_h 4y ago
As an ex South African it breaks my heart to see the country I love and hope to go back to, being run to the ground and winding back the clock of progress to pre-colonial times.
Barrin92 4y ago
The author partially blaims African nationalism for some of the ills of SA but I think if anything, and this is true in many African countries, the problem is a lack of genuine nationalism. Lack of national identity and the dominance of kinship relations in potitics (in SA of course the apartheid history being a big contributor to this), forms the basis of kleptocracy and factionalism, also observable in Latin America. When private relations start to override loyalty to the commons, people start to rob the state. Ideologically the anti-colonial, politically Marxist but economically flexible model is pretty decent as far as development goes, many Asian countries can attest to that. I think SA's problems are mundane really in the sense that it's easy to diagnose but hard to fix. A divided population and an incompetent leadership, it's sadly not extraordinary.
- awanderingmind 4y ago
  You may be right.
LimitedInfo 4y ago
- fleddr 4y ago
  - alienthrowaway 4y ago
    > You're probably downvoted because the assertion is controversial, but it shouldn't be. Fascinating. Would you mind showing me your sources for this assertion you claim shouldn't be controversial. I'm sub-saharan African, but I think I'll manage to read the papers just fine. Your suggestion that entire countries with an average IQ below what's considered developmentally challenged (70-75) is ... suspect. Additionally, considering international high school examination board exist in Commonwealth countries whose results do not reflect your theory. So, let's have a fact-based discussion and not unsourced "good faith" discussion
    - beeboop 4y ago
      Some sources online list the average IQ of the bottom 14 countries to be under 60. I find this really hard to believe and to me indicates more of an issue with testing IQ than the intelligence of people across various countries
      - norwalkbear 4y ago
        orangesite 4y ago
        Your statement would sound less like a racial slur if your citation was for "major physiological differences" rather than genetic ancestry. What do we call it when someone combines a claim with strong evidence in the same sentence with another claim which has no evidence?
bantuq 4y ago
- _djo_ 4y ago
  Nobody uses terminology like that these days unless they're trying to make an extremely racist claim.
  - DIARRHEA_xd 4y ago
    I'm not usually a fan of unfounded racism allegations. But the guy's username is "bantuq"...
    - _djo_ 4y ago
      Yeah. Anyone familiar with the phrasing, and especially how it’s used in parts of South Africa, knows that’s not a dog whistle but a foghorn. I’m surprised I got downvoted for it.
aaron695 4y ago
joemazerino 4y ago
Don't search for South African tragedies or the history of the national song "Shoot the Boer" since apartheid.
avar 4y ago
(I've been to South Africa once, for two weeks this summer) The author notes that it's "obviously bad" that inequality is so high in South Africa. I may be inadvertently challenging some orthodoxy here but why is that? The author also notes that around 1/4 of working age people contribute tax revenue. Would the rest really be better off without the top X% of taxpayers, other things being equal? I think implicit in this critique is that the reader should think anything less than maintaining a western European standard of living is a failure on the government's part. But South Africa's GDP PPP per capita is around that of Mongolia or Egypt, while one might think from reading this article that South Africa is a "temporary embarrassed" western European country. The country has a lot of problems, but if you frame it like that one could view the status quo as a resounding success. While traveling there I ran into a lot of immigrants from countries to the north that migrated there for a better life. I've read a few articles about South Africa with a similar tone, but they never really seem to get to the point. Yes the ANC is corrupt, but even if you suppose the country were run with Swiss efficacy you're begging the question about what a $15,000 GDP PPP per capita version of Switzerland would look like. The answer is likely to me much closer to Mongolia than Switzerland in terms of basic services, infrastructure etc
- awanderingmind 4y ago
  It's not an issue of maintaining a 'western European' standard of living - it's an issue of millions of people suffering because of lack of access to basic services, and a sky high crime rate that brutalises the population. The situation can be much better than it is without being comparable to western European standards. According to worldbank data the murder rate in SA is around 10 times higher than in Egypt, and around 5 times as high as in Mongolia. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=ZA https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=EG https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=MN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location... If you like the correct framing is 'extreme suffering due to poverty', not 'high inequality'. The inequality is galling because there is a small percentage of people (myself included) who enjoy a good quality of life while millions of people live in poverty. Purely in terms of 'inequality being bad', there are good reasons to believe that it undermines democracy (citation required I suppose).
sam-s 4y ago
It was fashionable in the USSR to blame all problems on the legacy of WW2 ("we suffered so much destruction and made so many sacrifices, this is why we are so poor compared to the West"). I think blaming Apartheid for the current ills 30 years after its end is not right.

xrd 4y ago

Back when I read books, one of my favorites was "My traitor's heart" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Traitor%27s_Heart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Traitor%27s_Heart) which is a riveting, honest and balanced (IMHO) look at post-apartheid from a man who fled the country in the 80s, then returned to revisit his homeland, acknowledging his own family's terrible history in SA. I also found this funny: The SA government became involved to avoid having a hostile Soviet-aligned country on their doorstep facilitating an armed resistance against their rule (at least that’s what they claimed, and there are reasons to believe them) - the ANC was involved, because, well, they saw themselves (and many members still do, as I pointed out above) as a revolutionary member of a community of anti-imperialist forces aimed at the emancipation of the African proletariat. I read over and over about strategists in all governments playing their chess pieces to avoid domination by other world powers. There is no laughable irony in what happened in Afghanistan when you read back about the soviet and US involvement and the revolving door of friendships that turned into enemies, and then back. It seems crazy that we have a bonafide war in Ukraine right now, and so many world powers are avoiding getting involved directly, but are constantly involved indirectly and surreptitiously over and over to great detriment. I wonder how the people in power form their opinions about what actions are necessary, and how the people making these decisions climb higher and higher into positions of power and decision making when the results all seem so awful. I suppose I'm only hearing about the bad outcomes, not the successes. Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity?

neves 4y ago
>Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? China. This is the greatest example of all. Search for "Soviet support for Mao"
Synaesthesia 4y ago
I wouldn't say that South Africa ended in peace and prosperity, for some yes. It embraced a US style neoliberal solution which led to great outcomes for the top of the population, and probably why it was so praised by elites. But really it's a country with a lot of problems, as the.blog post details. But we still have a lot of advantages which could be to our benefit. I also enjoyed My Traitor's Heart"
bobthepanda 4y ago
Depends on the definition of “peace”, “prosperity”, and for whom. The French helped out the American revolution and the two haven’t had a major military conflict. Although it did end up bankrupting the French monarchy and causing the Revolution.
- ununoctium87 4y ago
  Arguably good outcomes for the French as well
  - christkv 4y ago
    Well the French Revolution lead to the Napoleonic wars. While military deaths are invariably put at between 2.5 million and 3.5 million, civilian death tolls vary from 750,000 to 3 million. Thus estimates of total dead, both military and civilian, range from 3,250,000 to 6,500,000.
    - cm2187 4y ago
      It’s what makes me laugh about Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature. He has a whole chapter about how terrible was the spanish inquisition and how life was much better after the enlightments. But if you plot the number of deaths of the inquisition (a few thousands over a century), then those of the french revolution (in the 100ks), napoleonic war, ww1, ww2 and nazism, and then the wider communism, I see an exponential increase. It’s only capitalism and nuclear weapons that brought peace to an otherwise out of control spiral of violence, caused by crazy ideologues.
      - Beltalowda 4y ago
        > if you plot the number of deaths of the inquisition (a few thousands over a century), then those of the french revolution (in the 100ks), napoleonic war, ww1, ww2 and nazism, and then the wider communism, I see an exponential increase. That is of course very selective; I have no read Pinker's book, but I don't think he argues that horrible wars never occurred, just less so. It's important to keep in mind that the population has also grown in the intervening period. For example, Caesar's conquest of Gaul cost the lives of about a million Celts, with a further million enslaved (estimates). While "1 million" and even "2 million" seems low compared to, say, the second world war, it was a huge percentage of the population, up to as much as ~25%. There are many such truly staggering figures if you look at history. No one really remembers it in the same way as we do more modern atrocities, which is why we can have fun Asterix & Obelix cartoons about it, but the numbers of historical battles are often truly staggering. I don't know if Pinker was right or wrong, but I do think you really need to actually look at the numbers to get a good overview throughout the centuries and you can't just rely on "armchair analysis" for this sort of thing, as there will be a strong bias towards more recent events.
bpodgursky 4y ago
Are you suggesting that the US is funding a revolutionary force in Ukraine?
watwut 4y ago
Classifying Ukraine war as revolution is a step that not even Russia took. Also, real help for Ukraine started now. The power were happy for Russia to take pieces for years with only token support. Or even, with American president trying to extort Ukrainian president to persecute familly of his political opponents so that he can cheat elections in USA ...
seydor 4y ago
> funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? It is "revolution" when it ends in positive (for the west) outcomes It is "terrorism" when it does not
- the_lonely_road 4y ago
  What about the cuban revolution? This comment is about as low brow as they come.
  - eli_gottlieb 4y ago
    Yeah, everyone knows that it's revolution when the outcomes are positive for (checks notes) the Soviet Union or the Chinese Communist Party.
colpabar 4y ago
> I wonder how the people in power form their opinions about what actions are necessary, and how the people making these decisions climb higher and higher into positions of power and decision making when the results all seem so awful. I suppose I'm only hearing about the bad outcomes, not the successes. The simple answer is that the US military industrial complex dominates our foreign policy decisions. "Success" is measured in how much money was given to boeing and how much boeing agrees to give back through political donations and "speaking fees" after the politicians are out of office.
deleted 4y ago
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colechristensen 4y ago
>Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Western Europe in and post WWII would seem to apply. Israel is pretty prosperous if you're Israeli. The problem is that basically wherever you go in the world, you can find lack of peace and prosperity, and you can usually find some reason or another to attribute some blame to one power or another involved in the last major change. Any location you name will welcome a "what about X!?" The whole world though, the whole of human civilization is now and has been for a long time on a significant upward trend in peace and prosperity. If you smooth out the bumps there is a very significant increase in every metric you could think was positive. Consistently. For centuries. Is that a result of world power using force? Probably to a significant extent.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "If you smooth out the bumps there is a very significant increase in every metric you could think was positive" The problem here is solid data, but I believe we are at an all time high with the need and use of antidepressants and co. "has been for a long time on a significant upward trend in peace and prosperity" Prosperity paid for with a coming climate collaps and deforestation and constant fear of nuclear holocaust. I am really not an back-to-the-trees kind of guy, but knowing rough and wild nature life and knowing and seeing the systematic suffering in our modern meatfactories (whether for humans or pigs) I remain very sceptical that everything is so much better now, than how it used to be.
  - gumby 4y ago
    > I believe we are at an all time high with the need and use of antidepressants and co. And I am glad people are getting help they need. I wish more were.
  - helloworld11 4y ago
    >I am really not an back-to-the-trees kind of guy, but knowing rough and wild nature life and knowing and seeing the systematic suffering in our modern meatfactories (whether for humans or pigs) I remain very sceptical that everything is so much better now, than how it used to be. Yes, unequivocally, and by every real measure life is better now than it has ever been for more people than ever before. You claim to "know rough and wild nature life" but how do you propose forcing it upon 8 billion human beings with your self indulgent logic? Nothing stops you from living this supposed rough life consistently, yet here you are regularly commenting on HN, participating in tech industries and contributing to the use of a wast, worldwide high technology infrastructure that extracts resources from the Earth to sustain itself. It's not just meat farms that contribute to massive natural resource use. The aside about antidepressant use as an argument against the previous claim about improved living standards is just bizarre, because for one thing it does the opposite of negate a claim of improved conditions for people and secondly, it's such a minor thing relative to billions of people living longer, better, more calorically and medically stable lives than has ever been the case in any previous century.
lmm 4y ago
> Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Northern Ireland, although the US funding was always indirect/deniable.
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  Let's be clear (and I'm again proving the point at the top of the thread) the US support for the Provisional IRA didn't cause peace to spontaneously break out in Northern Ireland. That was a bunch of pro democratic forces in both communities, aided by the official US involvement. All the funding of the IRA achieved was pointless, violent deaths.
  - lmm 4y ago
    On the contrary, without the actions of the IRA the UK would never have been willing to offer the kind of equitable terms that make a lasting peace possible. You can see the shift in their negotiating stance. I don't like it but you can't ignore the results.
    - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
      I'm not sure about that, given the existence of the Sunningdale agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunningdale_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunningdale_Agreement
- MrManBooks 4y ago
  I'm not sure if you are trolling, or unbelievably clueless if you think funding paramilitaries in NI has helped lead to peace and prosperity.
janef0421 4y ago
North Vietnam received aid from USSR during the Vietnam war, and that has ended fairly well. Whether it would be appropriate to describe North Vietnam in that time period as "revolutionary" is somewhat more complex, though.
- throwaway-blaze 4y ago
  In what way would you say it's "ended fairly well"? They are saddled with a putatively communist government that simply rent-seeks bribes and other assorted parasitic encumbrances from the private sector that has grown since liberalization. The people are certainly better off financially, thanks largely to the creativity and drive of entrepreneurs and workers. But go down to the public square and challenge the powers that be verbally. See how that ends for you. Hint: they still send a bill for the bullets to the family.
  - janef0421 4y ago
    You answered the question yourself; People are better off financially. Yes, that is due to entrepreneurs and workers, but the government is essential in creating the environment where that can happen.
wrp 4y ago
I may be displaying a shameful lack of knowledge about modern history, but I can't think of any revolution besides the American that didn't result in a worsening of social and economic conditions for at least a generation. The only maybe I can think of is the Meiji Restoration in 19th century Japan, which was not foreign funded and was deliberately not referred to as a "revolution".
- pirate787 4y ago
  There are internal revolutions and revolutions against a colonial power, which seem to fare better. I think the breakup of the Soviet Empire (the velvet revolution etc) has brought widespread prosperity, if not complete peace. Of the internal kind, there's Augusto Pinochet -- Chile is still the 2nd wealthiest country in Latin America in terms of per capita GDP (Uruguay being 1st)
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    > Chile is still the 2nd wealthiest country in Latin America in terms of per capita GDP (Uruguay being 1st) Do what now? From what I have read it seems like Panama, Chile, and several Caribbean island nations all have higher per-capita GDP than Uruguay.
refurb 4y ago
Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Greece? Post-WW2, the US-aligned powers funded a anti-communist drive in Greece, which successfully kept Greece on this side of the Iron Curtain.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mikrotikker 4y ago
> I wonder how the people in power form their opinions about what actions are necessary, and how the people making these decisions climb higher and higher into positions of power and decision making when the results all seem so awful. I suppose I'm only hearing about the bad outcomes, not the successes. Maybe paying more attention to geopolitics would yield this answer to you. The base of most conflicts is usually a resource war or outright coups to enable imperialism. With your example of Ukraine, the finding of large oil and gas fields under the east, west and Crimean regions in 2012 sealed it's fate. The Maidan revolution 2 years later was nothing more than a coup setup by Jonn McCain and Lindsey Graham. Then Shell moved in to look at how to extract said resources. Then it would have been likely Ukraine would be used as a base to cut off Russia's access to the middle east through the Volgograd Gap in order to more easily topple Assad, allowing the Qatar-Turkey pipeline to complete it's route through Syria, thus giving Europe an out from the Russian gas monopoly. Of course the Russians couldn't stand for any of that, so they formed their own opinions about what actions were necessary. The action they chose ended up hurting them with Germany being forced into, (not even forming their own opinions), the necessary actions of dropping the Nord Stream pipelines, adding $100bn to their military budget and signing a deal with Qatari's for access to the yet to be completed Qatar-Turkey pipeline. Of course all of this benefits the respective populations and corporations allowing them to climb into higher positions of power. We like to think that politicians don't think further than the next election cycle and it's mostly true. But the deeper structures in the respective state, the states needs, and corporate profit ARE in fact playing the long game, causing the politicians to almost stumble upwards in some twisted version of natural selection. When you take into account that US war corps get to test new weapons systems against a near peer adversary without having to sacrifice US lives, it's a perfect storm. Like that old Bill Hicks bit... "Bring up G12 Tommy; says here it destroys everything but the fillings in their teeth!"

tibbydudeza 4y ago

A good on point summary if that was at all possible in a blog post - current game plan is for the kids to finish their education and get the hell out of here as I don't think this mess can ever be fixed.

awanderingmind 4y ago
That's not quite what I was going for - I didn't propose any solutions, but that doesn't mean I believe the situation is completely beyond repair. By all means live your life as you believe best, but to anyone else reading this comment, please don't think this is a course I recommend.
- tibbydudeza 4y ago
  If hope was a currency we would all be millionaires by now - don't see a workable plan of action except empty promises or slogans from either the current govt or the opposition tackling the growing social crisis.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I realise it's a complicated situation, but as an outsider some of this comes across as a bit tone deaf. The bit about the current government blames everything on Apartheid, but it only lasted 50 years ... before that it was centuries of colonial rule that put the basics laws of Apartheid in place feels almost like satire.

klipt 4y ago
Russia was ruled by tyrannical czars for centuries before Communism - does that mean the actions of Communist leaders like Stalin were really the czars' fault? For how long can you blame the czars when they're no longer in power? And who does it serve? It seems to me blaming the long gone czars mostly serves as a distraction from corruption in the successor government.
- bitwize 4y ago
  - wonderwonder 4y ago
    What do you mean by "whiteness itself"?
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      Clearly the mean UV exposure of my ancestors dominates my disposition towards others. If I spend more time in the sun do I become less white, and therefore a more acceptable, kinder, and all together better human? I mean, I am usually a little happier if I remember to get some sun. Maybe I won't find an equatorial people to oppress today, that's really a winter-time activity.
      - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
        >If I spend more time in the sun do I become less white, and therefore a more acceptable, kinder, and all together better human? Construction workers are the exception that prove the rule.

nimbius 4y ago

It feels like the root-cause of the decay and ruin is, by the end of the writing, a total lack of qualifying competence in leadership or government. the bungling amentia is so agonizingly glaring as to lead one to question if it, as the casualties pursuant to the fall of the raj in india or the bengal famine, were an intentional petulance...an act of thoughtless spite after having been made to atone for an atrocity and capitulate to the will of a people that had for so long been subservient to you. the ruling party embraces fragments of political systems they observe, as a child might mimic their favourite tv cartoon character, but at the end of the day the jangling discord of kleptocratic nihilism drowns out whatever character features the government hopes to project abroad.

tiahura 4y ago
Isn’t the root cause the people and culture that put incompetents into positions of leadership?
- mousetree 4y ago
  In this case most of the voting population is not educated enough to vote otherwise. There is also strong community/family pressue to continue voting for the ANC - the party that freed the country from apartheid. For many people it would be very difficult to openly vote for another political party. This is notwithstanding the shenanigans that occur at election time. Likely not outright election rigging but there is certainly a lot of pressure and threats of violence on voting day (and also free t-shirts and mattresses). disclosure: I am South African
  - googlryas 4y ago
    How would they confirm you actually voted the right way? Will your ballot get opened up and inspected after you turn it in?
    - zo1 4y ago
      Unfortunately, due to the level of education and overall intelligence of the majority of the voting people here, they will believe what they are told. And they can easily be fooled to think that their "vote" will be "checked" to make sure it's for the right party.

googlryas 4y ago

What happens if SA becomes a failed state? There aren't many nearby states that could handle refugees from a state with 60M+ people (Mozambique seems like the best bet), but not sure about the political implications or will for that to happen.

andrepd 4y ago
Well Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in Africa, with problems with Islamic insurgents in the north (Cabo Delgado)... Hardly prepared to take millions of refugees x)

truth777 4y ago

staindk 4y ago

I am South African and absolutely hate load shedding. 2 or 4 hours without electricity every day (when LS is active), often over dinnertime and other times you'd like to use electricity. Makes life much more meh. FWIW I think Texas had rolling blackouts in winter last year, similar to ZA load shedding. Will likely happen again this winter unless they manage to link into other states' grids (IIRC). Would be interesting to see some kind of comparison between the Texas and ZA electricity problems. Undoubtedly also a lot of corruption involved there.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago
It happens in California all the time but you only mention it happening in Texas. Why is that? If you were unaware that it happens in California, why is that?
- the_only_law 4y ago
  This is not relevant to their post. Why is that?
- mousetree 4y ago
  Perhaps because they are South African? As another South African I have heard of blackouts in Texas (and your Ted Cruz going on holiday) but I haven't heard about anything in California (other than the Enron related power shortages).
- lmm 4y ago
  The "wrong" party is in power in Texas, so problems there are far more widely reported.
- staindk 4y ago
  Because it's been in the news I consume, I guess. I saw a diagram like this [1] somewhere, perhaps a John Oliver video. It seems Texas is on their own grid and I think wherever I learned that mentioned that Texas has not been maintaining/upgrading the grid to the degree that they should. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-North-American-electricity-interconnections-Image-is-from_fig1_283018221 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-North-America...

spoonjim 4y ago

An interesting article but kind of doesn't really say outright what needs to be said.

jl6 4y ago
Now’s your chance?
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
So, what do you think needs to be said? Say it, instead of just hinting that there's something there.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  He's clearly talking about the fokken prawns, man!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- spoonjim 4y ago
  Account will get banned
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
awanderingmind 4y ago
If you are implying that I am trying make a racist claim you are wrong.

jl6 4y ago

Although the author declines to discuss property crime, it seems as though theft in the general sense is the unifying narrative of the country, from colonial-era and apartheid-era dispossession, through to corruption and kleptocracy in the modern era, looting of state owned assets, looting on the streets as a political weapon, and fraud of every kind.

Beltalowda 4y ago

I've always wondered why the ANC is still in power; they've been the ruling party for 32 years now, and while they've been losing votes in the last few elections, in the 2021 municipal elections they still got ~45% of the votes, with the second party getting ~22%, and in the 2019 national assembly elections they got ~57% (2nd party 22%), so still a comfterable lead overall. I've been reading about the failings and corruption of the ANC for years now. How do they manage to stay in power regardless? Are the other parties even worse? Bias in the political system? Many people genuinely believe in the ANC? Something else?

rayiner 4y ago
ANC freed the country from white rule. It will take generations to forget that.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  Maybe, but that sounds a little simplistic to me. People up to ~40 today hardly even remember apartheid. It's probably a factor, but I suspect there are other factors too. It's not really addressed in the article, but the root problem seems to be the lack of a functioning democracy where those in power are held accountable at least to some degree.
  - norwalkbear 4y ago
    Occam's razor
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      Occam's razor is a rough heuristic, not a law of nature. Sometimes, the more complex explanation turns out to be the correct one. Politics tends to be complex, and while I know next to nothing about South-African politics I have no reason to believe it's any different there. You can't just apply Occam's razor to the first simple explanation that springs to mind.
- janee 4y ago

francois_h 4y ago

As an ex South African it breaks my heart to see the country I love and hope to go back to, being run to the ground and winding back the clock of progress to pre-colonial times.

Barrin92 4y ago

The author partially blaims African nationalism for some of the ills of SA but I think if anything, and this is true in many African countries, the problem is a lack of genuine nationalism. Lack of national identity and the dominance of kinship relations in potitics (in SA of course the apartheid history being a big contributor to this), forms the basis of kleptocracy and factionalism, also observable in Latin America. When private relations start to override loyalty to the commons, people start to rob the state. Ideologically the anti-colonial, politically Marxist but economically flexible model is pretty decent as far as development goes, many Asian countries can attest to that. I think SA's problems are mundane really in the sense that it's easy to diagnose but hard to fix. A divided population and an incompetent leadership, it's sadly not extraordinary.

awanderingmind 4y ago
You may be right.

LimitedInfo 4y ago

fleddr 4y ago
- alienthrowaway 4y ago
  > You're probably downvoted because the assertion is controversial, but it shouldn't be. Fascinating. Would you mind showing me your sources for this assertion you claim shouldn't be controversial. I'm sub-saharan African, but I think I'll manage to read the papers just fine. Your suggestion that entire countries with an average IQ below what's considered developmentally challenged (70-75) is ... suspect. Additionally, considering international high school examination board exist in Commonwealth countries whose results do not reflect your theory. So, let's have a fact-based discussion and not unsourced "good faith" discussion
  - beeboop 4y ago
    Some sources online list the average IQ of the bottom 14 countries to be under 60. I find this really hard to believe and to me indicates more of an issue with testing IQ than the intelligence of people across various countries
    - norwalkbear 4y ago
      - orangesite 4y ago
        Your statement would sound less like a racial slur if your citation was for "major physiological differences" rather than genetic ancestry. What do we call it when someone combines a claim with strong evidence in the same sentence with another claim which has no evidence?

bantuq 4y ago

_djo_ 4y ago
Nobody uses terminology like that these days unless they're trying to make an extremely racist claim.
- DIARRHEA_xd 4y ago
  I'm not usually a fan of unfounded racism allegations. But the guy's username is "bantuq"...
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    Yeah. Anyone familiar with the phrasing, and especially how it’s used in parts of South Africa, knows that’s not a dog whistle but a foghorn. I’m surprised I got downvoted for it.

aaron695 4y ago

joemazerino 4y ago

Don't search for South African tragedies or the history of the national song "Shoot the Boer" since apartheid.

avar 4y ago

(I've been to South Africa once, for two weeks this summer) The author notes that it's "obviously bad" that inequality is so high in South Africa. I may be inadvertently challenging some orthodoxy here but why is that? The author also notes that around 1/4 of working age people contribute tax revenue. Would the rest really be better off without the top X% of taxpayers, other things being equal? I think implicit in this critique is that the reader should think anything less than maintaining a western European standard of living is a failure on the government's part. But South Africa's GDP PPP per capita is around that of Mongolia or Egypt, while one might think from reading this article that South Africa is a "temporary embarrassed" western European country. The country has a lot of problems, but if you frame it like that one could view the status quo as a resounding success. While traveling there I ran into a lot of immigrants from countries to the north that migrated there for a better life. I've read a few articles about South Africa with a similar tone, but they never really seem to get to the point. Yes the ANC is corrupt, but even if you suppose the country were run with Swiss efficacy you're begging the question about what a $15,000 GDP PPP per capita version of Switzerland would look like. The answer is likely to me much closer to Mongolia than Switzerland in terms of basic services, infrastructure etc

awanderingmind 4y ago
It's not an issue of maintaining a 'western European' standard of living - it's an issue of millions of people suffering because of lack of access to basic services, and a sky high crime rate that brutalises the population. The situation can be much better than it is without being comparable to western European standards. According to worldbank data the murder rate in SA is around 10 times higher than in Egypt, and around 5 times as high as in Mongolia. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=ZA https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=EG https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=MN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location... If you like the correct framing is 'extreme suffering due to poverty', not 'high inequality'. The inequality is galling because there is a small percentage of people (myself included) who enjoy a good quality of life while millions of people live in poverty. Purely in terms of 'inequality being bad', there are good reasons to believe that it undermines democracy (citation required I suppose).

sam-s 4y ago

It was fashionable in the USSR to blame all problems on the legacy of WW2 ("we suffered so much destruction and made so many sacrifices, this is why we are so poor compared to the West"). I think blaming Apartheid for the current ills 30 years after its end is not right.