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Was a well written article. Pretty amazing contrast in the way various people are forced to live. While obviously not great for black people during apartheid So

• concordDance 4y ago
  Do you think South Africans would be better off today if there had been no attempt to apolish apartheid? Genuine question, not a gotcha.
  • gowld 4y ago
    Authoritarian governments are similar to economic bubbles (balloons). They push out everything better and then leave a mess when they collapse. Pretty much everything on GPs list was a problem during apartheid era as well, or caused by it.
    • concordDance 4y ago
      There was 30% unemployment in apartheid era? (Definitely agree with your first paragraph)
      • superdeeda 4y ago
        It's estimated to have been around 20% [1], but there isn't an official number. The participation rate was lower because non-white people were limited in terms of where they were allowed to go, live and work. [1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w13167/w13167.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w13167/w131...
  • wonderwonder 4y ago
    White South Africans definitely. Black South Africans I don't know. Some of them could be better off financially but it's a heck of a thing to be treated as if you are a lesser being because of the color of your skin. I guess the answer is yes in regards to the economy, health (maybe, not sure sure on this) , government corruption and a couple other things but no on just the simple act of being treated like a human. Apartheid had to go but just throwing power into the mob was not a good way to do it. I don't have an answer as far as what would have been a better solution. I left South Africa as a young teen during the collapse of Apartheid. We had a black maid / nanny who lived on our property in housing my parents provided for years. She did a lot of the work raising us as my parents were always at work. She had a daughter a couple years older than me. Years later my mom wrote her a letter to see how she was doing. She was completely destitute begging for money. Her daughter has multiple kids and was hiv positive. Really rough. I really don't know what the right approach would have been. It's easy to be an armchair quarterback.
  • superdeeda 4y ago
    No, there were hectic sanctions against South Africa. We wouldn't have been able to do business outside of SA, travel to many countries, take part in the Olympics, etc. Probably would've ended up like Cuba.
  • liampulles 4y ago
    (South African here) I think so. It has to be better than living under a state which regards you as something less than human.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• boeingUH60 4y ago
  I've always wondered why there's no black-majority country that's prosperous...it's always the same story of corruption, incompetence, and/or infighting. Now, before anyone brings out the pitchforks, I'm a black African residing in Nigeria...I'm just saying that we really have to do better than this.
  • gowld 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • concordDance 4y ago
      Where the heck did you get the idea this is restricted to black majority countries? Like, check out the history of Poland some time. The European powers generally conquered, colonised or bullied wherever they could. Some countries like Vietnam recovered well, others like Ethiopia did not.
      • texaslonghorn5 4y ago
        > Europeans have a nasty habit of ravaging any black-majority country that tries to build anything. "Where the heck" did you see the above poster mention restricted?
        • concordDance 4y ago
          That post was in the context of asking why black majority countries have done less well than other countries.
          • texaslonghorn5 4y ago
            fair, my fault for misreading
      • Spooky23 4y ago
        It’s historically not a concept without merit. The needlessly cruel treatment of Haiti is probably the canonical example. I’d suggest reading about General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. The book “Black Count” is worth reading.
• X6S1x6Okd1st 4y ago
  Really odd to draw the line at before apartheid and after. Jacob Zuma's reign was really a clear sign of corruption hitting an extremely high level & he did things like say I took a shower after so I wouldn't get AIDs. My layman understanding is that the ANC's dominance of politics enabled extreme corruption to take place. It does look like they've finally started to lose hold
  • buyx 4y ago
    Zuma may have acted like a shower could prevent AIDS, but he also oversaw the rollout of anti-retroviral drugs that pushed life expectancy up. In fact, that was one of the reasons why he was elevated to power: Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS denialism led to huge numbers of deaths, and his political downfall in the ANC. I’d say the real issue is not the ANC’s electoral dominance, but the party’s practice of Democratic Centralism, which allows the leader unfettered control. I would guess the closest modern analogue would be the Chinese Communist Party. Zuma was allowed to loot the country, along with his cronies because of this, just as Mbeki was allowed to practice his AIDS denialism. As you said, the ANC’s power is eroding, but until there’s electoral reform, to make MPs independent of party bosses, South African democracy will always be at risk of being captured by nefarious actors.
  • wonderwonder 4y ago
    Not really. The end of apartheid was a monumental change in the country on a scale that is difficult to explain. Everything that came after was completely different.
• superdeeda 4y ago
  "Afrikaans Paramilitary groups" was basically what Apartheid was, only state sanctioned. > Hiv infection rates rose from 3% to 18% of the adult population. It's like saying COVID rates grew XXX% in 2020 due to some new government. Yes, SA's HIV rate is absolutely awful, but HIV hardly existed before the end of Apartheid.
  • archsurface 4y ago
    No, it's not like saying that - the health minister had the nickname Dr Beetroot for her ridiculous views in HIV/AIDS.
    • deleted 4y ago
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  • wonderwonder 4y ago
    Mbeki, The president of south Africa ran a program denying aids was caused by a virus. His health minister instead recommend lemon juice and beetroot. "In the following eight years of his presidency, Mbeki continued to express sympathy for HIV/AIDS denialism, and instituted policies denying antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients.[1] The Mbeki government even withdrew support from clinics that started using AZT to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. He also restricted the use of a pharmaceutical company's donated supply of nevirapine, a drug that helps keep newborns from contracting HIV" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism_in_South_Africa#:~:text=Mbeki%20criticized%20the%20scientific%20consensus,denied%20that%20HIV%20caused%20AIDS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism_in_South_....
• grecy 4y ago
  I spent three years driving around Africa, exploring the remote corners of thirty five countries and really sinking into the culture as much as possible. After six months I thought I knew a lot. Six month later I learned that was all rubbish and started again. And so on. I spent a few months in South Africa, and I felt less safe there than any other country on the continent. It is extremely edgy. I genuinely believe the magic of Mandela was stopping the (immense) majority of blacks from slaughtering the (extremely small) minority of whites for what they did. I had tears streaming down my face for hours in the Apartheid museum in Jburg. With Mandela long gone, many of the problems I saw in South Africa, I think, are the result. "It's time we got you back", etc. It pains me to say it, but I'll be shocked it the country doesn't tear itself apart in the coming decades. Countries like Botswana feel like the polar opposite, where blacks and whites have always lived together peacefully, and work together to make the country better for everyone. For context, I'm white.
  • buyx 4y ago
    I think whites are going to be increasingly irrelevant in South Africa, and apart from the poor, the old, and ideologically motivated Afrikaners, I suspect that they are going to continue to emigrate in increasing numbers. Indians are already displacing them as the dominant minority in professional contexts, but they'll also start leaving for greener pastures. A focus on race-relations, in 2023, obscures the real issues plaguing South Africa, which, although in large part a legacy of apartheid, don't have to do with black-white relations.
    • grecy 4y ago
      I have a lot to learn. > A focus on race-relations, in 2023, obscures the real issues plaguing South Africa, which, although in large part a legacy of apartheid, don't have to do with black-white relations. What are the real issues?
      • buyx 4y ago
        Corruption, an incompetent civil service stuffed with political appointees, terrible education system, open borders (sorry, but it's a fact....you can't have huge unemployment and open borders with large numbers of undocumented people who are willing to work with no protections and below minimum wage - as per the article ), constrained electricity supply and constrained infrastructure due to a neoliberal obsession with paying down debt in the 1990-2004 period, instead of investing.
• PicassoCTs 4y ago
  South africa profited like many others, from the cold-war, when the us propped up the "border" wall states (germany,austria, italy, turkey, south-korea and japan). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namibia#Independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namibia#Independence With the wind down of the cold war, all that stopped and the ANC, which was on the loosing side of the cold-war ideologically, had to pivot, while all support was cut. It did not go very well, but they also were delt a lousy hand to start with. Social Rebel groups seem to have a tendency to facilitate the rise of gangsters, profiteers and sadists to power, once they are victorious. Think of stalin, a little ruthless gangster, who basically ran the sovjet union like a gang kept in eternal turmoil and panic.
• heywherelogingo 4y ago
  You left out the rape stats. Last I checked, someone was murdered approx every 25 mins, and someone was raped approx every 15 mins.
  • rightbyte 4y ago
    Surely rape has to far more than about twice as common as murder? Looking at US stats the homicide rate is 0.007% and sexual assault 0.1% per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States
    • heywherelogingo 4y ago
      Why didn't you just look up the SA stats instead?
      • luckylion 4y ago
        I did [1], 2015-2016 saw 51895 reported "crimes of sexual nature". There seems to be a giant amount of unreported rapes though: While women's groups in South Africa estimate that a woman is raped every 26 seconds, the South African police estimates that a woman is raped every 36 seconds and In 1998, one in three of the 4,000 women questioned in Johannesburg had been raped, according to Community Information, Empowerment and Transparency (CIET) Africa and It is estimated that over 40% of South African women will be raped in their lifetime and that only 1 in 9 rapes are reported. draw a drastic image. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence_in_South_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence_in_South_Afric...
      • deleted 4y ago
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• buyx 4y ago
  The article makes it clear that the miners are mostly illegal immigrants from neighbouring countries. The country has reasonably strong labour laws, but employers, who never really moved beyond the cheap servile labour model under apartheid hate worker rights (which aren’t really that strong by world standards). So they hire undocumented workers from other African countries. This contributes to the huge unemployment rate amongst South African citizens. Kidnapping for ransom, which was unheard of ten years ago, has become a thing because of Mozambican and Pakistani crime syndicates. It’s one of a myriad of problems in the country, but the fact is that any attempts to control the borders have been decried as “xenophobia” by elites. Interestingly, SA white conservative types, who rally for support from anti-immigration people overseas, support illegal immigration in South Africa (along with most upper middle-class people), since it keeps labour costs down, and they hold black South Africans in contempt. There’s also been a general collapse in state capacity: the recent explosion in Boksburg where the police never bothered pitching up at the scene of a leaking LPG/propane truck to control bystanders led to 40 deaths, is indicative of the sort of don’t-give-a-damn attitude of most state institutions.
• botanical 4y ago
  It's always an emigrant giving their warped perspective on how things are when they lived here years ago as a teen. The stats don't lie, but to state "Paramilitary groups, "Massive organized criminal organisations" is beyond exaggeration. South Africa (as the 31st biggest economy) has a lot of problems, but things are slowly getting better despite the wealth inequality and corruption.
  • jocaal 4y ago
    I am curious, what makes you say things are getting better?
• hulitu 4y ago
  > Hiv infection rates rose from 3% to 18% of the adult population Thanks to western Pharma companies doing "business" there.