5 ms·
What's going on in South Africa?
by sho_hn 4y ago
What's going on in South Africa?
- jyscao 4y agoThe standard: high violent crime rates and a failing economy.
- yamtaddle 4y agoAnd when did it get added? Or have I been misreading this for years? I always thought the label was "BRIC".
- FredPret 4y agoThey needed an African representative
- prottog 4y agoIt's been BRICS for as long as I can remember.
- yamtaddle 4y agoFound the answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC Original term (referring to no formal organization) was BRIC, coined in 2001. BRICs common as a plural form, as in "the BRICs" (which I recall seeing), but not BRICS. The four countries started holding summits in 2009, and in 2010 declared South Africa part of the group, at which point a specific sense of the term (referring to invitees to these summits and members of related efforts or organizations) became BRICS.
- wkat4242 4y agoExtreme corruption and energy problems leading to riots and concerns over civil war https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/stockpile-food-and-water-south-africa-faces-civil-war-conditions-if-power-grid-collapses/news-story/231d976d93e9a34ef8dfaf0ac3db6582 https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/stockp...
- hulitu 4y ago[flagged]
- LAC-Tech 4y agoCorruption is everywhere, yes. But South African corruption is on a completely different level compared to the US. Not even in the same league.
- _zoidburg_ 4y agoWhy the whataboutism?
- tmn 4y agoThey are showing that narratives can be made and should potentially be taken with a grain of salt
- buyx 4y agoIf you look at that author’s articles on South Africa; they seem to echo right-wing Afrikaner talking-points. It doesn’t mean it’s all wrong, but important to recognise the limitations of the source.
- wesleywt 4y agoThis is utter rubbish. I live in South Africa.
- wjaugustyn 4y agoSouth Africa has a steadily growing GDP, and is one of the least corrupt countries in Africa. GDP has been growing steadily despite issues with the state owned energy provider Eskom. The private sector is robust against government incompetence. It’s not easy to live here, but the opportunities are massive (because the playing field is open if you are skilled).
- wjaugustyn 4y agoAnd BRICS helps a lot. It’s great to have a trade partner like China. Not all exporters feel happy to export to Russia currently.
- cm2187 4y agoGDP growth seems to have been in the 1-2% area for the past 10y. That's ok for a developed economy but that's low for a developing country that needs to pull its population out of poverty. Also I'm not sure that "one of the least corrupt countries in Africa" is such a high bar.
- linhns 4y agoAnd corruption is increasing!
- wjaugustyn 4y agoLet’s put it this way. In South Africa it’s not a constant onslaught of having to pay people off government officials, like in all other sub-Saharan countries I’ve been in.
- buyx 4y agoSouth Africa is a deteriorating shithole. My mother was telling me that they want to move to guarded security estate because she is afraid she might be raped, and my father bludgeoned in their home. (NB: they’re not under threat because of their race, rather because that’s what criminals do). The police are dumb as rocks and totally lazy: look at the Boksburg tanker blast in December to see how they don’t GAF about doing their jobs.the public was standing around a burning gas tanker taking pictures for social media for hours before it exploded and killed dozens. The police only pitched after the explosion. There is no serious border control, and any mention of it is shut down as “xenophobic” by the media and business that want to flout labour regulations by hiring undocumented migrants from the rest of Africa, despite the obscene unemployment rate. The electricity situation has been discussed at length here previously, but it’s strangling the economy. Sure you can make money if you are skilled, but you can make better money using those skills in any number of other countries. The only thing that’s keeping many middle-class South Africans from emigrating is the cheap domestic help. They are happy to exploit the obscene inequality since it gives them cheap labour. They live in terror of washing their own clothes and cleaning their own toilets.
- wesleywt 4y agoLots of anti-South African bias on HN. Few of these statements are correct or have any basis in fact. We are not doing great, but doing as bad as the comments suggest.
- sho_hn 4y agoAre there any good resources to learn more about South African history and the contemporaneous situation in a cohesive manner? I ask because like perhaps many, I've read a number of novels by Zakes Mda and it has sparked an interest. They're wonderful books, very emotional and beautifully written, but it's like looking at South Africa through a kaleidoscope, not all that much really comes into focus intellectually. Unfortunately my school education on the country was also basically nil.