Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The dystopian underworld of South Africa’s illegal gold mines

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 137 posts

Re: The dystopian underworld of South Africa’s illegal gold mines

#121

Post by geraldyo »

concordDance wrote: post #119
mrburkins wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many majority black countries were afforded the opportunity to grow up unmolested by great powers during their formative post colonial years? How many once in a generation leaders were assassinated or deposed in favor of brutal yet capital friendly regimes? America, with all its cultural heritage of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson and Lincoln barely survived the 1960’s due to political assassinations. It’s hard t…

No country has ever been unmolested during their formative years except maybe the USA.

While true that all countries had conflicts, most (maybe all?) of the developed world was never pillaged to the extent Africa and South America were. Not to mention a lot of the conflicts between those nations happened "voluntarily" between the fighting countries.

Africa especially, the current country borders were designed based on the division of property between all the European countries invading the natives' lands. That meant several tribes and groups were divided/grouped together, leading to wars that hold to this day. If I'm not mistaken the Rwanda Massacre is the major example of that coming to fruit

Re: The dystopian underworld of South Africa’s illegal gold mines

#122

Post by thriftwy »

Muromec wrote: post #85
bpodgursky wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are talking about the L/DNR, which did in fact draft the majority of their male population. They were literally sweeping the streets any adult men they could find.

I guess by now, every man is either in exile, in the military, dead or not leaving the house for the whole year. With pre-war (of 2014) population of 7 million, the whole region is just erased from the map by now. Fuck russia

The news of Donbass demise are greatly exaggerated.

Now if you want to get rid of Russia maybe you will start by freeing your nickname?

Re: The dystopian underworld of South Africa’s illegal gold mines

#123

Post by Georgelemental »

fleddr wrote: post #71
boeingUH60 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On Twitter recently a Nigerian business man shared some of his frustrations which I found insightful. He started a bar. Yet later discovered that his business partner was reselling booze via the back door, pocketing this money for himself. Next, the business man started a transport business. Every driver he hired mysteriously got "robbed", which means they resold the fuel. They are just anecdotes, but if widespread,…

I have heard similar stories, from people I kmow who have spent a lot of time working all around Africa. And countries where people are more proactive—Rwanda, Ivory Coast—are more functional overall. Climate seems to be a factor

Re: The dystopian underworld of South Africa’s illegal gold mines

#124

Post by grecy »

buyx wrote: post #98
grecy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 wi…

> Corruption, an incompetent civil service stuffed with political appointees, terrible education system ... constrained electricity supply and constrained infrastructure....

And what are all of those caused by?

In my opinion, it's all come about because the blacks and now saying "Screw you" and "You did it to us, so we'll do it to you"...

The country is not working together.

And this is the result.

Re: The dystopian underworld of South Africa’s illegal gold mines

#125

Post by dan-robertson »

maeil wrote: post #77
dan-robertson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps one thing to say is that not that many countries developed in general in the last hundred years or so, depending on how you count them. It seems there isn’t really an easy path to development and many African countries started a very poor quite recently without the smoothest transition out of colonialism. You might count a few Caribbean countries for your initial question, eg the Bahamas is 90% black and has…

Devil's Advocate - in 1954, South Korea was at least as poor as most of Sub-Saharan Africa, if not poorer.

I don’t understand what your argument is? I’m not denying that other countries developed but my (admittedly very poor) understanding of development economics is that there are some vague theories of ways that countries might develop but many attempts to develop have been stymied in practice in different ways in different countries in different places all around the world.

Re: The dystopian underworld of South Africa’s illegal gold mines

#126

Post by sangnoir »

luckylion wrote: post #108
sangnoir wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many black-majority countries were or are imperialist? External Imperialism does wonders for the prosperity of the home country. I ought to ask this on /r/AskHistorians

> External Imperialism does wonders for the prosperity of the home country. Does it last though? The UK doesn't seem to be bursting at the seams with prosperity these days. Switzerland does much better yet never had any colonies. Portugal had lots, just as Spain, and look at them. Germany had few because they started late and they're doing much better. The Ottoman empire was huge but Turkey isn't doing too good, desp…

> The UK doesn't seem to be bursting at the seams with prosperity these days. Switzerland does much better yet never had any colonies.

I dunno - Northern Ireland seems to be doing alright, current woes affecting the rest of the Kingdom (Britain) appear to be self-inflicted.

More seriously: I never claimed imperialism led to eternal prosperity. Pax Britania led to a very prosperous Britain - it is undeniable that imperialism is beneficial while it's happening: captive markets abroad support broader industrialization than just a single home market[1], and externalization of costs makes it cheaper/more "efficient".

1. Which Britain is relearning - as you noted, they are not exactly bursting at the seams with prosperity, post-Brexit

Re: The dystopian underworld of South Africa’s illegal gold mines

#127

Post by dzonga »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #23
wonderwonder wrote: post #19

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 South Africa's government really fell apart afterwards. Hiv infection rates rose from 3% to 18% of the adult population. Top 10 in the world for murder rates. 30% unemployment rate. Rolling blackouts. Afrikaans Paramilitary groups. Massive organized criminal org…

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.

because when you adopt an abusive system and the only change is the abusers the abuse will continue. modern african governments adopted extractive colonial gvts - so the extraction shifts from 'white' man to the 'black' man. with SA all that changed was who was in power. But the fucked up apartheid economy exists. BEE won't change anything.

btw: i'm also a black southern african

Re: The dystopian underworld of South Africa’s illegal gold mines

#128

Post by jocaal »

botanical wrote: post #105
wonderwonder wrote: post #19

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 South Africa's government really fell apart afterwards. Hiv infection rates rose from 3% to 18% of the adult population. Top 10 in the world for murder rates. 30% unemployment rate. Rolling blackouts. Afrikaans Paramilitary groups. Massive organized criminal org…

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.

I am curious, what makes you say things are getting better?

Re: The dystopian underworld of South Africa’s illegal gold mines

#129

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

jackothy wrote: post #90
prmph wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Botswana and Rwanda seems to be countries with lower levels of corruption and reasonably good or improving public services. Ghana too was doing well in the last decade, but now has taken a turn for the worse since the current government took over. I live in Ghana, and the level of corruption now, and the neglect of a proper development agenda, is unbelievable. So, I don’t think there is necessarily anything that make…

I feel like if it can all turn bad just from one election to the next, then it was never really good. I wonder if Botswana and Rwanda are just as vulnerable as Ghana was.

Rwanda is no stranger to bad times. 1994, being well known.

Re: The dystopian underworld of South Africa’s illegal gold mines

#130

Post by chrisehlee »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #23
wonderwonder wrote: post #19

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 South Africa's government really fell apart afterwards. Hiv infection rates rose from 3% to 18% of the adult population. Top 10 in the world for murder rates. 30% unemployment rate. Rolling blackouts. Afrikaans Paramilitary groups. Massive organized criminal org…

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.

As a fellow Nigerian also residing in Nigeria, I must add that things are even more nuanced than they seem.

- We’ve had an ugly history of military rule, post-colonization. - During the colonial period a specific region of the country[1] produced quite a number of leaders, both colonial and post-colonial era; it’s almost 63 years of independence and that region now has the highest population, higher unemployment, child illiteracy, and poverty rates in the country[2].

Thanks to this massive population and frequent election racketeering, immense political power seemingly resides with people from that region and nepotism has become the order of the day. So we now have a case of leaders who care less about establishing functional institutions or a sustainable culture and are much more concerned with maintaining power. It’s depressing.

- [1] https://www.icirnigeria.org/2023-north-has-the-numbers-to-co... - [2] https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/53569/northern-nigeria..., https://www.cgdev.org/blog/poverty-nigeria-understanding-and...

Post reply on HN