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Why South Africa Is on the Brink of Chaos

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Re: Why South Africa Is on the Brink of Chaos

#71

Post by seiferteric »

rejectfinite wrote: post #48
factsaresacred wrote: post #30

"There Are No Successful Black Nations" was the original title of this article in Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/09/why-black-people-must-h... It's an uncomfortable title, but it's a truth that must be confronted. How have once downtrodden countries like Korea, China, and large swaths of Eastern Europe been able to turn rags into riches while most of Africa has so far failed to? GDP is not everythi…

>but it's a truth that must be confronted Why? I really do not care anymore. How much have been poured in? How many marshall plans in $? While Germany rose from a bombed out nation in 1945 to the EU's strongest economy? South Korea too is even more impressive, from an illiterate peasant nation to now with Samsung and all that. Japan got hit with the most destructive man made weapon, twice. Granted, they were an Asian…

Those three nations were heavily invested in by the US after WW2 and Korean war as bulwarks against communism, perhaps not the best examples of pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.

Re: Why South Africa Is on the Brink of Chaos

#72

Post by benj111 »

letrowekwel wrote: post #61
factsaresacred wrote: post #30

"There Are No Successful Black Nations" was the original title of this article in Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/09/why-black-people-must-h... It's an uncomfortable title, but it's a truth that must be confronted. How have once downtrodden countries like Korea, China, and large swaths of Eastern Europe been able to turn rags into riches while most of Africa has so far failed to? GDP is not everythi…

IMO the main problem is the arbitrary way borders were drawn in Africa by colonialists. Too many ethnicities that didn't get along very well suddenly shared a common state, while others were split between many countries. When even much richer and educated areas have problems with multiculturalism of much smaller scale (the Balkans, Spain, Belgium for example), it's not surprising that countries like DR Congo with ove…

I don't think the language thing covers it.

Plenty of European countries have more than one language, only recently got 1 unified language.

You have countries like India that manage to make a cohesive country out of disparate peoples.

That's not to say these aren't contributing factors.

My current 'theory' / observation is that sub Saharan Africa never really had large scale civilisations, I wonder if that colours their conception of what a nation state is. Eg, if you think in terms of tribes. Perhaps that hinders scaling up to something bigger.

Re: Why South Africa Is on the Brink of Chaos

#73

Post by _djo_ »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #67
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tutsi and Hutu split stretches back before colonisation too. You could make the argument that it was always going to be a problem and the colonizers didn't materially affect the course of history. What you can't do is argue they didn't intentionally take advantage of this split for their own purposes. Because they did and it's documented history. edit to add: Here's a pro-apartheid Quora answer that suggests the…

That odd poster is writing about the (rather abortive) Bantustan effort after 1970. While that effort aimed to separate whites and blacks, it didn’t particularly seek to separate blacks from each other in spite of a claimed titular nationality for each; the projected bantustans were quite tribally mixed. So, it isn’t an example of what you were claiming.

That's inaccurate, the Bantustans were explicitly created on tribal lines:

Transkei & Ciskei: Xhosa

Bophuthatswana: Tswana (it's even in the name!)

Venda: Venda (ditto)

Kwazulu: Zulu (seeing the trend here?)

The Apartheid government was heavily involved in pitting tribes against each other, and especially in trying to co-opt Zulus against the others by allying with the Inkhata Freedom Party and Zulu king and offering them money, power, and other incentives.

Re: Why South Africa Is on the Brink of Chaos

#74

Post by slowmovintarget »

nathell wrote: post #41
inglor_cz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and it took decades to get rid of its awful legacy. Socialism sucks. The idea of "means of production owned collectively" tends to suck even in capitalism (too many shareholders), but if the owner is the state, it sucks massively. Any alignment of interests goes out of the window, massive white elephant projects get built in the name of ideology, "superfluous concerns…

I was born in the People’s Republic of Poland, and I think most of the suckage you’ve described are due to oppressive authoritarianism of the former Eastern Bloc countries, and have little if anything to do with collective ownership of means of production.

They have to do with the mechanisms of the commune being used to produce a dictatorship or a bureaucratic upper class, which has happened in ever circumstance where communism has been implemented.

We should know by now that communism as a form of government appears to be better than average at enabling corruption, because the underlying mechanism of removing personal choice is so well aligned.

Re: Why South Africa Is on the Brink of Chaos

#75

Post by nathell »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #74
nathell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born in the People’s Republic of Poland, and I think most of the suckage you’ve described are due to oppressive authoritarianism of the former Eastern Bloc countries, and have little if anything to do with collective ownership of means of production.

They have to do with the mechanisms of the commune being used to produce a dictatorship or a bureaucratic upper class, which has happened in ever circumstance where communism has been implemented. We should know by now that communism as a form of government appears to be better than average at enabling corruption, because the underlying mechanism of removing personal choice is so well aligned.

> which has happened in ever circumstance where communism has been implemented.

Not so; I’m not aware of this happening on a large scale in the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in Mexico, for example (please point me to sources if I’m wrong).

Re: Why South Africa Is on the Brink of Chaos

#76

Post by [deleted] »

dathinab wrote: post #68
AlbertCory wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is 100% wrong. Even in the very capital of corruption (in the US, anyway), Chicago, the slogan was "good government is good politics." In other words, doing a good job with the boring stuff is also good for getting elected.

> In other words, doing a good job with the boring stuff is also good for getting elected. yes and that is fully unrelated to the question of weather politics is about morals or not e.g. you explanation also would go hand in hand with not electing anyone with very bad morals because then it's guaranteed that they won't just do "the boring stuff good" but will try to do other stuff; Or if they are corrupt will not do…

[deleted]

Re: Why South Africa Is on the Brink of Chaos

#77

Post by churchill »

midasuni wrote: post #14
LegitShady wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Meh I'm from a nation way more socialist than the USA Australia is not socialist, period. Its a market economy.

From reading that article (until the paywall hits) it sounds like South Africa is a libertarian paradise - private security, private road repair, private fire brigade.

Whenever folks like you denigrate 'lawless' libertarian shitholes, it always ends up that the reason such territories are so terrible is because of a government using its monopoly of violence to extract rent from business, either through outright taxation or currency inflation. Yet, every single time, people can't get the irony.

Re: Why South Africa Is on the Brink of Chaos

#78

Post by cpleppert »

alephnerd wrote: post #31
oatmeal1 wrote: post #5

When people vote for politicians based on moral appeals instead of practical qualifications, corruption is much more likely; politicians don't have to do a good job, they just have to appear to be on the "good" side.

People vote for the ANC in SA because there isn't an alternative party at the national level. Once you vote for the party, the party then decides who will lead. Even the article notes that the first 15 years of ANC rule saw significant development, as does HDI data [0]. The issue was that Jacob Zuma essentially destroyed RSA thanks to his corruption. And the only reason he became President was because he headed the A…

The significant development after the end of apartheid was more due to a very favorable international economic environment and the elimination of sanctions that restricted south africa's ability to export resources. Additionally, the end of apartheid was in itself a massive economic boon as it created new sources of labor.

The performance of the ANC has always been poor in South Africa. The party engaged in widespread AIDS denialism and dramatically cut investment as it attempted to help poor black africans through a variety of mostly poorly run schemes. Corruption was always present and connections with the ANC became essential in south africa. Today's troubles are the result of decisions made years ago.

Re: Why South Africa Is on the Brink of Chaos

#79

Post by opyate »

alephnerd wrote: post #31
oatmeal1 wrote: post #5

When people vote for politicians based on moral appeals instead of practical qualifications, corruption is much more likely; politicians don't have to do a good job, they just have to appear to be on the "good" side.

People vote for the ANC in SA because there isn't an alternative party at the national level. Once you vote for the party, the party then decides who will lead. Even the article notes that the first 15 years of ANC rule saw significant development, as does HDI data [0]. The issue was that Jacob Zuma essentially destroyed RSA thanks to his corruption. And the only reason he became President was because he headed the A…

> People vote for the ANC in SA because there isn't an alternative party.

I'd say that there is not a _viable_ alternative party, due to fragmentation.

The DA has good representation in the Western Cape:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in...

Re: Why South Africa Is on the Brink of Chaos

#80

Post by alephnerd »

cpleppert wrote: post #78
alephnerd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People vote for the ANC in SA because there isn't an alternative party at the national level. Once you vote for the party, the party then decides who will lead. Even the article notes that the first 15 years of ANC rule saw significant development, as does HDI data [0]. The issue was that Jacob Zuma essentially destroyed RSA thanks to his corruption. And the only reason he became President was because he headed the A…

The significant development after the end of apartheid was more due to a very favorable international economic environment and the elimination of sanctions that restricted south africa's ability to export resources. Additionally, the end of apartheid was in itself a massive economic boon as it created new sources of labor. The performance of the ANC has always been poor in South Africa. The party engaged in widesprea…

South Africa's HDI skyrocketed from 2007-2013, which can be attributed to a mix of FDI as well was investments in human development in the 90s and early 2000s. Before then, South Africa largely plataued developmentally.

Economic growth =/= Development btw

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