It doesn’t mean it’s all wrong, but important to recognise the limitations of the source.
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.
A large % of white South Africans dislike the idea of the masses rising. The expectation that the transition should be comfortable is naive at best.
In any case, apart from many Afrikaners, whites are increasingly irrelevant to the discussion about South Africa’s future-they’re dwindling as a percentage of the population because of aging, emigration, higher black birth rates and inward migration from other African counties.
The country is, objectively, deteriorating.
I didn't say you were.
>whites are increasingly irrelevant to the discussion about South Africa’s future-they’re dwindling as a percentage
Not true, the owners of the vast majority of SA land are still a tiny white minority. As long as this is the case, they are relevant.
>The country is, objectively, deteriorating.
The world's worst wealth inequality [0] will do that to a country until resolved. As I mentioned above, the transition will not be comfortable and anyone expecting it to be is wildly misinformed.
[0] "South Africa is the most economically unequal country in the world, according to the World Bank. The difference between wealthy and poor in South Africa has been increasing steadily since the end of apartheid in 1994, and this inequality is closely linked to racial divisions in society."
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_South_A...
Of course reducing everyone to grinding poverty is one way of reducing inequality, but it’s hard to see what the utility of that would be.
Blacks will, and do, bear the brunt of the deterioration anyway.
India didn't start out with massive amounts of inequality and is still working at building while dealing with a poverty crisis. It isnt close to the finish line.
China, the most successful at transitioning, had inequality comparable to South Africa at one point. That is precisely what Mao targeted when he came to power. Their effort, which involved redistribution of >90% of the land from tiny minority (<10%) ownership, stamping out corruption, and solving domestic production issues; could hardly be described as comfortable.
Foreign powers worked overtime to sabotage the Chinese effort like they have and will continue to do in South Africa as it gets started on this path away from economic apartheid.
The good news is, modern South Africa being a part of BRICS may be useful in reducing inequality more rapidly by employing wisdom gained by other members... but there will still be discomfort.
The history surrounding this kind of scenario is very clear and not as rosey as your description. Luckily SA is not resource poor and its allies are some of the most capable nation builders on the planet.
>Mao’s reforms led to millions of deaths. China grew after the 70s.
Most of the deaths were due to trade embargoes set by western powers (mainly US & UK) that restricted emergency food and other imports leading up to and during an emerging famine.
Even though its an unpopular observation in the west, China's following 60 years of growth wouldve been stunted without Mao's decolonization efforts.
>thanks for clarifying
You are welcome.
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.
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.