The Lessons of South Africa
November 18, 2024
FROM an article by Will Tanner at The Tablet:
“When Nelson Mandela ascended to power in 1994, with his African National Congress (ANC) winning South Africa’s first multiracial election, the world was full of hope. South Africans hoped that the “rainbow nation” would turn out differently than the Congo, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Angola, among other decolonized lands where mass violence between ethnic groups and tribes filled the vacuum of postcolonial defeat and withdrawal. To this day, South Africa has seen no Gukurahundi between its native groups nor mass slaughter between natives and Europeans.
“Though it has avoided the worst outcomes, South Africa is hardly a multiracial paradise. Instead, it has trended toward chaos and internal disaster; its economy is in shambles, its once-budding space and nuclear programs are long gone. Crime rules in place of law and order. South Africa’s internal issues are manifold but can be distilled down to two categories: economic tyranny stemming from an unyielding top-down emphasis on racial spoils programs in the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mode, and anarcho-tyranny in which the government is both unable and unwilling to protect the Afrikaner, Anglo, and Indian populations from vicious criminals.
The economic aspect of South Africa’s decline is primarily a result of its postapartheid obsession with extending the country’s cursed racial logic, this time in the name of justice and equity. Though it didn’t see the outright expropriations inflicted upon white farmers in Zimbabwe by Mugabe’s government, it has seen softer forms of expropriation and reparations. For example, as of 2024, more than 24 million South Africans, the vast majority of them Black, received welfare grants from just 7.1 million taxpayers. That 3.38-to-1 grant-to-taxpayer ratio is plainly unsustainable. However, with the leftist ANC in charge, it is part of the system now and seen as an important social justice achievement. South Africa also has an outright reparations program for victims of apartheid, another expensive tax money transfer program.
See also: “South Africa’s Richest City is Collapsing”