Mandela’s South Africa was full of hope. How did it go so wrong?
The ANC got elected and S Africa turned into what you get when you elect corrupt commies….
Mandela’s South Africa was full of hope. How did it go so wrong?
The ANC got elected and S Africa turned into what you get when you elect corrupt commies….
Tim. you should have joined the FCO! Such diplomacy…
I’d also argue that the blacks of South Africa felt that they were being robbed by the wicked whites. So all they needed to do was seize power and divert all the loot to them.
Unfortunately switching from white to black rule simply meant that the new black ruling class snaffled the lot and didn’t waste any of it on running things properly.
So things are going down, down, down, down, down!!!!
I’ve just remembered that when we went to SA a few years ago just after the freedom fighters had won their grisly freedom our holiday was spoiled by the frequent “brown outs” because the electricity supply was so crap. I can’t remember whether the use of the term was the first stages of de-racialising the language or not. I know people of all shades were really pissed off because SA used to supply leccy to most of southern Africa. Different shades of folk ascribed the events to different reasons depending on which opinions they wanted reinforced…
I refused to march against apartheid because I knew that that nasty way to run a country would be replaced by one that was just as nasty.
The striking thing is that Mandela managed to defer the worst for a decent spell. (Either that or our press continually lied to me.)
We may never solve the mystery of why African bushmen haven’t split the atom or mastered the jet engine yet.
Just who was it that was ‘full of hope’ for South Africa? And what drugs were they on?
Bboy – I’d also argue that the blacks of South Africa felt that they were being robbed by the wicked whites. So all they needed to do was seize power and divert all the loot to them.
Yarp, jealousy played a huge role.
People who have shown no historical or current aptitude for building or maintaining complex societies that generate lots of excess wealth learned the magic word “racialist” would unlock unearned freebies and gibs.
For a time.
The World: Apartheid has to be the worst way to run a country.
South Africa: Hold my beer and watch this!
@ Grist
At least you now get a daily schedule for when the electricity is going to be cut off!
Nothing has gone “wrong”, and it really was naive to believe anything else was likely to happen.
I’m just surprised the lights have (sort of) stayed on as long as they have!
Just who was it that was ‘full of hope’ for South Africa?
Oh Julia, were you around in the 1980s ?
The full horror of Mugabe’s rule had not yet sunk in. There were even people who thought that that Marxist thug Nyere in Tanzania was worth listening to.
I can vaguely remember predicting all of SA’s future travails to unbelieving Sociology teachers at school and I have been proven 100% right.
One Man!
One Vote!
Once.
It’s what happens when you hand over power to a bunch of tsotsis.
I’m surprised that she was surprised.
South Africa? Slavery reparations? Corruption in BLM?…Blacks can’t resist a shakedown…
Nelson Mandela was the face of the ANC, but Winnie was the soul. South Africa got exactly what it voted for.
IIRC Henry Crun hails from those parts so perhaps he’ll tell me I’ve misread the situation.
I spent 6 months working for a bunch of former senior MK soldiers/terrorists as their technical lead on a mobile phone licence bid not long after the end of apartheid. They and most of the blacks I worked with really did just want the same opportunities as whites, but with a bit of a leg up. They certainly weren’t anti white and were quite happy working with white who’d been in the SA Army as long as they felt they weren’t in the death squads.
The problem in the country was that the infrastructure was built to support the white and black elite population and was always going to need a massive program to meet the expectations of the majority black population which would require good and competent government. The ANC, or at least some key players did try to prepare, getting quite a large number of people trained in the west for when the time came. (Have a look at Thabo Mbeki’s career, he was even classed as a neo-liberal). The Chairman of the company I was working for had been a senior executive with Nike and there were many similar stories.
During apartheid if you were against it you joined the ANC as that was recognised internationally as the official opposition and other anti apartheid groups were shunned, mostly because they were white. The reality was that it was at heart a communist organisation and the communists held sway, but the rest of the world didn’t want to see that and gave them too many passes.
So, when the time came rather than appointing competent managers to work with the existing white management of the various infrastructure companies they appointed at best incompetents but mostly political cronies who were only interested in lining their pockets.
When Mbeki was finally squeezed out and Zuma* appointed, sorry elected, president that was the writing on the wall and there was never a chance and the rest is history.
*To this day I’m convinced I got pissed with him or his twin brother. I was taken by the CEO to meet a key backer of the company and all they would tell me was that he was a senior ANC figure. We met in the bar of the Johannesburg sports club in Houghton where we worked and one drink led to another. After that they asked me if I’d stay on as COO if they won the licence so I obviously passed whatever test I was being given.
Bind, did he confide that the best way to avoid Aids was to shower after sex?
Just who was it that was ‘full of hope’ for South Africa?
Bleeding heart leftieFools who ignored what had happened to Rhodesia
@Steve at 9:25 am
I was surprised to learn that the bushmen were the early inhabitants of SA. They were exterminated by the current swarthier inhabitants who most modern “anti-racists” assume are the “owners” of SA, who were robbed of their tenure by the evil whites…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_expansion
What we all think of as the standard sub-Saharan African is just as much an ethnic irruption as the Germanics into Europe – actually, possibly closer, as the Celts into Europe overruning the Neolithics. And SA is more than that. The Bantu didn’t really get there until after the whites by the sea route. Further, without those whites (with Mediterranean crops, wheat etc) they’d never have colonised the Cape and Western Cape.
BiND, we left SA a few days before the 1994 elections. I saw what was coming having seen the worst of the ANC intimidation. Not in white areas, but in the townships. ANC thugs would attack all and sundry declaring them to be apartheid collaborators. The election campaign amounted to nothing more than Vote ANC or we’ll burn your house down.
In the rural areas they played on tribal superstition. Especially when tribal elders wanted nothing to do with the ANC. Agent Provocateurs were sent to villages where children were sick and accused the elders of witchcraft and left the rest to the villagers.
Mandela could have put a stop to all of that but had promised to make the country ungovernable. It’s the only promise the ANC ever kept.