Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Chickens come home to roost in South Africa

 

The current rioting and unrest in South Africa was sparked by the imprisonment of former President Zuma, but its roots go back much, much further.  Zuma was merely the spark that lit a fuse long laid and prepared.  The BBC reports:


The death toll in South Africa has risen to 72 as violence continues across the country following the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma.

Crowds looting and setting alight shopping centres clashed with police in several cities on Tuesday.

. . .

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called it some of the worst violence witnessed in South Africa since the 1990s, before the end of apartheid, with fires started, highways blocked and businesses and warehouses looted in major cities and small towns in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces.

Ministers have warned that if looting continues, there is a risk areas could run out of basic food supplies soon - but have ruled out declaring a state of emergency.

. . .

More than 200 shopping malls had been looted by Monday afternoon, Bloomberg news agency quoted the chief executive officer of Business Leadership South Africa, Busisiwe Mavuso, as saying.

Several shopping centres in Soweto - South Africa's largest township which was once home to Nelson Mandela - have been completely ransacked, with ATMs broken into, restaurants, stores selling alcohol and clothing shops all left in tatters.

Soldiers working with the police managed to catch a few rioters; in total almost 800 have been arrested, but law enforcement remains heavily outnumbered, he reports.

In KwaZulu-Natal - where livestock has also been stolen - the unrest continues with ambulances coming under attack by rioters in some areas, South Africa's TimesLive news site reports.

Video footage shows that a blood bank was looted in Durban as Mr Ramaphosa addressed the nation on Monday night.

. . .

Low income levels and unemployment - standing at a record high of 32.6% among the workforce and even higher at 46.3% among young people - are seen as the ticking bombs that have exploded.


There's more at the link.

There are many lessons to be learned from the current unrest in South Africa.  Kim du Toit, a fellow South African expatriate, addresses many of them in a blog post this morning.  Here's an excerpt.


The mayhem of the last 48 hours has wiped out our supply chain in KZN. Last week it was there, but today its gone. That complex web of transactions that moves goods across the landscape, like an army of ants on a single minded mission, each moving their package relentlessly throughout the colony of ants. Our network is now gone.

So as the day dawns I can reliably predict that we will rapidly start to encounter shortages of crucial goods like fuel for motor vehicles, food for hungry stomachs, medication for the sick, cash to grease the wheels of trade and spare parts to keep the machinery of commerce going.

ATMs are gone, so we will rapidly run out of cash. Grocery stores have been destroyed, so even if they can procure goods from the warehouses now burned to the ground, they will be unable to transact because the tills are gone and the point of payment card machines destroyed. The retail malls have been so destroyed that it will take months to rebuild them. More importantly, the Clicks and Diskem pharmacy chains that are the most efficient delivery vehicles for the national vaccine rollout, are simply no more.

I therefore predict an acute shortage of fuel, food and medication. These three things will hit almost everyone, and very soon.


More at the link, and highly recommended reading.  As Kim notes, "Anyone who thinks this can’t or won’t happen here is deluding himself ... think Minneapolis and Ferguson, times ten.  I see burned-out city centers, and rampant poverty and lawlessness therein."

There are many issues besides unemployment that have raised tensions in South Africa, but it's probably the biggest single problem confronting the country.  Inadequate education and a lack of resources and facilities - a problem going back generations - has meant that many of the country's youth are not only unemployed, but unemployable in a modern economy.  They're educated only sufficiently to perform manual labor, not for anything more demanding of skills and logical reasoning - and in a modern economy, there's only so much demand for manual labor.

Another issue coming to the fore during the rioting is widespread xenophobia.  Millions of people from other African countries and South-East Asia have migrated illegally to South Africa, because poor though its economy may be, it's light years ahead of most other African nations, and offers at least the prospect of earning enough to support a family.  However, South Africans - particularly those less educated, competing for a limited number of jobs - regard them as intruders, taking the bread out of the mouths of locals.  There have been riots in the past about this, and killings too.  I rather suspect that the current unrest will serve as cover for more of the same.

The fundamental problem remains that South Africa's economy is simply too small to accommodate massive population growth.  That was aggravated by an exodus of many qualified people, mostly white, who found themselves increasingly discriminated against following the end of apartheid in 1994.  Basically, anyone - of any race - who had the skills and education necessary to qualify for emigration to any nation offering better prospects has already taken advantage of that.  One can't blame them, of course.  (I didn't leave South Africa for economic or political reasons, but I certainly took advantage of the opportunity when it arose.  Quite frankly, it's probably the only reason I'm still alive.  The life-threatening pressures and tensions of the period 1976-1994, from the Soweto uprising to the first fully democratic elections, took their toll on me, and I'm sure contributed greatly to my heart condition.  Stress will do that to you.)

Widespread poverty, corruption and nepotism have led to the current unrest.  The Zuma controversy was merely "the last straw that broke the camel's back".  There's no solution in sight, and as long as the present government continues in office, I doubt one will be forthcoming.  If the ANC is voted out of office, the odds are very good that it'll be replaced by a far more radical, extremist party that will push the country into hard-line socialism, if not actual communism.  That may be the death knell for South Africa as we know it.

I'm sure there'll be some who claim that this would never have happened under a white government.  They're wrong, because they ignore demographics.  Rule by a racial minority that, as a proportion of the South African population, was becoming ever more of a minority with every passing year, was fundamentally unsustainable.  Demography is inexorable and relentless.  Its numbers don't lie.  Apartheid was a desperate attempt to deny the undeniable, to delay the inevitable - and, inevitably, it failed.  However, largely due to its failure to promote an overall South African national identity and properly educate its people as a whole, apartheid must bear its fair share of the blame for the mess in which South Africa finds itself at present.  It's not solely responsible, but it's right up there with other factors.

Of course, there are those who'll have different views to mine.  In the interests of fairness and a broader perspective, see this video interview yesterday between Lauren Southern (whom I regard as a white nationalist extremist) and Ian Cameron, a firearms and personal defense advocate in South Africa.  I agree with some, but by no means all, of what Mr. Cameron has to say.  There are many who'd be more on his side than mine.




Peter


24 comments:

Toirdhealbheach Beucail said...

Thanks BRM. I read the article. It was very sobering. Seeing how things play out over the next few weeks feels a bit like stepping into a time machine, looking to the future.

kirkster said...

Imagine deposing an unjust government run by Europeans, just to become an unjust government run by Africans. And yes the cities here are on the verge of becoming burned out husks as well. the veneer of civilization is very thin, and getting thinner all the time. It starts with the DAs that won’t enforce the laws, and ends with things like the watts riots. Baltimore got off light last time but I can see it happening again soon.

No one is coming…. It’s going to be up to us…

McChuck said...

The USA has descended from 80% white to 60% white in my lifetime. The majority of children are now non-white.

As our host says, demography is destiny. We need to do something about this problem now, before it really is too late for the American people to survive, much less win.

McChuck said...

Stupid autocorrupt. 90% white when I was young and America was a much better place to live.

JaimeInTexas said...

From twatter ...

Posted about this earlier, but really need to see it for the reality to sink in. trucks forced to dump thousands of liters of milk because the depots who are supposed to take them are all burned/damaged/unmanned. Electric plants & factories are burning, & a famine is imminent

https://twitter.com/FaeceSocietatis/status/1415392972779163650

Magson said...

The "Geography Now" channel recently did their episode for South Africa. Some of the crap happening there was mentioned, but largely glossed over. I wonder if they'd have done the same if they were making the episode now with the new goings-on there?

Here's the episode if anyone cares to see it. It's focused more on the geography of the place, but not completely -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP6G2wDrUUU

7916 said...

Lets note a couple of things: We agree that demographics is destiny. Immigration is invasion and destruction. When the Boers failed to rely on their own people for manual labor their destruction was written into the fabric of SA.

On education, please reference the educational experience of Africans in America. Far more resources have been expended here than the entire economic output of SA per year. This behavior still occurs here in America, regardless, because you cannot turn an African into a European or Chinese, no matter how much you pour into education or attempts to create a middle class.

As hour host is fond of referencing, this is Africa. It will always be Africa. Complex supply chains that require long term planning and investment are not of Africa. They exist only because of the Europeans and Chinese, and will die without them.

My prediction is this will descend into a tribal bloodbath. SA's European population will evac and coalesce, as will the other ethnic groups, in their own homogeneous areas.

Ray - SoCal said...

Thanks Peter for the post, very informative.

Words missing in the blog post are Tribalism and Marxism. Those same issues seem to have created huge problems in other African Countries, that have had a devastating impact. Peter does mention it could go hard-line socialism in SA, if not communism. From what I have read, the ANC while fighting against Apartheid, was heavily communist in ideology.

I found the Laura Southern interview very well done, and not in the least part racist in anyway. I don't see it as being a different view point at all from the other places Peter linked too. I did find the comments by Ian Cameron a bit more down to earth, and I did not see a political bias. His view is both the ANC and EFF have failed.

I am surprised at the low amount of "legal" gun ownership in SA. 2 Million out of 60 Million.

The comment in the interview by Ian Cameron of SA being a failed state, and the huge amount of corruption is what created the problem. The other blog post by Kim quoted law enforcement not having enough bullets, with the reason being hinted at being corruption.

And the only state not having issues, is the one ruled by the opposition.

5stonegames said...

Multiculturalism and Civic Nationalism are stupid just as much as Apartheid was

SA is the perfect object lesson.

5stonegames said...

Minecraft Chuck.

Its a bit different. Our Black population is 13%. Its Latinos that make up the rest.

We'll just end up as Latin America if we don't have a civil war soon which we probably will.

Sean D Sorrentino said...

"Video footage shows that a blood bank was looted in Durban"

Who the hell loots a blood bank? Does SA have vampire looters? Is Lance Armstrong staging a comeback but is just going to use blood packing instead of EPO?

Just when you thought things couldn't get any weirder, they get weirder.

boron said...

from an outside point of view:
it appears that Xi Jinping will be only too happy to jump in and help

Trailer For Sale Or Rent said...

Slightly off-topic, but I've noticed that recent black immigrants from Africa tend to have jobs, and want nothing to do with American blacks.

Randomatos said...

Why the shade cast at Lauren Southern? Her work with Stefan Molyneux in S.A. on Farm Murders was very interesting and not even remotely racist.

Jimmy the Saint said...

Enjoy the war, the peace will be terrible.

1st1shot said...

I agree.

Mad celt said...

Never fear. Congress here will send them a trillion bucks.

Maniac said...

Boron brings up a good point. The incoming Chinese colonizers will make the "Dutch occupiers" look like Mother Teresa in comparison.

Unknown said...

You are truly a hypocrite. The Afrikaans did it all not us English. You enjoyed all the benefitsd, and now say how awful it was.

It is hard to make a rocket scientist out of a 70 IQ native. That is reality not bigotry

McChuck said...

Distinction without a difference. Immigration is war. Replacement is genocide. Not us is still not us, be they Latino, Chinese, Indian, or African.

pyrrhus said...

SA can't escape the genetics of subSaharan blacks..on the average, they have an IQ of 70, have poor impulse control, lack any interest in long term planning, and are extremely violent, as has been seen everywhere in the world with a substantial population of them. But they will not take over America, because hispanics and other minorities won't tolerate their violence or anti-socisl tendencies

Tschifty Mccoy said...

Call me naive or blind but I continue to believe that in America we can break the evils of tribalism. What I saw in Trump's 2020 convention, beyond the stage managing and salesmanship, was an appeal to all races, all tribes, all classes to identify first as American patriots around core values of God, family, country. Ironically, the gangsters in power now may force slot of people to recognize that the race baiting and tribal politics is the path to hell. We still have a chance to forge a true American identity that has nothing to do with race or tribes.

matism said...

Wakanda, baby!!! Fourth world culture gonna fourth world culture.

Aesop said...

@Mad celt,

Yes, Congress will.
But it will be as a single $1T bill, and it won't cover a single order of chicken and waffles at Roscoe's.