Comment by greggoB | Hacker News Reader

Comment by greggoB | Hacker News Reader

Loving how many responding here don't seem to actually realise the socio-economic situation in South Africa is vastly different to that in the US/Europe, and so immediately start making false equivalencies.

As a white male from South Africa, I can assure you this wouldn't have been my reality were I still living there. Black people make up approx 80% of the population, and this would disproportionally be theirs. Reasons date back to the Apartheid regime, which deliberately kept non-whites uneducated, as well as some horrendous mismanagement under the current ANC governnment under then-president Jacob Zuma (who himself serious under-valued education in general).

Just as one example: there was a famous incident where, due to some corrupt dealings, textbooks weren't able to be delivered in Limpopo (one of the provinces) for several years in a row. For many years there have been schools with 0% high school graduation rates. The infrastructure and processes that are taken for granted in developed countries are only really available to a minority in SA. This makes a huge difference.

I’ve never lived in South Africa, but I have two South African parents and have visited the country several times, and can confirm that the parent comment is exactly correct. SA can come as a shock if you’re not expecting it: even just driving from Cape Town airport to the central city, the view abruptly switches from tin shacks as far as the eye can see, to houses (which in comparison are mansions) surrounded by barbed wire and electric fences. And it’s the same no matter where you travel. And this is in one of the more affluent and safe cities in SA — ‘safe’ as in, you’re not actually risking your life if you walk on the street in one of the more touristy areas. Definitely an amazing country to visit, but the inequality is utterly extreme.

EDIT: Here’s an example of what I mean. [0] is a Google Street View of a bridge near Cape Town International Airport. On the one side: tin shacks. On the other side: a golf course, behind middle-class (I think) housing.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.9675053,18.5735234,3a,60y,2...

To other readers: Not necessary to travel to SA to confirm truth of this description. A few minutes “driving” the roads with Google Street View will suffice.

Every day millions of South Africans walk in the street and don’t die. The touristy areas are safer than elsewhere. There isn’t just random non stop killing in the streets.

The intentional homicide rate is 7x USA’s.. Which is 7x my country’s (52x).

Sounds dangerous.

By this stupid statement, if 1% of the population was killed every day, you could still say it is safe for a while.

Safe doesn’t just mean “not killed”. There are many kinds of victimization.

By your logic if 0.000000001% of the population was killed while going for walks each day you could say going for a walk was literally risking your life.

Obviously these things operate on a scale and I’m not saying that there is zero risk. I was addressing your hyperbolic binary view of things. Saying that going for a walk in South Africa is risking your life is complete nonsense.

Source: I’ve lived in Johannesburg (most “dangerous” city in SA) for 30 years and have been an avid walker for most of these. In fact I “risked my life” for an hour just this afternoon, it was lovely.

Thank you for your candor! The socio-economic inequality in South Africa is staggering and its a powder-keg that's just waiting to be set off. Additionally, there is a wide chasm between black and white youth unemployment - I believe only 6% of white youths are unemployed.

I think blaming Zuma alone for mismanagement is not entirely accurate: none of the successive governments prioritised eliminating inequality - not the Apartheid government (obviously), but also not Mandela, Mbeki, Zuma or Ramaphosa. The economy is reliant on the exploitation of cheap labour, but this will have to change if the political will is there. BEE (affirmative action) had the right idea, but the execution was not great as it was riddled with corruption. It did help with the creation of a growing black middle class, but the floor wasn't raised.

There is a lot of corruption, but much could have been done to improve the education in under-resourced areas - a lot of rural and township schools do not provide high school science subjects because they do not have labs or lab equipment, not to mention teachers.

The spectre of Bantu Education will haunt non-metropolitan schools for a long time to come. "Bantu Education" was a lower-quality education black people had to endure under Apartheid - just enough to prepare one for non-skilled factory or mine work. A large number of present-day black teachers studied under Bantu Education, or if they are young, were taught by teachers who qualified under bantu education. It's a mess.

> BEE (affirmative action) had the right idea, but the execution was not great as it was riddled with corruption.

Not surprising. Affirmative action and other “right ideas” like this can only result in corruption and racial tensions. Straightforward help to the poor is more useful, but unfortunately it is less politically popular and harder to exploit for corruption.

> Affirmative action and other “right ideas” like this can only result in corruption and racial tensions.

This is a no-win scenario: Apartheid was affirmative action for a minority, it resulted in corruption and racial tensions, to put it lightly. There was a government-mandated floor on how poor white people could be - for instance, the starting position for white people in factories and mines were supervisor-/manager-level, regardless of their skill or education. It was verboten for a black person to have a white report.

Apartheid lasted for most of the 20th century, at at the end of the day, you have 2 options, both 'unfair': maintain the status quo or try to make things more equitable. Which would you have chosen?

> The infrastructure and processes that are taken for granted in developed countries are only really available to a minority in SA.

A very small minority. The middle classes don't have access to reliable power, water, government bureaucracy (mail, taxes, passports), law enforcement, etc. South Africa is failing all its people.

My understanding is a small minority own all the land, this is the kind of stupid anemic growth China would've experienced without Mao's land reforms.

Protip: Never the let criminal class keep/hold the majority of the land.

South Africa needs land expropriation without compensation, immediately.

In the West, our experience is the West. So we often make the mistake of assuming similar systems, even similar beliefs, when we speak about other areas of the world. Forums like this are useful precisely because there is an ability to have knowledgeable people chime in to help us set a more realistic context for discussion.

>schools with 0% high school graduation rates.

If I were a parent I'd be passing out pirated text books at that point.

Agree completely, but I can tell you for many of them pirating a text book is beyond their means. To do so you need not only internet access, but the sophistication to find pirated text books, and THEN the means to print possibly hundreds of pages. There is a big difference between poverty in the West and in a place like South Africa. Just printing the text book would be prohibitively expensive.

Source: am South African.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com