The most frustrating thing about decline like this is that we aren’t even allowed to ask the questions that would set us on a path to figuring it out.
The Overton Window[0] is set in such a way to perfectly ensure that the decline continues.
The Overton Window[0] is set in such a way to perfectly ensure that the decline continues.
So, they won’t even approach a conversation trying to determine the actual causes of decline because they feel any possible explanation is going to be racism-adjacent.
It kept a vast part of the country outside of the education needed to work the jobs that produce the highest values (finance, business, etc).
So yeah the "observation" is correct, except the implication of it is not.
Sometimes when the house is on fire, you just get everybody out. Instead of 'waiting for the fire brigade' or 'somebody smarter than you needs to make that decision'.
I'd hate to be that generation of young people condemned to a violently racist system because, it was going to be difficult for the rich to adjust.
And now, Joeburg is on fire and the fire department is no longer able to put out the fire because of incompetence and mismanagement.
Note that I imply nothing and the statement is a simple, albeit troubling, fact.
How do you propose that the discussion of decline in South Africa is framed so it doesn’t devolve into people screaming “that’s racist!!”?
Words have implications. This is one of those fallacious "but it's true" things, where it honestly becomes difficult to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt - i.e. that you think the phrase "South Africa was [insert anything positive] under Apartheid", by itself, has no possible implications.
Reframe the statement so some discussion on decline can proceed without triggering anyone.
It's incredibly easy to have a conversation about how to improve SA without taking needless diversions to support racist institutions. All you have to do is talk about potential solutions to current problems. That's it. That's all it takes.
Bringing up historical racist institutions is a good way to derail and shut down reasonable discussion.
Other African nations that didn't have Apartheid or similar institutions have similar economic and political results. And even the one sub Saharan nation that didn't experience colonization, Ethiopia, isn't screaming ahead of its neighbors economically or otherwise. Its GDP per capita is slightly ahead of Uganda's and fairly far below Kenya's.
Also what point are you trying to make here? You seem to be implying a common cause for these results. Care to explicitly state it?
Countries that have developed in the last 60 years tend to have strong authoritarian leaders and the favor and interest of Europe and the United States.
Ethopia does have natural resources but it doesn't have a strong central government, partly because the warring factions want control of the resources. Places like UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar had strong dictators before they developed the petroleum industry. African states that have oil tend to be too weak politically to resist outside interests taking the wealth by paying bribes and funding warring factions.
Just look how economically thriving Mozambique and Angola were, and what happened after they gained independence from Portugal.
South Africa is another example in that long list.
Hell, just look what happened with Libya and Iraq after their dictators, who subdued the masses but kept the peace, were disposed of respective being helped in their disposal by the US government.
Given my own experiences from travelling to 43 countries, the difference in drive, willingness to work, abilities or lack thereof / lazyness shown in daily life is certainly very visible between Africa and Asia, Europe, America.
The idea that everyone is a blank slate wrapped in different colors of skin seems quite reductive, if not insulting to the beauty of human diversity, given the real science behind genetics.
If you really want to make things better then you focus on the question "How do we make it better from where it is now?"
This is needlessly tribalistic. This is "not liked" by some people, because of the implications for which it is most often used as a stand-in. Even the right-wingers I know admit this dishonesty when they see it committed. In other words, they "don't like it". (I'm not accusing you of this particular dishonesty - I'm just criticizing your framing)
First of all, as an outsider, no, I don't know why it's happening. Secondly, the way it's carefully couched to avoid stating an actual reason, appealing to how they're "not allowed to say it", makes it sound like the real thing they want to say is something over-simplistic and extremely bigoted like "It's because of all the Blacks." So I'll leave my downvote, thank you.
Why is the town of Orania so beautiful, clean, and prosperous while the rest of South Africa is like this? You can watch videos of it on YouTube, it is very nice. Compare it with black towns or major cities in greater South Africa.
Orania is a “whites only” town of about 2500 people. They don’t abuse or extract resources from blacks, they just live separately.
This is the kind of dangerous question that GP is saying one is generally not allowed to ask.
The idea is usually that you can then use the downvotes as "evidence" of your correctness (of course, that's fallacious - downvotes can be for anything, and an antagonistic tone combined with portraying yourself as the underdog is one of the most prominent examples, regardless of the content of your post). And if you don't get downvoted - even better for your case! It's a cheap win-win for you.
because it's a tiny, self-selecting intentional community? i hate to feed the troll, but it's pretty obvious why a small, singular ideology-driven community might appear more "beautiful, clean, and prosperous" than a large metropolis
"The average wage in Orania was estimated at approximately R94,036 per annum in 2019, low by White South African standards. In 2016, CNN reported unemployment in Orania at 2%. In 2015, a visiting journalist estimated the poverty rate at 70–80%"
That seems to be similar:
"Annual household income for blacks stood at an average of 92,893 rand (about $7,000)"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-safrica-economy/black-sou...
Orania has 2066 people, and a third of them are children. That leaves 1363 adults. The official stats say there are only 609 people employed there, which means less than half of the adults work. Combined with making their own currency, elections, not having any real police force or public services, and the rest of SA basically leaving them alone, this all screams "racist white people with a lot of money who want to roleplay Fallout mixed with Atlas Shrugged".
How is that relevant when GP was saying that it's wealth that makes the difference, but the stats show equivalent wealth between the two groups we were talking about: Oranians and black South Africans.
The point is that by the data, these two groups aren't wealthy, there's nothing to suggest that Oranians have "a lot of money", and thus GP's assertion is incorrect and was just a random claim not backed by the data.
Rhodesia never had any racial requirements for voting/representation, at least not until the British insisted on special representitives being created for the black population as a condition of independence (source: Ian Smith's memoirs). They had educational and income requirements in order to vote, and were actively building more schools in majority black areas in order to increase the ability of black citizens to vote (and to have a better education/life in general).
The left often doesn’t want to critique ideas because they conflate that with cultural bigotry, especially if the ideas are linked to things like religions. The right doesn’t like the ideas explanation because they believe in biological determinism and think it must be race.
Find an image of North and South Korea from space. Those people are genetically almost identical. What’s the difference? Ideas.
Why did Europe suddenly become the worlds powerhouse right after the enlightenment when before it was poorer than many places in Asia and the Middle East? The ideas changed.
Have the dominant ideas and mentalities in South Africa changed? How? That’s the question I would ask.
I'm assuming (and hoping) you mean culturally identical because all humans are nearly genetically identical.
>Those people are genetically almost identical. What’s the difference? Ideas.
And trade sanctions, and the support of super powers.
>Why did Europe suddenly become the worlds powerhouse right after the enlightenment when before it was poorer than many places in Asia and the Middle East? The ideas changed.
I guess it was a 'change in ideas', it also might have had to do with colonization of the practice of exploiting poorer countries and repatriating their wealth.
I agree with the other poster: what, exactly, is your point? I agree that the Overton Window is probably stifling some crucial conversations here, but your comment, as is, leaves open many racist implications.
The Ciskei experiment: a libertarian fantasy in apartheid South Africa
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/mar/23/the-ciskei-expe...
> In the 1980s, South African libertarians set up a deregulated zone that they sold to the world as ‘Africa’s Switzerland’. It was a sham, but with its clusters of sweatshops, it was very modern – and in some ways it anticipated the world we live in today