When people vote for politicians based on moral appeals instead of practical qualifications, corruption is much more likely; politicians don't have to do a good job, they just have to appear to be on the "good" side.
Even the article notes that the first 15 years of ANC rule saw significant development, as does HDI data [0].
The issue was that Jacob Zuma essentially destroyed RSA thanks to his corruption. And the only reason he became President was because he headed the ANC's intelligence department from the 70s to the 90s, and as such had dirt on everyone.
The performance of the ANC has always been poor in South Africa. The party engaged in widespread AIDS denialism and dramatically cut investment as it attempted to help poor black africans through a variety of mostly poorly run schemes. Corruption was always present and connections with the ANC became essential in south africa. Today's troubles are the result of decisions made years ago.
Economic growth =/= Development btw
I'd say that there is not a _viable_ alternative party, due to fragmentation.
The DA has good representation in the Western Cape:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in...
Luckily for SA, in the reality of a declining west, they will probably get Chinese assistance instead of being isolated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921%E2%80%9...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_famine_of_1931%E2%80%93...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1946%E2%80%93...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%931985_famine_in_Et...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine
The deadliest famine in human history, the Great Chinese Famine, was caused by Communist policies.
Intellectually dishonest to ignore the ~10 year blockade carried out by western countries.
The reality is it's just one of 100s of centrally created false western narratives you may have fallen for.
If you are in the US, I cant completely blame you. There are too many drug dealing and human trafficking family fortunes in the US ruling class for the truth about one of their largest crime spree victims to easily emerge. African history is another victim of similar fraud.
Communist policies caused the Great Chinese Famine. And many other man-made famines.
No, you're not. You're a denialist and Communist apologist.
Is this really SA's problem, or rather classical tribalism? "A bastard, but our bastard."
(See also: Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq etc. Not just an African phenomenon.)
E.g. here in Lithuania we had a presidential candidate who is a women. I heard too many people advocating for her based on her gender. I heard some people going as far as saying that all women shall vote for her. Should all men vote for another candidate who happened to be man? Never got an answer :/
Eventually the lady lost. Some people cried that she lost because she is woman. Sexism and all that jazz. But we had woman president for previous 2 periods. Once elected in 1st round with 50%+ vote right off the bat. And we had first woman PM in early 90s. But yeah, it’s just sexism and not coming from a very polarizing party. With a baggage of being finance minister during 08 crisis.
You could make the argument that it was always going to be a problem and the colonizers didn't materially affect the course of history.
What you can't do is argue they didn't intentionally take advantage of this split for their own purposes. Because they did and it's documented history.
edit to add:
Here's a pro-apartheid Quora answer that suggests the separation of the different tribes was necessary to stop communists from stealing South Africa's mineral wealth.
> Apartheid gave these tribes their land back. Apartheid gave each tribe his independence from White Rule. Yes you lived ‘apart’ from the whites. But you lived apart in your own country. You could choose your own leaders and government and destiny.
> Communism was one of the driving forces to push the Black Independence program. The communists were using the blacks to try out vote the whites so that they could get control of of SAs mineral resources. By dividing SA into several smaller countries you effectively defeated the Communist plan.
Transkei & Ciskei: Xhosa
Bophuthatswana: Tswana (it's even in the name!)
Venda: Venda (ditto)
Kwazulu: Zulu (seeing the trend here?)
The Apartheid government was heavily involved in pitting tribes against each other, and especially in trying to co-opt Zulus against the others by allying with the Inkhata Freedom Party and Zulu king and offering them money, power, and other incentives.
don't forget the reason people voted for the nazis in Germany was not because they believed in their values but because they seemed competent to change things to the better, while all established parties seemed to not be able to do so
this (in a roundabout way) then put them in a position where they could size the remaining power by force transition into the power which would later start WW2
And it's not just back then. For example today many "right wing" forces in Europe use that arguments too telling people about how they (supposedly) can fix all the issues if you just stop nitpicking about "enter moral/ethic discussion here" and it just because the other parties blocking them for "insert slang for someone overdoing ethical correctness" reasons. Sure all a lie and most thing they propose tend to fall into the category of "looks like it could work until you understand market dynamics a bit better" and similar but people still get tricked.
Just to be clear in some parts of the world there seems to be an issue with political correctness and over policing(A) opinions but this is not a reason to stop putting ethical reasons into the selection of you vote, because AFIK the moment people stop that thing will get way worse.
(A) Like from outside of the US the US seems to suffer from it, but then when looking at inner US news closer I'm not sure if it's an actual issue or just people highlighting the exceptional case instead of the norm and starkly over exaggerating problems.
But, AFAICT, they also run on a lot of resentment in the society, from the loss in WWI, crippling sanctions, huge inflation, and the truly incompetent Weimar Republic government. The Nazi found a bunch of enemies: predatory Jewish capitalists, the evil Brits, the insidious Communists.
A common enemy always helps solidarity, and some fire sales and confiscations resulting from the flight or arrests of better-off Jewish entrepreneurs helped the bottom line, too. On top of that, Nazi offered grandeur: some ritualistic cultural revival, "ancient roots", racial supremacy over basically everyone, and increasing military might. This was raising the spirits, even if it was not improving the living conditions.
And winning the hearts of the population is utterly important for staying in power, usually more important than filling their bellies.
Then the president essentially challenges the 37% of the vote party to form a government, then dies (ok - THIS one was not the Nazi's doing), and appoints, on his deathbed (against regulations) NOT the vice president, but the leader of the party that managed to vote his government out of office twice. Frankly, he did this out of desperation (well, probably, we don't know).
So no, Hitler got to power through ... uh ... "agressive political maneuvering" (with a lot of violence and killing on the side). NOT through elections. He was never elected. Never even managed to falsify an election.
they didn't win the 1932 election and only got 36.77%.
but you can't at all compare it with "US party receving 37%" because it was a fundamental different system. And 37% with a turnout of 86.21% ((first round), 83.45% (second round)) is not low, that is percentage of population wise more votes for Hiter then for Trump in 2016 and slightly less then for Biden in 2020...
This might not have given them direct legal power (they still didn't won the presidential elections), but a lot of implicit influence.
At that point in time the congress of the Weimar Republic was already dysfunctional (actually, not just people complaining it is). And a major reason why Paul von Hindenburg did win the presidential election was due to some groups being seriously worried about Hitler winning.
Important is that P. Hindeburg was not part of any party and many hoped that he would find a way to fix the Weimar Republic.
After this failed, he did hand the power to Hiter on his death bad, yes. But that it was "against regulations" kinda wasn't that relevant as the whole political system was collapsing anyway. What mattered a lot was that Hiter had a quite high number of votes in the 1932 election and support for him had only grown since then, so handing the power to anyone else would likely have even further destabilized the political system potentially leading to a very devastating outcome for Germany. He knew Hitler was dangerous through as far as I understood he did expect other forces to be able to constrain Hitler more and Hitler not going anywhere as far as he did in the end.
Anyway I did oversimplify things to a degree where you could say they where not right. BUT the core idea still stands without so many people voting for Hiter in 1932 he likely would never have been able to take over the power and a good reason why he got so many votes wasn't because people celebrated him hating Jews but because the promises for a better future he made.
> He was never elected. Never even managed to falsify an election.
He didn't really need to.
In 1933 the NSDAP (his party) won (in not so democratic elections) the congress elections, they didn't had an absolute majority but by teaming up with the KSWR they still won which removed any remaining barriers for transitioning the Weimar Republic into a dictatorship and in turn removing any need for falsifying elections outside of PR reasons. (KSWR = mixed party union of conservatives, nationalist, emperor-monarchists and more which had quite a big overlap with the NSDAP and was also promised quite a bit of money).
that wasn't my point, I was speaking about them promising things, not delivering
my point was if you completly remove ethical considerations from your voting process (and many people do so) then sooner or later you have some really bad people in power
More often than not, it turns out these conservatives aren't only more corrupt but actually less competent than their liberal counterparts. Their "successful" past careers mean little when they are built upon backstage deals and friends taking care of friends.