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Notes -
Have we had a discussion on South Africa yet?
Recently, Andre de Ruyter, the now-ex CEO of the state owned power provider ESKOM, did an interview that basically said the corruption and everything was so bad that he and ESKOM cannot do their jobs properly. He himself was a target of assassination (cyanide pill in his coffee or something?), and after the interview has been removed from his post (he put in his resignation before the interview). He has since left the country.
There are many reports that the grid can totally collapse soon, despite the "load shedding" that they have been doing. Apparently this may lead to civil war?
Unemployment is apparently 35%, clean water access and supply is apparently unstable. Crime is apparently extremely high. If you go on /r/southAfrica, there are frequent discussions of home invasion and other crimes (70 carjackings a day, 2500 home invasions a day...). One post I saw last week was a question asking "Dogs been poisoned, both dead. Typically how many days before robbery hit?"
See this recent thread for more issues: https://twitter.com/k9_reaper/status/1630436052723720193
Some blame this all on the ruling ANC party, on their policies like BBBEE (from a few years ago: https://www.revolver.news/2021/07/south-africa-riots-looting-critical-race-theory/).
In general, SA's situation is not looking good...
"Truth and Reconciliation" was the darling of progressive legal academics the world over back in the 1990s. I had one colleague who made it the center of a course he taught on "restorative" justice. He's been dead for a while now, so I'll never know what he would have to say about all this, but my impression generally is that academics are most comfortable absolutely ignoring the reality of what is happening in South Africa and continuing to blame colonialism for everything. The fact that they were dead wrong about "Truth and Reconciliation," and it failed, will not be taken as a lesson of any kind.
It was also sufficiently large in the American public psyche to inspire a professional wrestling faction called the Truth Commission, though it's perhaps indicative that the wrestling scriptwriters seemed to have no idea what a Truth and Reconciliation Committee was:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_Commission
A lot of folks in SA weren't sure either...
If memory serves, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg even gave an interview in her twilight years where she praised the South African constitution as superior to the US one. So South Africa was the poster child of global liberalism for the older generation. Having it fail in such a public way is of course embarrassing. Though I suspect the usual excuses of "legacy of Apartheid" will be trotted out in perpetuity and no introspection will be allowed for fear of being called racist.
It reminds me of a comment I’ve heard about Spain, where the left just blames the dictatorship for every problem that happens even if it is their own fault.
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