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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32937 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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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...

“Our murder rate is higher than the death rate in Ukraine’s current conflict,” he wrote.

From the news.com article. I'm astonished by this, if it's true. But it could be true.

Another article says "There were over 7,000 murders committed in South Africa from 1 July to September 2022."

Now I imagine the South African police aren't the most capable or reliable source of statistics, so maybe we pump that up to 10,000? Higher? Annualized that would be 40,000 deaths per year in a country of 60 million.

Nobody knows how many people have died in Ukraine. I highly doubt the estimates conveniently listed on wikipedia are accurate. Anyway, the UK says 40-60,000 Russians dead and presumably a similar number of Ukrainians plus 9,000 civilians. The number of dead Ukrainians is a guess even amongst this dodgy guesstimate arithmetic. So let's say 110,000+ have died in the war. But that's from a population of 185 million or so, the total of Russia and Ukraine.

So I conclude that, from a certain point of view, South Africa in peacetime really could be more violent than a full-scale war in Europe. This is an intimidating level of dysfunction.

So I conclude that, from a certain point of view, South Africa in peacetime really could be more violent than a full-scale war in Europe. This is an intimidating level of dysfunction.

I always get ratio'd when I say this, but, well, that's what autism is for, to make me impervious to pro-Ukrainian social pressure.

To wit: have you considered perhaps that Ukraine is not embroiled in "full scale" war in Europe and is instead being subject to a limited and comparatively humane Special Military Operation? Y'know, like that one side keeps saying it is, but everyone just keeps disregarding in spite of mountains of circumstantial evidence (like this)?

Hell, I can't even get some interlocutors to stop calling it a "genocide" on the Ukrainian people much less agree that the attack is less than total war. Nothing is ever the middle version of anything, it's always maximally terrible.

"genocide" on the Ukrainian people

Russia is kidnapping Ukranian children and Russifying them. According to the 1948 Genocide convention, ratified by both Ukraine and Russia, such actions rise to the level of genocide:

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Russia is kidnapping Ukranian children and Russifying them.

There are barely any 'Ukrainian' children in the areas Russia has conquered so far.

These are mostly ethnic Russian areas.

How would we distinguish 'Russification' of Ukrainian children, from evacuation of Russian-speaking children from a warzone ?

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