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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31925 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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Mandela Goes From Hero to Scapegoat as South Africa Struggles

10 years after his death, attitudes have changed. The party Mr. Mandela led after his release from prison, the African National Congress, is in serious danger of losing its outright majority for the first time since he became president in 1994 in the first free election after the fall of apartheid. Corruption, ineptitude and elitism have tarnished the A.N.C... Faith in the future is collapsing. Seventy percent of South Africans said in 2021 that the country is going in the wrong direction, up from 49 percent in 2010, according to the latest survey published by the country’s Human Sciences Research Council. Only 26 percent said they trusted the government, a huge decline from 2005, when it was 64 percent... The unemployment rate is 46 percent among South Africans aged 15 to 34. Millions more are underemployed, like Mr. Thebe. He studied computer science at the university level, never receiving a degree. The best job he said he could find was selling funeral policies to the staff of the court.

While Mr. Mandela is still lionized around the world, many South Africans, especially young people, believe that he did not do enough to create structural changes that would lift the fortunes of the country’s Black majority. White South Africans still hold a disproportionate share of the nation’s land, and earn three and a half times more than Black people. Mr. Vawda, 17, belongs to a generation that knows Mr. Mandela only as a historical figure in textbooks and films. To him, Mr. Mandela’s fight to end apartheid was admirable. But the huge economic gap between Black and white South Africans will be on his mind when he votes for the first time next year, he said. "He didn’t revolt against white people,” Mr. Vawda said. “I would have taken revenge.”

the truth and reconciliation commission led by mandela chose to pardon many perpetrators of crimes related to apartheid, such as the murderers of amy biehl, an anti-apartheid activist, in order to encourage, well, truth and reconciliation. young south africaners have identified that mandela and his friends didn't go far enough with their silly restorative justice ways - perhaps a nuremberg would have been more appropriate. if you were willing to necklace traitors of your own race, why not the enemy?

What sort of political options on the ground do radicalized youth like Mr Vawda have?

The almost openly genocidal EFF?

And I believe the ruling party, the ANC is also closer to that now than is good?

Closer, yes, but they seem to understand that actually oppressing the whites will be detrimental to their Swiss bank accounts and Vancouver apartments.

I don't know honestly how they're on genocidal rhetoric. Probably far less than Malema, otherwise he'd not be the radical.

All I gathered from the news is ANC is okay with massive corruption, has an almost seamless connection with organised crime and has a policy of moving squatters into voting precincts where they'd like more votes.

It's been losing support gradually though.

They've been losing support but they are seen as too conciliatory towards whites. The guy who leads ANC is one of the richest black elites in the country. EFF will turbocharge South Africa's descent into Zimbabwe. However, I ultimately think it won't be allowed to happen since even Western countries put pressure on ANC to tamp down the flirtation with overt black racism.

Pompeo even publicly warned SA over "appropriation without compensation" of white wealth that was making the rounds within ANC circles. The Biden admin doesn't seem to mollycoddle them either. SA has an important position for the world's mineral markets, which is why I suspect there will be far greater pressure to maintain the status quo compared to what we saw in Zimbabwe.

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