International Is South Africa coming undone?


Hey @PrinceOfPain , what do you think of Serpentza's take on the situation?
He says some interesting things about deep racial hatred and compares with how non racist the US is . Says China is more overtly rascist than SA.


China is so racist when my family had a stop over in a Chinese airport they were refused service for being non Chinese. My sister loves pork buns and kept pointing to them but they all just rudely refused her.
 
I had a dear friend in Paarl.

I can't reach her.

How are things around there?

The Western Cape is more or less untouched by this. She should be fine.

Why such a hate for indians there? I get the whites, but never heard about the indians before

A) Indians got easier treatment under apartheid - there's been a touch of resentment over that for years;
B) Indians also have a very strong mercantile culture - they end up owning a lot of businesses and running a lot of things. So, as @ElKarlo parallleled earlier, they are seen similarly to how Jews were in old Europe (the Chinese carry a similar stigma, and I'm waiting to see that one play out more fully);
C) The Guptas, an Indian crime family, robbed the country blind, playing the catalyst to the last decade or so of economic decline.; and,
D) Finally, KwaZulu-Natal is essentially the home province for both Zulus and Indians.
 
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The Western Cape is more or less untouched by this. She should be fine.



A) Indians got easier treatment under apartheid - there's been a touch of resentment over that for years;
B) Indians also have a very strong mercantile culture - they end up owning a lot of businesses and running a lot of things. So, as @ElKarlo parallleled earlier, they are seen similarly to how Jews were in old Europe;
C) The Guptas, an Indian crime family, robbed the country blind, playing the catalyst to the last decade or so of economic decline.; and,
D) Finally, KwaZulu-Natal is essentially the home province for both Zulus and Indians.

Thank you.
 
Thanks for the run down @PrinceOfPain it’s hard to stay on top of all this. Didn’t realize that the Guptas were a crime family

Well, from the SA perspective, they're a crime family.
But they're a big family, and I see the name "Gupta" all over the place. So, I might be being too liberal with that description.
 
China is so racist when my family had a stop over in a Chinese airport they were refused service for being non Chinese. My sister loves pork buns and kept pointing to them but they all just rudely refused her.
Probably there was a political incident rather than outright racism, it’s a thing that happens in China. State media will amplify an incident and suddenly the Chinese people will hate X nationality for a month or so.
 
China is so racist when my family had a stop over in a Chinese airport they were refused service for being non Chinese. My sister loves pork buns and kept pointing to them but they all just rudely refused her.
Are they rude towards whites? Thought they worshipped them over there
 

Hey @PrinceOfPain , what do you think of Serpentza's take on the situation?
He says some interesting things about deep racial hatred and compares with how non racist the US is . Says China is more overtly rascist than SA.


Hey man. I had this playing in the background yesterday.
I think some of the key points I'd comment on in response are:
  • He's right that this is not the country for anyone wanting to raise a family. I can talk all I want about loving my country, but the reality is that if a South African is starting a family and he/she has the option not to do it here, then it would be madness to raise that family here. Seriously, go almost anywhere else in the world that isn't an active warzone (even some warzones might be a better idea to let your kids play in).
    The country needs all the good people it can get, but this is not a place for children.

  • South Africa very much has a culture of lawlessness. In many cases, it pays to break the laws because the laws are near-unenforced, they're unreasonable, or the system is too corrupt to be worth dealing with. This is true at all levels and in all facets of society.
    For example, if someone breaks into my house, it is never Plan A to get the cops involved at all; I will only deal with the cops if the neighbours call them in response to the sound of gunfire. Otherwise, I would prefer to resolve the situation myself. When you see those South Africans lining up in the streets and gunning down rioters, that's not because it's legal to do that. It's because the state can't handle shit - so it falls to the South African citizen to sort his own shit out, and sometimes that gets ugly.
    Likewise, in response to the looting, the government quickly passed a law banning the sale of petrol in any hand-held container - but that's a law that will have to be broken, because the government also can't keep the lights on, so people have to buy petrol for their generators.
    Another example are e-tolls: a digital road-use taxing system that tracks your use of the roads with these blue-light doohickeys they built over the highways. I don't think I know anyone at all who has ever paid their e-tolls. It's just an additional stupid tax in a country on the verge of a tax revolt.
    The taxi associations are incredibly socially and politically influential - yet, huge swathes of their vehicles are not legally roadworthy, like half their drivers are murderers and rapists, and rules of the road are barely even suggestions to them.
    When they banned alcohol and cigarettes for the lockdowns last year, basically everyone still had access via the black market - that's how prolific that black market is, and how ingrained it is into every socioeconomic level of society.
    In the old SA, whites broke the law in order to hire black labour. In the new SA, almost all businesses lie to circumvent or abuse Black Economic Empowerment policies.

    These might seem like odd, unconnected examples, and I know that everyone in the world is a casual law-breaker to one extent or another. But I'm just trying to illustrate that in South Africa, whether you're a maid or a CEO, if you are not consciously breaking the law, you're probably losing at life. The further we get from 1994, the more the law becomes a set of guidelines rather than hard-and-fast rules.

  • Americans are whiny little bitches when it comes to racism. Seriously. It's actually fucking enraging to see these entitled leftist brats with their god-damn BLM placards and their "microaggressions" harping on about "muh systemic racisms". They were lucky enough to be born into an amazing country, with no real worries at all, and what is probably history's best diversity-to-racism ratio, and they seem determined to ruin it because they're so desperate to feel like some sorts of noble victims or virtue signalers while vilifying half the people they share the country with. And in so doing, they're actually the ones introducing real racism.
    There are a lot of things about America that annoy me and yes, the country definitely has a relatively complex race history - but they should all be incredibly proud of how their country has handled that, continues to overcome it, and has set itself apart as one of history's most incredible achievements.

    I can almost guarantee that I have personally been the target of more genuine and dangerous racism than probably 99% of living African Americans - who are among the most privileged people in the world.
Something that I do want to comment on as well, is when he discusses optimistic South Africans as being like beaten wives, desperately looking for a reason to hope. He's partially right, but there is more context to even that.
So, for example, I am an English-speaking, British-Boer but British-raised South African from an upper-middle class background. That means that I was raised in a very liberal environment, largely insulated from the country's uglier side for a very long time. My life took a couple of messy twists that kept me from being particularly sheltered, but the reality is that a lot of (predominantly English-speaking white, but also a number from other groups) South Africans are legitimately blind to their own country because they still live in a version of Europe-light cloistered within the country. They probably aren't dealing with any food shortages and they rarely face crime. They're not optimistic about the country because they're refusing to face up to its reality, they're optimistic about the country because they rarely ever see it. These riots probably came as a great surprise to them. Sheltered millennials are not exclusively a Western thing.
 
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When they talk about corruption in SA politics, they are largely referring to the Guptas.

This isn't quite true.
The Guptas have become a focal point for xenophobia and corruption, but problems with both predate them.
Usually, complaints about corruption in SA refer to BEE, in one form or another, and tenderpreneurism.
 
This isn't quite true.
The Guptas have become a focal point for xenophobia and corruption, but problems with both predate them.
Usually, complaints about corruption in SA refer to BEE, in one form or another, and tenderpreneurism.

I thought the Guptas were among the primary beneficiaries of the use of BEE to award "fraudulent" BEE certificates for inflated tenders?
I haven't read much on it since the whole series of reporting done on "state capture" in Foreign Affairs, the BBC etc.
 
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E6o3ybUXEAEsMpC


I don't know why, but this woman made me laugh so hard.
 
I thought the Guptas were among the primary beneficiaries of the use of BEE to award "fraudulent" BEE certificates for inflated tenders?

In the State capture trial/scandal, yes. But the Guptas only became a thing around 2015.

BEE has been leveraged for cadre deployments for ages, and we've been complaining about its susceptibility to corruption for years. In fact, it's actually now Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) instead of just Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), because the whole thing had to be updated when the latter proved to only benefit a small-handful of already well-connected black and white elites; the former hasn't yet proven to have fixed that.

I'm not saying you're wrong-wrong. Just overemphasising the Guptas themselves a little. The policies that enabled the Guptas are what we talk about when we talk about corruption. The Gutpas have just taken heightened infamy because this was the first time we could point at a specific thing and say, "Hah! That! That is what is wrong with the country."
 
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Hey man. I had this playing in the background yesterday.
I think some of the key points I'd comment on in response are:
  • He's right that this is not the country for anyone wanting to raise a family. I can talk all I want about loving my country, but the reality is that if a South African is starting a family and he/she has the option not to do it here, then it would be madness to raise that family here. Seriously, go almost anywhere else in the world that isn't an active warzone (even some warzones might be a better idea to let your kids play in).
    The country needs all the good people it can get, but this is not a place for children.

  • South Africa very much has a culture of lawlessness. In many cases, it pays to break the laws because the laws are near-unenforced, they're unreasonable, or the system is too corrupt to be worth dealing with. This is true at all levels and in all facets of society.
    For example, if someone breaks into my house, it is never Plan A to get the cops involved at all; I will only deal with the cops if the neighbours call them in response to the sound of gunfire. Otherwise, I would prefer to resolve the situation myself. When you see those South Africans lining up in the streets and gunning down rioters, that's not because it's legal to do that. It's because the state can't handle shit - so it falls to the South African citizen to sort his own shit out, and sometimes that gets ugly.
    Likewise, in response to the looting, the government quickly passed a law banning the sale of petrol in any hand-held container - but that's a law that will have to be broken, because the government also can't keep the lights on, so people have to buy petrol for their generators.
    Another example are e-tolls: a digital road-use taxing system that tracks your use of the roads with these blue-light doohickeys they built over the highways. I don't think I know anyone at all who has ever paid their e-tolls. It's just an additional stupid tax in a country on the verge of a tax revolt.
    The taxi associations are incredibly socially and politically influential - yet, huge swathes of their vehicles are not legally roadworthy, like half their drivers are murderers and rapists, and rules of the road are barely even suggestions to them.
    When they banned alcohol and cigarettes for the lockdowns last year, basically everyone still had access via the black market - that's how prolific that black market is, and how ingrained it is into every socioeconomic level of society.
    In the old SA, whites broke the law in order to hire black labour. In the new SA, almost all businesses lie to circumvent or abuse Black Economic Empowerment policies.

    These might seem like odd, unconnected examples, and I know that everyone in the world is a casual law-breaker to one extent or another. But I'm just trying to illustrate that in South Africa, whether you're a maid or a CEO, if you are not consciously breaking the law, you're probably losing at life. The further we get from 1994, the more the law becomes a set of guidelines rather than hard-and-fast rules.

  • Americans are whiny little bitches when it comes to racism. Seriously. It's actually fucking enraging to see these entitled leftist brats with their god-damn BLM placards and their "microaggressions" harping on about "muh systemic racisms". They were lucky enough to be born into an amazing country, with no real worries at all, and what is probably history's best diversity-to-racism ratio, and they seem determined to ruin it because they're so desperate to feel like some sorts of noble victims or virtue signalers while vilifying half the people they share the country with. And in so doing, they're actually the ones introducing real racism.
    There are a lot of things about America that annoy me and yes, the country definitely has a relatively complex race history - but they should all be incredibly proud of how their country has handled that, continues to overcome it, and has set itself apart as one of history's most incredible achievements.

    I can almost guarantee that I have personally been the target of more genuine and dangerous racism than probably 99% of living African Americans - who are among the most privileged people in the world.
Something that I do want to comment on as well, is when he discusses optimistic South Africans as being like beaten wives, desperately looking for a reason to hope. He's partially right, but there is more context to even that.
So, for example, I am an English-speaking, British-Boer but British-raised South African from an upper-middle class background. That means that I was raised in a very liberal environment, largely insulated from the country's uglier side for a very long time. My life took a couple of messy twists that kept me from being particularly sheltered, but the reality is that a lot of (predominantly English-speaking white, but also a number from other groups) South Africans are legitimately blind to their own country because they still live in a version of Europe-light cloistered within the country. They probably aren't dealing with any food shortages and they rarely face crime. They're not optimistic about the country because they're refusing to face up to its reality, they're optimistic about the country because they rarely ever see it. These riots probably came as a great surprise to them. Sheltered millennials are not exclusively a Western thing.

Can you give us examples of racism you have been rhe victim of?
 
Can you give us examples of racism you have been rhe victim of?

I may have overstated that a little :D It's not that bad.
I mean, especially when I was a lot younger, before I'd toughened up a bit, there were sometimes physical attacks. There was a bitch in primary school who scratched up my face something awful, for reasons that I really struggled to comprehend at the time. Another time I was cornered by a group of 6 in a public park, and beaten down pretty badly. Both occasions had overtly race-based motivations. And confrontations like that vary in degree. That sort of thing was worse when I was a lot younger, and integration was only starting.

I worked as a reporter for a while, and when attending protests or reporting in townships and such, I'd draw some racist vitriol from random strangers.

I've been referred to on a couple of occasions as a "waste of white skin" which, despite coming from Afrikaaners who were themselves white, I think still counts :D Also, English South Africans are sometimes called "souties" by Boers to indicate that we don't really belong here.

And sometimes, there aren't really examples; you just know that the colour of your skin or the lilt of your accent is liable to get your ass hurt if you say something stupid. But I think that's more or less the case everywhere.

The big one really is that, living in South Africa, I'm subject to pretty strict racial hiring quotas - if I'm looking for a job and I see the EE (employment equity) tag alongside the job, I know I can't get the job because I'm white. It literally does not matter how well-qualified I might be for that job, my hue will keep from it. And most jobs have that little EE next to them. Even if, by chance, the position isn't an Employment Equity position, I will still be out of luck if anyone of a different colour applies for the same job with the same or similar qualifications.
This is not like in America where "if my job application has a hood-sounding name, as popularised by the Wayans Brothers, people are less likely to hire me," this is "if too many white people work for a company, then the state and companies that work with the state, will not work with that company." You can see how that might be a problem in a very socialist country.
It's also an absolute morale killer.

Thankfully, racism's not been a huge part of my life - especially not in interpersonal interactions. The vast majority of my experiences with my countrymen have been positive ones, whatever colour the countryman in question happened to be. And generally, I can sit around with diverse group of people, all telling racist jokes and loving it, because sexist and racist jokes are the best jokes, and if we can't laugh at ourselves, what's the point?
I've always been able to find work, because small businesses have found workarounds for BEE, and now I've positioned myself so that my country's decidedly self-destructive policies have a somewhat less direct impact on me.
 
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News ReportsWorld
Updated: 13 July, 2021
Indians face racist abuse online, threatened with rape and massacre as violence breaks out in South Africa

Indians are facing racist abuse and social media platforms are being used to incite violence against Indians living in South Africa.


13 July, 2021
OpIndia Staff
3c1af442-62e1-4f13-b5b9-200b9f646a75.jpg

Image Credit: Rogan Ward/Reuters
1978
Troubling news has been coming from South Africa where violence has erupted following the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma on July 7. While looters and rioters are rampaging through the country, some of Indian origin and others who are White have come together to defend their properties through retaliation.

Consequently, Indians are facing racist abuse on social media platforms and the platforms are being used to further incite violence against Indians living in South Africa.

racism-indians-2.jpg

Source: Twitter
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Source: Twitter
racism-Indians-4.jpg

Source: Twitter
Indians are being accused of racism in order to justify racist attacks against them.

racism-indians-5.jpg

Source: Twitter
Indians who are defending themselves against rioters in the USA are being accused of inciting a civil war.

racism-Indians-6.jpg

Source: Twitter
Some are even justifying raping Indian women because Indians are ‘evil’.

racism-indians.jpg

Source: Twitter
Threats of rape and massacre are also being issued.

racism-indians-7.jpg

Source: Twitter
Violence is being incited against the White population in South Africa as well.

racism-whites.jpg

Source: Twitter
Indians are being blamed pretty much for everything under the Sun, while some say that ‘giving the country away’ to Indians is worse than ‘living under Whites’ because Blacks do ‘better’ under Whites. One may recall, while Africans suffered slavery during colonial rule by Whites, Indians have never committed such atrocity against Africans.

racism-indians-3.jpg

Source: Twitter
racism-Indians-1.jpg

Source: Twitter
Reportedly, the South African government has decided to deploy the military at some places to curb the violence. Shopping centres, pharmacies have been looted and the supply chain and Coronavirus vaccination drives were disrupted. In all, 6 people have been killed so far and a total of 489 suspects have been arrested.

In a statement, incumbent South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said, “What we are witnessing now are opportunistic acts of criminality, with groups of people instigating chaos merely as a cover for looting and theft. We will not hesitate to arrest and prosecute those who perpetrate these actions and will ensure that they face the full might of our law.”

this is like Uganda in the 1970s all over again.
 
In the states, I think that the recent intensified use of race and identity politics to attempt to bludgeon people into acquiescence is very, very worrying (not least because they are re-importing their current leftist madness to countries like mine). Looking at the spread of "woke" insanity through their schools, military and private industry feels very familiar. A great many good teachers were flushed from the SA schooling system with the change of regime, and the country still hasn't recovered from the loss. America is in the position of damaging its ability to educate its people, as well as exploiting racial insecurity to deflect attention from bad policy and poor appointments.
Doing that is exactly why my country struggles to keep the lights on. There also appears, in America as there is in South Africa, to be too much familiarity between big business and big government.

On that front, the UK is very similar - if not even worse. A South African professor recently got into all sorts of trouble with the London School for African and Oriental Studies, because he used the "N-word" in the context of a lecture describing racial slurs. We're talking about an ethnically Indian man who literally lived through apartheid, being whined at by a pack of entitled British brats, because he apparently wasn't woke enough for them.

The immigration crisis in Europe also gave me concerns (though, I think that outside of France and the UK it's not looking too bad now?). Importing a third world underclass, when you have little appreciation for the world they come from, or the intention/capacity to assimilate them into your world looked like a quick-and-easy way to replicate the discontent of extreme inequality and sharply disparate cultures that we see here.

Yesterday's guilt looks like it's being used to bully Westerners into sacrificing tomorrow.

ETA: I know it sounds far-fetched. But last year there was a poster from Portland who implied that nothing was wrong in Portland, because he could go outside and not see burned down buildings and mobs of madmen in the streets. I live in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, and I can still go down the road to the park right now, and watch the families chilling by the river, walking their dogs and playing with their kids.
Doesn't mean the country's not falling apart. It just means the facade's not fully slipped quite yet.
Idk if the US will turn out that way unless I am misunderstanding your points here. South Africa has much higher levels of violent crime and corruption as well as a higher birth rate and average age. People talk about corruption in American politics but no one is looting a major treasury here in the US and getting away with it, would be hard to imagine something like that becoming an endemic problem in the near future.

We might have pockets of violence and corruption that are not unlike SA but I think our state and federal governments will remain resilient enough to corruption to prevent the circling of the drain we see in SA. More likely American decline will look somewhat similar to what you see in parts of Eastern Europe and East Asia; demographic collapse and economic stagnation. We'll probably have enough immigration to offset it more than those areas but our average age is already over a decade older than that of SA.

The racial identity politics are obnoxious but they're not really a driving force in politics in and of themselves. They're a big part of the public discourse but they're more likely to be co-opted by the existing power structure than to overturn it the way the ANC did in SA.
I was surprised to see St. Louis ranking that high. Then again these cities have lower populations than some of the other contenders, but it's still pretty bad.

Pretty crazy how all but 4 cities are from the Americas. South Africa, of course, is responsible for the rest. Must be something in the water in that continent.
Inequality, especially along racial lines, tends to correlate strongly with violence and the Americas are full of that due to its colonial history. South Africa of course has that more than virtually every country on earth and unsurprisingly is also the most violent country on earth in terms of prevalence of violent crime.

The upside is because the colonizers of the Americas wiped out the indigenous civilization and largely destroyed or corralled the population and created these nations from scratch you don't get as much instability between or within states. Even the most powerful and subversive non-state actors like the cartels don't question the legitimacy of their respective nation-states and the few border disputes that exist are hashed out mostly through diplomatic channels rather than armed skirmishes.
 
Idk if the US will turn out that way unless I am misunderstanding your points here. South Africa has much higher levels of violent crime and corruption as well as a higher birth rate and average age. People talk about corruption in American politics but no one is looting a major treasury here in the US and getting away with it, would be hard to imagine something like that becoming an endemic problem in the near future.

We might have pockets of violence and corruption that are not unlike SA but I think our state and federal governments will remain resilient enough to corruption to prevent the circling of the drain we see in SA. More likely American decline will look somewhat similar to what you see in parts of Eastern Europe and East Asia; demographic collapse and economic stagnation. We'll probably have enough immigration to offset it more than those areas but our average age is already over a decade older than that of SA.

The racial identity politics are obnoxious but they're not really a driving force in politics in and of themselves. They're a big part of the public discourse but they're more likely to be co-opted by the existing power structure than to overturn it the way the ANC did in SA.

I think our respective starting points almost guarantee that you're right. There's very little chance that your decline would wholesale emulate ours. For one, you're ludicrously richer than us. There's also a less historically burdened conversation of ownership and borders. Your massive population and geography give you a great deal of resilience. It also helps that your "previously disadvantaged" population is the minority, whereas in SA, it's 70%-80% of the population.
And you're modular, and so more adaptable because states are semi-autonomous. An all-American cross-State cascading collapse would have to happen incredibly suddenly for state-level solutions to be unable to respond timeously.

Either that, or the individual leaders of states would have to be so myopic, self-involved, or ideologically blinded that they stubbornly refuse to take necessary action in times of crisis for reasons of political allegiance or expedience.

But I didn't really intend to suggest that the US might look the same as a scaled-up SA. You get to where we are, by playing the same political games of racial opportunism that you guys are playing. But that doesn't mean that this is the only destination on that path. I just don't personally believe there are any good destinations on that path.

And, to be honest, race isn't the driving factor, even in South African politics. BEE is literally CRT operationalised. They both have race on the cover, neither is really about race.
Even when race is what you're being sold. Tribe is what you're buying. Sometimes one's tribe and one's race coincide, but that's not necessarily the case. In South Africa, there are a lot of tribes and some of us really dislike each other; that can be a chaotic situation and a culture of enclaves has developed and is hardening. But I don't actually think we're as tribal as Americans are - our tolerance has just been tested a lot more.
You guys have two tribes, before whom all others dissolve and according to which all else is defined. And the members of those two tribes are more and more seeing members of the other as being damn-near inhuman.

Race, in this discussion, really is just a political trap.
 
I think our respective starting points almost guarantee that you're right. There's very little chance that your decline would wholesale emulate ours. For one, you're ludicrously richer than us. There's also a less historically burdened conversation of ownership and borders. Your massive population and geography give you a great deal of resilience. It also helps that your "previously disadvantaged" population is the minority, whereas in SA, it's 70%-80% of the population.
And you're modular, and so more adaptable because states are semi-autonomous. An all-American cross-State cascading collapse would have to happen incredibly suddenly for state-level solutions to be unable to respond timeously.

Either that, or the individual leaders of states would have to be so myopic, self-involved, or ideologically blinded that they stubbornly refuse to take necessary action in times of crisis for reasons of political allegiance or expedience.

But I didn't really intend to suggest that the US might look the same as a scaled-up SA. You get to where we are, by playing the same political games of racial opportunism that you guys are playing. But that doesn't mean that this is the only destination on that path. I just don't personally believe there are any good destinations on that path.

And, to be honest, race isn't the driving factor, even in South African politics. BEE is literally CRT operationalised. They both have race on the cover, neither is really about race.
Even when race is what you're being sold. Tribe is what you're buying. Sometimes one's tribe and one's race coincide, but that's not necessarily the case. In South Africa, there are a lot of tribes and some of us really dislike each other; that can be a chaotic situation and a culture of enclaves has developed and is hardening. But I don't actually think we're as tribal as Americans are - our tolerance has just been tested a lot more.
You guys have two tribes, before whom all others dissolve, and according to which all else is defined. And the members of those two tribes are more and more seeing members of the other as being damn-near inhuman.

Race, in this discussion, really is just a political trap.
Well again I think there are some key differences. For one America is inherently a conservative republic for better or for worse in that its institutions are designed to resist radical change. And you see that with BLM specifically and the Biden administration generally. Biden has taken on some more left wing ideas but has largely shut out the more progressive elements of the party from real positions of power. BLM is mostly a scattered, disorganized movement whose rhetoric has been co-opted by the power structure rather than acting as a threat to it.

In SA the struggle against apartheid culminated in the ANC and what was basically a political revolution in the 90s, something like that would be unlikely to happen in the US.
 
Well again I think there are some key differences. For one America is inherently a conservative republic for better or for worse in that its institutions are designed to resist radical change.

Ditto. The resilience of our post-colonial British-born institutions is the only reason we are not already Zimbabwe (their post-colonial, British-born institutions weren't quite as resilient as ours). In fact, what you've just said is almost word-for-word what South Africans have been saying for two decades, in defense against the idea that we could ever become like Zimbabwe.

And you see that with BLM specifically and the Biden administration generally. Biden has taken on some more left wing ideas but has largely shut out the more progressive elements of the party from real positions of power. BLM is mostly a scattered, disorganized movement whose rhetoric has been co-opted by the power structure rather than acting as a threat to it.

This is not untrue of South Africa. Land expropriation, much like defund the police, wasn't even on the table as an option until a communist-rooted, politically influential black power movement made it their central platform. Call them scattered and disorganised all you want, but BLM has higher favourability ratings in America than EFF has in South Africa.

Again, what you've said could almost word-for-word be said about South Africa. Just swap Biden out for the ANC, and change BLM to the EFF.

In SA the struggle against apartheid culminated in the ANC and what was basically a political revolution in the 90s, something like that would be unlikely to happen in the US.

It culminated in an election in which the ruling party's primary platform lost. Something like that is also unlikely to happen in South Africa. Much like yours, our ruling party doesn't have a primary platform.
 
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