International Is South Africa coming undone?

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.
Thanks for your reply, very informative and interesting. When I was young I was raised to despise white south Africans by my marxist parents who protested apartheid when they were young. When I went to SA i really got a sense of the 2 worlds - one sheltered that you mentioned. I travelled with my national sport team and stayed in nice locations and tourist areas but i went out at night and made local friends and saw a different side. One thing that stood out was after a nightclub closed there were 2 young teen girls that myself and a local I met were talking to earlier were stuck and there were no taxis. they looked terrified. i asked the local guy if we could give them a lift home and he did. in the back of the car they were shaking. the local guy said they thought we were going to rape them and explained it could happen to them. we took them to their gated house with high walls and cameras etc, then the local guy guy asked if ! wanted to smoke crack as his house- ! politely declined. incidentally, before we went to that club we were at a bar that seemed perfectly normal until some gangsters came in and waving guns claiming they were russian mafia so we left.
 
Thanks for your reply, very informative and interesting. When I was young I was raised to despise white south Africans by my marxist parents who protested apartheid when they were young. When I went to SA i really got a sense of the 2 worlds - one sheltered that you mentioned. I travelled with my national sport team and stayed in nice locations and tourist areas but i went out at night and made local friends and saw a different side. One thing that stood out was after a nightclub closed there were 2 young teen girls that myself and a local I met were talking to earlier were stuck and there were no taxis. they looked terrified. i asked the local guy if we could give them a lift home and he did. in the back of the car they were shaking. the local guy said they thought we were going to rape them and explained it could happen to them. we took them to their gated house with high walls and cameras etc, then the local guy guy asked if ! wanted to smoke crack as his house- ! politely declined. incidentally, before we went to that club we were at a bar that seemed perfectly normal until some gangsters came in and waving guns claiming they were russian mafia so we left.

Where are you from originally? Also SA?
 
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I don't know why, but this woman made me laugh so hard.
Wow she has a drum fed shotgun. But she looks like she’s worried about the price of rice or something a mom would be worried about
 
Yeah. It's like it's the middle of the apocalypse, and she suddenly remembered she didn't turn the stove off.
Yep. She’s like honey did you take the wash out of the machine before we left?
Btw are things calming down there now?
 
Yep. She’s like honey did you take the wash out of the machine before we left?
Btw are things calming down there now?

Yeah. Things are back to what generally passes for normal.
But my guess is that this is going to keep happening, and I kinda feel like it will keep getting worse. The ANC has been suppressing popular protests for years and years - and their biggest advantage in a lot of ways has been that they've kept them out of sight and out of mind of most middle class South Africans and corporate interests. This time, it was very clear that that was not possible, and that the ANC has a huge problem. Zuma was the catalyst for this outburst, but he wasn't - strictly speaking - the, he was just a convenient excuse.

Next time, as with most in the past, the international media is likely to miss it.

"Expect this pattern to be repeated until it sweeps the ANC out of power"



Note the opening comments by the host, about how this was so unexpected. That is unfortunately the reality most South Africans live in. They didn't see this coming, because many of them were almost willfully in the dark about about how inevitable it was.
Corporate South Africa has been especially adept at ignoring reality - which has meant it's unwittingly been in bed with the ANC for ages.
 
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How Maponya Mall, the ‘heartbeat’ of Soweto’s economy, was rescued by the community

Since 13 July, Pimville residents have been forced to travel as much as 8km to Southgate Mall for household staples, including bread and milk, because about a dozen shopping malls and shops in Soweto have been destroyed. These include Jabulani Mall, Dobsonville Mall and Protea Glen Mall. Local spaza shops are not coping with the sheer demand for household items.

Maponya Mall is the only large shopping mall in Soweto that has survived, but its doors remain closed because the risk of looting remains high. “We can’t sit back and watch another mall being destroyed,” Michael told DM168 on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak on behalf of the Pimville community.

“The mall has been good to the community as it employs hundreds of people and feeds many communities — not just Pimville. If we destroy it, we will be destroying our inheritance from Mr Maponya.”

“The community rallied around Maponya Mall to protect it because the mall is the heart of Soweto. If the mall stops beating then the township economy dies,” said Nhlanhla Lux, who has become a media sensation for leading the community’s efforts to defend it.

The 33-year-old has cut a figure of authority; he wears camouflage gear and is armed with a pistol.

“These looters are violent and highly coordinated. I am prepared to die to stop the criminal activity in Soweto,” said Lux.

Before this thread fades completely, I do want to say that I've been very proud, in general, of the response of South African communities to this lil crisis. As well as the fact that when members of our communities stand up and push back against the violence, they are celebrated, not vilified for it.
No one's been actively running around trying to disarm people defending their homes or neighbourhoods. And it's not been a popular position to simply decry them as racists or otherwise evil.

'The last six days have been hell,' community activist who guarded Maponya mall tells Ramaphosa

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Nhlanhla Lux Dlamini, president of the Pimville Parliament movement, mobilized his community to look after the Maponya Mall in Soweto and protect it from looters.

Dlamini briefly spoke to the president at Maponya Mall where Ramaphosa concluded his tour of malls in Soweto that were affected by the looting and unrest earlier in the week. Maponya Mall was one of the few malls in the township that weren't looted because the community stood guard and protected it.

He said that an "unknown enemy" had infiltrated the community, encouraging it to loot.

"We were infiltrated and young people are saying they apologise for taking part in this looting because the community was infiltrated, their minds were also infiltrated but I am happy that we went through this lesson and we are going to learn from this lesson," he said.

I honestly think the future leadership of the country is going to be guys like this.
 
Yeah. Things are back to what generally passes for normal.
But my guess is that this is going to keep happening, and I kinda feel like it will keep getting worse. The ANC has been suppressing popular protests for years and years - and their biggest advantage in a lot of ways has been that they've kept them out of sight and out of mind of most middle class South Africans and corporate interests. This time, it was very clear that that was not possible, and that the ANC has a huge problem. Zuma was the catalyst for this outburst, but he wasn't - strictly speaking - the, he was just a convenient excuse.

Next time, as with most in the past, the international media is likely to miss it.

"Expect this pattern to be repeated until it sweeps the ANC out of power"



Note the opening comments by the host, about how this was so unexpected. That is unfortunately the reality most South Africans live in. They didn't see this coming, because many of them were almost willfully in the dark about about how inevitable it was.
Corporate South Africa has been especially adept at ignoring reality - which has meant it's unwittingly been in bed with the ANC for ages.

Very interesting. I think from the outside you guys always looked very fragile and that everything was papered over. But from the inside it might be hard to see that or uncomfortable. I think kicking the fan down the road was and is a huge part of the belief system in many places. Be it social security in the USA or immigrants from Islamic areas integrating and contributing to Western Europe.

Also to paraphrase James clavel the novelist. With MS you go down in stages. Once you go dow a stage there is no return.
I think the west has MS and it’s attacking itself. It’s just that SA has less capable and shorter institutions that seem more fragile. This was your BLM riots and it’s exposed the ANC for the corrupt mafia like party they are and the Zula as a group willing to burn down the house to warmTheir hands
 
How Maponya Mall, the ‘heartbeat’ of Soweto’s economy, was rescued by the community



Before this thread fades completely, I do want to say that I've been very proud, in general, of the response of South African communities to this lil crisis. As well as the fact that when members of our communities stand up and push back against the violence, they are celebrated, not vilified for it.
No one's been actively running around trying to disarm people defending their homes or neighbourhoods. And it's not been a popular position to simply decry them as racists or otherwise evil.

'The last six days have been hell,' community activist who guarded Maponya mall tells Ramaphosa



I honestly think the future leadership of the country is going to be guys like this.
Hopefully this woke up some of the youth. If they don’t step up and act, no one else will and the future a good thing. The gift definitely won’t. Glad people aren’t being vilified for protecting themselves.
 
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