Apartheid Is Still There: Post-apartheid South Africa Is World’s Most Unequal Country

[SimonS + 17]

No, it will break up along ethnic and linguistic lines. The Black race is divided into 4 main groups; Zulu's, Xhosa's (khosas), Sepedi and Setswana. Zulu's number about 10 million and are the biggest group. Their ancestral areas are the North East coastal section of the country (next to Swaziland and Mozambique). This is the Zulus ancestral land. Other groups also have their own land. Setswana are native of Botswana and number 5 million but live in the area closer to the Botswana border. Most blacks still live on their ancestral lands and come to the cities to earn a wage/salary. So they can easily just go back there in wartime. 

As for the genocide? It is a concern but Whites are heavily armed, Blacks are too but do not have the military know-how of Whites and do not have the same guns. Blacks have handguns and AK 47's, mainly, and Whites have other more high powered and accurate guns. This is all conjecture but is based and what people hear, say and what I have seen. There are also a lot of shotguns on either side.

It is highly unlikely that every Black will fight every White...so it's hard to say how it will all play out.   

If there is a civil war there will be famine as well so it hard to say what will happen except millions will die or migrate. Whites do reckon that they can win a military confrontation, even with outside involvement of other Countries. 

It will most likely manifest in a Whites versus the government civil war in the beginning and then a general civil war after about 6 to 9 months.    

 

 

[BenFranklin'sSpectacles + 762]

2 hours ago, SimonS said:

No, it will break up along ethnic and linguistic lines. The Black race is divided into 4 main groups; Zulu's, Xhosa's (khosas), Sepedi and Setswana. Zulu's number about 10 million and are the biggest group. Their ancestral areas are the North East coastal section of the country (next to Swaziland and Mozambique). This is the Zulus ancestral land. Other groups also have their own land. Setswana are native of Botswana and number 5 million but live in the area closer to the Botswana border. Most blacks still live on their ancestral lands and come to the cities to earn a wage/salary. So they can easily just go back there in wartime. 

As for the genocide? It is a concern but Whites are heavily armed, Blacks are too but do not have the military know-how of Whites and do not have the same guns. Blacks have handguns and AK 47's, mainly, and Whites have other more high powered and accurate guns. This is all conjecture but is based and what people hear, say and what I have seen. There are also a lot of shotguns on either side. 

It is highly unlikely that every Black will fight every White...so it's hard to say how it will all play out.   

If there is a civil war there will be famine as well so it hard to say what will happen except millions will die or migrate. Whites do reckon that they can win a military confrontation, even with outside involvement of other Countries. 

It will most likely manifest in a Whites versus the government civil war in the beginning and then a general civil war after about 6 to 9 months.     

Thanks for the response.

I'd like to keep up with this.  Can you recommend good news sources? 

[tldpdb1 + 24]

21 hours ago, SimonS said:

South Africa also has two worlds within it. One White and one Black. This is not because of Apartheid. It was like this before Apartheid and before White political rule started in 1910. Whites and Blacks also have a different expectation of property ownership and economic policy. Culturally the country is also very, very divided.  

Just Read That Quote....Unless everyone is Blind Apartheid Started long before 1910.  In order to Stay Wealthy and Politically in Control, The Whites Continued to Disenfranchised the Majority (Blacks)  then Just Institutionalized it.  You Have a poor Tribal Couture among the Africans and a European Technological Culture among the White. The Black Ruling Class know there's No Way the Economy can Bring the Majority Economically up to the level of the White's but They Can Sure try to get there Friends and family into it.

[tldpdb1 + 24]

 

 

 

 

3

On 5/8/2019 at 4:26 AM, SimonS said:

Moreover, the creation of South Africa lead to great improvements in the lives of black people. The population of Black people doubled under the rule of the White man. At its creation in 1910, the white population represented 20% of South Africa's population and numbered 1.3 million people. The black population represented 67% and numbered 4 million. By the end of White rule in 1994, the proportion and number of Blacks in South Africa had increased to 80% and 40 million people. Meanwhile, the proportion and number of whites dropped to just less than 10% and 5 .5 million people. This is due to commercail farming of the white man. Once the farmers are chased off their lands South Africa will have a famine of Biblical proportions. 

 

The Population Differences are also due to the Discriminatory 2 Tier Economic System in S.A.
The White people in there Progressive Economy went thru Demographic Transition while The Blacks in there Separate and kept Poor Economy didn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

I lived in SA from 1995-2000. One thing that I found interesting about all of the comments and posts is that there is not a single reference to the South African 'colored' (mixed race) community.

This community is a significant component of not only South African history, but their future.

I was having a conversation with a 'colored' lady in Seapoint one post- Apartheid afternoon and she told me that the 'colored' community preferred SA under Apartheid. Yes, they were segregated to certain beaches, areas of town, etc..., but the Rand was actually worth something in the Apartheid era.

 

[SimonS + 17]

No reference was made because unlike other ethnic groups the coloureds never hade a Homeland. They live in vast majority in and around Cape Town. If South Africa were to break up they would probably stay in the same area and not have a political dispensation of their own. 

In my opinion, Coloureds preferred Apartheid because they speak Afrikaans and Afrikaans was promoted during Apartheid. Also, crime was very low during Apartheid. Crime is out of control in SA and most of the victims are non-whites. The strength of the Rand is just a quantitative measure people can use in an argument to try and justify life being better under Apartheid. 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 14, 2019 by SimonS

[SimonS + 17]

I cannot give you any good news services for SA. I look at News24 but they are Deep State. I can see through the propaganda though...I'm not sure if an outsider can. 

Apartheid started in 1950 with the Group Areas Act...before then, with British domination, British people would have been first in the queue for jobs. The discovery of minerals (Gold and Diamonds) in the 1850's had huge benefits for Black people in SA as the moved to the mining towns to earn salaries. These capabilities were not present in SA before. The creation of South Africa had monetary and capability benefits for Black people but to a lesser degree after the creation of South Africa and then again after the Group Areas Act. Apartheid did not exist before 1950.  

 

 

[WayneMechEng + 89]

On 5/10/2019 at 8:56 AM, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

When it breaks up, I'm assuming it will break on ethnic lines: one white country, and one black.  Is that correct? 

If there's a civil war, what would prevent the black majority from genociding the white minority? 

What role does China play in SA now ?  

They are building infrastructure in Africa.  See "The Future of Water" series on Netflix.

[WayneMechEng + 89]

On 5/7/2019 at 9:57 PM, Jan van Eck said:

The problem I have run into is that simple machinery, which by its nature tends to be labor-intensive, transfers some profits into additional wages.  Now, that is the whole idea - spread around some of the new wealth.  In my mind, that beats taxation. But it also becomes a barrier to raising capital.  Nobody wants to invest in worthwhile social projects.  All they want to do is do protest marches at the Capitol building.  It gets discouraging, and I am getting old. Capitalism can do a lot of good, but it does require investment capital. Nature of the system.

I am a bit late reacting.  I agree with your ideas.

I retired from a large corporation after nearly 50 years service.  We transitioned  from competent no-nonsense supervisors and managers to a corporate juggernaut.  Doing a job right and economically used to be the mantra.  When outsourcing engineering and design became the vogue around 15 years ago, corporate greed took over.  Most work went overseas.  Billable hours.  So the almighty buck overrode common sense. Profit for the corporation did not allow sharing the wealth with your local employees. The corporation lost the loyalty of their local employees.  Experience was not transferred overseas.

All citizens benefit from the dignity of work and paying their way.  Not all can be engineers, scientists, or IT gurus.  Some jobs need to be available for others who wish to work.  Then tax revenues are generated as opposed to social assistance payments.

A tax will be needed on robots to generate revenue for displaced workers.  But that would cut into corporate profit and the US Congress is bought and paid for by the corporations.  If we had the tax in place, the robots might not be economical and more jobs available.

But then I attended church for quite a whlle.

 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

On 5/10/2019 at 10:56 AM, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

When it breaks up, I'm assuming it will break on ethnic lines: one white country, and one black.  Is that correct? 

If there's a civil war, what would prevent the black majority from genociding the white minority? 

Nothing.  That assumes that the UN does not assemble a peacekeeping force with serious firepower, which it typically does not do.  

It would be logical for the residual whites to fall back to the Transvaal, where the Dutch Boer Voortrekkers ended up.  With enough Whites there, the Transvaal is militarily defensible.  There would not likely be a sustained effort to exterminate the Whites, once driven into the Transvaal; I suspect at that point it will degenerate into black-on-black mass murder, akin to what you saw in Rwanda. The scale of death would be in the millions.  At some point outside forces would land troops and secure city cores such as Capetown and Durban. It would be logical that the Indian Army would seize Durban, probably establish military bases there.  Not a pretty picture, that's for sure.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

38 minutes ago, WayneMechEng said:

But then I attended church for quite a while.

 

Does make a difference.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

On 5/10/2019 at 3:00 PM, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

Thanks for the response.

I'd like to keep up with this.  Can you recommend good news sources? 

You might keep a weather eye out on the Dutch press.  Remember that Holland has long-standing migration and commercial ties with South Africa.  Africa today is a backwater:  it comprises in total only 2% of world GNP.  Of that 2%, the vast majority is generated in South Africa.  But even a majority of 2% is basically a dribble on the world stage.  Nobody really cares about South Africa - or the people that live there. 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

On 5/7/2019 at 7:00 PM, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

AFAIK, every African nation that kicked out or oppressed white people quickly returned to the primitive, tribal condition Europeans found it in.  Even when black Africans control every aspect of government and the economy, they're unable to accumulate wealth.  The only thing propping up their corrupt regimes is natural resource exports.  Those are entirely dependent on foreign (Read: European and Asian) competence.

Instead of crying about inequality, perhaps the world should investigate why black Africans do worse when left to their own devices. 

That reeks of racism...

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

Just now, Enthalpic said:

That reeks of racism...

Maybe.  Then again, perhaps it has the flavor of truth to it.  

Let's take a look at the Belgian Congo.  When it was a colony of Belgium, it was horribly exploited by King Leopold.  The people were treated poorly, very poorly. Beaten, enslaved, exploited, murdered.  The Belgians eventually left, the country split into two (along the Congo River), and both new countries have been mired in poverty and war.  Economic progress?  Nope.  You go to the Northern part, the Republic of the Congo, and the train from Pointe Noire to Brazzaville runs once a week, if you are lucky.  It takes two days to creep along at 20 mph. The railway workers have not been paid in over two years, and show up in the vague hope that maybe some day they will be paid the wages from some month from two years ago. That scene is hardly inspiring of black management talent, now is it? 

Go across the river, to the confusingly named "Democratic Republic of the Congo," and it is even worse.  The capital of Kinshasa is buzzing, but the only way in or out is by air, or you take some ferryboat over the (very broad and very fast-moving) river to Brazzaville and wait for the Train that Never Comes.  When the whites were  there, a fleet of paddle-wheel steamers ran up and down the Congo River.  Today there are only two left - that for a country ten times the size of France.  If you take the road out of town, the pavement apparently stops about 18 miles out, then you are on hardpack earth. (I don't know this personally, I have not been there, but so I am told). At one time in the white-controlled past you could take a train from Kinshasa to Capetown and up to Cairo.  Not today.  Long gone back to jungle. 

Africa has not done well under black majority rule. Whatever the reasons are, one factor is that expat whites end up feeling unwelcome, or even worse, threatened. Black Africa cannot afford to lose that managerial talent, yet it does, and the policies of nationalism that push that departure  ends up wrecking the economies, and the livelihoods, of the remaining blacks.  And the West?  Nobody really cares.  Africa is uninteresting. 

 

[BenFranklin'sSpectacles + 762]

19 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

Nothing.  That assumes that the UN does not assemble a peacekeeping force with serious firepower, which it typically does not do.  

It would be logical for the residual whites to fall back to the Transvaal, where the Dutch Boer Voortrekkers ended up.  With enough Whites there, the Transvaal is militarily defensible.  There would not likely be a sustained effort to exterminate the Whites, once driven into the Transvaal; I suspect at that point it will degenerate into black-on-black mass murder, akin to what you saw in Rwanda. The scale of death would be in the millions.  At some point outside forces would land troops and secure city cores such as Capetown and Durban. It would be logical that the Indian Army would seize Durban, probably establish military bases there.  Not a pretty picture, that's for sure. 

Interesting.  If South Africa devolved into mass black-on-black violence and the economy collapsed, wouldn't most of the black population starve?  Last I checked, modern population levels require modern agriculture, and what little I've read indicates that black South Africans never mastered that. 

And if most of the black population perished from violence & starvation, what would prevent white South Africans from slowly regaining the country?

[BenFranklin'sSpectacles + 762]

19 hours ago, Enthalpic said:

That reeks of racism...

Spare me your reflexive idiocy.  What I said has nothing to do with racism; I merely pointed out some phenomena worthy of investigation. 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

15 minutes ago, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

Spare me your reflexive idiocy.  What I said has nothing to do with racism; I merely pointed out some phenomena worthy of investigation. 

I didn't actually call you a racist; but it certainly reads racist. 

It does warrant investigation, and I bet the problem traces back to white people in some way (like they never gave up the means of production haha).

Freakonomics is an entertaining read if you've never; it explains a lot of counter-intuitive phenomena. 

My former employer hired a bunch of economists who did odd research... like attaching a monetary value to the extinction of a species*** (in particular the sage grouse).  Now in this case we just need a quality valuation of what it would take to prop up some of these nations so they don't revert to a "primitive condition." 

There is evidence that huge one-time payments do a lot more to improve poverty than lots of small payments over a long time.  It's the difference between buying a fish to eat today and buying a boat.

 

*** "the continuation of an existence value for the species (the value that individual Canadians derive from knowing that the species exists in Canada); the co-benefits associated with the preservation of ecological services from the Sage-Grouse habitat to other species"

FYI apparently a sage grouse is worth about the same as a wild turkey in the states ($23/household) for a total cost of keeping the grouse from going extinct at about 161 million.  Americans value bald eagles at about ($50/household).

 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

3 hours ago, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

Interesting.  If South Africa devolved into mass black-on-black violence and the economy collapsed, wouldn't most of the black population starve?  Last I checked, modern population levels require modern agriculture, and what little I've read indicates that black South Africans never mastered that. 

And if most of the black population perished from violence & starvation, what would prevent white South Africans from slowly regaining the country?

In the worst-case scenario of a descent into chaos and mass violence, yes agriculture would collapse except in the Transvaal, which I predict would become an isolated, yet self-contained, enclave of whites only.  The blacks would likely proceed to migrate to the countries of the north, just pushing over the borders in a mass wave similar to the Middle Easterners pushing into Europe. 

The White and Indian populations would retake the country.  That would not be "slowly;" it would be quite rapid. When you are busy starving, you really don't have the energy to contemplate politics of the ANC.  (It is also possible that India would do a boat-lift of Indians back to India.  Hard to quantify, depends a lot on the pull of Mother India for that population of Africans.)

[BenFranklin'sSpectacles + 762]

14 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

In the worst-case scenario of a descent into chaos and mass violence, yes agriculture would collapse except in the Transvaal, which I predict would become an isolated, yet self-contained, enclave of whites only.  The blacks would likely proceed to migrate to the countries of the north, just pushing over the borders in a mass wave similar to the Middle Easterners pushing into Europe.  

The White and Indian populations would retake the country.  That would not be "slowly;" it would be quite rapid. When you are busy starving, you really don't have the energy to contemplate politics of the ANC.  (It is also possible that India would do a boat-lift of Indians back to India.  Hard to quantify, depends a lot on the pull of Mother India for that population of Africans.)

So after some amount of mass violence & starvation, the whites and Indians take over the country.  What would you predict the final government would look like?  Would South Africa return to Apartheid? 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

4 hours ago, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

So after some amount of mass violence & starvation, the whites and Indians take over the country.  What would you predict the final government would look like?  Would South Africa return to Apartheid? 

Hard to say. As a guessing man, I would think it would be an effectively de-facto Apartheid.  Separation does not have to be part of the Legal Code to be the actual fact on the ground.  That said, I also suggest that major efforts would be made to get past the hovels of poverty that you now find in the Townships.  Nobody wants to see that. But that is all a guess, on my part.  

My basis for that is to look at India and Pakistan.  YOu have this separation, based there on religion.  Yet despite the massive separation between the two, you still have an effort on the part of the Indian govt to avoid massive Muslim poverty.  The costs of that are just so high. 

[BenFranklin'sSpectacles + 762]

22 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

Hard to say. As a guessing man, I would think it would be an effectively de-facto Apartheid.  Separation does not have to be part of the Legal Code to be the actual fact on the ground.  That said, I also suggest that major efforts would be made to get past the hovels of poverty that you now find in the Townships.  Nobody wants to see that. But that is all a guess, on my part.   

My basis for that is to look at India and Pakistan.  YOu have this separation, based there on religion.  Yet despite the massive separation between the two, you still have an effort on the part of the Indian govt to avoid massive Muslim poverty.  The costs of that are just so high.  

That makes sense.  It will be much like the USA, which uses a combination of gated communities and high real estate prices to enforce de-facto separation.  Some minorities rise into these neighborhoods, but they're still majority white.  Even more interesting is "gentrification": developers buy up real estate in a poor neighborhood, renovate it, and drive prices through the roof.  The poor renters are driven out. 

I wasn't aware of Muslim poverty in India.  Can you elaborate on that or point me to a resource? 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

16 hours ago, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

I wasn't aware of Muslim poverty in India.  Can you elaborate on that or point me to a resource? 

I have forgotten the source, yet I recall some 55% of Muslims remaining in India live in poverty. I have this rather vague recollection that the workers in the Alang ship demolition yards are largely Muslim workers. (That might be inaccurate.) Their pay is about $2 a day, no safety equipment at all, bare feet, no gloves, no helmets, and no injury or death benefits.  Just appalling conditions.  There are easily 100,000 workers in that industry, and now large numbers are being dismissed due to gyrations in the Chinese metal-smelting business.  A good chunk of smelted ships are turned into rebar for concrete construction, and that business has taken a nose-dive in China.  I have no idea what the Chinese market share of the world consumption is of rebar, might not be that high.  You would think that ship plate would be remanufactured into higher value product.  I don't have a grasp on how that industry works, other than to speculate that the metal content, when broken down, is sold in bulk as "dirty metal," the classic foundation for melting into rebar. 

Edited May 26, 2019 by Jan van Eck
edited sharof to share of

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

2 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

 Alang ship demolition yards

...

Just appalling conditions. 

What an environmental and labor disaster.  The shocking scale of the operation can been seen in the documentary Shipbreakers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jdEG_ACXLw

It's reasonably entertaining if you are into docs. Shows some the downstream industries from all that steel / waste.

A travesty against humanity; sadly even my Canada is complicit.

Edited May 26, 2019 by Enthalpic

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

3 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

I have forgotten the source, yet I recall some 55% of Muslims remaining in India live in poverty. I have this rather vague recollection that the workers in the Alang ship demolition yards are largely Muslim workers. (That might be inaccurate.) Their pay is about $2 a day, no safety equipment at all, bare feet, no gloves, no helmets, and no injury or death benefits.  Just appalling conditions.  There are easily 100,000 workers in that industry, and now large numbers are being dismissed due to gyrations in the Chinese metal-smelting business.  A good chunk of smelted ships are turned into rebar for concrete construction, and that business has taken a nose-dive in China.  I have no idea what the Chinese market sharof the world consumption is of rebar, might not be that high.  You would think that ship plate would be remanufactured into higher value product.  I don't have a grasp on how that industry works, other than to speculate that the metal content, when broken down, is sold in bulk as "dirty metal," the classic foundation for melting into rebar. 

The Muslims have a sizeable population in India along with Sikhs and Christians and followers of other religions.

If you just compare the population numbers, the Hindus are a majority and therefore with just the sheer numbers , the Hindus are a majority poverty entrapped population in India. However, yes the Muslims probably have that level of percentage in poverty. Education is a big thing in India and parents want their kids to get the best education and they will do anything to get their kids into the best elementary, middle and high schools and then into colleges and universities. In India they have a huge "affirmative action" law , under their quota system for minorities, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes etc. The system is rife with corruption top to bottom at all levels of education, political connections and bribery are rampant. What we have seen on our news about the Hollywood and elite folks paying off for their kids entrance to colleges, is an everyday thing in India.

About 20-25 years ago, it used to be 150k-250k Indian Rupees to be paid to colleges and universities to get kids into engineering and medical school , it used to be called "donation"

80% of population of India lives in a rural setting mostly embraced by poverty, no running water, no toilets, no bathrooms, no sanitation, no reliable electric power.

I saw some very horrible things in Bangladesh as well in the ship scrapping industry.

I have spent a lot of time traveling across India over a period of time and have seen it all, beauty and the ugliness, wealth and poverty etc.

We did have several mining projects in different parts of India and have ongoing crude oil, LNG and other energy products supply JVs.

 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

1 hour ago, Enthalpic said:

It's reasonably entertaining if you are into docs. Shows some the downstream industries from all that steel / waste.

 

Yet some ships are so deteriorated that they do not even make it to the breakers in Alang, so they get dumped along the coast of Mauritania and sunk.   Others are deliberately sunk in the Gulf of Nigeria, in very deep water there, for the insurance money. 

If you look at the map of Mauritania you will see this spit of sand on which the town of Nouadhibou sits.  Pay a small bribe to the mayor there and you, too, can go sink your old heap of a trawler. 

There are hundreds of these wrecks right outside the city, some on the beach, as above, many more sunk in the shallow waters of the inland bay.  They come from Europe, where ship dismantling is very expensive and controlled as to environmental residues.  In Mauritania, not so much (obviously).   

Want an abandoned boat?   Lots to choose from.  The shipowners just raft them up to whatever boat is anchored and not yet sunk, pay the bribe, and disappear. 

It is the largest ship graveyard in the world, by number of ships:

Even larger cargo ships get dumped:

These are only the ones on the surface.  On a clear day and aloft, you can see the silhouettes of hundreds more, sunk in shallow waters.  Some are so brazen they are sunk right smack in the inner harbor.  And Europeans call themselves civilized.