By the way, I found the following quote from a Time Magazine article in 1976:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,946657-1,00.html
You realise that’s from before the end of a bloody civil war, right? Of course they’d would say things like that then. Afterwards, when it turned out to be not so cushy anymore for the white minority, many of them ended up here. We call them “Whenwes”.
One youth leader of a small group - do you really want me to quote various actual US politicians’ allies saying things about Arabs, Gays, Jews or even White Devils?
And talks a lot of bullshit. There’s some truth in that article (I agree completely with the conclusion - leave Africa the hell alone, all of you), but numbness to death and a morbid fear of snakes are not particularly African characteristics. I have no fear of snakes, and deaths affect me all the time. Do Australians have a characteristic fear of snakes? It’s just an excuse to come be patronizing, really: “poor dumb darkies, terrified of their own environment”.
I don’t trust chicken run participants like Kim to have an objective view of SA. They were, after all, scared enough to run in the first place.
'cos lord knows, 10% of the country can be wiped out like that…
and the other 10% minority (coloureds, indians) is just going to sit by and let this happen, of course. Never mind that you can’t even get a Zulu to agree with a Sotho over the time of day, they’re all going to gang up on the whites (who are the only ones who deserve a warning, of course). Any day now.
9.3% now: whites seem to be fleeing already. You are, of course, aware that Rhodesia / Zimbabwe was 5% white?
And only 2.5% of South Africans are of Indian or Asian ethnicity.
Pardon me, Quartz, but don’t you think those two websites are just a bit retar- . . . ermm . . . subhum- . . . er . . . tendentious?
I’ve heard it suggested that he lost the plot after his first wife died in 1992. I think there’s no doubt that whatever his good intentions and initial successes, he’s currently, mad, bad, and needs to be removed. If the recent election results are anything to go by, the majority of the Zimb. people want him out. How many guns does he have, how does the country split if you chop the head off, can the army be bought? OK, regime change hasn’t gone so well lately in other places. Is it worth just waiting for him to die of old age or should we help him along a bit?
Sure, and “of course” some people will express a lot of optimism about South Africa.
I actually have a white South African emigrant family living in my town. Apparently they had a big estate in South Africa. Complete with high walls and electrified fences. When the power fails, it’s apparently a big worry for them.
In any event, they sold their estate and got enough money to buy a modest house in a decent suburb in the US.
Purely anecdotal, of course. But I do get the sense that educated people are leaving the country. Which is a problem because it has the potential to snowball.
They do not make for pleasant reading, but that doesn’t make them wrong.
No, but seeing David Horowitz’ name associated with anything usually does.
I don’t ever post this much. Normally I find someone has answered a question or debated a point much better than I can and I am quite content to sit and read. I was going to leave this thread be as well but it is GD after all so I’m inclined to continue, always wary of sounding like a broken record.
For the record, I am white, I was born in South Africa and have lived here all my life. My family came to SA with the French Huguenots and I can trace my roots in this country back nearly 350 years.
Yes many white South Africans have left and are leaving. Yes many cite the crime and violence as a reason. Yes some may believe South Africa could go the way of Zim. However most of those people have also not been to Zim and other African countries and really can’t appreciate the differences. Yet many white South African’s are also returning. There is an organisation helping people who have left to come home again.
But as you say it is purely anecdotal. I myself have a number of friends overseas in Australia, UK and USA. Many of them have left because of crime and to look for a better quality of life. Some have even found it. But most have said it isn’t that much better anywhere else and in some ways it is worse.
My point has never been that SA hasn’t got problems. Yes we have high crime and corruption and the economy isn’t great and yadda yadda. But I watch CNN regularly and they say the same things about America. In other words it is relative to what you are used to.
The point remains however that Zim and SA are NOTHING alike. You can quote people saying all kinds of things but it doens’t change the fact that you are comparing apples with peanuts. SA’s GDP is 75 times the GDP of Zim. SA’s per capita GDP is 21 times Zim’s. If you drive through South Africa you drive on highways from city to city through farms, mines, industries and towns. In Zim you drive on a single lane road between their only 2 cities and all you see is dust. No farms, no mining, no industry. And that was 10 years ago. It’s worse now.
We’ve had 2 president since '94 and are about to have our 3rd. Zim has had Mugabe. There is no constitutional court, no anti corruption units, no succession in government, no accountability. Why? We just did it differently. No one kicked the whites out, we had no civil war - BUT most importantly we were already SO far ahead we couldn’t regress to the levels of Zim.
The bottom line, as far as I am concerned, going back to one of my previous posts, you are comparing a horse and cart economy with a modern industrialised country. Can it regress? Yes of course it can. Empires can crumble, we know that from history. I just don’t think it likely to happen.
I really hope you are right.
It sounds like Mobutu will allow mass starvation in Zimbabwe. Chasing out the white farmers and asian shopkeepers has destroyed the economy. Under hyperinflation, all commerce ceases at some point. So, South Africa has a choice-oust the bum, or deal with millions of starving refugees
They’re dealing with refugees now. It hasn’t been enough to move Mbeki to switch his support.
South Africa is a different scene than most African countries. In South Africa, it’s possible to live in a house in the suburbs complete with lawns, drive to the mall to do some shopping, and pick up some KFC on the way home. In other countries, you don’t have these options- housing is either extremely poor (slum, village) or rich compounds with high walls and guards. Shopping is either in open air markets or a handful of “white man stores” selling European goods at insane prices (I once saw a box of Popsicles for $20.00.) Western companies don’t dare begin business because they know they won’t be able to operate without paying out most their profits in bribes.
Lets take a look at South Africa versus Cameroon:
Cameroonian Slum, South Africa Slum. Cameroonian “large city” hospital, South African Hospital. Cameronian village, South African village. Cameroonian supermarket (one of maybe 10 in the country- Mahima how I loved you!), South African shopping mall.
Of course economic development doesn’t mean everything, but it does mean something. South Africa has an industrial base and a true middle class in a way not seen in most other countries in the area. The economic forces at work there are a world away from those in Zimbabwe.
I certainly hope you’re right in what you’re saying about South Africa – if the original Rainbow Nation doesn’t work, what chance do other multicultural nations in the world hold? But speaking of that 3rd president you mentioned… What kind of sign of things to come is it if Jacob Zuma does indeed become the next president of SA, as is widely assumed? (Wiki article.) The corruption charges, the rape charges (taking a shower after sex to help prevent HIV?), his dubious economic policies (according to Wikipedia), the fact that his theme song is called “Bring Me My Machine Gun”…? Is he as bad as he looks from here? How will all of South Africa’s advantages hold up under his administration?
Mayhap so, but I wouldn’t bet that any nation in the world is immune from anarchic dangers. It’s all a matter of culture, and South Africa is at least a half-step closer to chaos than a lot of the world’s countries.
Thanks even sven. I was going to do a similar comparison but didn’t have the time yesterday. I don’t think many people realise just how different SA is from most other African countries. People tend to think of Africa as primitive and underdeveloped all over.
And as you say economic development doesn’t mean everything but it counts for a lot. Purely being a "rich"country is not enough. Look at Nigeria with their abundant oil reserves. They have not been able to translate it into infrastructure development for their people. But economic development in SA is more than just being richer than our neighbours. We also have a functioning defence force, police force, justice system and a developing political system. Zim had none of these even in its heyday. Its defence force was a ragtag bunch of guerilla soldiers, its police force survived on bribes and it has been a one party, one president state since independence.
The point is our political system is a lot more advanced than most African countries. Yes we complain about it here in SA. But only because we are measuring it to first world standards, and even there the people are constantly unhappy with their politicians. However, if the people here compare our politics to the rest of Africa we thank our good luck in living here and not in Zim.
I agree that Zuma does seem to have his issues. But once again it’s relative. From here the reports we get on Bush and previously on Clinton was also all about the scandals and stupid things they say and promises broken. Same with the UK Prime Ministers. The point is however that Zuma is not a dictator. He is part of a political system with counter balances. When he says something that people don’t agree with they can say their say and oppose him. As a white South African the Machine Gun song doesn’t make me happy. His odd views on AIDS too. But Mbeki is on record as saying AIDS doesn’t exist. And everyone widely criticised him and then ignored him and continued to fight against AIDS.
I’m not personally fond of him but I’m not convinced he’ll be worse than Mbeki. Unfortunately our political system is still young and we don’t have the sophisticated politics of first world countries. We therefore currently get the president that the ANC supplies and not necessarily the one with the best ideas or best platform. But it is changing and in the future the ANC will be tested and will need to deliver on their promises to maintain power.
You are right. No country is immune. And yes South Africa is certainly closer than many countries. My point was simply that Zim and many other African countries were teetering on the brink of anarchy all along, despite the “good” reports about their “success”. In many cases most of the country never really progressed much beyond rural subsistence farming. In other words their was little to begin with and not much needed to break it down to nothing. In SA there is much more development, more of a functioning socio-economic system, and therefore the road to travel to complete anarchy is longer and less likely.
Like I said - the chicken run. And I wouldn’t quibble over .7%. You’re still talking 4 million people, internationally connected and frequently armed. This isn’t 1939 Germany or recent Rwanda.
And then suddenly they were no longer in the pound seats…Like I said, South Africa is full of white Zimbabweans who left in the 80s i.e. after independence but long before the current troubles.
What does that tell you? To me, it says some whites just don’t like black majority rule. There’s a word for that…
Boy, 1994 must have sucked for them. Out of the frying pan… In fact, I wonder how many of the current “South Africans” fleeing SA used to be from Zim?
…and more than 8 percent are Coloured. What’s your point?
14 years after the transition to democracy. Do you see how there’s a difference between that and the middle of a bloody civil war?
No worse than a coke-snorting, AWOL,business-into-ground-running, war-starting, in-bed-with-Big-Business plutocrat.
To be fair, even sven, we do have slums that look like that Cameroonian one:BBC Story
But we also have an active government program to build minimal formal housing for everyone:
More from that story