It’s an escape of bad hope!
I think that the OP would have been MUCH better off starting this inquiry by putting a thread in GQ asking for solid information about what exactly was going on in the RSA. A GD thread which posits that the country is “melting down” and asks to start a debate on the reasons (especially when the impetus for the thread is a YouTube channel that makes vague occasional references) was always going to create problems, even subtracting the racial issues. After all, a meltdown is what Venezuela is going through, and the RSA is hardly approaching that sort of economic and social crisis, even on a cursory glance at the situation.
Heh, I knew when I first read your OP that you were referring to Winston Sterzel of ADVChina fame (at least that’s the channel I first saw him on with his ‘cohost’ Matthew Tye, touring around China on their motorcycles). While Winston seems he’s trying to be fair in his running commentary, clearly there’s a number of things he has rather strong opinions on, including South Africa (as well as Chinese scammers). He was born in 1980, and came to China to live in 2005.
Forgot to address this bit
I didn’t say “left *in *94”, I said “left here post-94”. Mostly that happens a couple years after varsity. For some, when the realization hits that a white skin no longer guarantees *quite *as much automatic privilege in the workplace as it did for your fathers’ generation.
But also, that same time any sane young adult would realize how provincial and geographically remote SA is from all the fun culture stuff that isn’t bush and surf. So it’s not all push, there’s a lot of positive “move to the metropole” impetus to it. It varies from person to person.
There was a big exodus when I finished uni, back when young South Africans were still able to easily get into the UK for work, but then they changed the visa rules. Led to a lot of South Africans digging in their families for UK ancestry - and an uptick on migration to Oz, which is much easier.
I’m obviously far from an expert on this, but I have known a couple of South African ex-pats and I believe that the short version is this.
When apartheid ended and Mandela took over, he made it a point not to exact vengeance on the white minority who owned a lot of property and the long established businesses in the country. It was important, he said, that any transition be slow and measured as South Africa, despite its past policies, was still a first world government in Africa. Sort of a Lincoln-esque with malice toward none and charity to all.
All of his successors, however, said to hell with that and lets exact vengeance.
I don’t believe that, I believe Cyril Rhamaphosa is trying to co-opt the EFF narrative and keep the ANC relevant, but keeping it watered down from the radicalism the EFF is promoting.
Except, how exactly did the white minority end up with all the land and all the money and all the businesses? How did that happen? By coincidence?
If you have an unfair system–like, you know, apartheid–that operates for decades to enrich certain classes of people at the expense of other classes of people, it is plainly fair to abolish that system. But is it exactly fair to say that the spoils of that system that were acquired over various decades should just be left in the hands of the people who established that system?
In other words, supposed I pull out a gun and threaten to shoot you. I then enslave you and put you to work in my factory for 30 years. After 30 years are over, there’s an election and it is decided that slavery is wrong. I reluctantly produce the keys to your chains, and tell you that you’re free to go now.
Would it be vengeance on your part to ask for some compensation for the 30 years of slave labor you were forced to provide at gunpoint?
Redistributive justice, meant to correct for broad past injustice that resulted in great inequalities, doesn’t need to be harmful to economies (and AFAIU, no serious South African proposals are as crude as mass land redistribution ala Zimbabwe). Just off the top of my head, a big family owned piece of land could become a corporation-owned piece of land, with the (white) family being the majority shareholder of that corporation, with the rest of the shares distributed among the (black and colored) families that have worked on that land for generations. Or something like that.
I should note that I have no special knowledge of South African circumstances or politics beyond cursory reading and the posts of a handful of South African Dopers.
That’s exactly the model being followed by some farmers, and it’s been very successful in some cases. It would be great if the government looked to that as a model for future moves.
This example doesn’t really fit, because you’re personnally responsible for the enslaving, so there’s no doubt you should be held responsible and pay (and be sentenced for it, and in fact, in this case, a desire for vengeance would be perfectly legitimate).
Here, I guess it’s more like : your greatgranfather enslaved my greatgrandfather. I’m poor, you’re wealthy : should you pay?
On top of it, it’s not like the only whites who benefited from the apartheid were the owners of big farms. I’m not sure why they should be the only ones who have to pay restitutions.
The issue of redress for past wrongs is clear as mud (grandchildrens of Palestinians expropriated in Israel, great grand children of victims of the Herero genocide, great great grandchildrens of American black slaves, great great great grandchildren of Australian aborigenes whose land has been stolen, etc, etc…). Seems just on the surface, but in fact the person currently asking for redress wouldn’t even have been born if history had been different, so he didn’t personnally really suffered any loss. Like everybody else, he owes his very existence to history having been what it has been, including these past wrongs.
Pretty much all advocates of some sort of redistributing justice (including reparations in the US) believe it’s necessary for current and ongoing oppression and injustice, as well as past oppression of the living, in addition to past injustices of the dead.
A more important question is - should you get to freely pass on your stolen wealth to your own kids? If farmers are essentially in possession of stolen property (stolen by their own grandfathers), do they still get to enrich their descendants off that theft? In perpetuity? I don’t think “I stole it, I get to keep it” has been a part of any sensible jurisprudence since, oh, before Hammurabi (It’s different for governments, of course).
And before anyone brings up that they likely improved the land they stole - “I stole it,* then I polished it*, so I should get to keep it” doesn’t sound any better than the short version.
Thanks. Do you know how this model is viewed by the land owners? Are they terrified of it, resigned to it, or something in between, in general?
Other than the ones already trying it, I have no idea.
But sensibly, it would be better than the outright expropriation otherwise being mooted, I don’t see how anyone would be against it in that regard. Well, anyone who passed the “learning to share” stage in kindergarten, that is.
I just want to point out that the land redistribution question is not just about farms. That has been the focus because it is the easiest to deal with but the many urban land claims were side-lined. And it is important to remember that these urban claims are not some relic of colonial era subjugation but forced removals and evictions from the early to mid twentieth century.
There are people alive today who can point to an empty plot, to the remains of their houses foundations, from where they were forcibly evicted. Or even more egregious to a million dollar mansion that they get no benefit from. It is those land claims that need to be dealt with. Farms are mostly owned or controlled by a handful of large corporations anyway.
I mean, there’s pretty much the entirety of the United States, and so far, we’re not giving it back.
Yeah, we noticed.
Some people don’t consider “be more like the USA” a viable path for a sane country to follow, you know.
How is farm redistribution remotely “easier”? It needs to be handed off to very specifically skilled people in a vital industry. Maybe there’s some political/propaganda reason that makes it the more obvious focus but the practicalities make redistribution of urban lots the easier effort I would think.
Farms generally haven’t been bulldozed down and had high-class developments and universities built on them in the 40-50 years since originally being expropriated without compensation*?
- Yeah, let’s not pretend “expropriation without compensation” is something recent, that only leftist brown people do, shall we? Or I dunno, maybe there’s a different name for it when White Rightists do it?