Clark’s research and his book ‘A Farewell to Alms’ are not about IQ. It’s about cultural and genetic factors that lead to a population being able to quickly adapt to an industrial economy. That is obviously relevant to discussions of how countries are likely to fare in terms of macro-economic and societal outcomes.
And yet the discussion with New Deal Democrat seemed to be moving in that direction all the same. I’m not going to split hairs here - that tangent is closed.
I would be more concerned with Zuma’s proposed speeding up of reforms. The LA Times had an interesting article late last year on the problems land reforms have encountered so far.
On the other hand, South Africa is a one-party democracy in the sense that the ANC constantly wins supermajorities sort of like Mexico under PRI or a large-scale version of Democratic party machines in the Old South or in the inner cities.
You can find the murder rate for the last few years at the South African Police Service website, over here (PDF). A ratio of 34.1 per 100,000 for last year.
In the US it was 5.0 per 100,000 for 2009. It has been decreasing for 20 years but no one seems to care.
I wrote a paper on South African crime once. The police did not keep good records of crime before 1994. I know they started keeping good records after 1994, but I don’t remember where I found them.
I don’t doubt that social transitions are difficult and can cause problems. I do take exception to the idea that Africans are uniquely stubborn and backwards. For the most part, they are nothing more exotic than farmers. For the most part, they respond to incentives in perfectly ordinary and unremarkable ways. If they are not responding the way you expect them to, it’s probably a matter of you not understand the incentives. But we’ve got a few hundred years of painting Africa as primitive, savage an uncivilizable. Why stop now?
How is worshipping your ancestors somehow inherently incompatible with modernity, and worshipping a dead Jewish guy is not? Why is it that when we organize under linguistic, religious, geographic and familial ties we are creating the wonderful thing we call ‘a community’ but when Africans do that, it’s a backwards ‘tribe’? How are traditional healers different than our own new-age BS? Why are chiefs more backwards than any other royalty? I’m not saying it’s all roses- it’s not. But half the “backwards”’ stuff people harp about only becomes “backwards” when you use the words we made up to describe African institutions rather than their familiar counterparts.
FWIW, I do agree that “traditional” is not the best word. “Traditional” institutions are dynamic and ever changing. They respond to people and the environment, including modern needs. It’s not entirely right to think of them as leftovers from the past. As long as they are accepted and perpetuated by modern people, they are by definition modern.
As the LA Times article that Chen019 linked explains, land reform in South Africa is currently carried out on a “willing seller-willing buyer” model, subsidized by the government, so “taking back” is probably not the best description. The controversy at hand is about possibly changing that model.
One point that should be emphasised - people often think that South African land issues are simply a matter of Blacks taking back all the land wherever they can. So they read about the successful land claims and figure that this is just a response to long-ago colonization.
Except it’s not. Quite a lot of the land claims relate to land that was taken in living memory. So the “Land that’s been in the (white) family for generations” bit is bullshit a lot of the time.
Another large component istribal land claims*. And that’snot just a South African phenomenon, now, is it?
- Note that, *unlike *Zimbabwe, the (majority black) Government was against that claim. But I expect that’s because they’re corrupt and out for all they can wring out of the coffers, right?
And - to back up MrDibble’s point - the land claim process is constitutionally limited to dispossession that occurred since 1913. Although, the specific land claim process is somewhat distinct from the more general policy of land reform.
If I may nitpick a little - correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Group Areas Act deal mostly with cities and towns? Agricultural land, which is the topic of contention, was mostly expropriated somewhat earlier under the Land Act (1913) and the Native Land and Trust Act (1936), IIRC.
DAMN south Africa for doing to the whites what the whites did to them.
Totally intolerable! How DARE those evil racist black African natives take their land back. The courageous Boers took that land and raped their women fair and square.
</sarcasm>
I just had almost this very exact conversation with my eldest daughter.
Is it going to benefit the black population if South Africa goes the way of Zimbabwe? I don’t think it will. Getting rid of the white farmers would be bad for all South Africans.
I think you’re being unfair here, though. Syphilitic dog-rapers are certainly disgusting and evil - but they “only” are harming dogs. The CIA did profound harm to a very large number of actual people. I doubt that there are any actual syphilitic dog-rapers on this Board, so there’s no real harm done - but if there were, they’d have a legitimate gripe with your comments.
A better question would be: Why didn’t Zimbabwe go the way of South Africa? They started out in almost exactly the same place, after they abolished their white-only governments.
No, the experience of East Asia would suggest the opposite conclusion. Tokyo is New York with funny-looking signs.
That impression leaves very, very quickly when you live there.
East Asian countries have their own social system, family structure, business style, morals and values, spiritual beliefs, and way of looking at the world. While of course every individual has their own way of doing things and there are common things that unite us all, taken as a whole social life in East Asia is extremely different than social life here. I never knew how vast differences could be until I lived in China. After two years of total immersion in the place (which looked pretty familiar- lots of high rises, fast food joints and even a WalMart) and I couldn’t so much as figure out who was supposed to pay for dinner.
It’s totally possible to modernize without completely dismantling your culture.
I can’t imagine South Africa going the way of Zimbabwe without active, targeted support from the South African government (certainly above and beyond simply tolerating an individual’s tirade). Most people tend to view what happened in Zimbabwe as some spontaneous uprising by the poor and landless, when in reality it was a coordinated, government-backed initiative in which those taking back land received monthly payments, food and other supplies from the government.
I think that this is what the OP was worried about.
Even land that’s been in the white family since 1955 is a long long time. That’s before my mom was born. (Damn. I just aged myself.)
Well, Reuters reported today:
Sooo, this is what I have heard/read/seen on tv:
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Paying whites fair price (subjective, really, when you talk about seizure of property) hasn’t worked well enough because 1.) The blacks don’t get big enough grants from the government and 2.) Whites don’t always want to sell, so
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They started fixing prices
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and maybe a ruckus will happen soon
Promised Land director says:
then he continues
This seems to be aggravated by the problem that new landowners don’t always know how to farm.
Let me remind you that Boers isn’t = all white people. Kay? My cousin’s family is from Great Britain and they bought their land from a white guy, yes, but who knows what will happen now. I’m not denying that the situation in South Africa is horrible. I’m trying to see how these policies are going to affect the country positively.
Land distribution under apartheid wasn’t just about some white people subjugating black people. Not every white person was part of the government, and not every white person was a conspirator here. So if I’m Joe Schmuel from Poland and I go to South Africa to flee the Nazis and I end up getting a farm and whatever, imagine how my children are going to feel when someone has a claim to it from before my arrival.
Or even if I’m Sally Bell and I was born in South Africa and my parents have had this land since 1966. No one likes being displaced. This isn’t a defense of anything, just my head thinking, “This may not be a good idea.”
I’m just not convinced these policies are working so well.
So now the ANC says they’re going to seize the land and pay people for it. Making that price fair is a little subjective. Redistribution is not about rights. It’s about race. So…yeah. I guess we’ll see how it goes.
Does anyone know the per cent of land owned by corporations versus smaller farms?
add: I think of Boers as the Dutch, but if people in South Africa just think white = Boer now, then well, that makes your post doubly wrong.
“Boer” is generally synonymous with “Afrikaner”, when not used to literally mean “farmer” (and with the exception of some fringe people who make a distinction between those who went on the Great Trek and those who stayed in the Cape). By the way, the use of “Dutch” to refer to Afrikaners is archaic.