The beautiful country of my birth (an event that took place very long ago) was in my childhood the setting of White happiness and Non-White misery. Apartheid ended there long after I had left it. Since the “liberation”, it has been going down and down. The fall gathers pace.
Nils A. Haug writes at Gatestone:
South Africa has regressed into an ideologically-driven socialist-communist abyss of poverty, crime, corruption and systemic dysfunction at all levels: local, state and national – all in 30 years since the end of Apartheid.
Once the leading economic power in all of Africa, South Africa is now regarded as the most corrupt country on the continent.
An independent body, the South African Institution of Civil Engineering, ten years ago rated South Africa’s infrastructure as C, and now it has deteriorated to a D rating. On its current path, the country is heading towards an E, meaning unfit for purpose.
South Africa’s infrastructure is collapsing in front of everyone’s eyes. The basis of any economy is infrastructure. It is what allows trade and workers to travel. With unfit infrastructure, roads, ports, airports, and bridges and so on, the economy will fail.
Powered by its Marxist-themed National Democratic Revolution (NDR) charter, the leading political party, the African National Congress (ANC), has been accelerating its collectivist program to control all aspects of the economy, whether public or private. While the private sector still has some freedoms, these rights diminish by the day.
This outcome should not be surprising when it is realized the ANC’s strategy is fully within the Marxist playbook: res delenda est – everything must be destroyed, refabricated, and brought to fulfilment into a communist state, a new order for the nation.
The demise of major private sector companies, most with a long history there, is a direct result of nationalistic government policies coupled to aggressive and ideologically-driven trade unions who, presumably, would rather see companies closed down than accept a lesser wage.
Unionized South African workers are among the best paid in Africa, due to unions contending for above-inflation wage growth, ostensibly to narrow the long-term large inequality gap. At the same time, the ANC government has enacted detrimental labour laws that make it hard for companies to hire and fire. This has a dampening effect on hiring in the private sector and thus escalates unemployment.
The official unemployment rate exceeds 33% (more than 8 million potential workers), while the rate for unemployed younger workers exceeds 60%. These figures consistently rate among the world’s highest and confirm for millions that they have little or no future prospects in their country of birth.
In the past 25 years, more than 70,000 important companies entered liquidation with more than 2.8 million jobs lost, directly due to adverse government policies.
As the deindustrialisation of Africa’s most industrialised country accelerates, the unemployment rate will increase accordingly and even more people, to survive, will become reliant on government grants. The centralized ANC state then has citizens exactly where they want them – under their control and dependent upon the government for daily living. In this way future votes are secured, leading to the perpetuation of the ANC – a typical seditious device to remain in power indefinitely, like other nations in Africa.
For example, ArcelorMittal, a major steel company - the largest and oldest (since 1928) in the nation - is in the process of closing plants. Around 3,500 jobs would be lost directly, while studies estimate that as many as 80,000 people could be affected indirectly as downstream businesses, mines, quarries, schools, and small guesthouses dependent on the industry.
Collateral damage includes leading iron ore mines due to the fact that ArcelorMittal is their main customer.
The sad upshot is that the economy is imploding, with key industries falling one by one like a set of dominoes, after 15 years of mismanagement and poor government policy.
There are no internal indications whatsoever that the socialist-driven centralized economy will improve. In fact, it will probably continue to deteriorate – unless Trump intervenes. If there is to be hope for South Africa, and the ANC is to relinquish power or remedy their destructive policies, this hope lies largely with the current US administration.
To bring about fundamental change in South Africa, there has to be a change from its alliance with totalitarian regimes to one closer to those nations reflecting Western interests and the liberal democratic tradition. The country is too important to the West for it to remain aligned with anti-Western powers of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, and for these despotic nations to take advantage of America’s absence of influence in southern Africa.
The West has long been sympathetic to South Africa – arguably, at times, too sympathetic – and has mainly treated it gently despite its recent alignment with BRICS, a group of 11 emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia – that bonded together on economic and geopolitical issues presumably as a counterbalance to the West, and purportedly to increase development.
Despite much international criticism, Ramaphosa declared, “We are not daunted. We will not be deterred. We will speak in defense of our national interests.” Despite being the US’s largest trade partner in Africa, he was clearly verbalizing the ANC’s defiant attitude towards the West.
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