Failing State
At the end of the Cold War and after the terrible Apartheid political regime, South Africa was considered to be a promising developing country: rich in natural and human resources, tied into the post-colonial British international system, enjoying the advantages of the British tradition of political liberalism. But as Jack in comments points out, governance went wrong and derailed all that promise in the intervening decades, leaving the nation of South Africa poor and chaotic, failing its own citizens.
The linked article is an in-depth report from the German newsweekly Der Spiegel, from its English-language international online edition. Der Spiegel is a journalistic institution in Germany, having arisen in the West German post-World-War-II economic boom times. The magazine gained a reputation for its critical reporting of West German governments over the years, often shedding light on corruption—and politicians’ ties to the Nazi-era past. Politically, the magazine has favored governments of the Social Democrats and Greens.
The magazine is something of a doorstop each week, and it does a fair amount of in-depth reporting through lengthy articles. As with a lot of other journalism, there is some tendency to be too dramatic. Still, the report on South Africa is rather shocking in its details of a system plundered by its own dominant political classes, while organized crime and rampant banditry exhaust any resources that are left.
The article is self-recommending. If you’ve ever found yourself occasionally wondering if our society faces a Roman decline and fall scenario, the decline of South Africa presents an alternative model to worry about.
An sample excerpt, regarding a public rail system that is picked over for scrap metal and no longer capable of serving commuters:
[In] the fiscal year of 2021-2022, around 1,500 kilometers of copper cable was stolen, says Transnet, the state-owned company responsible for rail service in the country. Infrastructure theft has become a lucrative revenue stream for organized crime, and they don’t just target the high-voltage lines owned by the railway. In the townships, gangs dig down to the power cables and pull them out of the ground using pickup trucks. The power utility in Johannesburg registered more than 2,000 such cases and similar that same fiscal year alone. Copper wiring is even stolen from hospitals, likely destined for sale abroad.
South Africa now exports more copper than its mines produce.
I just finished the Der Spiegel report on South Africa. I already knew about the high level of violence. But the level of corruption and chaos, in a country where there was so much hope post-apartheid, is absolutely heartbreakng, reminding me of Haiti.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that at least some blacks think they had it better when the whites ruled. It's hard to say that they were wrong.
The ANC has taken a modern industrial nation with well-developed infrastructure and is running it into the ground.
The only way it could get worse might be a military coup and/or civil war. That might not be off the table.
To all my friends here, Jewish or not, I wish you a happy and healthy new year, for you and all your loved ones.
Josh