To my followers outside of South Africa; here is a thread for you to better understand what is currently going on in the country.
As would be expected some of the reporting has been solid but much of it has been sensationalist or simply off the mark.
First up a disclaimer. This isn’t a thread aimed at highlighting isolated incidents of violence or looting, of which there are plenty, but rather one in which I will try to provide insight into what is happening and more importantly why these events are taking place.
The narrative you may have heard is that the former President (2009 - 201
of the country, Jacob Zuma, has been jailed for contempt of court after refusing to appear at the Zondo Commission, a commission of inquiry he established to probe widespread State corruption.
One of the issues with setting up a commission to establish the extent of Government corruption and so-called “State capture” is that as the head or former head of State you’re likely to be asked some difficult questions. Zuma isn’t big on difficult questions.
As such he looked for every excuse under the sun (illness, bias, jurisdiction etc.) in an ultimately futile attempt to avoid appearing at the commission. The commission then escalated the matter to the courts and the Constitutional Court found Zuma in contempt.
He was then sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for the contempt. It bears mentioning at this point that Zuma is yet to stand trial for more than 700 charges of corruption, fraud, and money laundering emanating from an arms deal more than 20 years ago.
Naturally the former President has some supporters in the country, many of whom believe that he has been hard done by. There is also the issue of tribalism whereby Zuma is a Zulu man in a country with several ethnic groups of which the Zulu nation is the largest (12 million).
Following a week of uncertainty Zuma handed himself over to police and was jailed last week. Subsequent to this there have been protest marches by supporters and in recent days violent rioting and looting by various groups of people.
However this is not the full story.
South Africa is a complex country, no different to many others but perhaps unique in how it came to be, it’s oppressive past, and it’s way of dealing (or not dealing) with all of the aforementioned. These issues are just a part of where we find ourselves now.
In 1994 when the country had its first democratic elections the African National Congress (ANC) was elected to power and their leader at the time, Nelson Mandela, installed by them as President. Mandela, as is well documented, was a conciliatory man who preached unity.
Thus unity (“the rainbow nation”) was the message and together with a relatively robust economic policy (GEAR) which prioritized GDP growth and sound management of the fiscus as well as relatively free market economics. Things were far from perfect but they were on the up.
For the average citizen, including the poor there was improvement, albeit slow, in both living standards and general poverty. However the ANC is a conflicted party, having made a deal with the communist devil in the 60’s and then buying Soviet propaganda whole later on.
Thus a laissez-faire approach to the economy was always doomed to fail, or more appropriately was doomed to be sabotaged. After Mandela the ANC moved steadily towards far more central control and planning of both the economy (ASGISA, GNP, NDP) and of society at large.
Government pushed socialism and identity politics hard through poor social welfare and measures like enforced race based employment/businesses, and academics/journalists/business leaders all responded in kind by endorsing these policies and foisting them upon society at large.
In the end the only people who benefitted were a handful of well connected individuals and already wealthy elites. The GDP growth began to slow and the real economy started to shrink. Fewer jobs and opportunities for the poor was the net result.
Undeterred the populace which actually votes (a minority) continued to elect the ANC, who in turn continued to install progressively poorer and poorer leaders (Mbeki; Zuma; Ramaphosa). A lot can be said of Zuma and his corrupt ways, but one thing he isn’t is an ideologue.
In comes Cyril Ramaphosa as the President of the country. A former trade unionist, a committed communist at heart, and a man who had used those race based policies (Black economic empowerment [BEE]) to become a billionaire. He takes over with the country at a precipice.
He’s no stranger to the situation having been Zuma’s Deputy President (2014 - 201
and having presided over such failures as the collapse of our electricity generation to the point that we’ve now had regular blackouts (called loadshedding) for more than a decade on and off.
Ramaphosa is also well aware of the very high unemployment in the country and a deepening divide between the classes. He approaches this by doubling down on socialist policy based on failed Soviet era policy which his party calls the “National Democratic Revolution”.
It’s important to note that Ramaphosa and the ANC policy is largely and vocally supported by almost every major news editor, academic, large corporation etc. and that any push back is deemed to be either racist or right wing or some other ad hominem.
Given this background of a failing country, a corrupt State, and a largely unemployed and hopeless populace - enter stage left COVID-19. It’s still too early to tell for sure but it appears as if Ramaphosa/Government viewed this as the ideal scapegoat for all their failures.
As with most other countries in the world we too panicked at the existence of a novel virus, and in March of 2020 Ramaphosa instituted a lockdown for “21 days to flatten the curve”. To do this he instituted a state of disaster which more than 16 months later remains in place.
At one point SA had the harshest lockdown in the world with bans on such items as open toed shoes and cooked chicken. To this day we remain in lockdown having moved into and out of harsher restrictions over time. Lockdowns have been the straw which broke the camels back.
In developed countries lockdowns have taken their toll, but Governments have been able to mitigate some of the damage by printing trillions of dollars and falling back on a competent if not ideal social welfare system. We simply didn’t have either option available to us.
