They voted Robert Mugabe into office.
If they aren't living through purgatory now, what would you call it?
I suggest you read more about South Africa. Crime is rampant. And the government is about to start the same sort of land reform that ruined Zimbabwe. Give South Africa another ten years - if that long - and the country will be in ruins.
The conditions under which people voted Mugabe into office--and it has been many years since free elections--were very different. Many years into majority rule, under Mugabe, Zimbabwe was doing very well economically and socially. The decline is relatively recent.
I have done reading about South Africa and your perspective is from the late 1990s. The situation has turned itself around quite dramatically, and the real estate market in downtown Jo'burg is booming.
Hell