South Africa in for tough times after stretch of solid growth

AFP ^ | Sunday, June 15, 2008

[Ratblaster]

Too many white owned businesses. Reform starts with the farms.

[MinorityRepublican]

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[BfloGuy]

South Africa needs China-style 8% growth rates if it's ever to all its people out of poverty. Unfortunately, it's in the odd situation of being a first-world country containing another third-world country.

The first world component will insist on the government spending, welfare safety net and legislatively-mandated minimum wages they're accustomed to. That will keep their growth too low to allow the poor to rise. Big trouble ahead.

[Parley Baer]

I hear a lot of the whites are leaving the country. Quite a few to Australia.

[pabianice]

This is a joke, right? S. Africa has become a third world hellhole of violence, poverty, and superstition.

[Ratblaster]

It's like being a Jew in 1937 Germany. The writing is on the wall.

[MinorityRepublican]

Yes you’re right. However, there are still nice parts in South Africa such as Sandton, a suburb north of J’burg. It is Africa’s richest square mile and the area where richest corporations in South Africa relocated from J’burg Central Business District which is now consumed by violence.

[MinorityRepublican]

That brings up the expression “Packing for Perth”.

[MinorityRepublican]

That brings up the expression “Packing for Perth”.

[TheMole]

...J’burg Central Business District which is now consumed by violence.

As documented in The Death of Johannesburg.

[MinorityRepublican]

Today in J'burg.

Brutal New York back in the '70s.

[MinorityRepublican]

South Africa's richest square mile in Sandton, South Africa.

[MinorityRepublican]

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[MinorityRepublican]

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[MinorityRepublican]

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[MinorityRepublican]

South Africans with money - herd nervously together into what are euphemistically called ‘cluster developments’. Above is a close view of one of them. Massively fortified, high-walled enclaves containing multiple copies of the same architectural plan, repeated over and over. It’s oddly reminiscent of the Middle Ages, where peasants seeking protection and safety, would give up their freedom in order to live within a castle’s territory.

Another booming industry in South Africa, are the ‘additional’ features to make homes safer. Normal life in SA is potentially so violent, that it’s not sufficient to have 15 foot walls around your property, ‘panic buttons’ to call armed guards (installed throughout your home), barred windows, and electric fences.. Here’s another layer of South African domestic home-security: razor-sharp jagged wall-spikes, bolted into place on top of the wall surrounding the home.

[MinorityRepublican]

[MinorityRepublican]

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[MinorityRepublican]

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