Posted on 05/30/2024 8:58:56 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
After many years in power, a corrupt and inept government is finally close to being removed. There is no great confidence in the opposition — but the people have had enough of seeing their country ruined and are finally having their say.
No, I’m not talking about President Joe Biden’s administration but South Africa, where the ANC looks as if it might be close to losing power after almost three decades of one-party rule.
Very high turnout for other parties is understood to have perhaps caused the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, to fall below 50 percent of the vote for the first time. It’s currently on 43 percent, according to the early results. This may force the ANC to power share.
The leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, which is led by a white man called John Steenhuisen, is still quite far behind on around 26 percent of the vote.
The DA has signed agreements with other parties in order to form a majority coalition, but the ANC is highly likely to remain in a dominant position in the struggle for power over the next few days and possibly weeks. Nonetheless, its iron grip on South African politics appears finally to be loosening.
The ANC’s vote share has steadily declined in the last two decades. In 2004, after ten years in charge, it won almost 70 percent of the vote. By 2009, that had declined to 66 percent. In 2014, that fell 62 percent and in 2019, the party’s lead shrank to 58 percent of the vote.
The result will be closely watched by Israel, which has been wounded by South Africa’s staunch opposition to the war in Gaza and support for the Palestinian cause.
But South Africans are less concerned about the Middle East than they are about the rampant corruption across South African governance. There is a widespread sense that, after the joyous triumph over apartheid, the country is regressing. The ANC has failed with the South African economy, and inflation has been too high for many years, even before the Covid pandemic. Basic utility services such as water provision and the electrical grid have been collapsing, too.
The final results of the election will not be clear until this weekend at the earliest.
My bet? Not without violence.
africa wins again...
These people who write for neocon publications all STILL believe that parliamentary democracy can be made to work in all the tribe-and-clan parts of the world.
Amazing.
The “opposition party winning” is a white thing, and decreasingly so at that.
In an 8% white country? Don’t be ridiculous.
And replaced with another corrupt and inept “government”
Is there any place where africans manage to govern themselves in a semi civilized way, including in the US?
2018, I spent three weeks in South Africa (half of that in Cape Town area).
From various conversations...blacks and whites, I came to three conclusions.
1. Early 1990s...modern infrastructure management and maintenance basically ended. Doesn’t matter if you talk national or local...the new leadership siphoned off funds, mismanaged programs, and most everything that you need (water, public transportation, electricity, phone, etc) is screwed up. The national airlines (remarkable operation throughout the 1960s to 1990s)...is crapped out and making zero profit.
2. Tons of commercial opportunities but everything is micromanaged to filter corruption into the system.
3. There’s just no one I ran into who could say a kind word on the ANC. They all agreed there was a element of the Apartheid gov’t that was corrupt. They also had a front-row seat for the Zimbabwe ‘mess’ created, and they don’t want that type of event in S-A.
Great place but you continued to have to watch your back. The safari-park area had armed guards, and they weren’t there to protect from the animals.
I drove >2000 km in 2000 Joburg - Durban - Swaziland - Kruger, flew back to Joburg and out to NY.
I grew up in Brooklyn, I found the whole place to be very tense (except Swaziland).
Not going back.
That’s what I call a self-evident proposition, as the dog’s-meat man said, when the housemaid told him he warn’t a gentleman.
I saw an interesting YouTube video shot in SA by tourist who was a power system engineer on vacation. It showed high voltage transmission line towers that had been stripped of supporting structure by scrap metal harvesters. As the videographer commented - one stiff wind and these are coming down.
You have nuclear power generators along the coasts that are managed with the help of foreign consultants. The staff include large doses of diversity hires who have no idea what they are doing. Thus you have increased the risk of accidents and system failures, and the transmission network has become far more precarious due to the perverse incentives in the economy.
My thoughts are that at some point in the not to distant future there will be genocidal threats to the whites who remain in SA. Then it will be a test of the United States and the original meaning and purpose of an asylum program. Something tells me if the crisis comes soon enough that Biden will invent a distinction to allow him to reject South African whites, while continuing to apply asylum in wide open form to those who arrive from Mexico by foot.
ANC is spectacularly evil and spectacularly incompetent.
I have ALWAYS been an anti-ANC and was an anti Mandela sort.
Let me tell you it wasn’t easy when he came to power. So you remember the Oprah/Taylor Swift like adoration of him then?
He was WORSHIPPED by most people.
They would wax on eloquently on his loving nature and heart of gold calling him the African savior. Then eventually I would be asked what I thought and tell them he was a dirty stinking. Commie , murderer terrorist. They would look at me like I was a piece of turd that did not go down the toilet.
Here it is 30 plus years later and I was right. I’m sure THEY wouldn’t remember that.
If they weren’t being supported by socialist entities like France or the Democratic party, things might be different.
Maybe the ANC could charge Trump with fraud, so SA blacks can vote for the ANC...(Or have Biden go there and say, If you don't vote for the ANC, you ain't black!'
To be replaced by another feckless, inept, and corrupt government that will ensure the continued path of South Africa back to the Stoned Age.
If they are counting the votes, not likely.
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