Back in the USSA

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Though it has avoided the worst outcomes, South Africa is hardly a multiracial paradise. Instead, it has trended toward chaos and internal disaster; its economy is in shambles, its once-budding space and nuclear programs are long gone. Crime rules in place of law and order. South Africa’s internal issues are manifold but can be distilled down to two categories: economic tyranny stemming from an unyielding top-down emphasis on racial spoils programs in the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mode, and anarcho-tyranny in which the government is both unable and unwilling to protect the Afrikaner, Anglo, and Indian populations from vicious criminals.

The economic aspect of South Africa’s decline is primarily a result of its postapartheid obsession with extending the country’s cursed racial logic, this time in the name of justice and equity. Though it didn’t see the outright expropriations inflicted upon white farmers in Zimbabwe by Mugabe’s government, it has seen softer forms of expropriation and reparations. For example, as of 2024, more than 24 million South Africans, the vast majority of them Black, received welfare grants from just 7.1 million taxpayers. That 3.38-to-1 grant-to-taxpayer ratio is plainly unsustainable. However, with the leftist ANC in charge, it is part of the system now and seen as an important social justice achievement. South Africa also has an outright reparations program for victims of apartheid, another expensive tax money transfer program.

The affirmative action situation in hiring is even worse. The state enforces its agenda through the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) laws. B-BBEE aims to “redress the inequalities of the past in every sphere: political, social and economic” and “promote economic transformation and enable meaningful participation of black people in the South African economy, through increased participation in ownership and management structures, increasing the involvement of communities and employees in economic activities and skills training.” It does so, as consulting firm Baker McKenzie notes, by requiring that “every organ of state and public entity must apply any relevant code of good practice issued in terms of the B-BBEE Act when, amongst other things, determining the qualification criteria for the issuing of licenses, permits or other authorizations, when determining their procurement policies and when developing criteria for entering into partnerships with the private sector.”

In short, B-BBEE requires racial preferences in hiring and promotion and handing shares of ownership to Blacks. The state measures compliance with B-BBEE via a scoring system that tracks compliance based on how companies hire Black workers under the B-BBEE racial preferences requirements; promote Black workers to management positions; and give ownership stakes to Blacks. Though the B-BBEE laws don’t directly burden the private sector, they require that the state only engage private companies in procurement contracts and issue licenses and authorizations if they comply with B-BBEE requirements.

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Eskom is far from the only company to degenerate in the face of South Africa’s race laws. The country’s economy is shrinking while unemployment is crushingly high. South African universities struggle to produce qualified graduates while being known for overt racial discrimination. Corrupt politicians and party-linked, gangsterlike entities use the country’s racial laws to skim profits off the struggling economy. Basic infrastructure like the hospital system has crumbled. Meanwhile, what’s left is being pillaged or frittered away in bribery schemes by some of the most corrupt politicians and civil servants on the planet.

B-BBEE, though an albatross on the neck of South Africa’s economy, isn’t the country’s only pressing issue, however. In April 2023, President Ramaphosa signed the Employment Equity Amendment Act into law requiring “equity,” meaning racial-ratio-based representation of staff members in all companies employing 50 people or more, threatening to bring what remains of private enterprise inside the country’s racial spoils system.

The result of South Africa’s policies, racial and otherwise, is, as the Center for International Development described in “Growth Through Inclusion in South Africa,” that its vast postapartheid promise has been frittered away, and economic stagnation has taken hold, impoverishing everyone, regardless of race. As the South African economy has lost critical capabilities, the disadvantaged suffer the most.

Economic woes are just part of South Africa’s problems. It also suffers under a significant and ongoing crime wave that the state is both unable and unwilling to handle. As of 2023, South Africa was the most crime-ridden country on the African continent, beating out even Somalia for that dubious distinction. Most of its once-sparkling cities are uninhabitable due to crime that the state refuses to stop. The resulting state of lawlessness can rightly be called anarcho-tyranny.

Armed, illegal miners called zama zamas run extensive operations in full view. Copper cable thieves are rampant and exacerbate Eskom’s B-BBEE woes. Private security forces are now a necessity for those who want to stay safe, as the police can’t or won’t keep citizens safe from robbers, burglars, rapists, kidnappers, and murderers.

The worst of the crimes under which South Africans suffer are the farm murders, in which African criminals use equipment, including signal jammers and automatic weapons, to break into isolated farmsteads and torture, kill, rape, and rob the predominantly Boer inhabitants. These attacks are known for their brutality, with atrocities like drowning children in boiling water and gang-raping female victims being close to the norm rather than radically atypical. Similar atrocities are inflicted on other South Africans, including children.

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The scale of these farm attacks is extreme, with attackers, according to data from 2023, committing about one farm murder a week and nearly one attack a day. {snip}

Though farm attacks are less frequent than other crimes that plague South Africa, such as cash-in-transit heists, they are renowned for their extreme brutality. {snip}

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Sadly, America has flirted with following the same dark path as South Africa. America suffered months of riots in 2020, much as riots racked South Africa in 2021. In America, as in South Africa, armed civilians had to defend their property when the police couldn’t or wouldn’t do so, while leftist politicians encouraged the rioters. Just as farm attacks go unsolved because of police incompetence and unwillingness in South Africa, murders are now only solved at about a 50% rate in America, the worst in the Occident. Some cities, such as Kansas City, have plummeted to under 40% clearance rates for homicides. Additionally, as robbers and farm attackers in South Africa, gangs in America are now using signal jammers to assist in burglaries.

Comparisons between America and South Africa aren’t limited to criminality, though. Some on the American left see South Africa’s reparations program as a model for an American reparations program. There is also the issue of affirmative action in higher education admissions and hiring. Although the American system now must be less open about racial preferences in admissions, the general effect is the same: Colleges ignore worse scores and admit favored groups. Though outright affirmative action is now illegal and quotas banned, unlike in South Africa, schools have found ways to discriminate regardless. Similarly, in the job market, proponents of affirmative action policies admit that they “shape the U.S. labor market” and argue that further affirmative action, or racial preference, policies are needed to achieve “equity” in the workplace. Bloomberg, reporting on diversity in the workplace, noted that “the biggest public companies added over 300,000 jobs—and 94% of them went to people of color.” When Bloomberg included replacements for old jobs rather than just new ones, the number remained around 80%. {snip}

Though America is not at South Africa’s disastrous level, it may be trending that way. Blackouts are growing more common as political agendas, such as “clean” energy, are prioritized supplying cheap and reliable electricity. Additionally, as Johannesburg is now uninhabitable for law-abiding people, Americans are fleeing their once-great coastal cities for safer and greener pastures in the Southwest and Southeast. As South African business and political leaders use their B-BBEE policies to skim off the top, America’s DEI-demanded struggle sessions are an opportunity for grift that is as massive as it is frequently abused. As a result of the various forms of indirect bribery and insider profiting, most Americans see their politicians as highly corrupt, an opinion with which many taxpayers in South Africa certainly agree. Meanwhile, much as South Africa’s nuclear and space programs are long gone, ours are mere shadows of their former selves.

Finally, there is the fact that America’s drift away from merit and toward South Africa-style CRT and affirmative action came after segregation had ended, much as South Africa’s Marxist change for the worse came after apartheid had voluntarily ended de jure long after it had ended in fact. {snip}

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