Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W.H. Auden
During one of my “Under the Fedora” roundups last year I wrote this about the “African Peace Mission” to Ukraine:
I didn’t give much attention to the African Peace Mission to Russia/Ukraine because it had no hope of success but there is one aspect I’d like to note. One of the delegates is President Ramaphosa of South Africa whose country you would call a basket case, if you wanted to insult basket cases that is.
Given the issues of violence, crime, electricity, infrastructure, and an inability of basic services in his country that he either can’t or won’t address it makes perfect sense for him to fly half way around the world to earn brownie points. It’s sort of like Gavin Newsome going after Florida. Much easier than solving problems at home.
Lately South Africa has been in a news a lot, for leading the charge against Israel and claiming it is committing Geocide in Gaza. They’ve gone to the international criminal court and continue to lead the international charge against the Jewish state.
Of course the reality is if Israel wanted to commit Genocide in Gaza they would have left their troops and home and completely flattened the place after Oct 7th (or any of the previous times Hamas was hitting them) rather than after 8 months of war deciding to deport Cancer patients that they were treating for free:
But that still leaves the question why is South Africa, a state that isn’t Muslim or Arab making such a fuss about Gaza when they have no state in it at all.
Well two things come to mind quickly, the first and most important is Iranian money:
The same week that the ANC got its finances in a better state, South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, according to South Africa’s Daily Maverick news outlet.
High-profile South African activists such as former Institute of Race Relations CEO Frans Cronje and Accountability Now Director Paul Hoffman both said earlier this month that reports are emerging that Iran fixed the ANC’s finance problem.
“The South African government is the same thing as Hamas. It’s an Iranian proxy, and its role in the war is to fight the ideological and ideas war to stigmatize Jews around the world,” Cronje during an interview on Chai FM Radio.
Iran has been cultivating SA for a while, apparently they’ve been putting those pallets of cash to use.
But the 2nd reason can be found it a story linked by Don Surber today about South Africa that isn’t getting a whole lot of play internationally:
Residents rich and poor have never seen a shortage of this severity. While hot weather has shrunk reservoirs, crumbling infrastructure after decades of neglect is also largely to blame. The public’s frustration is a danger sign for the ruling African National Congress, whose comfortable hold on power since the end of apartheid in the 1990s faces its most serious challenge in an election this year.
A country already famous for its hourslong electricity shortages is now adopting a term called “watershedding” — the practice of going without water, from the term loadshedding, or the practice of going without power.
I’ve been writing about the basket case that is South Africa for years:
In 1990 the year that Nelson Mandela was released South Africa’s unemployment rate was at 18.78% doubling the 1980 rate of 9.24%. By the first year of free elections (1994) it was up to 22.89%. There was a sudden drop in the rate in 1995 to 16.71% but by 1997 the rate was back over 20% (20.95%) and since h left office in 1999 through 2010 the rate has averaged 25.76% from a high of 30.41% in (2002) and a low of 22.23% (2007).
The current rate in the 3rd quarter of 2013 according to government stats is 24.7%
That piece was from ten years after I wrote that article the rate is over 32%
Last year linked a piece about the electricidal situation
Besides no airlines, no postal service and no trains, there is a dwindling electricity supply. They have rolling blackouts, euphemistically called “load shedding” which can last as much as 10 hours per day in Cape Town. Johannesburg is worse. People survive by always keeping their thermos flasks filled with hot water, using small gas camping stoves and using rechargeable lanterns for light and a healthy supply of batteries and candles at all times. Food rots in refrigerators so one needs to purchase small amounts of groceries just for a day. Few people can afford to have a generator, let alone the exorbitant cost of diesel fuel. Without electricity there is no viable economy. Retail stores, restaurants, businesses and factories cannot operate. The employees are idle and cannot do their job. As a result they are unable to earn a livelihood. The lack of electricity is a complex topic. In a nutshell, a history of huge financial losses, mismanagement, sabotage and corruption is evident.
Well at least there is equality…of misery:
There have always been people begging on the streets; mostly blacks. Now however, they are joined by ever-increasing white beggars. I did see an entire family including small blond haired children with crude cardboard signs saying “Please help – God bless you” .
According to some reports, over 50% of South Africans live in poverty on less than $2.00 a day. Some have no access to sanitation, water or electricity.
Well yeah sure South Africa has been known as the rape capital of the world for years and doesn’t have electricity in their capital city and now can’t even provide water to it’s people half of whom live on under $2 a day but at least with Iran’s help the ANC is doing OK.
The bottom line is really simple. To solve the problems of Electricity, infrastructure, food and water in South Africa involve having the will to take on the problem of ANC which has been using South Africa as their personal plaything since Mandela left power and perhaps before.
It’s actually the same dynamic that you see today in US cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, DC where you have Democrat/Marxist rule for decades. The actual problems of the cities involve ending the gravy train for the connected and that’s just not to be done, much easier to pass a resolution against Israel in Gaza. Keeps the activists happy and the money to the connected flowing.
That’s South Africa who cares if the people starve or die of thirst if the ANC can keep getting Iranian money for going after Israel. That’s what counts to those who rule exploit South Africa
Closing thought: These topics are generally considered VERBOTEN in the MSM because in their mind to speak the truth about South Africa post apartheid is to suggest white minority rule was better. I’ll leave Glenn Reynolds to answer that:
It’s not black rule. Botswana next door is well-run. It’s rule by leftists, which always makes everything suck. And they always use race as an excuse for their failures. You can see that in the deep-Blue parts of the United States.
UPDATE: via Elder of Ziyon Great quote from Douglas Murray on the subject
Murray blasted South Africa, saying, “I always think that for voters in any country, first order of priorities: getting the water clean; getting the roads running; getting the infrastructure working; getting healthcare; getting education. I do think that quite often, in my observation — I’ve covered a lot of countries around the world — quite often in my observation, those first-order priorities, if the government fails at that, it does distraction kinds of things. … I don’t think it’s something of primary importance to the people of South Africa; I don’t think it’s first order priorities for the voters, and I’m suspicious when governments pull international tricks.”
The words you’re looking for are: “NAILED IT”!
You really need to see the full interview:
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