Comment by pixelpoet
7 months ago
As a white South African who got out in 2007, while there's obviously no "white genocide", it's still pretty much the crappiest place to be as a tech / programming guy (or just anyone who likes having electricity). Pretoria (where Musk is from) in particular was terrible, Cape Town less so. Best decision I ever made.
There’s a pretty big gap between “they’re killing everyone of my race” and “dang, electricity’s out again.”
Are you saying it’s crappy to be white in South Africa even if you’re not a poor farmer?
The prospects are terrible, as being a "pale male" is the worst sort of employee to be. Businesses are given extra money if they have high BBEEE ratings; i.e. mostly-racial quotas. Loads of money siphoned off, and not just in the usual high-corruption way via the state, but e.g. if you want to procure something you go through a black-owned procurement firm that doesn't do anything except BBEEE-wash it and charge a premium.
It's a bit like what happened in Zimbabwe that devastated that country 20 years ago when all the white farmers were kicked out, but in slower motion.
> It's a bit like what happened in Zimbabwe that devastated that country 20 years ago when all the white farmers were kicked out
Land reform to repair the inequality from the previous apartheid state isn't exactly "kicked out". Zimbabwe became Zimbabwe from Rhodesia via a civil war that wrestled control away from the minority white government.
In South Africa today, 75% of the privately owned land is held by about 8% of the population(white folks), who were given legal preference multiple times in history to own all that land.
Even if you remove apartheid, you still have a similar situation to antebellum US where ex slaves were working on the same old plantations, now as share croppers. Of course in SA we're not talking about ex slaves, but you're maintaining the status quo one way or another.
Land reform is required if your country ever wants to know peace. The US never finished reconstruction and didn't redistribute those plantations and other ill gotten gains, and as a result is still struggling to move past slavery.
2 replies →
That scheme seems similar to how veteran owned business preferences are implemented in the US. I've read the exact same complaint about that.
So it may have unintended consequences but it seems to be as good a solution as the US could come up with.
BBBEE = Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Economic_Empowerment
You colonized them, monopolized their resources, and used the spoils to fuel an apartheid state with some of the highest levels of inequality humanity has ever seen.
It's really, really difficult to think of a set-up that's more economically-distortive on its face; a complete dislocation of labor productivity and sovereignty.
There's no possible way that the "devastation" began with the end of apartheid. It was built into the existing system. Geez. Black South Africans (and Zimbabweans!) are building a way out m of a hole dug for them by their colonizers, with the cheapo equipment that the global monetary apparatus will (predatorily) lend them.
I have no doubt that it was not an ideal place to be, psychologically, as a white man. Materially? Eh.
Based on post history, this might be Elon Musk’s account.
>it's still pretty much the crappiest place to be as a tech / programming guy (or just anyone who likes having electricity).
I'm pretty sure Afghanistan is worse, but Trump says its okay to go back there.