A few months ago I wrote a post on the ongoing collapse of South Africa – the Rainbow Nation of many moons ago.

And isn’t that ironic in the month of June?

But that post was mainly about the energy industry woes of the nation resulting from racist planning and outright corruption – plus outright stupidity.

But this latest essay from one Brian Pottinger (former Editor and Publisher of the South African Sunday Times who lives on the KwaZulu North Coast) is far more disturbing, South Africa’s infinite humiliation, because it makes it clear that the energy crisis is simply one example of what is a systemic collapse.

After reading this I don’t think Civil War is in the future for the nation but simple feudal warfare, aided and abetted by foreign actors, But before that, here’s some non-energy disasters:

South Africa’s postal services, rated worse than Nigeria’s by the Universal Postal Union, is about to file for bankruptcy. The ports are rated in the bottom 10 out of the 370 facilities listed on the Container Port Performance Index. The national electricity supplier is technically bankrupt after years of plundering, racial preferment in jobs and tenders, and sabotage. Power outages of 12 hours a day are common. This week it was confirmed that impoverished Mozambique, languishing towards the bottom of the UN Human Development Index (HDI), would be asked to supply power to South Africa, once the most successful economy in Africa.

It’s a lengthy essay, a tale of woe really, some of which is reasonably common knowledge here in NZ given the number of South Africans who have immigrated here in the last thirty years. And on that note:

Nearly a fifth of white South Africans have emigrated since the political transition in 1994; the white proportion of the population is now almost half what it was then. With them went a significant slice of current and future high-level skills. Emigration rates among the talented and hugely entrepreneurial Indian-descended community is reaching similar proportions, limited only by their sense of family duty. This exodus is comparable to the rates of migration from Ireland in the mid-19th century, Italy in the early 20th-century and Syria during the civil war.

Well…. Syria is still operating, sort of.

But this gives rise to other snippets:

The impact on the tax base is visible. Only 12.3% of South Africans pay income tax, and this figure is diminishing. Meanwhile 47% of all South Africans draw state grants, rising to 62% of the black population, and this is growing. Unemployment is at an all-time high of 32.9%. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts a growth rate of 0.1% for this year, far below that of African peers. We don’t need Yeats to grasp that the centre cannot hold.

Mean. But true. And when a centre cannot hold…

It is not surprising, then, that the ANC government, bust, broke and bereft of old allies, has turned to new friends who can be relied on not to raise inconvenient questions about governance or human rights or competitiveness: Russia and China. South Africa has refused to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, its navy took part in joint operations with China and Russia in February this year. 

Well of course. Looks like both nations are finally cashing in on decades of communist support for the ANC and other groups to overthrow the detested Apartheid regime of White Supremacy. Of course many other things have also faded since those halcyon days of the mid 1990’s:

The ANC’s share of registered voters has dropped from its high of 58% in 1999 to 37% in 2019. If no more than one in five ANC voters chooses to go to the shebeen rather than the polls next year, party support will drop 31%

Meh.

It leaves a pool of between 55% and 59% of registered voters to build a possible winning reformist and modernist coalition from four of the main liberal and conservative opposition parties. 

Meh II. I’m reminded of recent numerous comments from American RWNJ’s to that effect that “We’re not going t vote ourselves out of this”.

Surely John Minto, who was so unhappy with Mandela’s refusal to go full commie in 1994, is now feeling satisfied. Although you’d think a Wobbly like him (I’m guessing 🙂 ) might be concerned at the following:

What is not in dispute, however, is that Russian oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin, some on the US embargo list, are now the main financial backers of the perennially bankrupt ANC. 

But getting back to the important matters: how long can the Springboks continue?