Black SOUTH Africans much worse off under ANC-rule now than under apartheid
Date Posted: Saturday 22-Sep-2007

  • Sept 22 2007 - BOOK REVIEW -- After over a decade of ANC-rule under Thabo Mbeki, conditions for black people in SA are today much worse than under apartheid.

    This is the claim by far-left Canadian journalist Naomi Klein in her latest book "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".

    link:
    http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0805079831

    Klein provides the following list of how living conditions for SA blacks now are so much worse than they ever were during Apartheid:

    since 1994 under ANC-governance.  Notes by myself are in italics.

    -- the number of people living on less than $1 a day has doubled from two to four million;

  • But the numbers of very wealthy Blacks driving around in expensive motor cars and living in up market homes has risen.  But are they adding value to the economy with their mainly political appointments at all levels with high salaries and jobs through affirmative action laws in private industry?  We think not especially as there are in many cases three people or more doing the same job than under Apartheid .

    -- the unemployment rate has more than doubled to 48% from 1991 - 2002;

  • And the value of the SA currency has plummeted since the ANC took power.  In the last 18 months the Rand has devalued against the Euro by nearly 40%.  So not only has the number of jobs fallen, but the earnings do not buy anywhere as much as under Apartheid.  But the ANC do not seem to mind as they increase their salaries and bonuses to compensate.

-- only 5,000 of the more than 35-million black South Africans earn over $60,000 a year;

  • Mainly affirmative action appointments and promotion to all levels of government with salaries several times higher that the far fewer people that did the work under Apartheid. 

-- the ANC government has built 1.8 million (very ramshackle, tiny) new homes while two-million South Africans have lost theirs;

Just about all the homes built under Apartheid are still standing solidly.  They were built by black labourers under mainly white supervision.   There is a scandal in SA now where thousands of occupants of the new homes built under ANC supervision are literally falling down and the mortgagees are refusing to pay their monthly installments until they are properly repaired.  An impossible task.

-- nearly one million South Africans were evicted from farms in the first decade of 'democracy': evicted by black, newly empowered farmers who were given 'redistributed' farmland;

Many of the farms are producing about 30% of what they did under the white owners, many of whom had been there for generations.  And it is not an education problem, it is due to attitude and will power to work and succeed.  One, the Zebedelia citrus farm is now being managed by a white manager from Zimbabwe after production fell to zero in about a year when the new owners were virtually given the farm by the government.    It was the largest citrus fruit farm in the southern hemisphere before.

---the shack dweller population grew by 50% due to untrammeled migration from the rest of Africa;

Previously under Apartheid, squatting was not allowed so many Africans lived on their own lands with adequate food and cheap African style housing.  As their birth-rate is and was unsustainable for western style growth and they were restricted by the white government from the regular wars they had which kept the populations down, plus having a normal life expectancy under a white government due to health standards, they are quickly returning to the old days  due to diseases returning and their inability to cope with regular droughts, all overcome when the white man ruled.  Only AIDS and seriously violent crime could be said to be keeping  the population in check.

---in 2006, one-quarter of the entire SA population lives in shacks without running water or electricity.

When the ANC came to power, the black masses were allowed to move to the cities where they thought the homes and jobs they had been promised by the ANC would quickly appear, but they were in the main used by the ANC to populate areas where their votes could ensure the whites were unable to represent their old constituencies.   Now the cities are crowded with unhealthy shacks, many criminals who are bitter that there is no work.   The ANC made impossible promises as is usual by a terror organisation seeking power.

And there's more:
-- the HIV/AIDS/TB infection rate is about 20% of the entire population -- and the Mbeki government shamefully denies the severity of the crisis and did little to alleviate it;

All part of the Mbeki plot to lower the population of SA perhaps?  Also to save cash for his lavish lifestyle and Boeing luxury presidential jet, etc.

-- the average age life expectancy in South Africa had DROPPED by 13 years since 1990;

The same as everywhere in Africa when the whites have left.

-- 40% of all SA schools have no electricity;

Neither do most of the businesses and homes for hours at a time.  There is a desperate need for new power stations but the SA government thinks new stadiums for the FIFA Soccer World Cup in 2010 are more important, as well as diverting cash for new hospitals for the same reason.

-- 25% of the 46-million-plus people in SA have no access to clean water and most who do can't afford the cost; and

The population has been swollen by the estimated three million Zimbabweans who have fled their home country, by Nigerians who are the acknowledged drug dealers and scam artists and other Africans from countries that are further down the line than SA

-- 60% of all the people have inadequate sanitation, and 40% have no telephones...

Still far better than most of Africa, but included in this of course are the millions who have built squatter camps around the cities, although many have piped-in water paid for by the local taxpayers,  Due to the numbers of citizens who are not paying taxes, it is not surprising that the infrastructure is not there to supply the electricity and clean water.

NOW having read that one might be shocked and say "nasty capitalism", but the author has stated facts except she has given the wrong reasons for why they have occurred. The real reasons are in this web-site linked here.  Please cut and paste;

http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=17969&

As for the millions in the West who have been hoodwinked or misled by accusations of racism in the past, who are the racists now?  The ones who spoke the truth and ran the countries to the benefit of all, or those who insisted on "freedom for the blacks", thus condemning the masses to a return to the conditions they had a hundred years ago before the white man arrived?

Be honest when you decide.