Over 20 years ago when Mandela had just taken on the job, I remember asking two businessmen with experience of Africa, : “Will South Africa work?” And they both said No. I asked Why not? and they replied Corruption and Crime.
As the correspondent above said, Poor, poor South Africa.
If anyone predicted this situation 20 years ago, which everyone on the planet with functioning brain cells knew would happen, they would be tarnished as a racist. Now, racists are in charge and they allege racism is still at fault. It is growing more difficult to stand by and hold back the smirks when people talk about SA in polite circles.
Martin Bollis
5 months ago
“remains unbowed by its spectacular failures, preferring to fall back onto its default posture of blaming apartheid, the private sector and whites“
Substitute colonialism for apartheid and there is the story of Africa.
And, substituting the more general colonialism or racism for apartheid, there is the emerging story of the UK, too.
John Pade
5 months ago
What is so hard about maintaining roads? How did farming become so difficult? Electricity is complicated but its intricacies were mastered long ago.
South Africa is blessed with resources that should lift it to the pinnacle of economic achievement. But better economic performance could have been obtained by accident than what South Africa achieved on purpose.
It appears that South Africa’s future is Zimbabwe’s present: to see what it will look like in 10 years, just look north. Instead of taking Zimbabwe as a warning sign, South Africa’s leaders are using it as their lode star.
Perhaps its human resources aren’t such a blessing
R Wright
5 months ago
This can all be simplified down to its barest essentials. South Africa is merely reverting to the African mean. This is the fate of all African nations that were decolonised. The fact that this is happening sixty years later than most is irrelevant, the exact symptoms are present in the patient. Endemic corruption. Africanisation of the civil service. The threatened or real use of violence in business dealings. Tribal voting patterns. All of these happened and continues to happen in countless other post-colonial states such as Malawi, Zambia, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Zimbabwe, the list goes on and on.
The state which the European colonisers granted them were used as an elaborate device to pilfer what little industry was left and its proceeds distributed to cronies and/or deposited in the nearest Swiss bank account. South Africa is merely suffering the same fate that is inevitable in all multi-ethnic African states. Nelson Mandela knew exactly what he was doing. Now his acolytes will tear the rotting carcass apart for what little remains until South Africa becomes another Congo, a once wealthy region ripped apart by ethnic strife and anti-colonial posturing.
Chipoko
5 months ago
‘The Rainbow Nation‘, ‘Arab Spring‘, ‘Breadbasket of Africa‘ [Zimbabwe] : these clichéd platitudes coined by ‘progressive’ white westerners are vomit-inducing.
From the moment the ANC assumed power with the most productive economy in Africa that nation’s future was doomed. Africa chose the path of political ‘freedom’ in preference to colonial administration; which (in the case of former British colonies) sought to develop countries’ economies and peoples towards an eventual state of self-determination, but those waiting in the wings to grab power were driven only by the prospect of plundering huge wealth and enriching themselves from the productivity of those who built up sp-called ‘settler’ economies. That it has taken so long for South Africa to reduce itself to Zimbabwe’s revolting state is probably testimony to the solid economy the ANC inherited and the diminishing pool of settler know-how and competence, much of which has emigrated since the Rainbow Nation was born.
Samuel Ross
5 months ago
Poor, poor South Africa. I would feel bad, but curiously enough, I don’t find it in me to feel bad. The blessing and the curse of Democracy is this: you get what you vote for. The citizen is sovereign, and the voter is king. “The land groans under the reign of a foolish king.” This is true if there is one king or fifty million kings.
Fundamentally no. If you choose to vote for a morally bankrupt organisation because it is promising you something which you know it can’t produce then you are as guilty as those you elect.
The only reason for white people to stay, from a non-white point of view, is that they contribute to the coffers of the leaders and, in so doing, add some kind of legitimacy to the government.
Didn’t the ‘Boers’ manage to keep/hide one of their Atomic Bombs they developed with the help of Israel?
I trust they have ‘maintained’ it! For the time for another ‘Blood River’ draws close.
According to Danny Stillman and Thomas Reed in their book The Nuclear Express, when the end of white rule in South Africa became inevitable the government almost certainly made sure that any nuclear weapons were destroyed. The prospect of a nuclear-armed ANC was just too terrible to contemplate.
Don’t play into Mr Stanhope’s weird narratives which are about Judaic ‘underhandedness’. This is a mindset that can credit the idea of a nuke in a ‘shed’.
Yes if you’re white and middle class Lesley, the strain must be intolerable for you?
Stephen Hunter
5 months ago
The truth is there is nobody out there, whether or not they admit it, who is the slightest bit surprised by any of this.
Stephen Walsh
5 months ago
“President Ramaphosa…is powerless to address this scourge because so many of his party colleagues are beneficiaries…”. And not just his colleagues.
Daniel Lee
5 months ago
Same post-colonial story as everywhere else in the Third World. Reform hijacked by a corrupt regime as the country and its residents collapse into the black hole of destitution, misery and, eventually, violence. Meanwhile helper NGOs enable the corruption by putting bandaids on the chaos without ever truthfully blaming the culprits.
Sophy T
5 months ago
Also, hasn’t China lent large sums of money which South Africa won’t be able to repay so the CCP will grab what it can in lieu.
William Cameron
5 months ago
When African Countries were UK colonies they had rule of law, economies that were improving, Schools , Clinics, Hospitals and communications. And their economies were improving. Food was generally plentiful.
And most became independent in relatively peaceful transition. (Not 100% but mostly).
So what is it in that continent that so often results in corruption ruining the lives of the people ?
Howard S.
5 months ago
Mr Mandela was not being generous or forgiving when he insisted that the minority white population be retained and kept safe in the new, black-run South Africa. He knew that his own people were not capable of running a modern state, and still aren’t.
Anna Bramwell
5 months ago
Wow. Excellent, detailed article, but so sad. Why isnt this writer the go to guy for info on S Africa in the MSM?
Jonathan Story
5 months ago
It was obviously going to happen. The ANC is a movement. It had one goal, and a zillion of mixed motives. Once in power, those motives would reveal themselves. They have. The show that the ANC is capable of governing. So it has to be replaced. But because it is deeply corrupt, we can expect that alternative governments will emerge only through violence. That’s what is written in SA’s card as of now. Who knows, though?
Africa has yet to demonstrate that it can govern itself well.
My comment is not really germane to this excellent, but depressing, article but it must be said that your concluding sentence is not 100% correct.
It really is worth taking a look at the country to the north of increasingly squalid South Africa, Botswana. This is a stable nation and Africa’s longest surviving multi-party democracy. The fact that it is so jarringly at odds with general perceptions of African governance may be the reason so little is written about it.
Martin Smith
5 months ago
I think it’s the South African people who have been betrayed.
Malcolm Webb
5 months ago
Maybe we should have the humility to also learn from South Africa’s tragedy. We too are massively indebted, led by politicians unable or unwilling to tackle the major problems which confront us yet still expecting the Stare to “fix” things whilst continuing to subsidise our largely unearned lifestyles? Maybe South Africa is not alone in sleepwalking towards Argentina.
Charles Stanhope
5 months ago
Nelson Mandela was a convicted terrorist and should have been hanged, as should his simply appalling wife, the Winnie Beast.
I clicked the thumbs-down but it registered as a thumbs up. I’m guessing that’s how this comment appeared to get so much agreement. A technical glitch.
I’m not sure whether you get a perverse pleasure from being deliberately provocative or whether you actually mean what you write. I hope it’s the former.
Last edited 5 months ago by Roddy Campbell
A D Kent
5 months ago
I think the author really needs to explain what he means by a ‘Venezuela moment’.
South Africa differs from Venezuela in at least one key respect. They haven’t been under punitive sanctions by the US (and therefore the rest of the West) for thirty years. They’re much more emblematic of how countries & their elites operate in the modern World of rentier capitalism and financialisation of everything. Their recent elites are those formed in the scramble of the 1990s that also befell the ex-Soviet States – they’ve just been unlucky enough to have already been mostly ‘integrated’ in the West systems and have had neither the will or the ability to rebuild in the way that at least some of the ex-Soviet states have done.
‘Power corrupts and absolute Power…’ – so the saying goes.
One observation perhaps pertinent to our own debates – the separation of powers, esp judiciary, clearly eroded in SA such the latter cannot constrain. Worth us bearing that in mind. One can forget sometimes why we maintain a healthy separation in the West.
can't buy my vote
5 months ago
Can anyone point to an example of a successful decolonization anywhere in Africa?
Botswana, at least for now — see my comment, above.
Roddy Campbell
5 months ago
Revolutions need one type of leader. Stable governments need another.
Will we ever learn? People who excel at overthrowing governments and societies rarely have the skills to nurture them.
Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa
5 months ago
One would have supposed that South Africa’s betraying the legacy of a convicted terrorist such as Mr. Mandela and the political machine he founded would be cause for celebration. Nevertheless, as always always must happen, the mere repudiation or negation of something or someone (in this case, of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress) does not mean much. A negation or antithesis is too indefinite to be significant, because it leaves too many possibilities (tertium datur) open for South Africa, many or most of them not good, as can be plainly observed in the most recent involution of South Africa and its government that has and continues to take place.
At any rate, I hope South Africans can figure out a way somehow to crawl out of the terrible situation in their country.
Indeed. But all these ills were foreseen but not mitigated. Now a slow train wreck is unfolding.
Billy Bob
5 months ago
Seems a bit much to pin this on Mandela. He was only in power for 5 years and that was over a generation ago, with the author even stating that when he was in charge he appointed good financial experts who improved an economy battered by apartheid. I’m not sure you can blame him for the corruption and incompetence of his successors
Do you have trouble with your reading and comprehension? Pottinger is blaming the ANC for betraying Mandela’s legacy. It’s even there in the title of the piece.
On the other hand, it’s arguable that the current leadership of the ANC are a part of Mandela’s legacy. He had some small hand in developing the current leaders who are currently trashing the country and also in embedding a de facto one party state. Even though he may well have wanted neither of those outcomes. None of this is intended to diminish his remarkable achievements. But it’s better to keep an objective view of people and resist sanctifying them.
I thought the article was overly critical of Mandela himself, portraying him as a grinning simpleton and in my opinion it implied the ANCs problems began with his leadership. I believe this is an overly harsh assessment, especially considering the time in which Mandela led the country.
Childish insults also add nothing to your point so it’s best to refrain from using them if you want people to take your opinion seriously
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but I rather take my cue from the author, who certainly must have had a most intimate perspective into the man and of SA’s history, as editor and publisher of “The SA Sunday Times”.
The author is laying blame at the ANC’s door. Not at Mandela’s.
Paul Monahan
5 months ago
no mention of the multi generational destruction of black peoples; what was done to them will reverberate in the form of karma destroying everything until SA is reduced to ashes
Pottinger does mention this (third to last paragraph):
…typically, the ANC remains unbowed by its spectacular failures, preferring to fall back onto its default posture of blaming apartheid, the private sector and whites.
Yes, quite right. Perhaps it should take more than 30 years to completely destroy a nation and rebuild it into a shining city on a hill modeled after other bastions of equitable redistribution like Chicago, New York, Baltimore or Detroit.
Do you not feel that 2 generations of well-educated and privileged black ANC leaders sticking their fingers in the till, rotten with nepotism and inflaming racial tension as a means to hold onto power might bear a little bit of responsibility for the basket-case that SA is becoming?
Or don’t black leaders have any agency at all, destined forever to be victims of events retreating further and further into history?
One thing is certain. If you tell somebody that their bad behaviour isn’t anything to do with their choices and can all be blamed on something external to them, many will happily embrace this lie and continue on their course.
Of course the effects of Apartheid linger on. But perhaps the most pernicious and enduring of them all is to provide a continuing excuse for the excesses of SA’s venal leaders over the last few years.
Read King Lear, Act 1 Scene 2:
“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!”
Well this is most unexpected. Who could have predicted this would happen?
I could have told you how this would go 30 years ago so Mandela must have been aware that he current situation was inevitable
Over 20 years ago when Mandela had just taken on the job, I remember asking two businessmen with experience of Africa, : “Will South Africa work?” And they both said No. I asked Why not? and they replied Corruption and Crime.
As the correspondent above said, Poor, poor South Africa.
If anyone predicted this situation 20 years ago, which everyone on the planet with functioning brain cells knew would happen, they would be tarnished as a racist. Now, racists are in charge and they allege racism is still at fault. It is growing more difficult to stand by and hold back the smirks when people talk about SA in polite circles.
“remains unbowed by its spectacular failures, preferring to fall back onto its default posture of blaming apartheid, the private sector and whites“
Substitute colonialism for apartheid and there is the story of Africa.
And, substituting the more general colonialism or racism for apartheid, there is the emerging story of the UK, too.
What is so hard about maintaining roads? How did farming become so difficult? Electricity is complicated but its intricacies were mastered long ago.
South Africa is blessed with resources that should lift it to the pinnacle of economic achievement. But better economic performance could have been obtained by accident than what South Africa achieved on purpose.
It appears that South Africa’s future is Zimbabwe’s present: to see what it will look like in 10 years, just look north. Instead of taking Zimbabwe as a warning sign, South Africa’s leaders are using it as their lode star.
Perhaps its human resources aren’t such a blessing
This can all be simplified down to its barest essentials. South Africa is merely reverting to the African mean. This is the fate of all African nations that were decolonised. The fact that this is happening sixty years later than most is irrelevant, the exact symptoms are present in the patient. Endemic corruption. Africanisation of the civil service. The threatened or real use of violence in business dealings. Tribal voting patterns. All of these happened and continues to happen in countless other post-colonial states such as Malawi, Zambia, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Zimbabwe, the list goes on and on.
The state which the European colonisers granted them were used as an elaborate device to pilfer what little industry was left and its proceeds distributed to cronies and/or deposited in the nearest Swiss bank account. South Africa is merely suffering the same fate that is inevitable in all multi-ethnic African states. Nelson Mandela knew exactly what he was doing. Now his acolytes will tear the rotting carcass apart for what little remains until South Africa becomes another Congo, a once wealthy region ripped apart by ethnic strife and anti-colonial posturing.
‘The Rainbow Nation‘, ‘Arab Spring‘, ‘Breadbasket of Africa‘ [Zimbabwe] : these clichéd platitudes coined by ‘progressive’ white westerners are vomit-inducing.
From the moment the ANC assumed power with the most productive economy in Africa that nation’s future was doomed. Africa chose the path of political ‘freedom’ in preference to colonial administration; which (in the case of former British colonies) sought to develop countries’ economies and peoples towards an eventual state of self-determination, but those waiting in the wings to grab power were driven only by the prospect of plundering huge wealth and enriching themselves from the productivity of those who built up sp-called ‘settler’ economies. That it has taken so long for South Africa to reduce itself to Zimbabwe’s revolting state is probably testimony to the solid economy the ANC inherited and the diminishing pool of settler know-how and competence, much of which has emigrated since the Rainbow Nation was born.
Poor, poor South Africa. I would feel bad, but curiously enough, I don’t find it in me to feel bad. The blessing and the curse of Democracy is this: you get what you vote for. The citizen is sovereign, and the voter is king. “The land groans under the reign of a foolish king.” This is true if there is one king or fifty million kings.
Don’t you think democracy is just a bit more complicated than ‘you get what you vote for’?
Fundamentally no. If you choose to vote for a morally bankrupt organisation because it is promising you something which you know it can’t produce then you are as guilty as those you elect.
Oh, and the ‘voters’ had lots of choice did they?!
Sounds a bit like our predicament in the UK, ‘Rock and a hard place’?
A good comment, wasted on these simpletons…
It’s the Wild West here and we make our own way despite the criminals in charge.
Will there come a time when South Africa becomes too dangerous for white people to remain?
The only reason for white people to stay, from a non-white point of view, is that they contribute to the coffers of the leaders and, in so doing, add some kind of legitimacy to the government.
Didn’t the ‘Boers’ manage to keep/hide one of their Atomic Bombs they developed with the help of Israel?
I trust they have ‘maintained’ it! For the time for another ‘Blood River’ draws close.
According to Danny Stillman and Thomas Reed in their book The Nuclear Express, when the end of white rule in South Africa became inevitable the government almost certainly made sure that any nuclear weapons were destroyed. The prospect of a nuclear-armed ANC was just too terrible to contemplate.
Thank you.
I had heard that ‘one’ was hidden in a shed near Laing’s Nek.
In a shed?! Nuclear weapons are not like conventional explosives. They need regular maintenance by trained experts. Fissionable material deteriorates.
Merely a euphemism.
Don’t play into Mr Stanhope’s weird narratives which are about Judaic ‘underhandedness’. This is a mindset that can credit the idea of a nuke in a ‘shed’.
Haven’t you addressed this to the wrong person?
By the way Ms Davis I was expecting an apology from you for your vulgar “swastika” remark.
Ha ha, are you getting told off again Chas?
Coulport (Next loch to Faslane) had some very impressive ‘sheds’ when I worked nearby.
And yet they still have their hands on Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant in Cape Town, which is a Chernobyl in waiting…
Yes if you’re white and middle class Lesley, the strain must be intolerable for you?
The truth is there is nobody out there, whether or not they admit it, who is the slightest bit surprised by any of this.
“President Ramaphosa…is powerless to address this scourge because so many of his party colleagues are beneficiaries…”. And not just his colleagues.
Same post-colonial story as everywhere else in the Third World. Reform hijacked by a corrupt regime as the country and its residents collapse into the black hole of destitution, misery and, eventually, violence. Meanwhile helper NGOs enable the corruption by putting bandaids on the chaos without ever truthfully blaming the culprits.
Also, hasn’t China lent large sums of money which South Africa won’t be able to repay so the CCP will grab what it can in lieu.
When African Countries were UK colonies they had rule of law, economies that were improving, Schools , Clinics, Hospitals and communications. And their economies were improving. Food was generally plentiful.
And most became independent in relatively peaceful transition. (Not 100% but mostly).
So what is it in that continent that so often results in corruption ruining the lives of the people ?
Mr Mandela was not being generous or forgiving when he insisted that the minority white population be retained and kept safe in the new, black-run South Africa. He knew that his own people were not capable of running a modern state, and still aren’t.
Wow. Excellent, detailed article, but so sad. Why isnt this writer the go to guy for info on S Africa in the MSM?
It was obviously going to happen. The ANC is a movement. It had one goal, and a zillion of mixed motives. Once in power, those motives would reveal themselves. They have. The show that the ANC is capable of governing. So it has to be replaced. But because it is deeply corrupt, we can expect that alternative governments will emerge only through violence. That’s what is written in SA’s card as of now. Who knows, though?
Africa has yet to demonstrate that it can govern itself well.
My comment is not really germane to this excellent, but depressing, article but it must be said that your concluding sentence is not 100% correct.
It really is worth taking a look at the country to the north of increasingly squalid South Africa, Botswana. This is a stable nation and Africa’s longest surviving multi-party democracy. The fact that it is so jarringly at odds with general perceptions of African governance may be the reason so little is written about it.
I think it’s the South African people who have been betrayed.
Maybe we should have the humility to also learn from South Africa’s tragedy. We too are massively indebted, led by politicians unable or unwilling to tackle the major problems which confront us yet still expecting the Stare to “fix” things whilst continuing to subsidise our largely unearned lifestyles? Maybe South Africa is not alone in sleepwalking towards Argentina.
Nelson Mandela was a convicted terrorist and should have been hanged, as should his simply appalling wife, the Winnie Beast.
I clicked the thumbs-down but it registered as a thumbs up. I’m guessing that’s how this comment appeared to get so much agreement. A technical glitch.
My thumbs down didn’t even register at all, wots that all about?!!
My thumps up to you went to zero.
I’m not sure whether you get a perverse pleasure from being deliberately provocative or whether you actually mean what you write. I hope it’s the former.
I think the author really needs to explain what he means by a ‘Venezuela moment’.
South Africa differs from Venezuela in at least one key respect. They haven’t been under punitive sanctions by the US (and therefore the rest of the West) for thirty years. They’re much more emblematic of how countries & their elites operate in the modern World of rentier capitalism and financialisation of everything. Their recent elites are those formed in the scramble of the 1990s that also befell the ex-Soviet States – they’ve just been unlucky enough to have already been mostly ‘integrated’ in the West systems and have had neither the will or the ability to rebuild in the way that at least some of the ex-Soviet states have done.
Venezuela has not been under sanctions from the US any more than South Africa has.
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about Simon. I might also have added the UK nicking all their gold too.
https://www.state.gov/venezuela-related-sanctions/
So Venezuela’s hyper inflation was caused by…?
Venezuela mainly.
Venezuela has more than enough oil – the world’s largest oil reserves bar none – to be able to survive any sanctions.
Caused by mismanagement and corruption to a degree, but also decades of official & unofficial sanctions & interference from the West. Even the VZ opposition wanted them to end.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/venezuela-economic-sanctions/
The white man’s burden.
‘Power corrupts and absolute Power…’ – so the saying goes.
One observation perhaps pertinent to our own debates – the separation of powers, esp judiciary, clearly eroded in SA such the latter cannot constrain. Worth us bearing that in mind. One can forget sometimes why we maintain a healthy separation in the West.
Can anyone point to an example of a successful decolonization anywhere in Africa?
Botswana, at least for now — see my comment, above.
Revolutions need one type of leader. Stable governments need another.
Will we ever learn? People who excel at overthrowing governments and societies rarely have the skills to nurture them.
One would have supposed that South Africa’s betraying the legacy of a convicted terrorist such as Mr. Mandela and the political machine he founded would be cause for celebration. Nevertheless, as always always must happen, the mere repudiation or negation of something or someone (in this case, of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress) does not mean much. A negation or antithesis is too indefinite to be significant, because it leaves too many possibilities (tertium datur) open for South Africa, many or most of them not good, as can be plainly observed in the most recent involution of South Africa and its government that has and continues to take place.
At any rate, I hope South Africans can figure out a way somehow to crawl out of the terrible situation in their country.
The best explanation about what’s going on that I’ve read is in this review: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/look-back-in-anger/
Indeed. But all these ills were foreseen but not mitigated. Now a slow train wreck is unfolding.
Seems a bit much to pin this on Mandela. He was only in power for 5 years and that was over a generation ago, with the author even stating that when he was in charge he appointed good financial experts who improved an economy battered by apartheid. I’m not sure you can blame him for the corruption and incompetence of his successors
Do you have trouble with your reading and comprehension? Pottinger is blaming the ANC for betraying Mandela’s legacy. It’s even there in the title of the piece.
On the other hand, it’s arguable that the current leadership of the ANC are a part of Mandela’s legacy. He had some small hand in developing the current leaders who are currently trashing the country and also in embedding a de facto one party state. Even though he may well have wanted neither of those outcomes. None of this is intended to diminish his remarkable achievements. But it’s better to keep an objective view of people and resist sanctifying them.
I thought the article was overly critical of Mandela himself, portraying him as a grinning simpleton and in my opinion it implied the ANCs problems began with his leadership. I believe this is an overly harsh assessment, especially considering the time in which Mandela led the country.
Childish insults also add nothing to your point so it’s best to refrain from using them if you want people to take your opinion seriously
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but I rather take my cue from the author, who certainly must have had a most intimate perspective into the man and of SA’s history, as editor and publisher of “The SA Sunday Times”.
What do you expect, he’s an inveterate virtue signaller.
The author is laying blame at the ANC’s door. Not at Mandela’s.
no mention of the multi generational destruction of black peoples; what was done to them will reverberate in the form of karma destroying everything until SA is reduced to ashes
Pottinger does mention this (third to last paragraph):
…and now you’ve added a new twist: Karma!
Yes, quite right. Perhaps it should take more than 30 years to completely destroy a nation and rebuild it into a shining city on a hill modeled after other bastions of equitable redistribution like Chicago, New York, Baltimore or Detroit.
For the love of God. *Stop*.
You sound almost gleeful in your predictions.
Do you not feel that 2 generations of well-educated and privileged black ANC leaders sticking their fingers in the till, rotten with nepotism and inflaming racial tension as a means to hold onto power might bear a little bit of responsibility for the basket-case that SA is becoming?
Or don’t black leaders have any agency at all, destined forever to be victims of events retreating further and further into history?
One thing is certain. If you tell somebody that their bad behaviour isn’t anything to do with their choices and can all be blamed on something external to them, many will happily embrace this lie and continue on their course.
Of course the effects of Apartheid linger on. But perhaps the most pernicious and enduring of them all is to provide a continuing excuse for the excesses of SA’s venal leaders over the last few years.
Read King Lear, Act 1 Scene 2:
“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!”