I love the long empty beaches and abundant wide open space of South Africa. Along with the mild weather it facilitates a healthy outdoor life with no illness and minimal requirements to be healthy and happy all year through. But with this open expanse of nature available in my homeland of birth, come some sacrifices and limitations, as one should expect with emerging market economies of the third world.
Daily rolling blackouts
The most recent austerity is the return yesterday of daily rolling blackouts for two hours at a time. These were popular in December briefly and particularly a few years ago when the national power provider – Eskom – was under severe strain. I thought it was a thing of the past but now they’re back.
The wheels of industry come to a halt
Every day at varying times, the power goes off and all homes and businesses in the town and around the country have to pull out their own reserve backup power source or just go without for the duration, whether it’s during working or trading hours or whatever. Some days it’s after hours and so we sit at home with candles or lamps, or perhaps we’re asleep at night. One thing is certain – it’s a real pain in the neck and an extreme frustration, particularly to businesses who need to deliver a service or who simply need to make money to survive. The whole thing could actually set back an already crippled economy even more.
Simply powerless
There’s even internet shutdown at these times, with wireless facilities going off. There’s no way I can be trading crypto or have any day trades open then, since I can’t attend to them. Everyone’s lifestyle is suddenly constrained and cut back. It’s a result of a poorly managed government, fraught with colossal corruption. That and the copper wire cable theft by unscrupulous thieves, who sell it for scrap, are crippling our nation, keeping it in the previous century while the rest of the world strides forth in GDP and efficiency.
Crippling unemployment
The daily rolling blackouts are scheduled to carry on for the next several months, so at least there is an end in sight, apparently. Added to that or perhaps because of that, joblessness is a mounting crisis in the country. Analysts point out that unemployment has risen from just under 2 million at the dawn of the new South Africa in 1994 under the liberation of Nelson Mandela, to over 6 million today. This indicates a rise of over 200%.
Becoming further indebted to the World Bank
On the expanded definition of unemployment the national rate has risen from 31% to 36%. That’s more than one in three working age people who don’t have a job or means to make money. Similarly 39% of people aged 18-34 are not in any education or employment or training. There is no greater threat to South Africa’s long term stability than such levels of economic exclusion among the youth. At this rate the country will again be forced to look for more crippling loans or bailouts from the IMF or other first world globalist power, simply adding to the global debt, in itself an artificial imposition brought about by interest on money created out of thin air by a fraudulent banking sector.
Farm attacks in SA
Reports of farm attacks have risen over the past two years by 15%, from 478 to 564. This is a legacy of the old apartheid era, where most of the land was owned by white farmers and very little by indigenous black people. White farmers still own 75% of the land despite it being 25 years after apartheid ended. As a result a degree of vindictiveness remains and criminals resort to attacking white farm owners on their remote farmsteads in rural regions. Not all, but at least 70% of those murdered on farms are white. More and more malicious tools and weapons are being used by desperate criminals and attackers, like drills, blowtorches and bleach. This is fueled not only be poverty and vast wealth inequality but also by the meth amphetamine addiction that has swept through the poorest income bracket in recent years. Criminals perform more crazed and brazen and even violent forms of attacks than before under the influence of the most tragic of addictions that destroys the minds of its victims.
Not “white genocide” …yet
It is important to note that this is not the “white genocide” narrative that sometimes gets presented as the cause of such an increase in crimes and particularly murders. That rhetoric in itself can sometimes actually fuel even more violence in its wake. It could become an instigator in the very theme it is commenting on. There have actually been cases of blacks trying to protect whites in farm attacks and vice versa according to reports. Firebrand politicians from the newly formed radical left, like the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) may sometimes hint at potential white genocide, inciting the masses to a degree, but they also call for peaceful elections and unity, although he unity is more among black Africans from all nations on the continent. The white man (maybe 10% of the entire population) will always be seen as the colonizer, abuser, and exploiter of black African land, resources and people.
Murder capital of the world
South Africa still has the unenviable reputation of one of the highest murder rates in the world. Currently the murder rate is 34 per 100 000 according to police records. It has been increasing steadily for the past five years, despite a temporary decline in 2011/2 from a peak of 37 per 100 000 ten years ago. In total there were over 19 000 murders a year or an average of 52 a day in a population of around 55 million people. This is what gives us the stats of 34 per 100 000. The highest stats regionally come from the poorest province of course, so it appears that economics is the primary driving force behind these violent crime figures in what is still darkest Africa, rife with the law of the jungle, mob law and a dog eat dog civilization.
Technology mostly for the rich
Modern advancement and technology has come to these shores, but it is wrapped in some of the most inflated prices in the world, particularly for example regarding cell phone or wifi access. So the technology to uplift the masses from ignorance is still being kept out of the reach of the very poorest who need it most. This is generally to benefit the big corporations who are selling the tech on the streets to the retailer. South Africa is a stark example of how a potentially beautiful country can be so crippled and held back by inner corruption, fueled by historic colonialist oppression, as well as external exploitation by multi-national corporations who place profit above people in a modern world where capitalist economics have overshadowed the humanitarian virtues that one would expect by now in the 21st century or a so-called civilized world.
https://africacheck.org/factsheets/factsheet-statistics-farm-attacks-murders-sa/
https://africacheck.org/reports/5facts-sas-top-2017-numbers/