When I was coming of age, in the seventies and eighties, my parents taught me that the apartheid regime in South Africa was racist and evil. When I went off to college in 1985, I found fellow students protesting the South African government and US investment in the country. They set up encampments on the quad calling for the university to divest from this segregated country and its racist ruling government.
I never joined the protests. Not because I was unsympathetic to the cause, but because I saw the protests as less about the injustice in South Africa, and more about the protesters' need to protest. And importantly, to be seen protesting. If it had not been this issue, it would have been something else. Anything else. That was my immediate impression, and I still hold it to this day, forty years later.
And we all know the history. Apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994. And I bet most of those protestors never gave the country another thought.
Right? Well. Here is South African, Winston Sterzel:
Now Winston blames the communist ANC. And sure communism may play a part. But the real problem is corruption. This is true in most third world hellscapes. Whether a government leans left or leans right, it is the culture of corruption that results in what you see in this video.
What most people do not understand about corruption is this: You do not find corruption only at the top. No, corruption permeates society from top to bottom. You cannot only say things like, they have a corrupt government or they are corrupt crony capitalists. Because where you have those things, I assure you, the cab drivers and the street vendors are also corrupt. Corruption is not an elite issue; rather it is a cultural failing.
Returning to communism, it is interesting that it seems to take hold most easily in corrupt cultures. I do not think this is an accident. Something for nothing, provided by somebody else is appealing to the corruption-minded.
I am not saying that apartheid was a good system. And I am certainly not calling for its return. But today, the citizens of South Africa have no one to blame for the failings of their country except themselves and the leaders they vote for. They have the government and the society that they want.
So that's okay then.