South Africa is gone. More than 300,000 homicides after the ANC took power in 1994 compared with the apartheid period where the number of murders was 30,000. It is becoming clearer by day that the anti-apartheid ANC government has failed the people of South Africa.
Unemployment is 40% and public institutions are in decline. South African Airways, once the leading airline carrier in the country, is bankrupt today. And the white South Africans are fleeing the country as the government has successfully passed 140 laws to ‘expropriate without compensation’ the lands of white farmers.
President Donald Trump has issued a call for white South Africans to seek citizenship in the USA which he promised to fast track. More than 70,000 white South Africans have accepted this invitation. Also, President Trump has issued sanctions against South Africa. USAID, now suspended, contributed USD440M in 2024. With no aid today, several social programs including those handling Aids patients, are in chaos.
Elon Musk, South African by birth, is using his influence in the government of Donald Trump to shape the policies and programs of the US with relation to South Africa. The confiscation of white farms without compensation is being met with sanctions from the US. It is now clear that Donald Trump is not going to stand idly by as the minority white community is persecuted in South Africa and more so by a black led government.
Is apartheid the solution to the South African problem? If not, what is the future of South African under ANC rule? Confiscating the farms of the white is not the solution. That was done by Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and its backfired. The white farmers have markets for their produce. More so they have the technical knowledge to successfully manage those farms that provide employment for thousands of black South Africans.
Cyril Ramaphosa should learn from the mistakes of Robert Mugabe of Zambabwe and strike a compromise with the white farmers for social and economic equity. Are black South Africans willing to manage farms or are they settled as wage laborers? One would have expected black South Africans to have the technical and managerial skills to develop their farms from virgin lands but this does not seem to be part of their vision.
This brings me to Uganda under Idi Amin. He expelled the Indians in 1970 and invited indigenous blacks to take possessions of their shops. Within six months the shops were empty and later abandoned. The expelled Indians migrated to other parts of the world and their toil and labor helped them to rebuild their family businesses. Today their contributions have been lauded by their host countries especially the UK and Cananda.
Why have governments like the ANC of South Africa, the PNM of Trinidad and Tobago and the PNC of Guyana failed not only their respective country but their supporters? This is a question that must be answered and not swept under the carpet. And if I may attempt an answer it has to be the interpretation of history. Blacks have used history – slavery and colonialism- as weapons to justify entitlement to resources from the former colonial masters instead of moving forward. This mindset is well documented in the text Cult of the Will, a study of race, history and politics in Caribbean society by Gerard Besson. Not surprisingly Robert Hersov, a South African entrepreneur, has labelled the Cyril Ramaphosa government as “racist, kleptocratic and ineptocratic.”
