South Africa

Major fake-news moment here.

Watch this whole thing with your eyeballs.

h/t Patti Jo

JOHANNESBURG—What does it look like when a city stops trying? Visit Johannesburg, where instead of providing basic public services, the government just warns residents not to expect them.

Signs tell you what crime you’re most likely to fall victim to at highway exits and intersections; beware “Hi-Jacking Hot Spot” or “Smash and Grab Hot Spot.” Homeless people routinely direct traffic when the stoplights don’t work. Minibus taxis that ferry workers around the city often drive on the wrong side of the road to avoid rush hour traffic.

Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest metropolis, markets itself as a “world class African city.” It’s home to some of the continent’s biggest companies and its largest stock exchange. But private firms have gradually taken over public services, from security to healthcare to mail delivery. Insurance companies fix potholes and sponsor fire brigades to reduce claims.

Interesting comments.

A community clinic just north of Johannesburg has become the frontline of a battle in South Africa over whether foreigners can access public health facilities.

What started as a small local action in one area in 2022 has spread, with activists from the avowedly anti-migrant group, Operation Dudula, picketing some hospitals and clinics in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. They check identity cards and stop anyone who is not South African from entering.

“Dudula” means to remove something by force in the Zulu language.

Where are the Blue Haired Nose Ring People?

Located at the tip of southern Africa and at a strategic junction of trade routes, South Africa has regressed into an ideologically-driven socialist-communist abyss of poverty, crime, corruption and systemic dysfunction at all levels: local, state and national – all in 30 years since the end of Apartheid.

Once the leading economic power in all of Africa, South Africa is now regarded as the most corrupt country on the continent. It resembles a typical “banana republic” in some ways — little different from other failed or collapsing states in the region, particularly its northern neighbour of Zimbabwe — a Marxist dictatorial hellhole.

A farmer family gives ‘The American Spectator’ a profile in melancholy.

Gideon Jacobs has lived a life of the land. Farm-to-table was never a long sojourn for the barrel-chested Afrikaner, whose accent carries the history of his people. A base of Dutch, dashes of English, Malay, and a dozen more tongues built a language as uniquely native to South African soil as the people who claimed it as their own.

Less than 100 Dutch pioneers began the saga of Afrikanderdom in 1652, a century before Zulu expansionism brought that nation to fame. Former South African President Jacob Zuma, whose rule was a turning point in the post-apartheid era from rainbow nation to black nationalism, called the landing “the start of the trouble for this country.” Yet, even Zuma, for all his diatribes, had to begrudgingly dub the Afrikaners “truly African.”

Last week, during a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, U.S. President Donald Trump raised concerns about ongoing violence against white farmers in South Africa. Trump confronted Ramaphosa with video evidence of farm murders, racist chants, and footage of the Witkruis memorial. Ramaphosa refused to acknowledge the issue.

What followed was a concerted effort by major American and Canadian media outlets to dismiss the claims as a far-right conspiracy theory — downplaying or outright denying the systemic killing of white farmers in rural South Africa.

President Trump’s declaration that Afrikaners are refugees has sparked controversy, for it raises several complex issues.

Afrikaners are the descendants of Dutch settlers. The Dutch began settling in small numbers in what is now South Africa in 1652. Later other European groups settled there and intermingled with the Dutch. Many Afrikaners moved to rural areas in the mid-1800s, but a large community continued to live in Cape Town.