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South Africa gone down the Zimbabwe route.

A friend of mine has a business in south Africa , he was telling me today that he believes that the poor blacks were better off under the old regime as they had opportunities for work and education . Currently the poor are left to fend for themselves and they are homeless starving and without hope . He also stated that the Chinese are making themselves very busy but it does not seem to have impacted on the jobs situation for the poor as they seem to be bringing their own labour in to strip the country of their minerals etc .
Its a free for all every man for himself situation .
In Simonstown for an Assisted Maintenance period we brought in some workers from the ship yard in cape town. They were doing some hotwork and I was watching the yard fire sentry to make sure nothing went "missing."
I got chatting to him about where I was from, where he was from and how much I liked it on the cape. He was an older black chap and went on to say "things were much better under apartheid, wasn't perfect but the whites at least looked after us."
 
In Simonstown for an Assisted Maintenance period we brought in some workers from the ship yard in cape town. They were doing some hotwork and I was watching the yard fire sentry to make sure nothing went "missing."
I got chatting to him about where I was from, where he was from and how much I liked it on the cape. He was an older black chap and went on to say "things were much better under apartheid, wasn't perfect but the whites at least looked after us."
Every time I have gone back to Zimbo, normally the customs officer checking my British passport enters into a conversation.

A Mr OB what do you do?


I am a Technical Instructor.

Ah, why don’t you return to Zimbabwe where you were born , we need people like you .

Also posted before here , got a friend who is a very wealthy SA mining supplier. Now his family live , since 2016 or so in Australia and he commutes on a weekly basis. Family left after their house got torched and they were in a secure compound .
 
A friend of mine has a business in south Africa , he was telling me today that he believes that the poor blacks were better off under the old regime as they had opportunities for work and education . Currently the poor are left to fend for themselves and they are homeless starving and without hope . He also stated that the Chinese are making themselves very busy but it does not seem to have impacted on the jobs situation for the poor as they seem to be bringing their own labour in to strip the country of their minerals etc .
Its a free for all every man for himself situation .

Not just the Chinese

Skilled personnel smuggled, exploited in South Africa

And this is what decades of economic idiocy and institutional kleptocracy get you: overtaken by Botswana.

HumanProgress
 
Funny how the glaringly obvious just goes right over the heads of the thickerati.

SA FDI on slippery slope; new ‘Zuma’ Investment Act offers no plug
By Peter Leon*

FDI into South Africa will continue to decline, or remain static unless Government implements measures to
appropriately protect foreign investors.

On 13 December 2015 former President Jacob Zuma assented to the Protection of Investment Act, 2015 (Act). The
commencement date for the Act was suspended pending the publication of regulations which would govern the
mediation facility established under section 13 of the Act.

The Regulations on Mediation Rules, 2017 (Regulations) were eventually published by the Minister of Trade and Industry in
the Government Gazette thirty months later, on 13 July 2018. The Act came into force on the same day.

By publishing the Regulations and signing the Act into law, the South African government has effectively diluted the
protection afforded to foreign investors at a time of anaemic economic growth, high unemployment and increased
concern about the protection of property rights highlighted by the ongoing debate about the expropriation of land
without compensation.

This is so for at least two reasons:
1. First, when the Department of Trade and Industry originally introduced the Promotion and Protection of
Investment Bill, 2015 to Parliament, it presented it as a substitute for the fourteen Bilateral Investment Treaties
between South Africa and EU member states and Switzerland, which South Africa terminated between 2012 and
2014. Contrary to its stated purpose, however, the Act removes the protection afforded to foreign investors in
South Africa and replaces them with no greater protection than those enjoyed by domestic investors under
domestic law. The Act achieves this by “substituting” fair and equitable treatment with the right to administrative
justice, access to information and access to courts, which everyone already enjoys under the Constitution.

2. Second, in terms of section 13 of the Act, foreign investors no longer have any right of recourse to investor-state
international arbitration which is a key form of investment protection globally. As a palliative, the Act affords
foreign investors the right to refer disputes with the South African government to mediation. While mediation
might assist foreign investors and the government to resolve disputes amicably, it is not an effective substitute for
investor-state dispute settlement. Moreover, if artificially separated from recourse to investor-state arbitration,
mediation loses much of its effectiveness, because it is no longer driven by the parties’ interest in avoiding the
time, cost and unpredictability of international arbitration. (for more information on this, see my commentary on
the draft Regulations which is available here and here).

The absence of mechanisms which afford effective protection to foreign investors is a significant contributor to the
continued decline in foreign direct investment to South Africa. According to the United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development’s ‘World Investment Report 2018‘ foreign direct investment into South Africa has
continually declined since 2014 (in 2014 $5,771 million was invested; by 2017 this amount decreased to $1,325
million). Unless the government implements measures to provide confidence in foreign investors, it seems unlikely
that this trajectory will change.

Peter Leon, co-chair and partner, Herbert Smith Freehills.
 
Further demonstration of Dunning Kruger among those destroying SA.

EDINBURGH — There’s a neat line from expropriating ‘idle’ land to economic implosion, warns IRR head of policy research Anthea Jeffery in a piece that should be required reading for every South African. The ANC has been pushing for land grabs in a bid to reclaim support lost to the Economic Freedom Fighters, which has promoted Venezuela style economics and would like to see land ripped from white owners. President Cyril Ramaphosa is losing his magical glow – dubbed Ramaphoria because he gave South Africa hope that the country would improve for the better – in no small part because it has become evident that he supports the concept of land expropriation as carried out in Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Jeffery outlines the chilling trajectory from land expropriation policy to reality in a country where inflation is expected to hit a percentage in the millions this year. Meanwhile, my Venezuelan friend – a university professor – here in Scotland tells me he thinks Venezuela is a lost cause. People are starving, there has been a mass exodus of anyone with skills and a humanitarian crisis looms large on the horizon. – Jackie Cameron

By Anthea Jeffery*
In the mid-1980s, Venezuela, with its major oil and mineral wealth, had per-capita GDP similar to Norway’s and was the richest country in Latin America. By 2017, however, more than 80% of its people were living in poverty. In 2018 its annual inflation rate is expected to top 1 000 000 per cent.


President Nicolas Maduro blames the country’s implosion on an ‘economic war’ being waged against it by opposition parties and the US. The real reasons lie rather in the expropriations and price controls intrinsic to the ‘21st century socialism’ introduced by former president Hugo Chavez. (Chavez ruled from 1999 until his death in 2013, and was then replaced by Maduro.)

In 1999 Chavez amended the Constitution to declare that ‘the predominance of large idle estates (latifundios) was contrary to the interests of society’. In 2001 he introduced a Land Law which permitted the expropriation of such latifundios.

The stated rationale for this law was that the poor owned only 6% of the land, while the top 5% owned 75% of it. According to Chavez, these statistics made it imperative to ‘break up large, idle land estates and allow peasants to gain ownership of the land they cultivate’.

This is strongly reminiscent of the ANC’s (inaccurate) claim that black South Africans own only 4% of agricultural land, while whites own 72% – and that all ‘unproductive’ land must now be expropriated without compensation and then ‘shared among those who work it’ (as the Freedom Charter states).
In Venezuela, targeted latifundios were initially defined as ‘high quality idle agricultural land over 100 hectares’, or ‘lower quality idle agricultural land over 5 000 hectares’. In 2005, however, the maximum amount of ‘idle’ high quality land allowed was reduced from 100 hectares to 50. Lower quality ‘idle’ land was capped at 3 000 hectares.


In practice, however, it was not only ‘idle’ land that was taken. In addition, the government implicitly encouraged land invasions, which often reduced productivity to the point where farms were ‘idle’ enough to qualify for expropriation.

It also introduced a ‘one-cow-per-hectare’ rule, under which farms with less than one cow per hectare were deemed unproductive and expropriated for that reason. But farmers who increased the number of their cattle, so as not to fall foul of the rule, were then deemed to be overburdening the land. Since this would in future erode its productivity, these farmers were expropriated too. The result was a debilitating uncertainty which made virtually every farmer potentially vulnerable.

New farmers were not given full title to land, despite the government’s promises that this would be done. Instead, they were generally granted land on a provisional basis, which meant their land grants could be revoked if they failed to meet the state’s production targets.

Land was also allocated according to political criteria, with those who supported the government (chavistas) far more likely to receive it than those who were apolitical or supported the opposition. Writes Michael Albertus in Foreign Policy: ‘This helped generate a set of politically reliable clients, who were favoured through land grants, and who then helped the regime perpetuate itself in power by voting for it in elections.’

By 2010 the government put the quantity of farmland it had seized at between 5.5m and 7.5m hectares out of the 27 million hectares used for cultivation. At the lower of these figures, these 5.5m hectares amounted to 20% of Venezuela’s total productive farmland.

However, the redistribution of land to small farmers did not result in an increase in food production. On the contrary, according to the National Confederacy of Agriculture and Livestock Associations, agricultural production dropped sharply between 2007 and 2011: maize by 40%, rice by 39%, sorghum by 83%, sugar cane by 37%, coffee by 47%, potatoes by 64%, tomatoes by 34%, and onions by 25%.

Large quantities of fertile land fell out of production, while food imports rose. After 2014, however – when the oil price dropped dramatically – imports of all essentials, including food, became increasingly difficult for the government to afford. Shortages were blamed on ‘hoarding’, while food rationing was introduced.

In 2014 the government tightened up the price controls it had introduced in 2003. Both farmers and food producers were forced to sell at prices below production costs, which cut supply still further.

By 2015, thousands of people were queuing for five to six hours a day in the hope of buying food and other much-needed items. In 2016 Maduro began urging people to grow food and raise chickens in their homes, even though the population is 80% urbanised. Often, people were expected to achieve this on balconies and roof tops.

In 2016 foot riots began, along with the hijacking of food trucks and the violent looting of stores. Maduro put the delivery of basic foods under the control of defence minister General Vladimir Padrino Lopez. The labour ministry announced that all private and public employers must allow their workers to be reassigned to growing crops.

Though expropriations first targeted land, they soon spread to other sectors. In 2007, for example, the government demanded majority control of projects managed by international oil companies. It also expropriated the assets of the two companies (Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips) that refused to acquiesce in this. Chavez justified these takings on the basis that he was ‘returning’ the wealth of Venezuela to the ownership of ‘the people as a whole’.

In 2008 the government nationalised the cement sector, targeting Switzerland’s Holcim Ltd, France’s LaFarge, and Mexico’s Cemex SAB de CV. In 2009 Chavez closed down a number of small banks for what he said were operational irregularities, but re-opened some as state-run firms. He also vowed to nationalise any bank that failed to meet the government’s lending guidelines or was in financial trouble. In 2009 the mining ministry seized Gold Reserve Inc’s Brisas project, while in 2011 Chavez announced that he was nationalising the gold industry.

The economic consequences have become ever more catastrophic. In the words of Greg Mills and Lyal White of The Brenthurst Foundation, in a May 2018 discussion paper on Venezuela’s Populist Armageddon: “Between 2013 and 2017, Venezuela’s economy contracted by 39%. It is expected to plummet yet further, with a 50% contraction by 2019 at current rates of collapse.

“Although government stopped providing official figures in 2016, monthly inflation reached 100 per cent in February 2018. This will translate into annual rates of inflation of more than 1 000 000 per cent. While government studiously maintains an official exchange rate of 14 Bolivars to the US dollar, the black-market rate, which shopkeepers openly use, is 240 000:1…

“University professors now earn US$6 a month, [as does] a police superintendent with 17 years of experience. It requires an estimated 98 times the official minimum monthly wage of 700 000 Bolivars merely to survive…

“By 2018, total government debt was estimated at US$150bn, more than 100% of GDP. In 2017 the government’s bond default was US$2.5bn. For 2018 it is projected to be US$10bn… Basic water and electricity infrastructure is near collapse, and unemployment is rampant…

“Local industry has been destroyed and virtually everything has to be imported, including food, but the government no longer has the funds to do so… The percentage of the population living in poverty is well over 80%. Extreme poverty has leapt from 24% of the population in 2014 to more than 61% three years later.”

South Africans tempted to believe that the uncompensated expropriation of ‘unproductive’ land will increase prosperity for all (as President Cyril Ramaphosa has suggested) need urgently to reflect on whether they really want to follow in Venezuela’s footsteps.

Dr Anthea Jeffery, Head of Policy Research at the IRR, a think tank which promotes political and economic freedom.


When you know you don't understand you can do something about that. When you don't understand that you don't understand...
 
Sounds like gang warfare becoming more widespread and more deadly. And people still want to holiday there!

'Gunmen have shot dead 11 taxi drivers returning to Johannesburg from the funeral of a colleague in South Africa's east. The drivers, who were members of the Gauteng taxi association, were in a minibus on the R74 when unknown gunmen launched an ambush and opened fire.'

South African cabbies killed by gunmen
 
Taxi wars. Been going on for years between rival groups. Best to avoid any place where the matatus gather as they're a magnet for criminals (many use them to get around and transport stolen goods) as well as drive by shootings when rival taxi associations have a go at each other.

Was a time they were monitored and kept under control, any trouble leading to the cops coming down on them hard. Most yards had low walls you could step over or no fences at all and crime was almost unheard of. That's no longer the case.
 
Meanwhile....

Best ways to explore the Rainbow Nation

Thus fully equipped and with benefit of progressive lefty leaning attitudes, friend of Mrs B and her bloke were trilling away about setting off on a three week tour of SA in November.

Flying to Cape Town, hiring a car and "just doing their own thing"

Bon chance.

They would die at the hands of the "downtrodden" screaming it was all Thatchers fault anyway and that their killers are nice people really.
 
They would die at the hands of the "downtrodden" screaming it was all Thatchers fault anyway and that their killers are nice people really.

Got to say I would find that little other than quite satisfying.

She now "works" in social care having had a upper middle class lefty guilt crisis of epic proportions and jacked her well paid City career to go through all the PC shit that now qualifies her to write grand policy papers.

Did for a while actually have to work in the real shitty end of it and deal with the poor, disadvantaged and scum though.

It was quite challenging. Her equally lefty right on concert event company owning hubby had to lease a shit car for her as she thought her Porche might create the wrong impression.
 
What exactly is wrong about working in social care?

Nothing at all. In fact badly needed.

Going around virtue signalling to your extensive social network, writing grand papers and greasy pole climbing in the lefty academic thought bubble surrounding actual social work isn't.
 
Meanwhile....

Best ways to explore the Rainbow Nation

Thus fully equipped and with benefit of progressive lefty leaning attitudes, friend of Mrs B and her bloke were trilling away about setting off on a three week tour of SA in November.

Flying to Cape Town, hiring a car and "just doing their own thing"

Bon chance.
Tell 'em I can get a good deal on pepper spray.
And if they are in Cape Town, I can meet them for a sitrep.
 

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