And yet... The new rulers are far less effective than the Apartheid government. The cost of bad government is so influential it's nearly hard to imagine.
I strongly suspect the moral accounting does not favour your position in the long term, the same argument is expressed here but in the abstract since this is of course an emotive subject.
The new rulers are far less effective than the Apartheid government
Are they really?
Access to water, sanitation, electricity and housing are far better than they were under apartheid. The AIDS epidemic which started in the last years of apartheid has been tamed through decisive government action. Despite a stubbornly high unemployment rate, blacks have made major economic strides. The macroeconomic situation is more stable than it was in the last years of apartheid. Even crime, as measured by the murder rate, has actually dropped.
And the apartheid government was hardly a paragon of competent economic management, running up massive debts to keep itself going, and to wage war on its neighbours and oppress its black population.
There are serious issues: education (a legacy of terribly educated teachers perpetuating their ignorance) and public healthcare are awful, and high level corruption represents a risk to the economy, but the idea that the apartheid government ruled benevolently is pretty much discredited everywhere except the darkest corners of the internet.
PS. The biggest difference between the apartheid era and the democratic one was just that: in 2016, during local elections the ruling ANC was kicked out of power by voters in some of the largest cities in South Africa. It went quietly and respected the will of the people, with no squads of secret police murdering opponents of the ruling party. Could you have said the same about the apartheid government?
It's bad enough this is an emotive political subject, but it's also a complex one.
If I can continue to harp on my 'dust mote' fable. The life expectancy was 64 under the previous regime, and is 56 in the current one.
Some back of the envelope arithmetic.
8 years x 40 million = 320000000 person years.
Let us call that, assuming the higher life expectancy: five million dead.
That's the cost of bad government. Silent. Insidious. Real.
Now it's complex, because you'll say: "It couldn't be helped, we don't really know if the previous regime would have done better", and I'll agree with you. Then it becomes subjective because nobody can really know the answer and it's impossible to test.
I strongly suspect improper rule has led to at least several million avoidable deaths.
As I see it, if a government does 99/100 things right, but 1/100 things wrong, and those 1/100 things have a greater impact than the other 99... I think you see what I'm getting at. Good intentions, some gains morally, it's all kind of worthless if the big things aren't got right. To use a Comp Sci analogy, governments have their own version of Big O notation.
The AIDS epidemic started under the apartheid regime (not directly their fault of course),and was the reason for the drop in life expectancy. It is also moving up again with the provision of ARVs. Furthermore, infant mortality is dropping.
I suspect that your "dust mote" analogy holds, but in the opposite direction to the one you assume: the quality of life has gotten materially better for the vast majority of people (coming off a low base), but worse, or stagnated for those of us SA'ns well-off enough to frequent HN.
I suspect that when a government is unable to scale its ability to govern, the statistics become dopey.
This doesn't imply a conspiracy necessarily. It could be for instance that if people stop reporting crime, that either the crimes are not occurring or that people's faith in the government to provide effective policing is undermined.
This makes a government's statistic's office an unreliable narrator even if every person is not corrupted and competant at their job.
Semi-related: I feel a faint thrill of unease at this reasoning because of the broader notion - that any society going into reverse wouldn't be sensible to what was happening: things would just gradually get weirder. Nobody would know why. A society suffering from Alzheimer's disease. It would just get worse with the ability of society to possess executive function dropping off at a similar rate to the ability to physically function. Eventually people would be looking upon the ruin wondering what the fuck happened.
Second thought.
Although no expert on SA's economic infrastructure I do know one thing which is at odds with your portrayal. Escom is the almost exclusive provider of electric power, still owned by the SA state IIRC. It has not added any electrical generation capacity to the grid since Apartheid. Their facilities are also badly run down.
How can you claim then, that more South Africans have access to electricity? Were white people hoarding all the electricity and now it is more evenly distributed? It seems more likely that more people would have obtained access in name only.
> quality of life has gotten materially better for the vast majority of people (coming off a low base), but worse, or stagnated for those of us SA'ns well-off enough to frequent HN.
I concede it is possible I have obtained a biased version of reality from those South Africans capable of net access.
I'd suspect though that most right wing South Africans would have left 20 years ago, so the people left in SA must be the more Liberal and Left of center portion of the population, or those unable to leave. If this is true, and we believe that political character is mostly hereditary (I do), then the bias may lie in the opposite direction.
That most media sources bias would be in that same direction nearly goes without saying. Western media trumpeted a great victory after Apartheid after all.
Final thought:
For what criteria would you concede being mistaken? Mine is simple: if South Africa experiences significant increases in real wages and life expectancy goes up, then it is successful.
I put to you that since AIDs should be fatal to those without access to expensive drugs, and infant mortality likely is dropping as you said you should expect an uptick in life expectancy over the next few decades.
Were that not to occur, then something is wrong.
I know some people believe the tentacles of the former regime have gotten stronger over time but this seems conspiratorial to me and I've never heard a fleshed out explanation for why that ought to be so.
It could be for instance that if people stop reporting crime, that either the crimes are not occurring or that people's faith in the government to provide effective policing is undermined.
The murder rate is used as a proxy for the overall crime rate, precisely because murders are more likely to be reported (plenty of citiations available for this). And the murder rate has dropped since the end of apartheid.
How can you claim then, that more South Africans have access to electricity? Were white people hoarding all the electricity and now it is more evenly distributed? It seems more likely that more people would have obtained access in name only.
It is well known that the apartheid government overinvested in generation capacity in the 1980s and a lot of capacity had to be mothballed. Of course, the opportunity cost caused by this failure of central planning is less visible than the later failure by the post-apartheid government to provide for expanded capacity. Furthermore, electricity-hungry aluminium smelters were built to soak up excess generation capacity. So yes, in a sense, it was hoarded by the apartheid government.
I wonder how electricity access can be provided “in name only”. It would suggest a vast conspiracy that an ostensibly incompetent government would be hard-pressed to execute.
if South Africa experiences significant increases in real wages and life expectancy goes up, then it is successful.
>According to this Rapid Mortality Surveillance Report 2013, issued by the council’s Burden of Disease Research Unit, South Africa’s life expectancy has escalated to 62 years in 2013 – a staggering increase of 8.5 years since the low in 2005.
I'd suspect though that most right wing South Africans would have left 20 years ago, so the people left in SA must be the more Liberal and Left of center portion of the population, or those unable to leave
This is an interesting point, and a bit of a sidetrack, but my experience with adult SAn emigrants indicates that they tend to be in a bit of a time warp, reflecting contemporary attitudes at the time of their departure. I expect that many were pretty much centrist or even somewhat liberal at the time of their departure, but white South African society has shifted towards a less racist position while many expats are insulated from this, and thus appear to unreconstructed apartheid apologists today.
I strongly suspect the moral accounting does not favour your position in the long term, the same argument is expressed here but in the abstract since this is of course an emotive subject.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/kn/torture_vs_dust_specks/
It moves!