There are two fundamental reasons why, despite the positive prospects the country enjoyed in 1994, South Africa is degenerating rapidly into yet another failed African state.

One is the psychological mindset of most South African blacks, resulting from their 350 years of domination by the controlling white minority.

Having been consistently humiliated, maltreated, and impoverished over so long a period, many of them have developed an entirely understandable and deep aversion to whites and white values as being the root cause of their discomfort. This has resulted in the conscious exclusion of whites by the ANC from positions of authority and influence in the country.

The other fundamental reason for South Africa’s degeneration is the general mindset of whites.

Attributing each government failure to what they see as inherent black incompetence, white people conveniently ignore the obvious fact that it was their centuries-long suppression of black economic freedom that found blacks in 1994 largely impoverished, uneducated, and certainly not in a position to run a sophisticated industrial economy successfully. 

Similarly, whites clutched their pearls in horror when many of the asset-less ANC politicians, on being handed the keys to power in 1994, chose corruptly to regard the public Treasury as their own property – as though any other politicians, totally devoid of assets and assuming power, would have behaved  differently in the identical circumstances.

Failing to adapt themselves mentally to their radically changed and diminished circumstances, South African whites persist in the delusion of their racial superiority.

Often unaware

Naturally highly offensive to blacks, this is expressed either advertently or inadvertently, with whites often unaware that they are giving deep offence. Thinking of themselves as the beneficiaries of a more sophisticated and developed culture underpins their delusion of moral superiority, leading whites to suppose they are in a better position to understand the racial dynamics that govern the country. Yet they appear largely not to do so.

Anticipating the total breakdown of society and the personal threat to themselves that the current circumstances could involve, white South Africans have had sufficient opportunity to assess the ongoing cost to themselves of their imagined moral superiority to blacks. Despite this, they appear to be doing virtually nothing to address what is clearly the greatest obstacle to their future wellbeing: the black aversion to whites, brought about principally by a primitive and unamended white attitude towards blacks.

We have an entire country that is now well down the road to ruin, almost entirely because of the negative basic mindsets of both groups, black and white.

Many white South Africans remain passively glued to the conviction of their own superiority, despite the negative political situation that this creates for themselves. They do not think to reassess their prejudice to accord with their new and radically changed circumstances, and so facilitate and encourage blacks to cooperate with them. In failing to do so, and in their inherent conscious or unconscious arrogance, they continue to alienate the blacks who now control their destiny.

Cooperation

On the other hand, the ANC rejects any active cooperation with whites in the running of the country, even though 30 years of failure have made it evident that for the present, they need such cooperation.

If ANC leaders had rather seized their opportunity in 1994, broadcasting their problem with white prejudice, but aiming to work with whites who were not  inclined towards racism, it would have provided them with a unique opportunity to prove to the world that Africans are no less capable than any other peoples of running a sophisticated, industrial economy. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, this was never going to happen.

Instead, the ANC chose to adhere dogmatically to the unproductive and borrowed Marxist-Leninist ideology of its revolutionary days (ironically established by a white man, who happened to despise blacks). This in all probability has doomed the party and the country to failure.

It now also practises the same sort of naked racism in its legislation that it criticised the apartheid government for. This raises the relevant question as to exactly how, and even if, the ANC differs morally from the apartheid government.

Most importantly, through its ethnically driven and socialistic economic and educational policies, it has failed utterly to elevate the condition of the majority of the black population, in whose interest it claims to be acting. There is also, unfortunately, little doubt that the black majority will be even worse off than it is now when the ANC finally transitions the country to a full Marxist economy.

Could be avoided

It is very likely that South Africa, despite the enormous, underutilised black and white human resources that it possesses, will indeed soon become a failed state.

It is tragic that so avoidable a negative situation might actually come about when it could be avoided. Above all, avoided by the whites, in their own interests, coming to their senses intellectually, critically examining and modifying their out-dated and emotional racial attitudes and behaviour, and then doing everything that they can to persuade the ANC of the disastrous likely outcome for black South Africans of their unworkable Marxist ideology. But of course, this won’t happen.

The whites will carry on mindlessly blaming ‘them’ for every governmental failure, and the ANC will continue stumbling blindly down its yellow-brick road to socialist Utopia. The country will eventually fail simply because of inherent human foolishness – to be frank, sheer human stupidity, which clearly afflicts blacks and whites equally.

The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR

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David Matthews is a Daily Friend reader.