Why South Africa The First Country Built On Critical Race Theory Failed

Everything that is being done in America now, was implemented systematically by South Africa long back. South Africa is the first modern nation to be refounded on the principles of Critical Race Theory, and now the project seems to have dramatically failed. 

South Africa did everything that is being done in America right now. As a hyperdiverse multiethnic, multilingual society, South Africa has followed almost every prescription embraced by the CRT proponents.

Despite being advised for more than a decade that its water supply infrastructure was inadequate, South Africa did not act and now its dams are almost empty.

Since 2007, South Africa has been experiencing massive blackouts and the government is now protecting that it may continue for another five years.

Despite being the “economic superpower” of Sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa’s brain drain is significant and accelerating. Those who have options are abandoning the country. 

There have also been an increase in the murder rates. In its report, South Africa’s Police Minister Bheki Cele revealed that even though overall crime declined by 8.5 per cent, the rate of murder and attempted murder rose by 8.4 per cent and 8.7 per cent respectively. 

For decades, the South African economy has been shaped by a policy known as Broad Based Black Economic Employment. Despite the fancy sounding name, the policy is the same as that of activists in the United States.

BBBEE relies openly and explicitly on injecting racial preferences throughout the economy. Companies receive a BBBEE scorecard based on hiring black workers, elevating black management, and giving black South Africans a share of ownership.

Companies with high BBBEE scores are given favorable tax treatment and preferences in government contracts. Corporate actors are strongly incentivized to give contracts to high BBBEE scorers as well.

President Jacob Zuma himself in 2014 blamed the electricity blackouts on these racial policies:

“There’s a belief out there that the electricity challenge is a result of the failure of  government, of lack of leadership … The economy of apartheid was racially skewed  and structured to take care of the minority, not the majority of the country …  Apartheid forced the majority of people to live far away from economic  opportunities, this exclusion must be defeated”.

Eskom, South Africa’s public electric utility company, is one of the most aggressive adopters of BBBEE. South African National Assemblywoman Gwen Ngwenya described the outcome of this approach in a 2019 column:

Why is Eskom in trouble? Because it has high operating costs and it cannot meet its debt obligations. Why? It’s ambitious programme to build two big power stations has incurred substantial cost overruns and technical faults. Why? In part it was flawed from the beginning with a small bidding pool, meaning it was likely not cost competitive from the start. Why? There was political meddling. Why? Chancellor House. Why? Contractors needed to have a black partner in order to secure contracts. Why? BEE.

Eskom has experienced a skills carnage for many years, and the long spectre of race-based policies has never been far from the crime scene.

A decade after the skills shortages plaguing Eskom at the time of the 2008 financial crisis, it still cites ‘people issues’ as one of its major concerns. This is startling for a company where the staff complement has increased by almost 50% in the last 10 years.

As recently as 2015 Eskom was talking about reducing the number of white engineers by 1,081 and white artisans by 2,179 in professional and mid-management positions in order that the utility could more accurately resemble the demographics of the country.

Estimates vary but Eskom has lost thousands of skilled personnel since 1994, and often paid a premium for it via costly severance packages. Many were taken up by individuals who could smell the blood in the water and for whom retirement or employment abroad presented a more attractive offer than sticking around for the looming apocalypse.

If a company is to be politically rewarded for handing out ownership based on race, why not gain even more security and let the politically connected into the ownership caste? If you have to hire unqualified hacks for senior management, why not give the jobs to politicians’ children? Corrupt behavior like this happens even in the best systems.

But as one South African observer notes, in that country it’s by design:

Across state in-house institutions like the South African Revenue Service, the National Prosecuting Authority and the National Intelligence Agency, black-first narratives were used to effect ‘state capture’ which meant shielding those corrupt rent-seekers (black and white) who used BEE deals, slush-funds and tax dodging to fizz their champagne while flattening the rest of us.

In the private sector, BEE is one of many onerous costs of business that the biggest, well-established firms can bear while their up-and-coming competition is hounded off the grid or else simply bankrupted. This creates a winner-take-all economy while the sum of it all shrinks.

The Small Business Project’s (SBP) landmark new analysis finds that contrary to former expectations there are not millions of formal Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) but only about 250 000. It also notes that formal SMEs ‘only account for 28% of the jobs’ while, ‘based on international trends, this should be about 60% or 70%’.

South Africa’s unemployment rate is at a record 32.6 percent. The country’s unemployment was 32.5 percent in early 2020, before a single lockdown hit. The country’s GDP per capita peaked in 2011 and has fallen by 25 percent since.

One of South Africa’s richest families is the Gupta family; Indian immigrants who arrived in 1993. The Guptas soon built a close relationship with the now-jailed Jacob Zuma. When Zuma became president, his actions benefited the Guptas to such a degree that it constituted state capture.

The Guptas owned a portfolio of companies that enjoyed lucrative contracts with South African government departments and state-owned conglomerates. They also employed several Zuma family members — including the president’s son, Duduzane — in senior positions.

According to testimony heard at the inquiry, the Guptas went to great lengths to influence their most important client, the South African state.

Public officials responsible for various state bodies say they were directly instructed by the Guptas to take decisions that would advance the brothers’ business interests.

It is alleged that compliance was rewarded with money and promotion, while disobedience was punished with dismissal.

The public bodies that are said to have been “captured” in this fashion included the ministries of finance, natural resources and public enterprise, as well as the government agencies responsible for tax collection and communications, the state broadcaster SABC, the national carrier, South African Airways, the state-owned rail-freight operator Transnet and the energy giant Eskom, one of the world’s largest utility companies.

When investigation began, the Guptas employed a British PR firm Bell Pottinger to argue that South Africa’s problem wasn’t a corrupt family dynasty, but the white race hoarding resources from everyone else:

According to an investigation by the Sunday Times last month, Bell Pottinger took on the Gupta family as clients in 2016 to try to improve their image, and the chosen strategy was to target white business leaders as a distraction from serious allegations of state capture.

One of the strategies was apparently to drive a predominantly social media narrative that “white monopoly capital”, the SA Communist Party and National Treasury have been standing in the way of transforming the South African economy.

The phrase “white monopoly capital” has, over past months, become a major feature of mainstream political discourse, with even President Jacob Zuma using it.

The paper said it had seen evidence of the PR plan (presumably including the document above) involving Andile Mngxitama and his Black First Land First Organisation, Mzwanele Manyi and his Decolonisation Foundation, and others.

The Bell Pottinger plan reportedly involved using, among other things, Twitter bots involved in a fake news campaign to support messages critical of white monopoly capital and be defensive of the Guptas.

To get an idea of what ideologies the Guptas were enabling with their campaign, here is an interview with a member of Black First Land First, one of the radical organizations promoted by Bell Pottinger’s scheme:

The looming apocalypse predicted by the Congresswoman seems to have dawned now for South Africa.