South Africa as a Template for a Slow-Motion Collapse

Is South Africa America’s Future?

The American dissident right has a strong interest in South Africa, as far as a template for America’s future, as Whites face becoming a minority. Afrikaner commentator, Dan Roodt, described South Africa as the canary in the coal mine for the West. The American left also has an interest in South Africa’s politics, especially the anti-Apartheid struggle, as Americans tend to treat other nations as proxies for their domestic political issues. Regardless, there are some parallels to South Africa with Democrats proposing a truth and reconciliation committee and racial quotas at government agencies and corporations becoming more like South Africa’s BEE (Black Economic Empowerment).

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After a long silence about South Africa’s problems since the fall of Apartheid, mainstream Western publications have been recently reporting on the breakdown of South Africa. For instance, Bloomberg News proclaimed South Africa was on the verge of chaos last year and the BBC quoted an ANC politician who said that South Africa could become a failed state. South Africa is one of many nations at risk of collapse, as the Global South is facing a crisis caused by debt and breakdowns in supply chains, and South Africa is one of 17 nations at risk of state fragility in 2024.

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American right-wingers hyperbolically use the term White genocide, to describe South Africa, as well as the situation in America. However, the mainstream human rights organization, Genocide Watch, places South Africa in the 6^th Stage of Genocide, which is polarization. This is due to attacks on White farmers but also xenophobic attacks on African immigrants, with the perpetrators being South African police and the leftist Black Nationalist, Economic Freedom Fighters. Farm attacks have surged after the EFF’s Julius Malema chanted “Kill the Boer.” The next stage for genocide is preparation.

However, a systematic genocide, like the Rwandan Genocide, is not likely in South Africa, and I have noticed this narrative more from the online American right than from South Africans. This is because, unlike Rwanda with a clear Hutu majority, South Africa’s Black population is divided up into many ethnic groups which do not trust nor care much for each other. South Africa’s geography and population are so dispersed, with Whites concentrating in the Cape region. The Cape’s dominant mixed-race Coloured population, would likely ally with Whites if there was an ethnic sectarian conflict. However, Whites in urbanized parts of Gauteng (Johannesburg and Pretoria), as well as Durban would be vulnerable in a collapse scenario.

South Africa has not really had a full-blown ethnic sectarian conflict, and even the 2021 Durban riots, proved that revolutionary forces just don’t have the competency to carry out a genocide. For a systematic genocide to occur, South Africa’s main Black ethnic groups would have to unite under one anti-White banner and be well organized, which is not to say impossible but not a likely scenario. What is likely is an increase in racially motivated violent crime, rioting and looting, and anarcho-tyranny, with the State refusing to prosecute anti-White violence. Basically, South Africa is non-stop, low-intensity civil unrest and high crime but they never get big events like civil wars or revolutions.

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South Africa’s major problems include a water crisis, a cholera outbreak, collapsing ports, and an energy crisis (load shedding), which in particular is tremendously harming the economy. South Africa’s rate of economic growth has come to a standstill, South Africa has tanked in its corruption index and is rated by the World Bank as the country with the highest wealth inequality. South Africa also has one of the World’s highest unemployment rates at 32.1%, and an astonishing 59.4% rate for youth.

While South Africa’s inflation rate is only 5.6% and its debt to GDP rate is 65.81%, which isn’t the worst in the world, the high unemployment rate and energy crisis will lead to more debt. Not to mention that the US Fed rate hikes will increase interest on debt for indebted Third World nations. South Africa’s financial system was grey-listed for financial backing of Islamic terrorism, and also probably as punishment for South Africa’s alliance with Russia. However, South Africa’s massive gold reserves have somewhat helped offset economic problems, including the debt.

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With this year’s election, there is a power vacuum with the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), plunging in support. This election will likely be the first ever that the ANC fails to get over 50% of the vote. Under a Parliamentary System, the opposition parties are also very fractured, with the main parties being the neoliberal centrist Democratic Alliance, which represents minorities, the EFF, and former president Jacob Zuma’s MK Party, which represents Zulus and is very radical. There is also a rightwing Zulu party, the Inkatha_Freedom_Party and an Afrikaner Nationalist Party, Freedom Front Plus. Since the ANC will be forced to form a caucus, caucusing with the DA could have a moderating or decelerationist impact while caucusing with either the EFF or the MK Party, or perhaps both, will push South Africa’s regime in a much more radical and militantly anti-White direction. For instance, land appropriation without compensation.

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South Africa is experiencing a slow-motion collapse and has taken much longer to collapse than many anticipated. South Africa is an 80% Black country that is very “Woke” by non-Western standards, so it should have long since collapsed by all metrics, according to Western right-wingers but somehow it hasn't. If South Africa does not collapse, it totally discredits accelerationism and shows how long the American system can be sustained with a managed decline. South Africa serves as a grim reminder about how dysfunctional and shitty a State can be while still existing and exerting power over the populace.

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South Africa has bubbles where well-off Whites live that are basically First World on a small scale. South Africa’s upper middle class and wealthy have a high quality of life, despite the dangers and potential of becoming targets of the regime. However, these bubbles are maintained by extensive private security and lots of servants. Not to mention White flight, such as from Gauteng to the Western Cape serving as a safety valve.  

While South Africa is overall dangerous, it has not gotten to a critical mass where most of the wealthy feel a dire need to get out. While South Africa lost about 11k millionaires over the past decade, South Africa has recently become a magnet for digital nomads from Europe and the US. Also, because real estate is so cheap while the South African Rand is weak, a lot of the wealthy are hesitant to downsize from a massive estate to something much more modest in say London, Sydney, Vancouver, or California.

The dissident right assumes that once demographics reach a certain tipping point or the economy tanks, White normies will all get “red pilled” on race. However, even South Africa has a decent amount of Whites who are liberal on racial issues, with similar issues of upper-class Whites virtue signaling while throwing ordinary Whites under the bus. South Africa’s White elite made a deal with the new Black regime in order to retain their wealth, though this arrangement is unsustainable.

While the dissident right assumes that a more non-White America will collapse, it is plausible for things to get much worse for middle class Whites while America’s imperial core is sustained. Even California has not collapsed, after hemorrhaging its White Middle Class, and gets by with a Latino working-class and increasingly Asian managerial class.

The dissident right pontificates about whether America’s future will be like Brazil, South Africa, or Trudeau’s technocratic Canada. I foresee pockets of America that are like Brazil or South Africa, hypercompetitive company towns dominated by Asian and Indian immigrant managerial strivers, middle class Whites continuing to get squeezed out from both the top and the bottom, rural White conservatives becoming more tribal and totally isolated from major institutions, and the White upper class gatekeeping non-White strivers while sequestering certain zones away for themselves.

However, America is far from collapse and I predict that foreigners will continue to buy US stocks, treasury bonds, and real estate as a hedge against instability. Basically, America will benefit from other nations’ chaos and demise. Even the hyperbole about civil war feels more like political theater rather than a serious threat to elite power, and Americans are too sedentary to rebel. 

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South Africa’s problems stem from trying to create a Western style nation-state that is also urbanized and a liberal democracy, out of many African tribes. Leftists are actually correct that the British Empire screwed things up by not respecting ethnic tribal boundaries, but unintentionally end up making an ethnonationalist argument. While I don’t think Apartheid was sustainable, South Africa would be better off carved up into smaller nations or under a decentralized confederacy of semi-autonomous regions.

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South Africa’s collapse will likely play out as a gradual breakdown of government services and in its place a more decentralized order of tribes and enclaves. Unlike America, South Africa lacks a strong administrative state, and segments of Afrikaners are well organized for a post-collapse situation. This ironically is hopeful for those who desire self-determination. South Africa’s Civic Nationalist Cape Independence movement or even an independent Afrikaner nation, like the Orania movement, has some chance at happening while the chances that California and Texas, or let alone any ethnic separatist movements, have of becoming independent nations are nil.