Maybe “both” is the right answer?
Right-wing tendencies are easy to explain. South Africa is clearly the wealthiest of all sub-Saharan Africa, and of course Westerners play a major role in its history and present. You can put different glosses on that, but a variety of those methods lead to the right conclusions. The lessons on the left are novel to ponder, here are a few:
1. After the removal of apartheid, middle and upper class black people emerged quickly. That proves the importance of environment, opportunity, and circumstances. Yes, the majority of blacks in South Africa still lack adequate opportunity, mainly due to poor education and sometimes also because of the bad environment in the country, a legacy of the different apartheid times. In general, visiting the country causes one to develop the value of opportunities, and to realize that bad conditions for talented people can last for a very long time.
2. The performance of the post-apartheid economy has been disappointing, and economic inequality has increased steadily. That suggests that more capitalism can exacerbate economic inequality, as political inequality does.
3. Apartheid was enforced with a very small number of police officers, per capita far less than in many Western countries at the time. That may suggest a kind of Marxian and Foucauldian view that oppressive systems take their power, through norms and expectations, and are harder to dismantle than simple coercion analysis might indicate. The disappointment of post-apartheid South Africa does not contradict that proposition, as those previous norms and expectations have not ended at all.
4. In the new, desegregated South Africa, class sometimes seems more important than race per se. A certain number of blacks have been included in the upper echelons, due to their business success, but the dominant role of the class continues much as before. That point comes across as more Marxian than the current publisher, but Marx is still on the left.
5. You can see how much South African history has been influenced by the role of gold and diamonds in their economy. That again points to a Marxian approach, more so than today’s left. In South Africa, methods of production were very important.
6. What is the purpose of color fading to mean there, after many centuries of such an important color and in many legal ways? They still call one group “Colored.” Would it be so wrong to accuse the disaffected South African promoters of missing out in some way, and asking for something that is false and unattainable?
I’m not sure how much I agree with all of this, only that it’s the way I think of visiting South Africa and coming back more than being on the left.
What else?
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