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As reported in news.com.au, South Africa's Parliament have voted to "expropriate" land from white farmers with no compensation.
From TFA:
The motion was brought by Julius Malema, leader of the radical Marxist opposition party the Economic Freedom Fighters, and passed overwhelmingly by 241 votes to 83 against. The only parties who did not support the motion were the Democratic Alliance, Freedom Front Plus, Cope and the African Christian Democratic Party
...
"The time for reconciliation is over. Now is the time for justice," Mr Malema was quoted by News24 as telling parliament. "We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land."
...
Mr Malema has been leading calls for land confiscation, forcing the ANC to follow suit out of fear of losing the support of poorer black voters. In 2016, he told supporters he was "not calling for the slaughter of white people‚ at least for now"
This policy has been tried in other African countries before, most recently Zimbabwe, with disastrous results. The farms appropriated usually fail rapidly, leading to food shortages and economic destruction. Will South Africa be able to avoid repeating history, or is it about to slide into 3rd World status?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 28 2018, @06:48PM
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "been gutted". My dad was a part of that education system for several years, and noted the following problems:
1. Many of the teachers he encountered were incompetent in their subject matter, had no training in education, and failing to carry out the most basic duty of the job, namely showing up to class. Most of the principals he encountered were dedicated professionals trying to make the best of a bad situation.
2. There was a bit of a scandal a few years ago where textbooks that were supposed to be delivered to rural schools instead got delivered to a river near the depot. The shipping company in question just happened to be owned by somebody with family ties to someone in the education ministry. Who had, in turn, been hired for their family ties to the minister. This kind of corruption is extremely common in the ANC, and one of the reasons their political fortunes have been declining in recent years.
As for the concerns about South Africa "sliding into 3rd world status", can anybody name a period when South Africa wasn't in Third-world status? Third-world countries have rich people, and frequently have an educated middle class. What makes them 3rd-world countries (or "developing nations", in more modern and somewhat less Eurocentric parlance) isn't that they don't have rich people, but that those wealthier classes are dwarfed by teeming masses of impoverished people who are abused at every turn. In South Africa, that's fairly heavily racialized: Until the end of apartheid, if you were black, you were automatically part of that teeming mass of impoverished people.
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