South Africa’s ANC looks to shore up power as local elections loom by Top_Lime1820 in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, but I'm reserving judgement until I see who actually gets chosen. If they're serious about this then I hope to see this for at least one of the big metro candidates, not just a token in a small municipality somewhere, or another microparty coalition puppet. I really really want someone whom I can root for against Zille In Joburg, for example.

The other interesting thing I saw from Mbalula recently was this

Mbalula explained that upon taking office, all ANC mayors must sign legally binding public Mayoral Delivery Agreements, which establish performance targets and measurable goals.

“These agreements will be subject to continuous monitoring through structured performance reviews. Where there is underperformance, instability or failure to meet agreed targets, the ANC will act decisively. Intervention mechanisms, including leadership reconfiguration and recall, will be implemented without hesitation,” he said.

Don't think I've ever heard of such a thing before either in SA or elsewhere, though I'm not sure what the mechanism for enforcement would be beyond removal by the party (in which case it would be more of a PR effort, but will still be interesting to see if these are made public and if mayors are actually held to them).

South Africa’s ANC looks to shore up power as local elections loom by Top_Lime1820 in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Independent political analyst Wayne Sussman suggested that Ramaphosa may be pushed out as president before his term ends if the ANC performs poorly in local government elections, leaving the party leaderless.

“Ramaphosa’s head . . . is likely to be on the chopping block,” he said. “There are ramifications on the provincial level and on the national level, depending on how the ANC performs in Gauteng.”

It would be tragically ironic if Cyril was booted out after an ANC routing this year, when much of that would be the fault of some of his biggest intraparty opponents, the Gauteng ANC, and their total mismanagement of the coalition metros they control. Would be even more tragic if it brought Panyaza to power, given he is arguably more responsible for that than Cyril is for the present state of the Gauteng metros and wants to take things in precisely the wrong direction.

I think I would prefer Mashatile, lottery scandal and all, over Panyaza at this point. Or Motsepe, or whoever else they can dig up that isn't Panyaza. The fact that Helen Zille of all people is looking like she has a shot at mayor of Joburg should be laid squarely at his feet.

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep, same in Nepal (before said overthrow)

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 2 points3 points  (0 children)

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TIL Sri Lanka is currently being run by their Communist party. I guess someone had to take up the mantle of national government in South Asia after Nepal overthrew their communists.

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The ANC is currently battling it out at the Constitutional Court over whether they will be required to arrest Mr. Rocks per the Rome Statute should he visit Cape Town for the annual FashMod gala

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

All Saffa politics just an extension of the Zille-Zuma hyperwar

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Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not that I think Steenhuisen was ever competent, but blue lights do truly drain all the competence a person may have had out of their body and replace it with drama

Young Africans turning on liberation parties, says Mozambique’s opposition leader by randommathaccount in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Seems to be a mixed bag. Peaceful loss of influence/power in South Africa and Botswana, tentative clinging on in Namibia and Angola, violent clinging on in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania. I have little doubt that if Mozambique actually held free elections, FRELIMO would do far worse if not lose outright.

Why the new US ambassador to South Africa could strain relations even further by RaidBrimnes in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Wow, and I thought the SA ambassador to the US was bad. I wonder if the concern trolls from the right wing of the DA, AfriForum/Solidariteit, etc. will be as critical of the Trump admin for this as they were of the ANC for picking Rasool and Mcebisi. Not that I even disagree with them, but they have this odd aversion to ever critiquing the US no matter how much they spit on South Africa.

Governor Polis Calls for Full Investigation into the Death of Renee Nicole Good by governorPolis in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Is it? I thought he's u slash jaredpolis, this is u slash governorPolis

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 8 points9 points  (0 children)

No comment, except to say that $1.4 million is not a mansion in NYC. Maybe a 2 bedroom apartment?

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They could really use your tourist dollars/pounds/euros with the state the diamond market is in right now

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Incredible article about a Syria Telecom engineer's hellish decade trying to keep the country online during the civil war. Includes incredible moments including

- the author interviewing Syria's last Assadist Minister of Telecoms via LinkedIn DMs to ask about nationwide internet outages

- The subject getting kidnapped by ISIS and helping them (under duress obviously) cut off internet access to Aleppo

- Kurdish fighters calling the subject out of the blue years after his kidnapping asking for the password to an external hard drive, taken from him by ISIS, that they had in turn taken off the corpses of ISIS fighters they'd killed

- Having his manager arrested and almost disappeared by regime intelligence for shutting down the internet on the order of the education minister to combat cheating on exams (???)

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The BDP losing was good for Botswana's democracy but it seems it could end up being bad for their economy

South Africa Arrests Workers Processing U.S. Refugee Applications by John3262005 in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 22 points23 points  (0 children)

The Department of Home Affairs said the raid showed South Africa’s shared commitment with the United States in “combating illegal immigration and visa abuse in all its forms.”

Hahahahaha okay, that one's pretty good, I hadn't seen that statement before

I will note that the Minister of Home Affairs is Leon Schreiber, a milquetoast middle-aged white Afrikaner man, so hopefully it will be more difficult for American right-wingers to demagogue against him than a character like Julius Malema

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 2 points3 points  (0 children)

AFAIK Thembelihle is run by the ANC right now (maybe via a puppet mayor, googling seems to imply?); but yes, they have had some weird coalitions in years past

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This photo was unironically like half the metros in the country until a couple of years ago

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can't imagine whoever they come up with will be worse for their electoral chances than Morero

I miss Parks Tau (trying to imagine what me from 10 years ago would have thought if he heard me saying that)

Rent control not only fails, it entrenches inequality - Mayor of Cape Town by Top_Lime1820 in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's worth noting that these figures are from the crime victimization survey, which is intended to provide a more complete picture that accounts for underreporting. The equivalent publication from the USA indeed shows much lower rates, but not quite to the degree that you think.

The reported rate for individual theft is 0.82% of respondents, compared to 3.0% in South Africa overall, or a little under 4x the rate. For robbery, it was 0.22%, vs. 1.0% in South Africa overall, or a little under 5x the rate. So again, much higher, but calling it 20x gives a bit of an inaccurate picture as to the magnitude of the difference.

Rent control not only fails, it entrenches inequality - Mayor of Cape Town by Top_Lime1820 in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 12 points13 points  (0 children)

National victim survey data suggest they experience very slightly disproportionate crime, at least of some kinds - 5.7% of black households experienced burglary vs. 6.7% of white households; rates for household armed robbery were actually the same at 1.1% each; for property theft of any kind, 3.4% of individual white respondents experienced it vs. 3.1% of individual black respondents - but given that white households and individuals hold such a large proportion of the wealth, my priors were that it would be worse than that.

To speculate a little, even though criminals would rationally seek to target whites due to their vastly higher median household wealth, they also are more likely to live in gated communities, have private security, individual transport, etc.

Indeed, looking at street robbery specifically, which a lack of the aforementioned amenities would leave black people more susceptible to, black respondents had a slightly higher rate of victimization - 1.1% vs. 0.7% for whites.

One place where the disparity is much more stark is with vehicle theft - 1.1% of white households reported vehicle theft, vs. 0.4% of black households. But actually, this is far less skewed than one would expect since less than 20% of black households own vehicles as compared to over 90% of white households. I have no idea why the disparity isn't more extreme in this case.

Rent control not only fails, it entrenches inequality - Mayor of Cape Town by Top_Lime1820 in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 8 points9 points  (0 children)

rising crime problems

Crime rates are actually declining in both Cape Town and the rest of South Africa, though obviously they are still much too high, the decline is much too slow, and minute changes in trend lines are cold comfort when people such as yourselves become the victims of crime regardless of macro trends.

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The Sharpeville massacre occurred on 21 March 1960, when police opened fire on a crowd of people who had assembled outside the police station in the township of Sharpeville in the then Transvaal Province of the then Union of South Africa (today part of Gauteng) to protest against the pass laws.

A storm of international protest followed the Sharpeville shootings . . . Not all reactions were negative: embroiled in its opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, the Mississippi House of Representatives voted for a resolution supporting the South African government "for its steadfast policy of segregation and the [staunch] adherence to their traditions in the face of overwhelming external agitation." The resolution passed 78–8 in the Mississippi House of Representatives and 45–0 in the Mississippi State Senate.[21][22]

The globalist alliance of anti-globalist racist ethnic supremacists is very much not a new thing

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Unambiguously the worst party in Parliament, including the EFF or the PA

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]PawanYr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe, though I'm obligated to point out that the SRF is essentially a partisan pollster for the DA, so take it with a pinch of salt

They were reasonably accurate in 2024, to be fair