While the U.S. and South Africa similarly attract migrants from poorer neighboring countries because they are the strongest economies on their respective continents, that’s where the similarities stop.
South Africa’s post-apartheid arrangement means that illegal immigration affects groups very differently. Migrants taking low-skill jobs disproportionately impact black South Africans trying to escape the townships and move up the economic ladder, because they compete directly for these opportunities.
Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from southern Yosemite. I am just to the north of Red Devil Lake. And below me is the Red Peak Fork of the Merced River. And in the background there you can see the start of Merced Canyon. That is the canyon that ultimately leads to Yosemite Valley, Half Dome and El Capitan. And over this way we have Red peak and the High Range.
Anyway, today we’re taking a question from the Patreon page about South Africa. It seems like they’re having a little bit of illegal immigrant snafu that is reminiscent of politics in the United States. Let’s talk about where it’s similar and where it’s not. Let’s start with where it is similar. Proof. There are not a lot of South Africans that want to do certain jobs, and it is the bright spot economically on its continent.
And there are a whole lot of countries in sub-Saharan Africa that are not doing very well and haven’t been doing very well for more than 50 years, so it’s natural that there is a pull pulling, especially unskilled labor to south into South Africa and all of the politics and the populism of the conservative or liberal trade unions versus people who don’t want outsiders in their neighborhoods.
All of that stands to a degree. It’s all very similar, but where it’s not, we are now nearly 30 years, 1992. Yeah, we’re pushing 35 years since apartheid ended. When it did, the white leaders of South Africa had some sit down, serious conversations with the black leaders of South Africa and decided how post-apartheid South Africa was going to work.
In the past, all the blacks and the coloured, as the term that they use, lived in something called townships, which were basically fenced off. They had a centralized water system, but no real sanitation system. So they’re kind of ringed by porta potties, and then they’re barbed wired off from the white communities that basically live in something that looks a lot like an American suburban environment.
So when you have three quarters, 80% of the population that basically lives in isolation, what happens when you suddenly give them the right to, for example, vote? They’re going to want different things in whatever they’ve had. And all of the wealth in South Africa was controlled by the whites. So what happens there? We’ve had political evolution since, where populist groups among the blacks have risen.
A group called the Economic Freedom Fighters basically wants to nationalize almost everything because from their point of view, the whites very small minority hold all the money. And if we give to the state and then redistribute it, that would be more fair. Anyway, regardless of what you think about that, the decision that was made back in the early 90s was very simple.
The whites could keep everything that they had, and in exchange the blacks would have free housing and electricity and water forever. What that has economically done is locked the most of the black population into the townships. There is more education, there are more opportunities. There are possibilities for the blacks to leave the townships and earn a normal living and then go on and move up the economic ladder.
But when your basics are almost free, it is a huge disincentive and people stay where they are. So as a result, based on who’s numbers you’re using, South Africa today has an unemployment rate somewhere between 35% and 55%. And it’s been like that since the 90s. They also have some of the highest crime rates in the world, because people will steal to buy the basic necessities they need and then go back to their free housing, which is honestly not a whole lot more than a shack.
Introduce illegal migration into this environment. There are a lot of jobs in South Africa that really do need to be done. The whites are too skilled for most of them and a lot of the blacks are. I don’t want to use the word complacent. That’s not quite right, but they feel stuck with where they are right now. So bringing in illegal migrants to do the work doesn’t bother either of those groups who it bothers the blacks who are trying to leave the township and make a career of themselves and get a house that has internal plumbing and move up the ladder, because those are the people who are being undermined by the illegal migrants.
Now, how South Africa deals with this. We’ve basically had a series of majority governments by one of the most corrupt groups in modern history, the African National Congress, and more recently in coalition with the White Party, Who which is basically based out of Cape Town, which is a more white heavy city, as opposed to Johannesburg, which is more black heavy.
None of this is a clean mix. None of it perfectly aligns to anyone else’s political milieu, because it is such a unique situation from so many different points of view. Anyway, it is a real issue. But before you layer that onto anyone else’s political agenda, just keep in mind it is very, very, very specific to South Africa.
There is no other country on the planet has anything like this or has in the modern era. Okay, that was a lot to say at high elevation. That’s it for me today by.
