It's interesting: the poll turnout for our village was 55% and nationally 65%, nearly 10% down on the last election. And many young people (under 30) or the so-called "born frees" didn't even register to vote. So the apathy is beginning. It's combined with disillusionment.
The results have been very interesting with a consistent reduction in the ANC majority - not a bad thing. There is also the marginal increase in support of the lunatic extremes. More importantly though, a move towards support of a party that supports a free market. Especially in the economic hubs. The Western Cape, where we live is not ANC, for the 3rd time. It's the best governed province in the country.
PS 60, I see.... 😉
Posted using Partiko Android
@fionasfavourites,
Identity politics, in any country, inevitably leads to failure. The reason is pragmatic, not philosophical. Anything other than a meritocracy unavoidably results in corruption and the massive misallocation of scarce resources ... and this sets up highly destructive self-reinforcing negative feedback loops.
Meritocracies, whether respecting individuals or ideas, continuously weigh the alternatives and the cream rises to the top. The churn of "constant curation" results in the necessary course corrections that the system needs if it is to survive ... and thrive.
Throughout history, countless attempts have been made to short-circuit this fundamental dynamic, usually on ideological grounds, and all have failed. One wonders when it will become apparent to the next group of Utopians that they're attempting to defy a reality as elemental as gravity.
The ANC is pregnant with meaning in South Africa's history but such wonderlust blinds many to its short-comings. An idea is not good or bad because it emanates from someone sporting a Nelson Mandela pin. It's good or bad because it works or it doesn't.
Africa in general is crippled by corruption and a good part of such corruption derives from the effects of tribalism ... and tribalism is the antithesis of a meritocracy.
Of course, it's not just Africa. The Ukraine and Russia are crippled by oligarchs as is Venezuela by ideologues. And, it is STEEM/Steemit's unwillingness to enforce a meritocracy that WILL lead to its demise. If @dan launches MEOS (Steemit 2.0) on June 1 (as is widely rumored), and it has been reformed so as to compensate merit instead of manipulation ... STEEM/Steemit will be dead within a month.
Quill
P.S. Geez ... getting from 59 to 60 seemed to take forever. I'm awaiting the payday. :-)
Ah, yes, @quillfire - those first three paragraphs - yes. But humanity is infested with politics and Politics, not to mention ideologues, despots and megalomaniacs. So....
No-one is more acutely aware of this than I.
Only part of your assertion is true - in South Africa, anyway. Corruption is a pervasive cancer and Zuma's having not just traded on the Zulu card, but having built a tribe of his own, does to some extent, bear out the tribalism theory. Yes, it is, indeed, the antithesis of both democracy and meritocracy. However, the results of this election with a growing urban population, show that tribalism is diminishing. In the rural areas of the Eastern Cape ( where I grew up and went to uni, and where there is a majority rural population) whence some of the ANC's most dominant leaders have come (Mandela, Mhlaba, Hani, Mbeki (father and son), Sisulu (and daughter), you still see blind Xhosa support of the ANC.
However, in the metropolitan areas, this is changing, and has been for a while in the Western Cape, and specifically around Cape Town where the Democratic Alliance has grown and is dominating. Here, much to its annoyance, the ANC is being forced to suck the hind t*t. And Cape Town is the country's legislative capital. Similarly in Gauteng where the ANC lost a significant number of votes and, at times in the vote count, had not mustered 50%, and got in by a ball hair 50,1%, also demonstrates this.
However (isn't there always), in the provinces that are also largely rural, and where Julius Malema (a Mopedi / Northern Sotho) is dominant, there is no large, dominant tribe. It's also the region from which Cyril Rhamaphosa comes, and he's a Bavenda. The ANC took the provinces - with a reduced majority, and Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters have become the official opposition (the provinces are Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Northwest).
When I worked in Johannesburg in my 20's, and then when I travelled there on business, black South Africans who grew up in either Soweto or Thembisa or in Johannesburg, generally, socialise and marry outside the traditional tribal groupings and resent being coralled and labelled in terms of their tribes. That's not to say they don't maintain some of their traditions - they do - it's a bit like our maintaining certain Scottish traditions in our home and my father never forgiving his English wife for being a sasenach. One of my happiest memories is attending a lobola (engagement) ceremony in Soweto: the sister of a Mopedi colleague, marrying a man from outside her tribe. Chipane went on to marry a Swazi woman....
Fiona
PS I have 0.45 to go to reach 60......
@fionasfavourites,
My remark about tribalism was continentally generic. I'm glad to hear there is at least some diminishment of it in South Africa.
Quill
P.S. ... we'll get you over the 60 hump. One whale 50% upvote would do the trick.