didiDIDI

didiDIDI wrote

This is interesting.

If you haven't, one thing that it might be worthwhile to look into for South Africa and perhaps other countries is xenophobia and xenophobic violence as an indicator of fascist tendencies occurring in that context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia_in_South_Africa

Realistically the ruling party is not fascist by almost any measures, in part because of its postcoloniality and its relation to whiteness. But there does seem to be some elements of the party, and opposition parties in the country, that enable this kind of fascistic politics.

And of course, with organisations like Afriforum there is also a substantial white nationalist lobby power here, along with various white nationalist centrepoints, like Stellenbosch and Orania. While they are a fringe element they have big apartheid money and they are organised.

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didiDIDI wrote (edited )

Reply to by !deleted1759

Here in South Africa, we have the ANC, a formerly-liberation ruling party that is waning in power but still wins consistently. They were coopted from the start, and unfortunately some of our most radical people, like Chris Hani and Steve Biko, were murdered before ANC power, while others like Winnie Mandela were victims of calculated, systematic and severe character assassination.

The next most powerful party is the white and neoliberal DA; they like to pretend that they're better at governance and it appears that way to some, at least until the last elections where they got control of substantially more territory and seem not to have been able to carry as much. They're racist and all-round bad news.

The next most popular party is the EFF an already-coopted populist 'state-socialist' party; just another breakaway by people disgruntled with the ANC. Their main platform is around expropriation of land without compensation, which the ANC has recently taken on and in doing so made the EFF toothless.

Given this it's not clear that the ANC isn't the best option. They win anyway.

Some might be tempted to say that the 1994 transitional election affected the daily life of people, but it was the decades of struggle that put formal apartheid out of commission, not a vote.

Anyway, I'm thinking aloud mostly.
tl;dr: No, never affected my daily life. At least national elections. Who knows how elections in other places have affected my life here.

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didiDIDI wrote

Zikode's speech here covers the ground: https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/the-politics-of-the-expropriation-of-land-without-compensation-in-south-africa-sbu-zikode/

The ANC’s new talk about ‘expropriation of land without compensation’ is a new voting campaign for the ruling party that aims at attracting black majority voters. The ruling party has lost its credibility with millions of people. It is hoping that this campaign will restore its credibility. But when they talk of expropriation as taking land from white farmers we know that land will go to black elites. We know that at the same time impoverished black people will be violently driven off urban land occupations in unlawful and brutal evictions. Democratically organised land occupations from below will continue to be criminalised.

It was surprising for me also to see the 'news' on this website that the government here was taking the land, because that's not what's happening. By my best guess there is going to be an endlessly long bureaucratic process that will amount to very little becoming possible and even less being done. We'll see.

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