[wjaugustyn]

South Africa has a steadily growing GDP, and is one of the least corrupt countries in Africa. GDP has been growing steadily despite issues with the state owned energy provider Eskom. The private sector is robust against government incompetence. It’s not easy to live here, but the opportunities are massive (because the playing field is open if you are skilled).

[buyx]

South Africa is a deteriorating shithole. My mother was telling me that they want to move to guarded security estate because she is afraid she might be raped, and my father bludgeoned in their home. (NB: they’re not under threat because of their race, rather because that’s what criminals do).

The police are dumb as rocks and totally lazy: look at the Boksburg tanker blast in December to see how they don’t GAF about doing their jobs.the public was standing around a burning gas tanker taking pictures for social media for hours before it exploded and killed dozens. The police only pitched after the explosion.

There is no serious border control, and any mention of it is shut down as “xenophobic” by the media and business that want to flout labour regulations by hiring undocumented migrants from the rest of Africa, despite the obscene unemployment rate.

The electricity situation has been discussed at length here previously, but it’s strangling the economy.

Sure you can make money if you are skilled, but you can make better money using those skills in any number of other countries.

The only thing that’s keeping many middle-class South Africans from emigrating is the cheap domestic help. They are happy to exploit the obscene inequality since it gives them cheap labour. They live in terror of washing their own clothes and cleaning their own toilets.

[ashwagary]

>South Africa is a deteriorating shithole.

A large % of white South Africans dislike the idea of the masses rising. The expectation that the transition should be comfortable is naive at best.

[cm2187]

GDP growth seems to have been in the 1-2% area for the past 10y. That's ok for a developed economy but that's low for a developing country that needs to pull its population out of poverty. Also I'm not sure that "one of the least corrupt countries in Africa" is such a high bar.

[wjaugustyn]

Let’s put it this way. In South Africa it’s not a constant onslaught of having to pay people off government officials, like in all other sub-Saharan countries I’ve been in.

[linhns]

And corruption is increasing!

[wjaugustyn]

And BRICS helps a lot. It’s great to have a trade partner like China. Not all exporters feel happy to export to Russia currently.