Oh South Africa, what a mess!

Living in Israel, I think about some distant lands and feel I would rather be here than there. South Africa is at the top of my list. 

When South Africans ended apartheid, their country faced significant challenges. Their key test lay in addressing high levels of social and economic inequality, largely along racial lines, the result of generations of racist, discriminatory behavior long preceding 1948's formal apartheid. 

Transparency International publishes a yearly Corruption Perceptions Index that uses various social research measures to calculate levels of corruption in the countries of the international community. When apartheid ended in the mid-1990s, South Africa was rated the 23rd least corrupt country in the world. In 2023 they were 83rd. 

Alongside the relative score, Transparency International offers an absolute score. South Africa currently comes in at 41/100, where 100/100 would be a completely corruption-free country. Denmark sits at the top of the list with a score of 90. At the bottom are states that struggle to function, like Venezuela, with 13. The global average is dispiritingly low, at 43, yet South Africa doesn't achieve even that.

Let's look at wealth inequality. In the decades since SA ended apartheid, the share of Black South Africans in the highest 10% income group rose from perhaps one quarter to a point where they now constitute a majority of the top 10%. That Black elite has done very well for itself, joining its White colleagues in sharing the wealth at the expense of the masses. Despite extensive government distributions, the racial wealth gap remains an open sore, with the average Black household possessing only 5% of the wealth of a typical White family!

South Africa is, overall, the country most afflicted with wealth inequality.

 Here it is in a nutshell: "The richest 10% own a striking 85% of total household wealth, with an average net worth exceeding $440,000 at purchasing power parity…while 57% of the population lives with less than $5.5 per day...National income per capita grew by about 35% from 1993 to 2019, yet ... The average pretax income of the top 1% increased by almost 80%, while that of the poorest 20% declined. The share of pretax income accruing to the top 10% of the population thus shifted from about 64% to 69%, putting South African inequality levels much higher than anywhere else in the world..." 

The outcome of 30 years of ANC rule calls into question its competence, integrity, and credibility in terms of any claims to a social-justice-oriented ideology. 

Then there is crime. South Africa has the fifth highest level of crime in the world. Here is food for thought: Syria, in its current dysfunctional state, is a less crime-ridden country. 

So, let's summarize. We see globally unmatched inequitable income distribution, above-average corruption, and an astronomical level of crime. 

Given the corrupt record of the ANC, no wonder so many people connect between the suit at the ICJ and the magical clearing of ANC finances, bringing it back from impending bankruptcy, shortly after the presentation in the Hague. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) has a report with everything we know about the possibility that the South African ruling party accepted cash from Iran for the legal service of corrupting the ICJ. 

The case for corrupt dealings is strong because the ANC could quickly address the accusation by revealing the sources of its sudden financial healing in January 2024. But it hasn't.

As an Israeli, I can't help but note the context of crime, inequality, corruption, and general government dysfunction in which their leadership decided to sue my country at the ICJ about an alleged "genocide" (where the victim population in question is estimated to have grown by more than 2% since the war began, but never mind). 

While researching for this article, I came upon an analysis of crime in South Africa that appeared in the Dubai-based newspaper The National. It strengthens a long-held assumption of mine that obsessive anti-Israelism is a form of the classic anti-Judaism that David Nirenberg documented so well. Written by South Africa and California-based journalist Joseph Dana, it is a great example of how to deploy an anti-Israel obsession as a pathological excuse-creator for the regime in South Africa. The ANC struggles to explain what is going wrong in their country and people like Dana supply them with a mythological construct of the Jewish State as an explanation for everything wrong, using a method that Nirenberg showed is deeply embedded in Christianity and Islam based civilizations. It's a pity to involve Israel in their social illness, but there it is.

Oh, South Africa, what a mess! My poor country, Israel, in an existential war, our economy battered, and facing a raging international campaign of libel, is a better place to live.