Ernst Roets
speaker
479 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard May 2025
Ernst Roets’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yeah, the concerns about the threat of communism wasn't exaggerated.
Yeah. So the point I want to make is by the end, of the apartheid era. The metaphor that was used was like riding on the back of a tiger and having to get off. You know you have to get off this tiger, but the question is how do you get off without getting eaten? That was the question that at least the Afrikaner people were grappling with.
How do we end this in a way that is peaceful and in a way that would not be- And sustainable. Yes, yes. And it was, the transition, I would say, was at least peaceful, fairly. Yeah, not bad. The violence in townships, I think, is underestimated, but especially black-on-black violence in South Africa.
So that's the... It's urbanized areas that are very poor in South Africa, where the majority of black people live. And... At the time, there was some very, very vicious rival warfare, you could say, between competing political groups who were competing for support of black people, as if that's one whole.
And the ANC, who's currently governing, was not the biggest initially, but they became the biggest because they were supported by the Soviet Union and the Chinese, and they got weapons and so forth. Well, in terms of getting off a tiger,
Well, quite miraculously well, all things considered. Nelson Mandela probably being the prime example of someone who continually called for peaceful solutions. And he was criticized for that within his own party. But I think to use, you mentioned safe, but also sustainable. So the solution we got was a safe one, but not sustainable.
Well, there's so much that has unfolded, but one way to think of it is that in terms of, the way I put it is we have two problems. The one is the ship is headed in the wrong direction. And what I mean by that is those in power openly say they want to implement socialist solutions. They want to take property rights. They think the way to help to uplift the poor is to attack the rich.
because that has happened to many examples.
They're some of the best farmers in the world.
And look at what the Dutch do in Europe. I think the Dutch are probably the best, I think productively the best farmers.
So one thing they did, which is very smart and very strategic, is the ANC, when they took power, they said the single biggest problem in South Africa is a triangle. It's a triangle of unemployment, poverty, and inequality. And so they lump those three things together. And so the solution is to find, or the quest is to find a solution for these three things, which is essentially the same thing.
But unfortunately, they don't seem to know how to encourage production. They don't know how to fix the unemployment problem because they think the solution is socialism. And so the way, ironically, they've gotten to a point where they can only think about inequality.
And so they get Margaret Thatcher, that famous line saying, you would rather have the poor be poorer provided that the rich is less rich.
Yeah. Right. Yeah, we had to figure out how to, yeah.
Yes. Yes. But also not. So that's the irony. So that goes to the point about the ship I mentioned. So the ship's headed in the wrong direction. But even though the ship is heading in the wrong direction, the ship is sinking. And what I mean by that is- That's a bad combination. Yes.
So the fact that the ship is sinking has become a bigger problem than the fact that it's headed in the wrong direction. And when I say the ship is sinking, I mean that we just have massive state failure in South Africa. So they want to implement all these very radical policy ideas. And they have become more radical. Because they talk about a two-phase revolution.
Phase one is getting control of the levers of power through democracy. And phase two is once you have power, you need to use the levers of power to implement your socialist ideas, which is where they are now. So we have this plethora of new... very radical leftist policy ideas in South Africa.
But on the one hand, they're not really able to implement this because firstly of large scale corruption, but just sheer incompetence within the South African government. So everything that the government is supposed to be doing in South Africa with the exception of tax collection is collapsing.
So, we can literally take any example, but let's take power as an example. We started having rolling blackouts maybe a decade ago. And it was first, you would have an hour without electricity because they're not able to provide electricity for everyone because they didn't build power stations. Well, providing electricity for everyone turns out to be very difficult. Yes.
You better stay on top of it. So you have to build stations, but you also have to maintain them. Yeah, right. And neither of these two are happening. So we're about, I think the last time I saw about half of the capacity we would have been if the power stations were maintained.
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