This is the least bit surprising coming from a country that is in steady decline.
Bureaucracy can be crazy at times, and sometimes it seems like data just gets lost, for whatever reason.
Can be quite a risk for people who entered a long time ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windrush_scandal
> Bureaucracy can be crazy at times, and sometimes it seems like data just gets lost, for whatever reason.
The easiest way of reconciling data with reality if the rules don't allow changing the data is to change reality. By deporting people.
What is your indication of decline? Some facts and figures:
- Less than 30% of the population having access to water has increased to near 100%.
- Electricity had less than 30% access and now sits around 90%
- Access to education (The matric pass rate more than doubled from 53.4 in 1995 to 82.9 in 2023) to taking that to near 100% in 29 years is pretty incredible.
- Taking 8 million people out of poverty and lower class into the middle class in that time is pretty great.
- Access to free healthcare for the entire country.
- The freedom of not being discriminated towards due to skin colour.
Yes the ANC has had an opportunity to do much greater good, but if you take in the bigger picture and understand that the white population still holds over 70% of the wealth while being 10% of the population - this is an enforced inequality that needs to be righted.
If you look at the freedoms of South Africa, it has possibly the best constitution in the world. Sure, the enforcement of the laws are not as good as the laws themselves - but the rate of improvement in my lifetime has been staggering. Even despite the setback of the Zuma years.
Even now, we have gone from an ANC dominated political landscape to a Government of National Unity, which forces different political factions to work together. Another huge milestone in the burgeoning democracy of a young country.
It is so far from perfect but if you really have spent any significant time in SA and still think it is a country in decline, then I am more inclined to think you're one of the types of expats who love to shit on something that you have no bond to, and not because your arguments are bound by facts. We must interrogate the long standing consequences of white monopoly capitals violent subjugation of South Africans in both the past and the present to paint a fair picture of the country.
Your quote " a country that is in steady decline." certainly does not paint a fair picture.
Here’s a more reasonable point of view: https://cthulhucachoo.substack.com/p/does-south-africa-reall...
I just started looking and, for example, when issuing licences to extract water, the authorities must, in accordance with the law, "consider [...] the need to redress the results of past racial and gender discrimination". Why would a water licence need such a consideration, and is it discriminatory in ZA's context?
If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points thoughtfully, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are, we'd appreciate it.
It's really simple, we as white people have been given - historically and now - just about every advantage a minority can have. If a white person or their parents couldn't make the most of that well then that's ok, because equality and equity are the goals. And just because a PoC are succeeding more now, does not mean white people are suffering in the least.
- Many communities still rely on water trucks instead of water pipe infrastructure. The government loots the funds for it, meanwhile the entire system is on the verge of collapse and there are regular water shortages.
- With the electric grid, the amount of load shedding in the past few years where people are regularly without electric to 6-8 hours a day is absolutely crazy. The country didn't used to experience that. Also, cable theft is common, which wasn't an issue 30 years ago.
- 1.6 million people out of 66 million pay 76% of all taxes.
- Public healthcare in ZA is bad and not recommended by anybody who values their life.
- South Africa has more race laws today than it did during apartheid.
- It has a violent crime rate that is one of the highest in the world.
- Unemployment is high.
- It has suffered from massive underinvestment in infrastructure over the past 30 years.
- Extremely high levels of government corruption.
One thing that really brought home how the situation is in South Africa is was when I was talking to someone I know who works for a furniture company there. They used to make all of their furniture in the country, but recently started importing it from China because that is cheaper than producing it locally. Keep in mind that is with an average daily wage of $30 for a factory worker. If a country with South Africa's nature resources and inexpensive labor cannot compete with China for manufacturing furniture for the local market, it is deep trouble.
That is probably why the CEO of a local Tile Manufacturer recently said that South Africa is one of the worlds least manufacturing-friendly economies due to onerous regulation, infrastructure deterioration, energy uncertainty and rising costs.
- Loadshedding is no more.
- The tax issue is precisely the problem that needs redressing and is primarily because of past injustices. You're almost there.
- I have been treated in public hospitals and while not perfect the access to healthcare is impressive.
- I agree with the race laws. Your basis that SA has more race laws is gaslighting due to the fact of the homeland act. But let's not let facts get in the way.
- Violent crime rate is because why? Apartheid spatial planning. Read up and learn all about why this has re-enforced violent crime.
- Unemployment is high, yes. Doesn't mean the country is in decline.
- Corruption has hit its peak and on the way down post-Zuma years.
I have a close friend who owns a huge furniture company, and builds everything in house and grows year on year very well. So your anecdote is countered by mine.
https://currencynews.co.za/manufacturing-meltdown-south-afri...
It sounds like you prefer communism over capitalism. Sadly, South Africa is heading towards communism. The only consolation is that then at least everybody will be poor.
I largely agree with you otherwise (viz. South Africa is on the whole improving) but on this specific point I think you’re optimistic. When summer comes round I’m pretty confident Eskom will start loadshedding again, and their public statements more or less align with this.
Regardless: not a sign of decline! Loadshedding is evidence that demand > supply, but that doesn’t imply supply is decreasing or the system as a whole is failing. On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence that supply has steadily increased since the 90s, new facilities opening and what not. Widespread solar will only improve the situation as the tech improves.
We all saw it with electricity - handing out more access isn't the hard part. Backing that with funding and capacity to deliver is.
Inequality, unemployment and debt/gdp are all on very alarming trajectories. Without a very sharp course adjustment (and soon) there are dark clouds ahead that could undo all the victories you list. Not sure if that makes it a decline, but if it were a car ride I'd say it's time to buy crash insurance
in the same code list, "SA" refers to Saudi Arabia, and Zambia is "ZM".
ZA is not ambiguous, it has that going for it.
These kids can't access any services because they don't legally exist in government systems. No birth certificate means no school enrollment, no healthcare, no social grants.
You think a 15-year-old footballer who can't play in tournaments because he has no birth certificate is going to be helped by Bitcoin?
What school is letting them enroll because they have a hardware wallet?
This is a civil administration problem that needs government solutions: streamlined processes, digital systems, reduced fees, and political will.
So there's already a lack of a stable, functioning government, and the solution you're touting isn't currently a reality, why? In the US when there's little friction in a marketplace people in some communities resort to using Tide laundry detergent as a medium of exchange. There's nothing stopping them from using bitcoin or cryptocurrencies currently, but navigating a market place, finding qualified teachers, finding motivation to use what little resources you have to use a novel medium to pay for teachers in a place with no opportunity, etc., doesn't seem too easy. One tool alone doesn't usually solve any problems.
I completely agree. The world of developmental economics has had so many great "One tool to fix everything!" ideas, but at the end of the day, they generally don't add up to much without a functioning government that's focused on serving its citizens.
Back in 2013, I loved the idea of Bitcoin. Then I actually tried using it. Such a pain. I switched to Coinbase until I gave up entirely on crypto around 2017 and became highly skeptical it was going to change the world as promised. I would love to hear that the world of self-custodied Bitcoin has become less onerous.
However I don't see the binary extremes you see.
The undocumented people can pool together and start their own schools. They can start their own soccer league. They can hire a pooled doctor. They can put some amount of stored value into a crypto account, which might be better in some cases than hiding gold in a hole or something, because they aren't going to be able to access banking.
And yes, that situation sucks, and it's wrong, and it encourages apartheid-light, and is not an acceptable solution. But in the meanwhile, it would be better for them than nothing and it is something they might have the agency to do.
But my MIL from Mao era has docs from the local officials that's all notarized, as does my wife. The dates might be... you know, not exactly right, but they're close, and importantly they're accepted by both the Chinese government and also other foreign governments for official purposes (immigration, etc).
I think I the article here we're talking about something fundamentally different from the last 70-ish in China. They're talking about people with like no official docs whatsoever, can't get healthcare, national ID card, anything. Very different from China 70 years ago, and very different from even pre civil war China.
黑孩子 and 黑户 were fairly common until the last 5-6 years.
The issues mentioned in the article were prominent in rural China and the lower tier of migrant workers before e-governance innovations along with a relaxing on the one-child policy started a decade ago.
Furthermore, the township mentioned in the article is itself one of those migrant areas in Cape Town, similar to what urban villages are in Beijing and other cities in China.
Identification and segregation is an important element of any welfare system, to prevent the system being destroyed by an unlimited amount of persons drawing aid while only a relatively fixed small pool provide the aid.
The state in the more liberal countries did not usually introduce such measures to make it difficult to live there without ID until the state had pretty much fully taken over the prior job of the church (or family) to provide to the unemployed, sick elderly, etc.
On a smaller scale, imagine back in certain periods of the old days, when families were the main method of social security. If you could not identify who was your own brother or mother, you would constantly being scammed (or even not scammed, just overwhelmed) until you were broke or the system broke.
I don't have any answer how to roll back the nationalistic identification and Orwellian immigration systems without decoupling social benefits from citizenship/residency, or from becoming so incredibly wealthy you just don't care.
So South Africans not having birth certificates or any birth records is the least surprising.
They've been there over 2000 years, I think we can consider them native at this point.
European colonialists and apartheid justifiers try to shoehorn the Bantu migration as being just slightly before Europeans arrived when fossil records prove it was thousands of years prior.
Have you looked at a map? What would stop the oldest humans, who have been there hundred thousand years, from moving from the central African plans to anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa?
It is an ordeal to go the local DHA offices to do anything - the system is offline :).
bombcar•9h ago
Vermont didn't require it until 1955!
thatguy27•9h ago
afavour•9h ago
I can't help but wonder if similar concerns will appear in the US, if they haven't already.
wat10000•8h ago
throwaway48476•9h ago
BrandoElFollito•7h ago
mothballed•7h ago
nostrademons•9h ago
When McCain was running for president, there was a big court case about whether being born in the Canal Zone (a U.S. territory) qualified as being a "natural born citizen". And I made the connection - "Wait. The Philippines was a U.S. territory in 1939. Shouldn't dad have had birthright citizenship?"
Moot point by then, he'd already been a citizen for ~40 years, and died the next year. But it was wild to think that the 10+ years of immigration hassles were basically due to an administrative fuck-up, and that legally, he should have had citizenship all along. The process you link wouldn't work for him, either, because the Philippines is not a U.S. territory now.
NoMoreNicksLeft•9h ago
Unless your dad was part of the elite ruling class which gets to skip and ignore all the rules, the answer is an emphatic no. However, if he was the son of an admiral from a long line of important people who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president, well, then Congress might just decide that he's good enough and give their stamp of approval to all of it.
Was your dad the son of an admiral who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president?
Besides, the thing with McCain wasn't about whether he was a citizen or not... this was 100% the case. The trouble was that McCain didn't become a citizen until 3 years old. And "natural born citizen" can't happen for a kid who's already 3, nor can Congress pass laws that are ex post facto, meaning they couldn't retroactively declare him natural born. He was absolutely disqualified from running, and if he had had an ounce of decency he would have accepted that and quit pressing his claims.
wbl•9h ago
NoMoreNicksLeft•8h ago
At that point he became a citizen, and not before.
mrgriscom•8h ago
wbl•6h ago
FuriouslyAdrift•5h ago
wbl•6h ago
FuriouslyAdrift•5h ago
NoMoreNicksLeft•3h ago
wbl•1h ago
FuriouslyAdrift•5h ago
It wasn't until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that todays standards of overseas citizenship conference took shape. Citizenship in the US is a bit of a mess.
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/123.7.Collins_r35np7ug.pd...
blululu•8h ago
mothballed•8h ago
sgustard•7h ago
https://ballotpedia.org/Citizenship_status_in_territories_of...
stackskipton•7h ago
bluGill•8h ago
khuey•8h ago
No. Filipinos as a group were never US citizens. They were non-citizen US nationals during the American colonial period. When the Philippines became independent in 1946 the status of Filipinos as non-citizen nationals was terminated and they became citizens of the Philippines only.
https://fam.state.gov/fam/08fam/08fam030806.html
tl;dr your dad really did have to go through all that trouble.
e40•8h ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/podcasts/trump-civil-righ...
The guest of this pod is the creator of the 1619 project and she is against DEI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project
epistasis•7h ago
Mass deportations, elimination of legal status, all these things tend towards one very very scary direction throughout history. And you know what they say about people who do not know the history...
(Just going to ignore the DEI comment because I don't know how that relates to anything here...)
alexpotato•7h ago
IIRC, you need a couple of people to sign affidavits that affirm you are who you say you are. That's the start of the "paper trail" and then you start rebuilding your document pool.
Getting married and changing your last name is similar (although with fewer documents etc).
jandrewrogers•7h ago
It is more involved than just affidavits. The US uses databases on every citizen, some not formally acquired, that can be used to "duck type" individual identity. An affidavit is primarily used to bootstrap the entity resolution process. With only a couple touch points they can reconstruct identity with high probability. It may feel like a "trust me bro" process but it really isn't.
It is related to how the provided information on credit applications is not used to inform the creditor. They already have access to all of this information and are more interested in if your representation matches what they already know.
jandrewrogers•7h ago
Obligations on parents to generate that paper trail exist now but there are still many ways people can fall into the cracks. The US has generally been far more accommodating of Americans without documentation out of necessity than I think people realize. Some parents choose this for their children, either intentionally or through negligence, and those children need a way to bootstrap their documentation as adults.
There was a large contingent of Americans born outside the US to American parents in the aftermath of WW2 that frequently had little or no documentation.
atmavatar•5h ago
Consequently, that's also why Republicans push so hard for voter ID laws.
antonvs•2h ago