The future of South Africa in your opinion [serious]

[Heraclitus]

I reallly hate how "white man's burden" is seen as a racist notion today. In the end of the 19th century It was actually had a completley different meaning. It didn't view differences of development as due to innate characteristics of peoples but mere historical hapenstances, thus it was seen as unfair and selfish to deny help to those who quite literally where less fortunate.


It was however imperialist and ethnocentric in another sense, it sought to arogantly accelerate the development of less developed parts of the world by making them follow Western standards, customs and laws. One not need try very much to see echoes of this sentiment under a different name everytime a drive for aid to some third world country or every time "development aid" is disscused.


I can't help but lament how so many people where naive to belive such utter nonsense. What fools ancestors of the more powerfull European nations where and how horribly shortsighted those who pursued economic and poltical gain from the colonies where. Europe would have been so much better off in the long term had it never colonialized Africa or parts of Asia (well perhaps this isn't true of Britain which was one of the few 19th century empires which was actually built due to real economic interests, but even so didn't Italian GDP surpass British GDP a few times in the past few decades? and the Italians only went for Empire for Empire's sake)

[Caligastia]

Cali, is is possible to have a "phased" introduction of the franchise, the way it actually happened in all the more successful democracies today? First, of course, you'd have the end of apartheid and you'd allow economic equality. Five years later, all those who are in the professions, irrespective of race, get the vote. Next, it is extended downward in levels, so that in around fifteen more years, you have the franchise extended to all those who are literate. Finally, five more years of this, it's extended to everyone, the idea being that by that time:

a) The ignorant masses aren't politically ignorant any longer, and
b) The amount of time in between has allowed for sane and responsible blacks to bubble to to the top of their parties in an environment conducive to such behaviour.

"In the professions" is a bit of a vague category, and I don't think your positive assumptions about the ignorant masses would pan out. Better to have a simple, unbiased test that everyone who wants to vote must take. That would weed out a good majority of the ignorant and illiterate. But as I said, this kind of thing isn't politically feasible in a world that calls any unequal outcome "racist". Racial egalitarianism has to go first.