Evidence shows that racial isolation drives down ANC support among White South Africans

This is from an excellent new paper by de Kadt and Sands in Political Behavior:

de kadt and sandsThis study investigates how political behavior is shaped by one central outcome of segregation—racial isolation—in post-apartheid South Africa. We focus on the relationship between sustained white isolation-the probability of a white person encountering a non-white person in their local context (Massey and Denton 1988)-on white racial voting. South African elections have been marked by some degree of racial voting since the advent of democracy in 1994; white South Africans havtypically voted for “white” parties such as the Democratic Party, the New National Party, the Freedom Front Plus, and the recently conglomerated Democratic Alliance. Scholars of the region have gone so far as to refer to South African elections as a “racial census” (Mattes 1995; Johnson and Schlemmer 1996; Lodge 1999; Ferree 2006, 2010). Our central contribution to this literature is to show that racial voting among white South Africans tends to increase as a function of local white isolation.
……. White South Africans living among other whites are less likely to vote across racial lines, measured as voting for the majority-black African National Congress. At the ward level, greater white isolation in post-apartheid South Africa, even conditional on ward demographics and economic status, leads to lower aggregate support for the ANC. At the individual level, whites living in areas of high white isolation, where inter-racial mixing is limited, are less likely to vote for the ANC than whites who live in less segregated areas.

You have to visit South Africa to appreciate the level of racial segregation in the “Rainbow Nation.”

I wonder how vote choice among white South Africans will evolve if and when the ANC becomes threatened by parties to its left. Presumably, expressive voting for the DA and other smaller parties would not seem so attractive under such a scenario.

Cape Town’s Water is Running Out

This is from NASA:

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And this is from the New York Times:

The Western Cape Province, where Cape Town is, has been in severe drought for three years. The water shortage has been amplified by the population boom here; more than a million new residents have arrived in the city in the past 15 years. The city’s desperate attempts to build desalination plants and install new groundwater pumps may help, but these solutions seem to be the equivalent of building an extra lane on an already jammed highway. The underlying causes of the shortage are likely to continue to stress the system. Other cities in drought-prone regions should pay close attention.

…. There are many people who still aren’t doing enough to curb usage, but in a city of high inequality and concentrated wealth and privilege, there’s a leveling that’s happening. Behaviors have changed quickly and on a broad scale. The city has published maps that indicate which households are above or below the recommended water consumption level. It’s now commonplace to see an unflushed toilet in a fancy restaurant, per guidelines that advise, “When it’s yellow, let it mellow.” I find this motivating; it’s evidence of a collective consciousness and effort.

Apparently, authorities knew of the impending crisis but did little to avert it — at least according to the Cape Times back in 1990.

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State of Capture: Corruption in Jacob Zuma’s South Africa

This is from Quartz Africa: 

The 355-page report detailing corruption in South Africa’s ruling party offers one rare uplifting moment. In the report, deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas reveals more details of how he turned down an offer by the powerful Gupta family of 600 million rand (about $44 million) to be the country’s finance minister.

Jonas, in an interview with Thuli Mandonsela, the country’s former anti-corruption chief who spearheaded the report released today, said he had agreed to meet with president Jacob Zuma’s son Duduzane Zuma on Oct. 23 last year, a few months before then finance minister Nhlanhla Nene was dismissed, kicking off a hailstorm of corruption allegations against the president.

Jonas met the younger Zuma at the Hyatt Regency hotel in the Johannesburg suburb of Rosebank where Zuma asked if they could move to a more private location for discussions “with a third party.”

Jonas was then taken to the Gupta compound in the suburb of Saxonwold where they were joined by Ajay Gupta, the eldest of the Gupta brothers, who briskly informed the deputy minister that “they had been gathering intelligence on him and those close to him.” Gupta informed Jonas that they were going to make him minister of finance, to which Jonas said that only the president could make that decision.

You can download the full State of Capture report here (pdf).

For more on the history of corruption in South Africa see here.