While Mandela didn't sell out, pretty much everyone after him did. Mbeki (president from 1999-2008) believed that HIV could not cause AIDS, and developed a committee around that false belief. He also didn't follow the State run power companies maintenance plans and budgets, which led to rolling blackouts (load shedding) that still happen today. Utter ghoul, disgrace to everything the ANC stood for and neoliberal parasite. Austeritied the country into rolling blackouts.
In 2000, he organized a Presidential Advisory Panel regarding HIV/AIDS including several scientists who denied that HIV caused AIDS. In the following eight years of his presidency, Mbeki continued to express sympathy for HIV/AIDS denialism, and instituted policies denying antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients. The Mbeki government even withdrew support from clinics that started using AZT to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. He also restricted the use of a pharmaceutical company's donated supply of nevirapine, a drug that helps keep newborns from contracting HIV. Instead of providing these drugs, which he described as "poisons", shortly after he was elected to the presidency, he appointed Manto Tshabalala-Msimang as the country's health minister, who promoted the use of unproven herbal remedies such as ubhejane, garlic, beetroot, and lemon juice to treat AIDS, which led to her acquiring the nickname "Dr. Beetroot." These policies have been blamed for the preventable deaths of between 343,000 and 365,000 people from AIDS.
Mbeki made his first "public apology" for the country's power problems related to Eskom's (State owned power company) load shedding (rolling blackouts).
"Eskom was right and government was wrong," Mbeki said, after indicating that government was asked earlier to invest more in electricity to keep-up with the country's growth
I believe even people under Mandela in the first ANC government bowed down to IMF/World Bank demands iirc. It’s been a while since I read Shock Doctrine :P
To be honest I can't blame Mandela that much, if at all, for that. The apartheid government had severely messed up the economy and got the country into massive amounts of debt though looting state resources on the way out and though general mismanagement and corruption. So with the country very much on edge and almost interrupting into civil war he focused a lot on stability, and a ton of very unfortunate consequences had to be made with regards to that, including bowing to capital and taking the loans instead of just writing off all apartheid debt or something. That's what the main commenter means by it being forced on the country.
What I will do is blame the people afterwards for massive mismanagement with AIDS denialism and trying neoliberal economics with no care for the state. Yes, line go up ™️, but the electricity company is breaking down and everything is failing, it was in no way a sustainable way to achieve economic growth or industrialization under a capitalist global system.
ANC sold out as soon as they got into power though, part of why South Africa is a neolib hellscape now.
(Not particularly their fault, they had to play the hand they were dealt, but it was still a shitty outcome).
While Mandela didn't sell out, pretty much everyone after him did. Mbeki (president from 1999-2008) believed that HIV could not cause AIDS, and developed a committee around that false belief. He also didn't follow the State run power companies maintenance plans and budgets, which led to rolling blackouts (load shedding) that still happen today. Utter ghoul, disgrace to everything the ANC stood for and neoliberal parasite. Austeritied the country into rolling blackouts.
I believe even people under Mandela in the first ANC government bowed down to IMF/World Bank demands iirc. It’s been a while since I read Shock Doctrine :P
To be honest I can't blame Mandela that much, if at all, for that. The apartheid government had severely messed up the economy and got the country into massive amounts of debt though looting state resources on the way out and though general mismanagement and corruption. So with the country very much on edge and almost interrupting into civil war he focused a lot on stability, and a ton of very unfortunate consequences had to be made with regards to that, including bowing to capital and taking the loans instead of just writing off all apartheid debt or something. That's what the main commenter means by it being forced on the country.
What I will do is blame the people afterwards for massive mismanagement with AIDS denialism and trying neoliberal economics with no care for the state. Yes, line go up ™️, but the electricity company is breaking down and everything is failing, it was in no way a sustainable way to achieve economic growth or industrialization under a capitalist global system.