r/whoathatsinteresting • u/ThatPatelGuy • 3h ago
A South African compares pictures of Johannesburg in 2010 vs 2025
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u/cobblernobbler 3h ago
Is this due to corrupt government officials? New laws? Policies?
How’d it get that bad in 15 years
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u/jdillacornandflake 3h ago
Corruption yes. Mixed with poverty and incompetence frankly.
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u/jdillacornandflake 3h ago
Oh and don't forget, "the secret ingredient is crime".
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u/whater39 2h ago
Poverty and crime have high correlations. World wide and through history
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u/Stole_Sample 3h ago
Could be tribal politics and racism, they kicked white's out of the government and the place went to hell same with zimbabwe
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u/Super_Range45 2h ago
Botswana did the same, reclaimed their resources but instead split the wealth among their tribes. They are now a middle income country.
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u/shrigma_male_malmut 1h ago
Botswana did not do the same, they kept educated European descendants in Government. They didn't gut the intelligentsia of their country like Zimbabwe or South Africa and actually learned from them and created there own homegrown educated institutions.
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u/No1LudmillaSimp 29m ago
Botswana never had a meaningful European presence, they did however have the benefit of having competent leadership capable of forward thinking instead of retarded kleptocrats blowing the treasury on Bugattis and Rolexes.
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u/Intelligent--Bug 2h ago
This is a success story. Thanks for explaining the reasoning behind it, bc I had seen that Botswana had quite perceptibly moved up in development rankings, but didn't know why
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u/OkExpert9927 1h ago
Botswana also protected it’s white minority which wasn’t the case in Zimbabwe
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u/Adr_LDN 1h ago
This is oversimplifying it a bit - the Bechuanaland Protectorate under the British gave a strong role in governance to the Tswana and tribal groups anyway, and on independence in 1966 this was just incorporated into a successful liberal democracy with less bouts of corruption, which incorporated all citizens. The Brits also sent a fair amount of funding to the Republic even into the 70s.
The country had stronger institutions that lasted, and wasn’t subjected to South African or Rhodesian-style minority white rule.
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u/Zdzisiu 2h ago
Was it Botswana with this chad leader that was actually thinking ahead and about the good of the country?
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u/fromcjoe123 1h ago
Botswana is unique in post colonial Africa for never fucking up and maintaining the state institutions and rule of law that it was born with (instead of having the classic coup 6 months after independence).
That being said, most of Anglophone Africa has in the last 10-15 years has dramatically turned the corner in terms of building national identities, establishing better government institutions, and undoing the ignorant economic policies of a lot of the immediate post-colonial regimes.
The feeling on the ground I’ve seen in Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Namibia has all been really positive and hopeful across tribal lines and socio-economic levels and I would say the same thing about Ghana, Nigeria (well minus the giant anchor in the north), Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania from people I’ve met abroad. And the numbers show it - they are safer, wealthier, and fairer than they have been since independence.
South Africa is the big outlier. Not only are they demonstrably going backwards across every metric, they’re also a deeply cynical and pessimistic people from every interaction I had in country, whether rich whites, poor blacks, and everyone (most notably non-Indian Coloureds) in between - at least at the Cape. The consensus is the ANC post Mandela drove the country into the ground, and Zuma did so much damage to institutions and infrastructure that there is almost nothing to be done.
The ANC will carry the poor townships in the East and (and everyone in the Eastern Cape), and Zuma, now alone in his new party, will still carry the Zulu vote.
And nothing will change it would seem except for the worse.
Which is wild because I’ve met some truly remarkable black South African businessmen, who are absolutely nationalist and do want to help (yes contrary to what Reddit thinks, dudes who do international business need a strong and transparent rule of law to govern commercial agreements), but the party has a Spoils System and isn’t going to get ride of it until something really breaks. They just barely got the power and water situation under control but just barely so have not yet had the full reckoning.
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u/ProduceNo1629 1h ago
And South Africa split it all between two indian brothers and the president.
All 3 now live in Dubai in extreme luxury.
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u/Pinecone1000 3h ago
Met a fellah who’s family used to have a very productive farm in Rhodesia. He made it sound like paradise. It’s a barren wasteland now he says.
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u/KetoSaiba 2h ago
Zimbabwe used to be called the breadbasket of Africa, a massive exporter of grain. now they need humanitarian aid because they can't even afford to import enough food.
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u/Hazbro29 1h ago
It used to be known as "The bread basket of africa" it grew so much food.
From that to a failed state in just a few years time
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u/FEMA_Camp_Survivor 2h ago
I have a similar family story but in the U.S. My grandad spoke fondly of a farm his family had in East Georgia until a violent racist mob ran them off.
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u/AeroelasticCowboy 2h ago
so the farm your grandad had is now a barren wasteland?
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u/Do_You_Pineapple_Bro 3h ago
Thats definately had a part to play in it.
Look at Orania, literally a self governing colony(?), living entirely off the land and doing their own thing in blatant contrast to the rest of South Africa, and yet everyone will happily try and bash them over the heads as "white supremacists" and "trying to reintroduce apartheid".
The downfall of SA has been insane, and their entire tactic is to blame someone else
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u/twotall88 2h ago
The Zuma Era and "State Capture" (2010–2018): President Jacob Zuma’s tenure was plagued by severe corruption allegations, notably characterized by "state capture"—where private interests (most famously the Gupta family) systemically pillaged state institutions and utilities. This triggered massive public protests and legal battles, ultimately leading to Zuma's forced resignation in 2018.
I think that's the main driver but there was also a cultural shift because youth born after the end of apartheid in 1994 have radically different views of how the country should operate.
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u/meerkat2018 1h ago
It’s been 8 years since 2018 though. Nobody still isn’t fixing anything? It’s getting even worse year after year.
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u/Soggy_Pineapple4804 42m ago
It's hard to fix anything because South Africa is stuck in a self perpetuating death spiral. For example we need to fix the freight rails so our mining exports are more competitive to drag us out of recession. But we can't do that smoothly because criminals keep extorting infrastructure projects or steal the train tracks, wires, for scrap. But we can't fix the crime easily unless people have more real jobs, but that can't happen unless the economy improves which will need the rails to be fixed in the first place. You see where this is going?
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u/VivaLaDiga 3h ago
kicking out the only people that kept that level of quality at heart.
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u/dedboooo0 2h ago
the same way china turned from a shithole to the fuckin future in 15 years
the same way japan rebuilt an economic powerhouse from rubble in 15 years
the same way the philippines turned from the richest country in south east asia to one of the poorest shitholes in 15 years
15 years is a damn long time for stupid leadership and stupid people to send their own country to the gulags. it’s near half the current lifespan of most existing political leaders. culture, crime and foreign interference makes for a good oven for the shittiest cakes
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u/Mediocre-Jury9022 2h ago
A timely reminder here in the US that a government of idiots can do a lot of harm, fast, and it is easier to break things (NIH, NSF, CDC, Universities, rule of law, FBI, armed forces) than it is to rebuild them.
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u/OkExpert9927 1h ago
Best example is South Korea and Algeria
Same gdp than Sk after independance from France.
Now one is one of the most developped countries on earth, the other is mostly yelling at France, Israel and Morocco for no reasons
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u/GTAIVisbest 1h ago
Both started with corrupt dictatorships. One was a right-wing dictatorship sucking at the US' teat, the other was an arab socialist military dictatorship championing pan-arabist ideals
Then SK went through liberalization and went full steam ahead on development and infrastructure and economy. The FLN in Algeria pretty much did the opposite and stagnated, resting on their limited energy exports and not changing or innovating anything since the war of independence.
And then in the 90s that idle laziness came to bite them when the rise of islamism caused an islamist party to win the elections, threatening their monopoly, and so they simply cancelled the elections and started a civil war. During the civil war, they r*** and committed massacres on entire villages while dressed up in civilian clothes to artificially raise war-weariness in the population and erode the support the islamists had. They succeeded a decade later and went RIGHT back to just being idle
Then the arab spring started popping off in Algeria but they managed to just escape accountability and it fizzled out with no major changes.
Then in 2019 a new threat to the regime emerged with large-scale youth/university students protesting and demanding a change in the regime. These protests were huge and they forced the government to make some token concessions, which placated the protestors. As soon as the protestors were placated the government went right back to laziness, idleness and incompetence. Recently they've been further bolstered by rising energy prices which means the government is making even more money so they're resting on their laurels even further
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u/Hot-Job-6281 1h ago
Lmfao The Philippines was NOT the richest country in Southeast Asia. Singapore was and continues to be ahead. Also it was propped up by close colonial ties and trade relationships to the US back then, rather than having this awe-inspiring leadership that you try to imply
Sincerely, a Southeast Asian.
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u/Historical_Gate_8301 43m ago
And Japan didn't rebuild all by itself,it had large amounts of aid from U.S. to help rebuild the infrastructure,along with large amounts of financial and material backing to rebuild factories and businesses.
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u/AshRemnants 3h ago
White people got essentially chased out.
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u/PolicyWonka 2h ago
Ultimately, their skin color didn’t matter.
White is South Africa comprised 10-15% of the population while having 85% of the nation’s private wealth.
The end of apartheid resulted in significant wealth contraction as the whites left the country or otherwise withdrew from the larger society.
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u/RSPloveSPYhate 1h ago
Eliminating most wealth helps reduce wealth inequality tbf
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u/Charming_Victory_723 1h ago
A tonne of white South Africans moved to Perth, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand.
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u/Frosty-Army9751 1h ago
The current government implemented a vast and deep anti white policy, they literally chanting kill the boer at their rallies.
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u/YouDaManInDaHole 3h ago
no one knows!
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u/skibbsescobar 2h ago
lol, there is absolutely no way we will ever know. Not even Windows 10 can find the answer. Not even Bill Gates.
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u/SpiritedYam2661 2h ago
Assuming you mean U.S. foreign aid to South Africa, and using fiscal-year obligations:
FY 2010: about $651 million (inflation-adjusted figure reported by USAFacts from U.S. government data).
FY 2025: $261.6 million according to the current ForeignAssistance.gov database.17
u/Teflonwulfie 2h ago
A certain group of people were driven out. And a certain group of people stayed behind and took over.
I will let you extrapolate the rest.
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u/rts93 3h ago
They erased the privilege.
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u/mothandravenstudio 2h ago
The privilege of having a functional infrastructure looks like.
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u/mrtn17 3h ago
corruption would be my guess, that's usually the main reason in any country when it's not caused by an external factor (like economic crisis, a natural disaster, war)
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u/YouDaManInDaHole 2h ago
So there isn't corruption in other large global, cleaner cities?
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u/Nerdymcbutthead 2h ago
I lived in Joburg in 1999 and it was doing really well after coming out of Apartheid. I still have a lot of friends there. Things were looking good.
In 2009 President Jacob Zuma (2009-2018) came in and his party stole billions of dollars, while at the same time almost zero investment went into Electric, Transport, Water and Infrastructure. There are rolling blackouts, infrastructure decay, poor water quality.
Add to the massive wealth inequality and it is a recipe for disaster. My friends there have told me you should never move back here, not even safe to visit even though it was very dangerous over 25 years ago.
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u/Stole_Sample 2h ago
saw a documentry on jo berg it was a vice documentry i think it was about the many shops in the area. all of them had bosses these would just sit there you pay him and he keeps you safe if you don't he will loot from you. There's also story from Rebel Wilson she use to carry a stick or something when she was walking around cos of the crime. Africa man never going to that place
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u/Nerdymcbutthead 2h ago
I moved down there from the UK in 1999 after Apartheid and things were turning around, and I lived there for a year. When you parked your car there was always a ‘security guard’ attending the cars. You went to find him and paid him 25c and he would ensure that nothing happened to your car!
The country was so dangerous. When I went to Cape Town, the hotel was 2 blocks from the shopping mall on the harbor. The two blocks were just grass, but it was too dangerous to walk there, so the hotel had a shuttle. The mall on the harbor had guards with AK-47’s.
My house was in a development which was a compound with armed guards, and razor wire on top of the 10 foot walls. My house had bars on the windows and a prison door at the top of the stairs so you couldn’t get access to the top floor.It was such a great country and I loved my time there, but I would never go back.
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u/GuidanceFit5208 1h ago
How can you describe all of those things and conclude ‘it was such a great country’? Genuine question. What did the place have that was enough to overlook the obvious danger and lawlessness? You had to sleep in a fortification and travel between safe areas via armed guard.
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u/Nerdymcbutthead 1h ago
The country was beautiful, and once you got out of the cities it was amazing. I got to see amazing places, went on safari.
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u/Alive-Particular-297 2h ago
It sounds like what the US is going through. The orange moron sounds a lot like President Zuma.
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u/Traditional_Ice_9250 2h ago
In 1997 we had a high school rugby exchange with some high schools in South Africa, because we followed the same circles, we kept in touch with many of them then. Years later, like 80% of them left South Africa for good. They just coudn't take it anymore.
I imagine it must be much much worse now.
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u/OkCoconut3270 2h ago
I know a few saffas through the local rugby club and work, there's literally not a week that goes by I don't hear about one of their friends or relatives moving here or the UK.
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u/TherealjamesE 3h ago
I drove through Joburg on the way to Kruger National park and I swear you could swim in some of the potholes.
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u/Apprehensive-Log3638 2h ago
This is what happens every time a government removes experts and replaces them with a politically desirable group. This experiment has been done many times across the globe. When you remove professionals, wether that be farmer or city planners, and replace them with a desired group, it goes to hell. The people there had education, experience, possibly generational knowledge from family members who worked those jobs before them. When you replace them with unqualified people, essential services stop.
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u/funAmbassador 2h ago
I wonder how the US will look in a few years considering, Trump’s been replacing experts with reactionary airheads
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u/WorldlyCantaloupe394 24m ago
You say "professionals" but I hear "white people."
Back in 2006 I was part of a team that installed wells in small African communities so they didn't have to walk 3 miles for unsanitary water. None of those wells are working today because low trust, low IQ tribes are not able to share responsibility for the greater good.
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u/ArkAngelEV 2h ago
lol straight up Haiti. what the hell happened south africa??
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u/Ryanoceros6 3h ago edited 1h ago
Damn you guys pulled a Detroit.
Edit: I'm not sure why everyone assumes I'm talking about Detroit in it's current state, but I'm not. Detroit looked nice once, then it fell apart. Same as Jburg in the video which is the point I'm making. Recovering from that now doesn't change the fact that it happened then.
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u/Forward_Motion17 3h ago
This looks way worse than Detroit, this is more like back when Detroit was at its worst. Source: live in Detroit
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u/Historical_Owl_1635 2h ago
But that doesn’t fit the Reddit cliche that the US is literally the worst place in the world.
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u/purplehendrix22 3h ago
And Detroit is actually getting a lot better.
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u/Jazzlike-Equipment45 2h ago
Detroit recovered pretty well since its bankrupcy and decline of automotive industry. Its population has grown for the first time in nearly 70 years, tons of ruined buildings were torn down or renovated. Still a poor city but way better than it was 12 years ago.
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u/Krytan 2h ago edited 2h ago
I think this is primarily due to massive government corruption (Zuma and the ANC) along with a lot of massive levels of immigration, often from from countries that look like the 'after' photo and bring that culture along with them.
Somewhat ironically,. black south africans have been protesting the immigration levels, in cities from Johannesburg to Durban and Pretoria.
As you can see net migration levels more recently have been 3x,4x, even 10x the levels in the 2000's.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/zaf/south-africa/net-migration
It's tempting for some people to try to shoehorn this into a 'white vs black' narrative, but I'm not sure that's really accurate here.
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u/EarNo4548 2h ago
I think westerners often make the mistake of thinking Africans a monolith. There's not some black solidarity across the continent in the same way there isn't white solidarity across Europe. In fact there's at times little national identity due to European colonial adventures, so tribal identity can instead be at the forefront
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u/SingularityCentral 2h ago
Very interesting.
When I saw this post, my first thought was "corruption". Corruption is the silent thief that steals the potential of a society. Higher levels of corruption always equate to worse social outcomes. Always.
I can't say I know much about S. Africa and immigration, but I do know that the corruption of the Zuma administration was enormous. That robs State Owned Enterprises and Government Agencies of the resources they need to do the work that they do. These picture really look like corruption at play because the money and materials to fix the streets is diverted into pockets, the money and material to clean up the trash is diverted into pockets, the money and material to clear old buildings or provide proper building inspection and code enforcement is diverted into pockets. When public spaces fall apart so rapidly and so broadly without a corresponding geopolitical/natural event (war, plague, natural disaster, government collapse) it is a good bet corruption is at the root.
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u/cabazon99 1h ago
It's not really ironic, it's mostly the native south african tribes objecting to the massive influx of Bantu tribes from the north flooding into the country causing a reduction in quality of living standards.
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u/unk1ndm4g1c14n1 2h ago
Lotta racism in the comments, nice to have an actually reasonable comment.
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u/EscapeSeventySeven 2h ago
lot of massive levels of immigration, often from from countries that look like the 'after' photo and bring that culture along with them.
You aren’t kidding
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u/Round-Region-5383 2h ago
Lmao bigotey. Why is South Africa a shithole nkw, and it wasn't 40y ago?
Corruption? Sure, but who is corrupt?
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u/Unlikely-Position659 2h ago
Damn. That's not from neglect. You have to purposefully ruin those areas to make them look like that
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u/Loud-Direction-5700 1h ago
I went in Johannesburg more than a decade ago and it was already… sktechy.
Looked like a normal city, but i did not really feel safe anywhere back then, i don’t wanna know how it feels now …
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u/OkExpert9927 1h ago
South Africa was a racist country with electricity now it’s a racist country without electricity
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u/Eskimoposh 1h ago
Oh my God. I lived in Pretoria from 2004 until 2011. Worked all over Gauteng. Moved back to Canada to raise kids safely….
I remember my SA inlaws showing me family pictures of PTA and Joberg in the 1970s and 80s. Looked stunning. First world conditions.
This is awful. What a mess.
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u/Califrisco 3h ago edited 2h ago
The Kiffness produces amazing music videos. But I didn’t know he also has used his voice to bring attention to the deteriorating conditions in South Africa.
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u/mechapoitier 2h ago edited 2h ago
That was my first thought. “Holy crap The Kiffness cut his hair”
His whole deal is basically bringing the beauty of the world together in collaboration
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u/Atheizm 1h ago
The only reason why Joburg looked so cool in 2010 was the billions the ANC-led government spent fixing it up for the FIFA World Cup and the visiting tourists. Sadly, it was a temporary illusion. Many areas of Jozi also looked as terrible before the World Cup.
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u/blue_nairda 52m ago
These pics only show the rough parts of downtown. Rosebank, Sandton, and Melrose are all in the same city and look great. It's like how people post pics of the worst parts of Detroit or Baltimore, but the wealthy suburbs right next to them look totally fine. A few pics of one neighborhood doesn't tell you anything about a city of 5+ million people.
Some context on these comparisons: 2010 was the World Cup year, so Johannesburg was spending a ton of money to improve it's look, and those pics are basically a best case snapshot. Even back then downtown was already losing businesses to Sandton, which is a nicer area in the north of the city.
There are several reason why the parts of the city went to shit. Eskom, the state power company, got mismanaged and underfunded, which is why there are constant blackouts that started around 2007-08. Then there's the corruption under President Zuma (look up the Zondo Commission), old water and electrical systems that never got maintained, and a city government with a ton of debt and no stable majority since 2016.
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u/Good_Posture 33m ago
I've lived in Johannesburg for 36 years. The suburbs around the CBD are in the same state of collapse, so it isn't just cherry picked parts of the CBD. Take a drive through Kensington, a suburb once home to the wealthy. Major roads are torn to shreds. I drive a SUV and in the middle of Kensington I was having to pick my way through cratered roads.
Even newer, wealthy suburbs to the south of the city, Mulbarton, Glenvista, are grappling with collapsing infrastructure.
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u/FlushedApparatchik 25m ago
A white American Karen will tell you how things are.
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u/Impressive-Court5279 3h ago
So why has this happened?
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u/DangerousChipmunk335 2h ago
Corrupt parties that took over from 2009 that basically exploited state funds for personal wealth and left to live in dubai.
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u/AutumnVitheMonster 2h ago
Government corruption and a lack of investment. Things break, services cease, people stop caring.
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u/WillingnessIll6371 1h ago
Why is hard the for west to grapple with? The west built these places up and when the local population forced out the western culture things returned to how they were before... If anything its an example to the world what western values and culture can do to an area and what happens when that place then rejects the culture and values after reaping the rewards.
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u/WillingnessIll6371 1h ago
I can already tell the comments are gonna be so sweet when evidence is presented and its doesn't peoples narratives.
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u/This-Requirement4916 1h ago
WTF?!?! It looks worse than some of the war torn countries!!! What the heck happened?!?!?! Sad, sad, immensely sad...
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u/quadrispherical 53m ago
What you see in this picture is even worse in person, because you obviously can’t smell the awful odor of garbage everywhere when looking at Google Street View images.
I also know from friends that in many neighborhoods that were previously nice and had a mixed Black and white population, the white residents have largely left. According to what my friends have told me, some of these neighborhoods have since become severely dysfunctional: the water supply no longer works reliably, storm drains are completely clogged with garbage, and sewage water is consequently flowing through the streets. These neighborhoods, which were once well-maintained, now reportedly smell like garbage dumps.
Foreign countries criticized the white population for enabling apartheid, while the murder rate in South Africa is now among the highest in the world, and the economy is struggling as though the country were experiencing a civil war with Black South Africans increasingly being victims of violence committed by other Black South Africans.
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u/RequirementAwkward26 17m ago
Was Johannnesburg in a war or something? What happened is this a district 9 thing?
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u/Pure_Lie6509 2h ago
For your info, this guy goes by the pseudo theKiffness and he makes the best musical remixes on the internet. Look him up, you won't regret it.
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u/Past-Resource-6184 2h ago
I almost started doubting myself when I kept scrolling and did not see anyone mention this lol
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u/1startreknerd 3h ago edited 2h ago
When Americans say taxes aren't fixing stuff, yes, yes they are. It can get way worse fast.
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u/Deaconherbz 2h ago
They got exactly what they wanted and this what they did with . This time they have no one to blame
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u/Whowutwhen 2h ago
What happened?
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u/king_kong_kum 2h ago
Same thing that happened to detroit, baltimore, memphis, st louis…
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u/RedMansions 2h ago
The subtext to these SA Then vs Now posts is: once upon a time SA was a prosperous paradise, now it's a crime-ridden hellscape.
Then the next question is what happened between then and now? But the real issue is who benefitted from that period of prosperous paradise?
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u/Bitter_Flight3937 2h ago
I know nothing about South African politics but I would assume the very corrupt leadsrship in charge of its government are the ones benefitting
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u/Alive_Success_1030 2h ago
Can someone who isn't racist explain this to me?
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u/DangerousChipmunk335 2h ago
The gupta family was highly involved with massive levels of corruption in South africa with the ruling south african government. Both parties coming down to it, basically did whatever they wanted. They extracted the wealth and left.
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u/FlushedApparatchik 2h ago
Could someone who isn’t a virtue signaling idiot please explain this to her?
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u/jaackobarbs 2h ago
New leadership/government fails to maintain public amenities and quality of life it seems
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u/RelationshipShort460 1h ago
in south africa bitterness between the whites and the blacks remains. Both sides blame the other for the current economic malaise. And then the government is utterly corrupt, promises to give everyone something for nothing, and gives jobs based on skin color and connection.
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u/ReindeerTypical2538 2h ago
The government got super corrupt and stole billions of public dollars. The place has gone to shit because of it.
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u/AYellowSand 2h ago
It’s largely incredible local mismanagement from the city. The leadership in the municipality went from taking 9% of budget for employees to 40%, and they treated infrastructure as political spoils to hand out and constantly split control of them. Cape Town for example is not nearly as bad, but the country’s government did not help either.
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u/Pure_Lie6509 2h ago
I'm confused about what does racism has anything to do with all this?
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u/Knocksveal 2h ago
An acquaintance and her family moved there for business and college in the early 2000s and did quite well. But I learned that they moved to New Zealand before COVID. Business went south and safety/security a serious concern.
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u/Armstrongcrane 1h ago
I worked with a guy from Rhodesia a few year ago and he said when the British left everything basically stopped. His parents insisted he leave for his own children to have a chance. He also claimed the best thing that could happen would be for the British to return.
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u/Odd-Tradition-8419 1h ago
Don't think I've seen it mentioned yet but the 2010 World Cup was in Johannesburg/South Africa. Governments and cities often throw big money at public infrastructure and try to keep the city looking super clean for this. I imagine that has something to do with the disparity.
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u/PieGold6023 1h ago
I nearly moved there about 15 years ago. I can't imagine trying to unwind that mistake. It would have been expensive.
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u/BiggieBigs34 49m ago
Rapeburg, I’m not surprised it’s in bad condition now, no one with money and the means to leave wants to live there.
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u/RequirementNo2161 18m ago
Reddit will ban you if you say the actual cause of this
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u/gaschligan 16m ago
Looks like a lovely place - they’ve really made it more beautiful for every year that goes…
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u/BeAPo 1h ago
I wonder why he chose 2010 (the world cup year) instead of 2005 or 2008.
South africa use lots of money they didn't have to make the country look better for the world cup but ultimately didn't have an incentive to put enough money in to sustain everything they created with the world cup.
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u/Salute-Major-Echidna 1h ago
That happened when the pope visited NYC in 2015. The homeless were shifted to other streets and 'rubbish' was picked up relentlessly until he left and then everything went back in less than 3 weeks.
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u/IndividualSkill3432 1h ago
I wonder why he chose 2010 (the world cup year) instead of 2005 or 2008.
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On September 1, 2009, Google announced that it started collecting images in South Africa for Google Maps Street View.\9]) Google is currently driving around South Africa in Toyota Priuses, taking photographs of locations in the cities of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and East London. Google Trikes are also being used for the first time to map popular tourist destinations, such as the scenic Chapman's Peak Drive and Table Mountain in Cape Town, Soccer City in Johannesburg, and the new Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. Images of South Africa were made available on Google Street View on June 8, 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View_in_Africa
I dont know. I am guessing because either 2005 showed walls that were derelict and knocked down, then 2010 they had been built up again, or because Google Street View for 2005 was not available.
You tell me.
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u/Otsde-St-9929 1h ago
He chose 2010 because that is when Google Street View became available in South Africa. The Kiffness is a very good guy. He isnt cherry picking
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u/jkman61494 2h ago
This is just sad. It’s sad to see where we were as western societies 15-25 years ago and just how fast corruption can kill it.
South Africa is a more striking example but those same “cracks” you could see in 2010 is where we are in the US now. Much of our infrastructure is decades out of date. And instead of investing in it we are REMOVING funds.
Instead of investing in more modern technology we are investing in outdated tech.
Instead of more light rail, we get no rail and LESS buses.
And it’s not just happening in the U.S.
It’s truly sad to see the evidence of how we peaked and now we are on the downslope
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u/Some-Panda-8168 1h ago
The sad truth is South Africa’s government is shady af, it has nothing to do with their race other than the history of colonialism and segregation screwed them over and left them vastly underprepared to run the country.
Anyone trying to link their failing state to their race is either dishonest or racist or both.
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u/AccurateGur9826 2h ago
Well shit if I ever did visit Africa that would of been the place I visited, now nope.
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u/FunAd2208 1h ago
At the end of the day, someone , with very little social intelligence will think..hey, that zink drain pipe attached to that building will give me a little bit of money, annnnnnnnddd..... its gone. Some people dont have the ability to think of the future, when you have entire peoples like that, hey,,, we here in the west who dont do that, should send money to them, to build back what they ruined, because...they sad.. we not.. we guilty..... give money.... we sell stuff for scrap.... again... and again.... and again...
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u/Witty_Look9662 2h ago
Those prawns, even with their advanced technology, cannot save that hellhole
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u/karma_virus 3h ago
This is strangely global. No more jobs yet there is PLENTY of freaking WORK to do. We just stopped doing it because it wasn't profitable to some guy up top. Now we must live in filth because of a social construct.
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u/Personal-Hamster4102 43m ago
Intentional misuse and embezzlement of public funds that should go to public infrastructure, keeping citizens poor and destroying opportunities for a better society
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u/CarolinaSandstorm 2h ago
We just not going to address the obvious reason for the decline in this thread?
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u/helloimhumanboy 52m ago
Product of a government that built itself on anything but productivity, competency and actually having a plan for their country.
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u/L_Tryptophan 32m ago
Reddit will ban you for saying anything other than white people oppressed them.
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u/BeauHunkus 1h ago
The giant elephant in the room is that colonial Africa was better than Africa on its own was, is, and will ever be.
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u/kryotheory 2h ago
There was a reason South Africa was the most developed nation in Africa despite its many problems... since that reason is getting chased out of the country, this is the result.
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u/No-Understanding9064 2h ago
There are 3 major components to have a successful country. Education, opportunity, and security.
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u/jellobend 2h ago
This is so sad. I loved it there during 2011-2012. The country was thriving, despite the blackouts and the sense of insecurity.
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u/Few-Conclusion-483 3h ago
Christ. I was there in 2013 for a couple weeks and it was a very pretty normal looking functioning city. This is a huge bummer. Looks like a fuckin call of duty map.