> he's just regurgitating conspiracy theories that float around in right-wing circles as
Firstly, I am not "right wing". I am libertarian and socially liberal.
> as a way to explain their often public embarrassments.
This is exactly the idiocy that I was talking about. Note that you put everyone in an "us" and "them" basket.
I do not care what the content of the program is, as long as it is objective.
Unfortunately many people on the internet (such as yourself) just flock to news sources that agree with your point of view (such as Huffington Post, reddit.com, Alternet, TDS, etc...) and the right flock to their websites and programs (Glen Beck, Redstate, whatever).
In the end those programs just end up engaging in character assassination instead of having a constructive and rational debate. But I guess that is too much too ask.
> Everyone I know is fully aware of how some groups are treated in SA.
Nope. Most people will simply not get the nuances. I sincerely doubt (no offense) that you know anything about the situation (economic, cultural, etc...) of several groups.
By the way - getting the interview under false pretenses is still unethical.
But yeah, he is now branded as a racist.
> You see TDS as a news source, and are worried that its viewers take it as news.
TDS is an opinion former. What it does is presents a warped and highly subjective view of certain complex topics.
In any case, I guess that TDS is simply the result for a demand of such programs. Just like the dumbing down of CNN is because of demand factors.
People like their news like they like their fast food: Only the juicy bits and they don't care whether it is accurate or not.
> I think it's pretty clear they are a comedic satire show when they do their interviews.
Nope. They often have interviews under false pretenses (the interviewee doesn't know he is from the daily show). The questions and the persons facial expressions) is often edited in afterwards.
> Journalism does exist, but you have to go to the locals to find it. By narrowing their focus, they're able to limit the costs.
There are many facets of journalism (including regional papers). Regional papers are surviving. But the fact of the matter is that all papers addressing national and international issues are fading and declining (almost as fast as my Karma today).
> I can't find any reference to that day's episode or the clip you mention. Can you be more specific by providing a link?
> Journalism is doing fine. You're just looking in the wrong places.
Nope. Journalism isn’t doing fine. The majority of papers that do good investigative journalism have serious financial problems.
> Can you cite something?
Here is a good example: Daily Show of 13 July 2010. A large part deals with racism in South Africa and race relations. The author paints a completely wrong picture (of an incredibly difficult and nuanced subject – which involves language and culture rights, economical aspects and poverty, land ownership, illegal immigration, and xenophobia, black economic empowerment, etc…). In that he made a 6 hour interview (under false pretences) with a person with a pretty nuanced view (he only aired snipped parts out of context – his whole interview style was baiting).
The whole fucking video pisses me off – it is such a complex subject which he is making light of (and painting a wrong picture). WTF? But yeah, let’s make fun of extremely complex and delicate subjects because our viewers will laugh!
> According to the article, there is a 1.8 million viewer base per night.
It gets viewed more often than that (through video streaming). It also appears on CNN International at different times (WTF?). Many people also watch it irregularly.
> In any case, this line is a brilliant response to your claim:
He just confirms what I've said, but put it more eloquently.
> And I will lead you to the land of answers, my people!’
> You can fall in love with your own idea of common sense.
Usually rational people form conclusions (i.e. reaches answers to questions) based on an objective discussion from all angles/sides to a story. Does this happen on the Daily Show? No. Does the Daily Show go into depth (from all sides) to complex and important news topics, allowing the viewer to come to his own nuanced conclusion? No.
Does it quote people out of context, have interviews under false pretences, cut tapes to put people in bad light, add questions which the interviewee was never asked and break all rules of journalistic ethics? Yes.
The idea of the Daily Show is simple – they would make fun of groups such as the Republican Party (through some of the methods above). Their audience laugh – not because it was really funny, but because it reinforces their own ideological bias.
PS: I am not American, and that show completely irritates the hell out of me. The whole of CNN for that matter went down the drain. If you want (somewhat good) television journalism, it seems that only Al-Jazeera can provide it.
> I'm a 20 something and know quite a few of them.
Quite a few of my friends view this as a "serious" news show. If you do not believe this, look at any large social site such as Reddit (where the Daily Show is taken as a serious news source).
> Just like a comedy show.
Of interviews with politicians which they obtained under false pretences? The objective of the Daily Show is to make one ideological grouping laughable. It is inherently a political show that parades as a “quasi-news” show and uses the “comedy show” excuse so that they do not have to show any integrity (journalistic or otherwise).
> Again, why single out TDS? All comedy shows dip into politics, and do a poor job of representing things.
That is quite debatable. Most “comedy shows” do not dip into politics. If it is, it is mostly human interest (and around election time).
The Daily Show also parades around CNN International (a “news network”). Why is it on this channel then?
But I guess that this is just how real journalism fades. Papers become bankrupt whilst people read online “news sources” such as Huffington Post or Alternet. News networks like CNN become Twitter Crazy and airs shows like The Daily Show.
John Stewart’s show is probably the worst show that someone could create. He does not even attempt to be objective. A large part of 20 somethings use this as their main news source. It is sad when people are not willing to watch news for news’ sake (instead of having it mixed with comedy – like a child gets medicine mixed with syrup).
And whilst the Daily Show serves as the main news source for many of 20 somethings, it does not even try to be objective. It often cuts video tapes completely (usually making fun of someone whose ideology differs from that of the viewers), uses video out of context, have interviews under false pretences and does not give fair coverage. Yet the excuse for that is that “it is a comedy show and not a news show”. It must choose, either one or the other – either it is a news show (and should subscribe to journalistic ethics) or it should be a comedy show (and try and involve itself in politics).
> The value of the entire Greek church is in the billions of euros, and nothing is taxed.
You know that NGOs are also not taxed?
I personally find a lot of people who are against religion who wants churches taxed. The only reason is that they have an axe to grind.
Churches (and NGOs) are by definition not wealth creators. A church elder praying or a nun giving food to the poor does not create wealth (but fulfills a whole different social function).
> Large numbers of poor/mediocre teachers and small class sizes are not necessarily better than good teachers with larger class sizes.
I suspect that this probably referred to class sizes of 15 (small) and 30 (large). In South Africa, a small class is 35 and a large class is 80. It is quite a difference.
How do you think a teacher would keep rudimentary discipline in such a big class? You cannot even check their homework.
Learning a new language, it is important to talk it. In a class size of 80 people, each person would get 45 seconds to talk or answer a question in a double period (assuming that there was no lesson or any interruption otherwise). Learning a language would be impossible for these people.
> South Africa's densities are low because of apartheid planning. Segregation trumped density or sustaintability.
South Africa’s densities are low because South Africa only industrialized fairly recently and we have a natural low density (40 people per square kilometre).
> The lower life expectancy is due to HIV/Aids and it is similar to neighbouring countries.
I think that you set the bar artificially low when you compare with neighbouring countries (Civilwartorn Mozambique, Mugabe Zimbabwe and the Kleptocracies of Lesotho and Swaziland).
> In the (highly unlikely) event that the Apartheid government had survived, I doubt that the life expectancy figures would have been much better. (And the AIDS epidemic took hold under the apartheid government).
The NP government of De Klerk had a surprisingly good AIDS program (seeing as the disease was then a smaller problem).
You seem to gloss over Mbeki’s AIDS denial (he did not want to give pregnant mothers even Nverapine which would have prevented mother to child transmission of AIDS during birth). The courts had to be used to force the government to change.
Even Harvard University had a study which they claimed that Mbeki’s government at least caused 300,000 deaths. That is genocide. The world would have been up in arms if the Apartheid government had a similar policy.
> The Apartheid regime was not viewed as a benevolent dictatorship by the majority of South Africans (or the rest of the world),
So? Neither Singapore (or for that matter, Pinochet’s Chile) is/was viewed as benevolent dictatorships. All things considered, statistically the country was governed better than neighbouring countries.
> Instead, Apartheid was an organised state policy to further the interests of white people, at the expense of all others,
It is ironic that it is middle class white people whose income grew* the most in post-Apartheid South Africa (see again the Knight & XX study I mentioned) while unemployment and real salaries fell for black people.
So, if you complain about the enrichment of white people, the current government is doing a much better job of it. Income inequality increased significantly the past 15 years.
> deliberately dumbed-down black population, to keep them docile.
This is also debatable. The biggest expansion of tertiary education on the African continent (for both black and white people) occurred during the 70ies and 80ies. Even the TIMSS study (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) scores were higher in 1994/1995 than in the newer study. There are numerous international benchmarks which showed that the quality of education declined.
This is called "Precision agriculture". Tractors and equipment enabled with this can throw the precise amount of fertilizer/seeds at specific points. Probably quite a hot topic in farming... Go to any farming show and you will see this.
> The conventional wisdom on class sizes is being challenged currently.
This is a statement without any meaning. Yeah, large class sizes with 800 students is OK in college.
But it is a huge as difference between primary schools and secondary schools where children need more individual attention. How will a teacher check that each child writes properly, or get a chance to speak? I’ve been learning a foreign language recently and I found a class of 14 people too big. Imagine being a poor black kid in a class of 80 trying to learn English or another language?
You know that some rural schools have a ratio of 1 to 80? These are the kids that need more attention than any other student. Yet they do not get it.
You are right that in some sectors of education the idea of class sizes are irrelevant – notably college kids or self-motivated students (a very small percentage). This is not what you will find in your typical overfull and run down rural school.
> The reason why blacks, Indians and Coloureds have historically lived so far from their workplaces is that the apartheid government (literally) forced them out of urban centres and onto the periphery of urban areas.
The reason why most black people historically lived far from business centres was because they were spread around the country (This was the same for white Afrikaans people in the beginning of the century).
At least in Gauteng, business centers arose around mining sites and are unnaturally densely packed around this. By the way, look at groups such as Venda’s, N. Sothos, etc… They were historically far from business centers, not because they were moved there by the Apartheid government, but because there was not big industrial development in the area that they historically lived (such as a town which grew from mining roots).
> Transport infrastructure was neglected for 20 years, starting in the 1980's, and continuing under Mandela and much of Mbeki's tenure.
Again, this is debatable. Quality of roads in rural areas rapidly declined in the last 15 years. This is mostly due to the fact that the provincial governments and local governments lost almost all capacity to function (again, this is truer for rural areas).
> Car-centric urban sprawl also first took hold under the apartheid government (even today, mass transit between the black areas of Soweto and white-flight Sandton, established in the late 70's is nonexistent).
South Africa will always be a car based country as far as passengers go. We simply do not have the high densities needed to form passenger rail networks.
It is however interesting to note that freight rail has almost completely declined in South Africa with most freight transport occurring with trucks (increasing danger). The South African rail company (Transnet) is also a corrupt ANC cadre cesspool.
> why was did that government have to run up massive deficits to support the system?
The Apartheid government did not have to run up massive deficits to support that system. The deficits were created by defence spending (which was in the 80ies around 10% of GDP) and things such as sanctions.
> Communist countries also enjoyed low unemployment, just as Apartheid South Africa did, thanks to similarly massive misallocations of resources, and coercion, in pursuit of a failed ideology.
Yet, in 1994 SA’s economy was 50% the size of the whole sub-Sahara Africa’s economy. Whilst many of those countries followed a Marxist ideology, SA still remains the only industrialised country on the continent.
> The only place where pro-apartheid revisionism gets much currency is in obscure corners of the internet.
Look. Your argument is now “something is bad because someone said so”. I said at the beginning of this post that I do not see Apartheid as good, but I do not see the new government as good (Majority democracy failed horribly in South Africa). Or do you describe a government that presides over a 15 year drop in life expectancy as “good”?
I also do not care about moralizing. As an example, Singapore was ruled by a dictator and the PAP political party ever since it existed. They are generally condemned by people who take the (western) moral outlook and whatnot. Yet it is one of the most developed countries in the world with a higher standard of living than any of its more politically correct neighbours. When cold and hard statistics and facts are used, Singapore is one of the best governed countries in the world – and much better developed than its neighbours.
> There was a lot amount of duplication between racially segregated institutions, and cutting administration costs is a good idea.
Yeah, closing them down isn’t such a good idea. You know that most universities which merged basically closed down their “satellite” campuses in black areas? This simply serves to keep away affordable education from black people.
> The merging of teacher training colleges into universities may be more problematic, but overall, in South Africa, the less institutions, the less chance for waste and looting.
Most teacher colleges weren’t merged, they were simply closed down. Note that waste and looting wasn’t such a big problem before, why is it now?
By the way, you know what is one reason why they were closed down? Provincial governments became extremely corrupt (the funding for colleges came from provincial governments). They simply closed it down to ensure more money for looting.
> I also have to wonder how good the teachers produced by those colleges really were.
Look, they were not the best teachers in the world. But the problem is that we do not need the best teachers in the world, we need a lot of teachers. A good teacher in a class of 40 doesn’t help a thing. Also, the idea of removing teacher diplomas ensures that there are even less teachers (teacher training courses at universities is now 1 year longer).
South Africa loses some 12, 000 teachers a year (6, 000 produced by universities but 18,000 lost due to retirement and immigration). It is a disaster waiting to happen.
> Hendrik Verwoerd's comments about Bantu education clearly indicate,
Hendrik Verwoerd was not the be all and end all of the NP government. You know that many of the policies changed after him? In any case, I do not care what someone has said (or what the motives were) but what happens on the ground.
> Migration and the migrant labour system are two very different things. The Apartheid ideal was black men in hostels, black women and children in Bantustans.
Can you give a citation for that? During Apartheid, there were a lot more industries closer to the living area of black people. The industrial zones (of which there were numerous) are an example of that.
Today the economic activity near large centres of black population is a lot lower. The economic outlook in rural areas also forces people to become migrant labourers.
> that it has been abandoned, but one has to question the sustainability of those developments.
Whatever the motive, those developments worked.
> If they had provided job opportunities close to major economic centres, those jobs might have proved to be sustainable.
There are many reasons why those businesses moved (from high crime to non-functioning municipalities). The fact of the matter is that work and businesses are now far from where many employees work. So they have to rely on non-existent transport (such as taxis or horrible metro lines) each day to commute 30km+.
Look here, I am not in support of Apartheid (or the current system for that matter). The fact is that Apartheid could not work (for a multitude of reasons, including economic reasons).
But a lot of attacks on Apartheid ignore the basic facts and do not perform a simple statistical comparison with the NSA.
> "separate development and rule for all ethnic and cultural groups" under Apartheid forced blacks onto 13% of the land, even though they formed by far the largest population group in South Africa.
What does this number include? Blacks were deprived of their land well before “Apartheid” started. During the creation of homelands, white people also lost their land (land was bought and sold to create contiguous homelands). A good example is the large farms of Lisbon, Berlin, etc… that became KwaNdebele.
It is clear that the deprivation of land from black people is wrong. But the fact is that most of the depravation/deprivation was done well before Apartheid.
> Nor does it mention the fact that generations of blacks were forced by state policy into inferior "Bantu Education"
Bantu education was inferior, that is a fact. But it is a question of resources. During Apartheid more money was spend on Bantu education than on the education of white people (although less per capita). White people almost exclusively pay taxation (as is still more or less true today).
The problem is that there are only so many math teachers, etc…
By the way, Bantu education is vastly superior to all education that every person in South Africa receives. This is not my opinion, but the opinion of Dr. Mamphela Ramphele and prof. Jonathan Jansen. OBE failed.
Even South Africa’s president Zuma, said the following of the previous education minister:
> This comes shortly after ANC president Jacob Zuma blamed former education minister Kader Asmal for closing down these institutions, causing more damage to education than had been done under apartheid.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=vn20080425091635396C60...
There were a lot of teacher colleges whose function it was to train teachers. These colleges were often in rural areas and focussed towards black people. The ANC government closed down basically all these colleges, leaving SA in a severe shortage of (black) teachers (and people in these places without the opportunity to get education).
How many black universities did Apartheid government build? I can think of quite a few (MEDUNSA, University of the North, University of Venda, several Technicons, etc…). How many was built by the ANC government? None – they however closed down colleges.
Why wasn’t there at least a University built in the past 20 years in Mpumalanga? The province doesn’t have a single university.
> Nor does it mention the fact that the migrant labour system,
Migration is a natural cause of South Africa’s industrialization. The population is still rural and development is in the cities.
What you should bear in mind is that Apartheid government tried to get industrial development started in black and rural areas. This was done by means such as development zones (e.g. Babelegi) and making companies in homelands free from VAT.
Another thing that the NP government was fearful for was that black unemployment would lead to revolution. There were active programs in order to reduce unemployment. During Apartheid, SA’s unemployment was much lower than it is now. Do you know what unemployment is now? Narrow definition 25,3% (people who are actively looking for work but do not find any: http://www.statssa.gov.za/keyindicators/keyindicators.asp). Broad definition (people who are capable of work but have given up) is over 40%! (see articles by Kingdon, G. and J. Knight)
This had another effect – spreading development around the country. Now we have a lot of development in cities, but many rural areas are basically abandoned. Rural areas (where many black people live) have now extremely high unemployment rates and there is almost zero industry. The ANC abandoned the country site to its own fate.
> Apartheid was designed to turn black people into failures, and into an exploitable manual labour pool.
That is debatable. The primary goal of Apartheid was arguably to ensure the existence and security of minority white people (from real and perceived threats such as communism (“Rooi gevaar”) and black crime (“Swart gevaar”).
The amount of money spent on black education (e.g. universities) would indicate that the “exploitable labour pool” theory is not completely correct. I would like to remind you amount of black teachers and craftsmen trained during Apartheid were much higher than it is now.
I personally suspect that the aim of the ANC government is to create very stupid and untrained voting cattle while cultivating a very small and rich black elite with close ANC ties.
Firstly, I am not "right wing". I am libertarian and socially liberal.
> as a way to explain their often public embarrassments.
This is exactly the idiocy that I was talking about. Note that you put everyone in an "us" and "them" basket.
I do not care what the content of the program is, as long as it is objective.
Unfortunately many people on the internet (such as yourself) just flock to news sources that agree with your point of view (such as Huffington Post, reddit.com, Alternet, TDS, etc...) and the right flock to their websites and programs (Glen Beck, Redstate, whatever).
In the end those programs just end up engaging in character assassination instead of having a constructive and rational debate. But I guess that is too much too ask.