My father (born in ZA) had to re-register his birth at 65 when emigrating to the UK on a visa. The ZA government had no record of his birth, despite him having a drivers license, passport, tax returns for 40+ years…
This is the least bit surprising coming from a country that is in steady decline.
Fascinating you say "a country that is in steady decline" when all the data of the past 29 years since the start of democracy seems to go against that statement. I hate the ANC for their corruption and other stances, but I don't let party political hate get in the way of the real basis of what is going on in the country. I'm guessing you haven't spent much time there? Whereas I have spent the past 25 years and travelled and lived extensively in South Africa.
What is your indication of decline? Some facts and figures:
- Less than 30% of the population having access to water has increased to near 100%.
- Electricity had less than 30% access and now sits around 90%
- Access to education (The matric pass rate more than doubled from 53.4 in 1995 to 82.9 in 2023) to taking that to near 100% in 29 years is pretty incredible.
- Taking 8 million people out of poverty and lower class into the middle class in that time is pretty great.
- Access to free healthcare for the entire country.
- The freedom of not being discriminated towards due to skin colour.
Yes the ANC has had an opportunity to do much greater good, but if you take in the bigger picture and understand that the white population still holds over 70% of the wealth while being 10% of the population - this is an enforced inequality that needs to be righted.
If you look at the freedoms of South Africa, it has possibly the best constitution in the world. Sure, the enforcement of the laws are not as good as the laws themselves - but the rate of improvement in my lifetime has been staggering. Even despite the setback of the Zuma years.
Even now, we have gone from an ANC dominated political landscape to a Government of National Unity, which forces different political factions to work together. Another huge milestone in the burgeoning democracy of a young country.
It is so far from perfect but if you really have spent any significant time in SA and still think it is a country in decline, then I am more inclined to think you're one of the types of expats who love to shit on something that you have no bond to, and not because your arguments are bound by facts. We must interrogate the long standing consequences of white monopoly capitals violent subjugation of South Africans in both the past and the present to paint a fair picture of the country.
Your quote " a country that is in steady decline." certainly does not paint a fair picture.
The country is in decline. I have spent a lot of time there, have family who live there and can easily counter this:
- Many communities still rely on water trucks instead of water pipe infrastructure. The government loots the funds for it, meanwhile the entire system is on the verge of collapse and there are regular water shortages.
- With the electric grid, the amount of load shedding in the past few years where people are regularly without electric to 6-8 hours a day is absolutely crazy. The country didn't used to experience that. Also, cable theft is common, which wasn't an issue 30 years ago.
- 1.6 million people out of 66 million pay 76% of all taxes.
- Public healthcare in ZA is bad and not recommended by anybody who values their life.
- South Africa has more race laws today than it did during apartheid.
- It has a violent crime rate that is one of the highest in the world.
- Unemployment is high.
- It has suffered from massive underinvestment in infrastructure over the past 30 years.
- Extremely high levels of government corruption.
One thing that really brought home how the situation is in South Africa is was when I was talking to someone I know who works for a furniture company there. They used to make all of their furniture in the country, but recently started importing it from China because that is cheaper than producing it locally. Keep in mind that is with an average daily wage of $30 for a factory worker. If a country with South Africa's nature resources and inexpensive labor cannot compete with China for manufacturing furniture for the local market, it is deep trouble.
That is probably why the CEO of a local Tile Manufacturer recently said that South Africa is one of the worlds least manufacturing-friendly economies due to onerous regulation, infrastructure deterioration, energy uncertainty and rising costs.
- Please share which communities rely on water trucks?
- Loadshedding is no more.
- The tax issue is precisely the problem that needs redressing and is primarily because of past injustices. You're almost there.
- I have been treated in public hospitals and while not perfect the access to healthcare is impressive.
- I agree with the race laws. Your basis that SA has more race laws is gaslighting due to the fact of the homeland act. But let's not let facts get in the way.
- Violent crime rate is because why? Apartheid spatial planning. Read up and learn all about why this has re-enforced violent crime.
- Unemployment is high, yes. Doesn't mean the country is in decline.
- Corruption has hit its peak and on the way down post-Zuma years.
I have a close friend who owns a huge furniture company, and builds everything in house and grows year on year very well. So your anecdote is countered by mine.
- Googling for water outages gives a lot of results in just the last few days. In the NorthWest for example there are a lot of failing municipalities which are relying on government assistance to just make it month to month. Water trucks are a common occurrence all over. The official numbers on connection to water, electricity etc. are pretty much a joke.
- Loadshedding is indeed no more: Up to about 10-15% of households are now living off-grid, while in the industrial sector I can link you any number of metal processing plants that have closed down, the same for mines, car manufacturing etc. In the last few years our electricity bills have about doubled, rates and taxes aren't far behind either. That's not a win in the least.
- Healthcare: A few of the more well funded public hospitals are ok, but just from Tembisa approximately 2 billion Rands have been siphoned as of recently. Impressive isn't the word to use. Google for images to see the conditions of the hospitals and what the people who go there are experiencing, while on the other hand you can see videos of tenderpreneurs riding their Lamborghini's with police escorts via dirt roads in the outlying areas.
- Violent crime has nothing to do with apartheid (apart from the occasional incitement by political parties etc). We have crime because somewhere between 33-43% of the population is now unemployed, along with having only a barely functional police force. The people stuck on the bottom have no hope of changing their circumstances, which in turn is fueling crime (and violence).
- What makes you think there's less corruption now? The fact that more and more of it is coming to light? As long as the governing party allows it to happen its going to cascade down into all facets of life/business etc. They've begun to realize that they are losing the vote (and with it the power), but we're still a long way off from having any change on the horizon.
- Single anecdotes are pointless, some businesses will naturally grow while other decline, a lot of it is just random luck based on the type, area, time etc. Foreign investment is down something like 29% in just the last two years while we've taken on more than R25 billion in loans just recently.
It sounds like you prefer communism over capitalism. Sadly, South Africa is heading towards communism. The only consolation is that then at least everybody will be poor.
I largely agree with you otherwise (viz. South Africa is on the whole improving) but on this specific point I think you’re optimistic. When summer comes round I’m pretty confident Eskom will start loadshedding again, and their public statements more or less align with this.
Regardless: not a sign of decline! Loadshedding is evidence that demand > supply, but that doesn’t imply supply is decreasing or the system as a whole is failing. On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence that supply has steadily increased since the 90s, new facilities opening and what not. Widespread solar will only improve the situation as the tech improves.
....and that's before we get into things like Transnet and SA Air. I'd love to see the country succeed, but putting your head in the sand and denying that there is a problem will not fix things.
Fun fact: when the Gupta brothers were starting to run into trouble for stealing South African public funds, they paid British PR firm Bell Pottinger £100,000 a month to distract the public.
That's when Bell Pottinger came up with a campaign to stoke racial tension by popularizing the phrase "white monopoly capital" to distract from the Guptas:
The stats you posted paint a good picture of improving lives in real ways but they're only part of the picture - and not the deciding ones.
We all saw it with electricity - handing out more access isn't the hard part. Backing that with funding and capacity to deliver is.
Inequality, unemployment and debt/gdp are all on very alarming trajectories. Without a very sharp course adjustment (and soon) there are dark clouds ahead that could undo all the victories you list. Not sure if that makes it a decline, but if it were a car ride I'd say it's time to buy crash insurance
I'm sure you know this, but the "steady decline" narrative tends to come from people who are comparing it to the apartheid-era standard of living for white people there, effectively supported by slave labor. (In hindsight, no wonder Reagan and the US Republicans were so supportive of it!)
I am white. I am surrounded by white people. The standard of living of just about every white person I know has increased in the past 25 years.
It's really simple, we as white people have been given - historically and now - just about every advantage a minority can have. If a white person or their parents couldn't make the most of that well then that's ok, because equality and equity are the goals. And just because a PoC are succeeding more now, does not mean white people are suffering in the least.
Looking at our roads these days the latest Chinese SUV's and I saw a BYD Shark pickup truck the other day - why on earth would they open dealerships if there is no money to be made ?.
The trick here, for the uninitiated, is that “race-based law” or “race law” means the law refers in some way to race. That is legally and logically distinct from “laws that discriminate on the basis of race,” which is how most foreigners read the term.
You broke the site guidelines badly in this thread. Can you please not do that? We're trying for a different sort of internet forum here, not the kind where people bash each other for being wrong and/or bad.
If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points thoughtfully, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are, we'd appreciate it.
What does "historically disadvantaged communities and persons" mean in ZA? Any racial bias present in this phrase, which is apparently in multiple laws?
I just started looking and, for example, when issuing licences to extract water, the authorities must, in accordance with the law, "consider [...] the need to redress the results of past racial and gender discrimination". Why would a water licence need such a consideration, and is it discriminatory in ZA's context?
In your example, because many businesses (majority white owned) have riparian rights and those who live on the land need equal access despite being historically disadvantaged from gaining access to said water rights.
I understand the concept of "riparian rights", but I fail to see how gov't entities who issue water licences (or any government service, for that matter) would need to "consider [...] the need to redress the results of past racial and gender discrimination".
I'm trying to apply that logic to any of my gov't services, and it would be outrageous to have any random thing responsible with redressing past racial discrimination, water rights, maternity rights, access to public information, literally any government service. It couldn't possibly be in their purview to take such a thing into consideration.
Do you know why the British authorities wanted a birth certificate? Did his ZA passport show date and place of birth? Did the ZA birth certificate have some other information that the British authorities specifically wanted, like the names of the parents? Or were the authorities just following some standard procedure with no obvious purpose?
FWIW, I moved to a European country about 20 years ago. The first 10 years I thought everything was fine, but once I was applying for something, they said that it seemed like I never actually properly entered the system, but had just began. Most public services worked alright regardless. Cue some confusion for a while, and some filled forms later, and I finally got legally approved and finalized to actually stay, ten years after I initially arrived.
Bureaucracy can be crazy at times, and sometimes it seems like data just gets lost, for whatever reason.
Load shedding hasn't been a problem for a while now. With proper maintenance of the coal stations and investments in solar, we haven't had it in Winter either. But you're right, it's always lurking. With increased renewable energy, and less reliance on coal, hopefully it stays in the past.
True, but I meant in South Africa, SA is the most used. Less so with RSA or ZAR. ZA is somewhat used but SA (I would say) dominates in conversation and in written text.
My dad was born in the Philippines in 1939. He came over to the U.S. on a Taiwanese passport in 1959, part of a group of students that MIT imported from the Philippines based on letters of recommendation from their Atomic Energy Commission, and then bounced around on various visas for a decade. Finally got citizenship upon marrying my mom in 1971.
When McCain was running for president, there was a big court case about whether being born in the Canal Zone (a U.S. territory) qualified as being a "natural born citizen". And I made the connection - "Wait. The Philippines was a U.S. territory in 1939. Shouldn't dad have had birthright citizenship?"
Moot point by then, he'd already been a citizen for ~40 years, and died the next year. But it was wild to think that the 10+ years of immigration hassles were basically due to an administrative fuck-up, and that legally, he should have had citizenship all along. The process you link wouldn't work for him, either, because the Philippines is not a U.S. territory now.
This is getting off topic but I do not believe that the Commonwealth of the Philippines was legally/formally a US territory in 1939. It was a protectorate whose foreign affairs were administered by the United States, but it had its own government/constitution that was formally independent and administered by Filipinos. It was more like Cuba than Puerto Rico in the context of the Spanish American war.
Being a territory doesn't mean you become a citizen in any case. American Samoans are not citizens, nor are they entitled to bypass the naturalization process if they wish to become one.
They don’t bypass naturalization process but US Nationals can apply for US citizenship by moving to United States, which they have right to with no limits, and apply for naturalization within 3 months of being here. They take the tests and boom done, US citizens.
> The Philippines was a U.S. territory in 1939. Shouldn't dad have had birthright citizenship?
No. Filipinos as a group were never US citizens. They were non-citizen US nationals during the American colonial period. When the Philippines became independent in 1946 the status of Filipinos as non-citizen nationals was terminated and they became citizens of the Philippines only.
>And I made the connection - "Wait. The Philippines was a U.S. territory in 1939. Shouldn't dad have had birthright citizenship?"
Unless your dad was part of the elite ruling class which gets to skip and ignore all the rules, the answer is an emphatic no. However, if he was the son of an admiral from a long line of important people who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president, well, then Congress might just decide that he's good enough and give their stamp of approval to all of it.
Was your dad the son of an admiral who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president?
Besides, the thing with McCain wasn't about whether he was a citizen or not... this was 100% the case. The trouble was that McCain didn't become a citizen until 3 years old. And "natural born citizen" can't happen for a kid who's already 3, nor can Congress pass laws that are ex post facto, meaning they couldn't retroactively declare him natural born. He was absolutely disqualified from running, and if he had had an ounce of decency he would have accepted that and quit pressing his claims.
Citizenship by blood is not established in the Constitution but by the various modifications of the Immigration and Nationalization Act. In 1936, when McCain was born, the 1934 modified version of the Cable Act allowed transmission of citizenship via his mother as well as his father...
It wasn't until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that todays standards of overseas citizenship conference took shape. Citizenship in the US is a bit of a mess.
The Immigration and Nationality Act is a moving target. Periodically it is amended, or the Supreme Court strikes down certain provisions.
Having been born to a Canadian father in the US and moved to Canada when I was nine, my US citizenship lapsed when I turned 25 in Canada (I was quite happy to stay in Canada during the Vietnam war during my twenties). At the time I was unaware of the INA provisions repealed in 1978 that lapsed my US citizenship.
New FATCA and IRS obligations motivated me to research my US citizenship status and I was happy to discover that it had lapsed.
US Customs officers sometimes ask questions when I show up with a Canadian passport with a US birthplace. Now I pull out my copy of State Department FAM 1200 APPENDIX C to explain my status, but the legalese is a challenge for people with just high school.
.
Legally, he was very much not a citizen at birth. You are simply incorrect. In the year in which he was born, children of citizen parents born overseas were not citizens at birth... that only changed 3 years later when Congress passed a law making it so.
At that point he became a citizen, and not before.
>In the year in which he was born, children of citizen parents born overseas were not citizens at birth
This is completely incorrect and is not what the issue was with his citizenship. John McCain was born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone, the area around the Panama Canal that was controlled by the US. The Naturalization Act of 1855 granted birthright citizenship to foreign born children of a US citizen father [1], and was reaffirmed in 1878 [2]. The Equal Nationality Act of 1934 added that a US citizen mother could also confer citizenship to children born abroad [3].
Most interpretations considered The Canal Zone to be foreign territory for citizenship purposes. The issue was in the extremely specific wording of the Acts, which was that children of US parents born “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States” were granted citizenship. The Canal Zone was outside the limits of the US, but was technically under the jurisdiction of the US. So, depending on how you interpret the Act, children born in The Canal Zone are in a weird no man’s land, where they don’t get citizenship as a result of being born in the US, but also technically aren’t on totally foreign territory, which would give them their parent’s citizenship. In 1937 (a year after McCain’s birth, not three years), Congress passed 50 Stat. 558, explicitly making children born in The Canal Zone to a US citizen parent US citizens [4]. There was no citizenship law 3 years after McCain’s birth, but the Nationality Act of 1940 was four years after, however, its significant change was allowing children born out of wedlock to a US citizen mother to be given citizenship [5].
[1] “persons heretofore born, or hereafter to be born, out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were or shall be at the time of their birth citizens of the United States, shall be deemed and considered and are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided, however, that the rights of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers never resided in the United States.” extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-10/pdf/STATUTE-1...
[2] “All children heretofore or hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were or may be at the time of their birth citizens thereof, are declared to be citizens of the United States; but the rights of citizenship shall not descend to children whose fathers never resided in the United States.” Original Statutes of 1878
[3] “Any child hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such a child is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States; but the rights of citizenship shall not descend unless the citizen father or citizen mother, as the case may be, has resided in the United States previous to the birth of such child.” 8 FAM 301.5 SECTION 1993, revised statutes of 1878 extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-48/pdf/STATUTE-4...
[4] “any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this Act, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.” extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-50/pdf/STATUTE-5...
[5] “The provisions of section 201, subsections (c), (d), (e), and (g), and section 204, subsections (a) and (b), hereof apply, as of the date of birth, to a child born out of wedlock, provided the paternity is established during minority, by legitimation, or adjudication of a competent court.” 8 U.S.C. 605; 54 Stat. 1139 https://fam.state.gov/fam/08fam/08fam030106.html
They can choose not to get a social security number like anyone else, but the real exception is that they can take a religious exemption to paying social security while basically most everyone else who is of a religious organization objecting to social security past X date (I think around 1960 from memory) cannot ( I suspect this is unconstitutional religious discrimination against later forming religious groups, if I were rich I'd challenge it). However there are a couple other groups -- preachers can exempt themselves as can members of the railroad and a few other industries that have been heavily entwined with government and provide their own pension plan.
Before segregation ended, it was relatively common for hospitals to turn away pregnant black women, ultimately forcing them to use midwives instead. Those born via midwives often were not issued birth certificates, so many black Americans have none.
Consequently, that's also why Republicans push so hard for voter ID laws.
It's "anti-colonialist" in the sense that it encourages the mass murder of the descendants of the original colonialists.
I don't know the US well enough to give you an exact equivalent, but "shoot the WASP" might be more or less the same thing. It wouldn't be any better if the same song sang the praises of a white member of the Weather Underground.
Save me the pearl clutching. The song was penned by people living directly under the thumb of those poor innocent descendants and waging an active battle for their freedom. You'd even deny them their rage against those directly culpable for their oppression.
Poor innocent descendants -> I did not call them poor, or innocent.
Deny rage -> of course not. I'd be furious too.
But singing songs like "bring my machine gun" and "shoot people from that ethnic group" just aren't justified, especially since South Africa has been a democracy for decades now.
Moral relativism at its finest. Turn away now, because this is a dead end my friend. "ethnic cleansing is justified if the violence goes the way I prefer" is the red flag of all red flags.
I guess, except that ethnic cleansing bit is something you just made up. What is actually happening is that you've been memed into caring about the winners of a justified war singing their old war songs.
Joe Slovo isn't Boer; of course he has no problem with Kill the Boer as he allied himself with the ANC againts the Boer. Being white doesn't excuse you from tribalism/racism.
Tribalism is not when you colonize a country and terrorize the former residents from centuries. Tribalism is when your multi-racial coalition pens a song expressing their rage at said terror. I understand now, priors updated.
There's at least a dozen different tribes, of which only two are white. There's been inter-tribal violence between all of them since time immemorial leading up to today.
Because I don't know a single South African who would describe historical intertribal violence and Dutch colonialism and apartheid as basically the same thing.
Your argument was "there's no tribalism except what the whites brought to South Africa", remember?
And elsewhere you say that because of this, violence against white South Africans are justified.
This is not only insane, but simply historically incorrect. I'm going to stop replying to you now (apparently there's a "HN Blocklist" Chrome addon!) but feel free to keep justifying calls for political and ethnic violence.
It should make interesting reading for others in the decades to come.
Actual race-based apartheid ended 9 years after the first Windows release.
The Boer in question were the people enforcing apartheid for generations. They're also still the majority land-owners in South Africa due to the apartheid system. As of 2017 it was around 73% of Agricultural land owned by the beneficiaries of Apartheid.
I'm sorry but you can't just cry foul when your racism record setting attempt falls apart in the age of the internet and the victims hold a grudge.
It's already worse than that. There are multiple stories of US citizens being detained just because they look Hispanic, which the authorities have decided means they look like illegal immigrants, and then accused of presenting fake IDs when they try to prove otherwise.
Isn't there a similar mechanism but for the case where you lost ALL of your documents e.g. in a house fire.
IIRC, you need a couple of people to sign affidavits that affirm you are who you say you are. That's the start of the "paper trail" and then you start rebuilding your document pool.
Getting married and changing your last name is similar (although with fewer documents etc).
Consider the case of foreign-born Americans living overseas who have lost all of their documents get new US documents. How does the US government distinguish them from a random person in that country impersonating the same?
It is more involved than just affidavits. The US uses databases on every citizen, some not formally acquired, that can be used to "duck type" individual identity. An affidavit is primarily used to bootstrap the entity resolution process. With only a couple touch points they can reconstruct identity with high probability. It may feel like a "trust me bro" process but it really isn't.
It is related to how the provided information on credit applications is not used to inform the creditor. They already have access to all of this information and are more interested in if your representation matches what they already know.
Some members of my family have no record of birth or formal existence until they were quite old.
Obligations on parents to generate that paper trail exist now but there are still many ways people can fall into the cracks. The US has generally been far more accommodating of Americans without documentation out of necessity than I think people realize. Some parents choose this for their children, either intentionally or through negligence, and those children need a way to bootstrap their documentation as adults.
There was a large contingent of Americans born outside the US to American parents in the aftermath of WW2 that frequently had little or no documentation.
For now. I'm not being snarky or hyperbolic. Today's Daily pod is related. I'm half way through and no mention of voting yet, but it takes no imagination to see where this is going. Remember the whole "Obama wasn't a citizen" thing? Remember the "illegal aliens elected Joe Biden?" The best way to disenfranchise a segment of the population is to give them difficulty proving they are citizens, so they cannot vote.
The creation of stateless people during WW2, those without passports or birth certificates or citizenship, was a clear path towards the Holocaust. And the same tactic is used to this day to perpetrate genocide around the world.
Mass deportations, elimination of legal status, all these things tend towards one very very scary direction throughout history. And you know what they say about people who do not know the history...
(Just going to ignore the DEI comment because I don't know how that relates to anything here...)
China didn't issue birth certificates until 1996. Because I was born there before 1996, I do not have a birth certificate. In addition, I was also birthed at home instead of a hospital. That said, it's never been a hindrance. My parents managed to obtain Hong Kong permanent residency for all of us and I guess that sort of rooted my birthday and birth place and it's been a continuous line of documentation since then -- green card and finally US passport. I think this was helped by the fact HK probably dealt with this issue a lot during the latter half of the 20th century.
Yea not birth certificates from the hospital, but there is documentation. Well, there was for awhile. My grandpa definitely didn't have a birth certificate back in the 1930s (or 1920s? lol) in Taishan, but also no docs of any sort whatsoever..
But my MIL from Mao era has docs from the local officials that's all notarized, as does my wife. The dates might be... you know, not exactly right, but they're close, and importantly they're accepted by both the Chinese government and also other foreign governments for official purposes (immigration, etc).
I think I the article here we're talking about something fundamentally different from the last 70-ish in China. They're talking about people with like no official docs whatsoever, can't get healthcare, national ID card, anything. Very different from China 70 years ago, and very different from even pre civil war China.
> I think I the article here we're talking about something fundamentally different from the last 70-ish in China
黑孩子 and 黑户 were fairly common until the last 5-6 years.
The issues mentioned in the article were prominent in rural China and the lower tier of migrant workers before e-governance innovations along with a relaxing on the one-child policy started a decade ago.
Furthermore, the township mentioned in the article is itself one of those migrant areas in Cape Town, similar to what urban villages are in Beijing and other cities in China.
you may not have had a birth certificate, but for sure you must have had a hukou, which establishes your birthday and who your parents are. that's pretty much all that is needed in most cases.
This is seen in many countries, that the bureaucracy is set up to serve its own needs. They will run normal office hours, yet the people working subsistence jobs are not able to take a day off to handle paperwork when each day they only earn enough to pay for their food and shelter.
While listening to Trevor Noah's podcast one of the topics they were discussing was South Africa. Apparently, the apartheid South African government never included Black South Africans in the census. That was how little regard they had for native South Africans they couldn't even be bothered to count how many fellow humans existed in their country. The new government was required to carry out a census in order to know how many MPs were going to be in parliament. And they were blown away by the count. Until then, it was just a guess.
So South Africans not having birth certificates or any birth records is the least surprising.
Native South African is a debatable word. You could argue that the Khoisan are the natives. But I doubt these are the affected populations that are the subject of this article. There were multiple migrations into South Africa, some from the south by the Europeans and some from the north by the Bantu. All around a 200-year primary window. Even today, the northern migration routes are still active.
They've been there over 2000 years, I think we can consider them native at this point.
European colonialists and apartheid justifiers try to shoehorn the Bantu migration as being just slightly before Europeans arrived when fossil records prove it was thousands of years prior.
Have you looked at a map? What would stop the oldest humans, who have been there hundred thousand years, from moving from the central African plans to anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa?
> They've been there over 2000 years, I think we can consider them native at this point.
> European colonialists and apartheid justifiers try to shoehorn the Bantu migration as being just slightly before Europeans arrived when fossil records prove it was thousands of years prior.
> What would stop the oldest humans, who have been there hundred thousand years, from moving from the central African plans to anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa?
The Khoisan have been in South Africa for 20,000 - 30,000 years.
While the Bantu-speaking groups brought advancements like agriculture, ironworking, and permanence settlements, they also displaced the original Khoisan peoples, pushing them from fertlie lands or hunting grounds. Raids or conflicts over cattle and territory also happened. Assimilation and intermarriage also occured, causing many Khoisan to lose their distinct langage and culture over time.
The Bantu people have been in the southern African region longer than the Roman empire has existed in continental Europe. So, why aren't they not considered native? No one considers the Roman empire not native to Europe.
I didn't say that explicitly, but you are right that I'm implying that it is customory to use "native people" to refer to the original occupants of a territory, not subsequent waves of humans.
For context:
a) Khoisan (20,000 - 30,000 years)
b) Bantu-speaking groups (1,500 - 2,000 years)
c) white South Africans (300 - 400 years)
I guess you could say that there is a "degree" of nativeness, where a > b > c, but I would question the motives for doing so.
> No one considers the Roman empire not native to Europe
That's drawing arbitrary lines to suit your argument. Nobody would claim that the Romans were native to Gaul, for example.
I'm trying to understand what is the reason behind your points, but am struggling to do so. The less generous interpretation of your angel is that you're trying to say that white South Africans or Indian South Africans or Chinese South Africans are less native than black South Africans or that black South Africans are more native than the Khoisan. I don't know that you are saying this, but your argument does seem to point in that direction, FWIW.
One should be able to exist without being in The System's database. In previous eras this need for The System to minimize existential threats to itself by knowing about every single human that might be able to challenge it (especially en masse) was accomplished by baptism. Making birth certificates indispensable to the individual is just the modern secularized version of that.
The Church had some parallels to the state in the olden days, in that it was the primary system of social support and welfare.
Identification and segregation is an important element of any welfare system, to prevent the system being destroyed by an unlimited amount of persons drawing aid while only a relatively fixed small pool provide the aid.
The state in the more liberal countries did not usually introduce such measures to make it difficult to live there without ID until the state had pretty much fully taken over the prior job of the church (or family) to provide to the unemployed, sick elderly, etc.
On a smaller scale, imagine back in certain periods of the old days, when families were the main method of social security. If you could not identify who was your own brother or mother, you would constantly being scammed (or even not scammed, just overwhelmed) until you were broke or the system broke.
I don't have any answer how to roll back the nationalistic identification and Orwellian immigration systems without decoupling social benefits from citizenship/residency, or from becoming so incredibly wealthy you just don't care.
Crypto doesn't solve any of the actual problems here.
These kids can't access any services because they don't legally exist in government systems. No birth certificate means no school enrollment, no healthcare, no social grants.
You think a 15-year-old footballer who can't play in tournaments because he has no birth certificate is going to be helped by Bitcoin?
What school is letting them enroll because they have a hardware wallet?
This is a civil administration problem that needs government solutions: streamlined processes, digital systems, reduced fees, and political will.
They are definitely getting fucked by not getting the documentation they are owed, no two ways around it.
However I don't see the binary extremes you see.
The undocumented people can pool together and start their own schools. They can start their own soccer league. They can hire a pooled doctor. They can put some amount of stored value into a crypto account, which might be better in some cases than hiding gold in a hole or something, because they aren't going to be able to access banking.
And yes, that situation sucks, and it's wrong, and it encourages apartheid-light, and is not an acceptable solution. But in the meanwhile, it would be better for them than nothing and it is something they might have the agency to do.
The counter there is that it takes a lot of optimism to be more optimistic than the ANC, an incredibly amount of inefficiency to be more inefficient than the South Africa government, and not much luck to get higher likelihood than sitting around waiting for some bureaucrat to give you birth certificate this year.
Why not just use cash at that point? Crypto doesn't make it any easier to create your own social institutions. It just adds volatility, complexity, and risk.
So the government creates a problem, and you think more government is the solution? Bizarre. Yet the 15 year old can find a teacher and pay them directly, they can buy and sell services globally and get paid. Yeah, bitcoin doesn't solve any problems..
Can't you just say that about any less than perfect solution? Bitcoin has been used to facilitate illegal drug trafficking, which is a problem. Yet you think more bitcoin is the solution? Bizarre.
So there's already a lack of a stable, functioning government, and the solution you're touting isn't currently a reality, why? In the US when there's little friction in a marketplace people in some communities resort to using Tide laundry detergent as a medium of exchange. There's nothing stopping them from using bitcoin or cryptocurrencies currently, but navigating a market place, finding qualified teachers, finding motivation to use what little resources you have to use a novel medium to pay for teachers in a place with no opportunity, etc., doesn't seem too easy. One tool alone doesn't usually solve any problems.
> One tool alone doesn't usually solve any problems.
I completely agree. The world of developmental economics has had so many great "One tool to fix everything!" ideas, but at the end of the day, they generally don't add up to much without a functioning government that's focused on serving its citizens.
So in 2025, what self-hosted options does a 15 year old have to manage his finances using Bitcoin? Assume he gets a monthly paycheck of 0.00125 BTC. How would his employer pay him? How much would be eaten up by fees?
Back in 2013, I loved the idea of Bitcoin. Then I actually tried using it. Such a pain. I switched to Coinbase until I gave up entirely on crypto around 2017 and became highly skeptical it was going to change the world as promised. I would love to hear that the world of self-custodied Bitcoin has become less onerous.
KYC/AML is largely there to increase profits for corrupt politicians and bankers at the expense of the honest segment of poor. Criminals and the dishonest can bypass that stuff easily enough through corruption if they are large, and by slipping through the cracks with "dark" IDs if they are small.
Sure is interesting how they begin to diverge around the time the US-backed Paul Magloire coup'd the sitting president and prioritized tourism via cruise ships over education.
Yeah, if you're trying to explain the difference in outcomes between Haiti and the Dominican Republic today, appealing to poltical events in Haiti in the 1950s when that economic divergence began to happen has a lot more explanatory power than appealing to poltical events in Haiti in the early 19th century (including the two decades or so when Haiti itself had colonized the DR).
My own understanding of 20th century Haitian poltics is fairly limited. I don't know if "prioritized tourism via cruise ships over education" is a fair characterization of Magliore's policies in Haiti, or, assuming it is, that this constitutes a good casual explanation of the Haiti/DR economic divergence. I'm frankly skeptical - lots of places that are not Haiti have tourism as a major, government-supported component of the economy, and nonetheless are capable of providing some kind of useful formal education to their populace and have better economic outcomes than Haiti. I suspect the story in Haiti is a lot more complicated than this. But sure, if there's a specific education policy that the DR did implement in the 1950s and that Haiti under Magliore did not, that explains DR's greater economic development today, feel free to make the case.
I'm generally a fan of Cuba so take whatever I say with that in mind, but to me the big difference was Cuba was able to make a cleanish break from the big neighbor to the north while Haiti always had a US hand reaching in, possibly to avoid Cuba II.
While Cuba is pretty poor(and we can talk about embargo in those respects), they generally met their revolutionary goals. They got the mobsters out of Havana, who previously had massive sway in the government alongside the American ambassador. They massively improved literacy, put tons of effort into health for their citizens(prior to the revolution, a majority of cuban children suffered from foot parasites among other things), and did a relatively forgiving land reform to remove the big land-owners from power(ie Land reform in Japan post WWII by the US was considerably harsher policy wise iirc).
As far as a country with a huge trade embargo against it, they've done pretty well and built up allies around the world.
If Haiti followed a similar path, we'd see just as many complaints over their governance, but from a totally different angle.
As for DR, I think its still debatable. From the 30s to the early 60s, DR was under a dictatorship that was fairly brutal. After that, a democratically elected president was couped with US support, then essentially a man described as a puppet for the previous dictator was put into power for another 12 years. Perhaps the relative stability + having a ruler with US approval is enough to explain the relative success.
I think any time a country is kicked in the shins for being a little too democratic, there's going to be a period of rebuilding. That period gets longer each time they get kicked in the shins, with the more intelligent folks leaving each time, until they're left with the people you don't want leading a country. A self fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
I'm not sure why you're talking about Cuba. But since you bring Cuba up the fact that the Cuban economy is doing better than the Haitian one and quality of life is better in Cuba than in Haiti, despite the American trade embargo on them for the entirely of the late 20th century, is evidence against the proposition that Haiti's contemporary problems are primarily a result of the 19th century French impositions.
> As for DR, I think its still debatable. From the 30s to the early 60s, DR was under a dictatorship that was fairly brutal. After that, a democratically elected president was couped with US support, then essentially a man described as a puppet for the previous dictator was put into power for another 12 years. Perhaps the relative stability + having a ruler with US approval is enough to explain the relative success.
Haiti was also ruled by brutal dictators in the mid-20th century, and was receiving aid from the United States for much of this time. So this can't in and of itself be an explanatory factor for why Haiti is so much worse off than the Dominican Republic.
I mean you scratch a lot of commentators on colonialism anywhere in the West and deep enough you will find an apologist.
While there might be structural issues in Haiti, a colonial apologist starts with simplified one sided history -> The colonizers civilized the country -> the people deserved it -> The better side won, survival of the fittest
What I have seen is that unlike the Star Trek post scarcity world visions, all discussions are stuck at some sort of national or ethnic identities at one end or a very simplified oppressed vs oppressor ideology at the other end which prevents discussing many ideologies based on their teachings through a modern civilized lens.
It does not look like the divisions would ever improve because we are now moving into a post labor world and the asymmetry is probably a feature that defines geopolitical clout and power and no one has the incentive to think bigger.
Star Trek is a sci-fi franchise written mostly by American liberals with a specific vision of what society ought to look like hundreds of years in the future (and who are generally not interested in exploring in detail more material questions like, how precisely does the world become post-scarcity). Haiti is a bad place to be right now in real life.
The colonialist apologist case with respect to Haiti is something like: rich white nations are already spending money and other resources providing humanitarian aid to Haiti, because the human need there is real and the native Haitian government is not capable of governing in a way that would fix these problems. If those same rich white nations were actually formally in charge of Haiti in a neo-colonialist poltical arrangement, they could govern it better and improve the lives of the average Haitian in a material sense. It's not directly related to the colonial history of Haiti, which is over 200 years in the past at this point.
I personally think there are serious issues with this argument, but it's not completely crazy to suggest that the revealed preference of many Haitians is to live under the governance of rich white countries, especially in light of Haitian immigration to the US which was a major issue in the 2024 US presidential election.
This conversation is silly. The lovely Haiti watchers who ignore historical contexts and the effects of a couple centuries of foreign involvement in their sovereignty has no effect in regards to modern material circumstances.
The only things that matter, according to those who love to shit on Haiti, is their apparent inability to self govern. This inability must have come from nowhere, or is genetically innate to the people.
It's crazy how every country who has had it's sovereign legs kicked out from under them multiple times just ends up being a failed state. Total mystery!
> It's crazy how every country who has had it's sovereign legs kicked out from under them multiple times just ends up being a failed state. Total mystery!
It's not the case that every country that has had its sovereign legs kicked out from under them multiple times just ends up being a failed state, and this is an important observation if you're trying to come up with a theory for why Haiti is in the state it is in. As the sibling comment mentions, a number of countries that today are peaceful and prosperous places to live, the sorts of places Haitians might want to immigrate to rather than live in Haiti, are countries that earlier in history were badly defeated in war and conquered - this descibes the losing WWII powers such as Germany, Japan, and Italy, it describes countries subject to some kind of colonial influence until well into the 20th century like Vietnam, South Korea, China, India, and many other places. Most of these countries are doing fairly well today, certainly much better than Haiti, which hasn't been directly ruled by a colonial power since the beginning of the 19th century.
Germany in particular was badly defeated and occupied twice in the first half of the 20th century and had crippling debt obligations imposed on it by (largely) France, and is nonetheless a much much better place to live today than Haiti is. This is a fact about the world that needs to be explained.
White people reminiscing about the beauty of segregation and subjugation, and pretending to wonder why a dog raised in a tiny box with no room to move and no fresh air to breathe for its entire life doesn't win the Westminster dog show when you let it out.
Instead, they want to be congratulated for eventually being forced to open the box.
We've asked you only a few weeks ago to avoid posting flamebait to HN, and it's specifically against the guidelines for comments to introduce generic tangents. Please make an effort to observe the guidelines if you want to keep participating here. We have to ban accounts that break the guidelines repeatedly.
This is the least bit surprising coming from a country that is in steady decline.
What is your indication of decline? Some facts and figures:
- Less than 30% of the population having access to water has increased to near 100%.
- Electricity had less than 30% access and now sits around 90%
- Access to education (The matric pass rate more than doubled from 53.4 in 1995 to 82.9 in 2023) to taking that to near 100% in 29 years is pretty incredible.
- Taking 8 million people out of poverty and lower class into the middle class in that time is pretty great.
- Access to free healthcare for the entire country.
- The freedom of not being discriminated towards due to skin colour.
Yes the ANC has had an opportunity to do much greater good, but if you take in the bigger picture and understand that the white population still holds over 70% of the wealth while being 10% of the population - this is an enforced inequality that needs to be righted.
If you look at the freedoms of South Africa, it has possibly the best constitution in the world. Sure, the enforcement of the laws are not as good as the laws themselves - but the rate of improvement in my lifetime has been staggering. Even despite the setback of the Zuma years.
Even now, we have gone from an ANC dominated political landscape to a Government of National Unity, which forces different political factions to work together. Another huge milestone in the burgeoning democracy of a young country.
It is so far from perfect but if you really have spent any significant time in SA and still think it is a country in decline, then I am more inclined to think you're one of the types of expats who love to shit on something that you have no bond to, and not because your arguments are bound by facts. We must interrogate the long standing consequences of white monopoly capitals violent subjugation of South Africans in both the past and the present to paint a fair picture of the country.
Your quote " a country that is in steady decline." certainly does not paint a fair picture.
- Many communities still rely on water trucks instead of water pipe infrastructure. The government loots the funds for it, meanwhile the entire system is on the verge of collapse and there are regular water shortages.
- With the electric grid, the amount of load shedding in the past few years where people are regularly without electric to 6-8 hours a day is absolutely crazy. The country didn't used to experience that. Also, cable theft is common, which wasn't an issue 30 years ago.
- 1.6 million people out of 66 million pay 76% of all taxes.
- Public healthcare in ZA is bad and not recommended by anybody who values their life.
- South Africa has more race laws today than it did during apartheid.
- It has a violent crime rate that is one of the highest in the world.
- Unemployment is high.
- It has suffered from massive underinvestment in infrastructure over the past 30 years.
- Extremely high levels of government corruption.
One thing that really brought home how the situation is in South Africa is was when I was talking to someone I know who works for a furniture company there. They used to make all of their furniture in the country, but recently started importing it from China because that is cheaper than producing it locally. Keep in mind that is with an average daily wage of $30 for a factory worker. If a country with South Africa's nature resources and inexpensive labor cannot compete with China for manufacturing furniture for the local market, it is deep trouble.
That is probably why the CEO of a local Tile Manufacturer recently said that South Africa is one of the worlds least manufacturing-friendly economies due to onerous regulation, infrastructure deterioration, energy uncertainty and rising costs.
- Loadshedding is no more.
- The tax issue is precisely the problem that needs redressing and is primarily because of past injustices. You're almost there.
- I have been treated in public hospitals and while not perfect the access to healthcare is impressive.
- I agree with the race laws. Your basis that SA has more race laws is gaslighting due to the fact of the homeland act. But let's not let facts get in the way.
- Violent crime rate is because why? Apartheid spatial planning. Read up and learn all about why this has re-enforced violent crime.
- Unemployment is high, yes. Doesn't mean the country is in decline.
- Corruption has hit its peak and on the way down post-Zuma years.
I have a close friend who owns a huge furniture company, and builds everything in house and grows year on year very well. So your anecdote is countered by mine.
- Googling for water outages gives a lot of results in just the last few days. In the NorthWest for example there are a lot of failing municipalities which are relying on government assistance to just make it month to month. Water trucks are a common occurrence all over. The official numbers on connection to water, electricity etc. are pretty much a joke.
- Loadshedding is indeed no more: Up to about 10-15% of households are now living off-grid, while in the industrial sector I can link you any number of metal processing plants that have closed down, the same for mines, car manufacturing etc. In the last few years our electricity bills have about doubled, rates and taxes aren't far behind either. That's not a win in the least.
- Healthcare: A few of the more well funded public hospitals are ok, but just from Tembisa approximately 2 billion Rands have been siphoned as of recently. Impressive isn't the word to use. Google for images to see the conditions of the hospitals and what the people who go there are experiencing, while on the other hand you can see videos of tenderpreneurs riding their Lamborghini's with police escorts via dirt roads in the outlying areas.
- Violent crime has nothing to do with apartheid (apart from the occasional incitement by political parties etc). We have crime because somewhere between 33-43% of the population is now unemployed, along with having only a barely functional police force. The people stuck on the bottom have no hope of changing their circumstances, which in turn is fueling crime (and violence).
- What makes you think there's less corruption now? The fact that more and more of it is coming to light? As long as the governing party allows it to happen its going to cascade down into all facets of life/business etc. They've begun to realize that they are losing the vote (and with it the power), but we're still a long way off from having any change on the horizon.
- Single anecdotes are pointless, some businesses will naturally grow while other decline, a lot of it is just random luck based on the type, area, time etc. Foreign investment is down something like 29% in just the last two years while we've taken on more than R25 billion in loans just recently.
https://currencynews.co.za/manufacturing-meltdown-south-afri...
It sounds like you prefer communism over capitalism. Sadly, South Africa is heading towards communism. The only consolation is that then at least everybody will be poor.
I largely agree with you otherwise (viz. South Africa is on the whole improving) but on this specific point I think you’re optimistic. When summer comes round I’m pretty confident Eskom will start loadshedding again, and their public statements more or less align with this.
Regardless: not a sign of decline! Loadshedding is evidence that demand > supply, but that doesn’t imply supply is decreasing or the system as a whole is failing. On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence that supply has steadily increased since the 90s, new facilities opening and what not. Widespread solar will only improve the situation as the tech improves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_South_Africa
Because of this many companies are reducing staff or pulling out. https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/837719/important-busi...
....and that's before we get into things like Transnet and SA Air. I'd love to see the country succeed, but putting your head in the sand and denying that there is a problem will not fix things.
That's when Bell Pottinger came up with a campaign to stoke racial tension by popularizing the phrase "white monopoly capital" to distract from the Guptas:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/sep/05/bell-pottinger...
We all saw it with electricity - handing out more access isn't the hard part. Backing that with funding and capacity to deliver is.
Inequality, unemployment and debt/gdp are all on very alarming trajectories. Without a very sharp course adjustment (and soon) there are dark clouds ahead that could undo all the victories you list. Not sure if that makes it a decline, but if it were a car ride I'd say it's time to buy crash insurance
It's really simple, we as white people have been given - historically and now - just about every advantage a minority can have. If a white person or their parents couldn't make the most of that well then that's ok, because equality and equity are the goals. And just because a PoC are succeeding more now, does not mean white people are suffering in the least.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Here’s a more reasonable point of view: https://cthulhucachoo.substack.com/p/does-south-africa-reall...
If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points thoughtfully, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are, we'd appreciate it.
I just started looking and, for example, when issuing licences to extract water, the authorities must, in accordance with the law, "consider [...] the need to redress the results of past racial and gender discrimination". Why would a water licence need such a consideration, and is it discriminatory in ZA's context?
I'm trying to apply that logic to any of my gov't services, and it would be outrageous to have any random thing responsible with redressing past racial discrimination, water rights, maternity rights, access to public information, literally any government service. It couldn't possibly be in their purview to take such a thing into consideration.
Bureaucracy can be crazy at times, and sometimes it seems like data just gets lost, for whatever reason.
Can be quite a risk for people who entered a long time ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windrush_scandal
> Bureaucracy can be crazy at times, and sometimes it seems like data just gets lost, for whatever reason.
The easiest way of reconciling data with reality if the rules don't allow changing the data is to change reality. By deporting people.
https://african.business/2025/10/energy-resources/has-south-...
ZA is not ambiguous, it has that going for it.
in the same code list, "SA" refers to Saudi Arabia, and Zambia is "ZM".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa
Vermont didn't require it until 1955!
When McCain was running for president, there was a big court case about whether being born in the Canal Zone (a U.S. territory) qualified as being a "natural born citizen". And I made the connection - "Wait. The Philippines was a U.S. territory in 1939. Shouldn't dad have had birthright citizenship?"
Moot point by then, he'd already been a citizen for ~40 years, and died the next year. But it was wild to think that the 10+ years of immigration hassles were basically due to an administrative fuck-up, and that legally, he should have had citizenship all along. The process you link wouldn't work for him, either, because the Philippines is not a U.S. territory now.
https://ballotpedia.org/Citizenship_status_in_territories_of...
No. Filipinos as a group were never US citizens. They were non-citizen US nationals during the American colonial period. When the Philippines became independent in 1946 the status of Filipinos as non-citizen nationals was terminated and they became citizens of the Philippines only.
https://fam.state.gov/fam/08fam/08fam030806.html
tl;dr your dad really did have to go through all that trouble.
Unless your dad was part of the elite ruling class which gets to skip and ignore all the rules, the answer is an emphatic no. However, if he was the son of an admiral from a long line of important people who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president, well, then Congress might just decide that he's good enough and give their stamp of approval to all of it.
Was your dad the son of an admiral who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president?
Besides, the thing with McCain wasn't about whether he was a citizen or not... this was 100% the case. The trouble was that McCain didn't become a citizen until 3 years old. And "natural born citizen" can't happen for a kid who's already 3, nor can Congress pass laws that are ex post facto, meaning they couldn't retroactively declare him natural born. He was absolutely disqualified from running, and if he had had an ounce of decency he would have accepted that and quit pressing his claims.
It wasn't until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that todays standards of overseas citizenship conference took shape. Citizenship in the US is a bit of a mess.
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/123.7.Collins_r35np7ug.pd...
Having been born to a Canadian father in the US and moved to Canada when I was nine, my US citizenship lapsed when I turned 25 in Canada (I was quite happy to stay in Canada during the Vietnam war during my twenties). At the time I was unaware of the INA provisions repealed in 1978 that lapsed my US citizenship.
New FATCA and IRS obligations motivated me to research my US citizenship status and I was happy to discover that it had lapsed.
US Customs officers sometimes ask questions when I show up with a Canadian passport with a US birthplace. Now I pull out my copy of State Department FAM 1200 APPENDIX C to explain my status, but the legalese is a challenge for people with just high school. .
At that point he became a citizen, and not before.
This is completely incorrect and is not what the issue was with his citizenship. John McCain was born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone, the area around the Panama Canal that was controlled by the US. The Naturalization Act of 1855 granted birthright citizenship to foreign born children of a US citizen father [1], and was reaffirmed in 1878 [2]. The Equal Nationality Act of 1934 added that a US citizen mother could also confer citizenship to children born abroad [3].
Most interpretations considered The Canal Zone to be foreign territory for citizenship purposes. The issue was in the extremely specific wording of the Acts, which was that children of US parents born “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States” were granted citizenship. The Canal Zone was outside the limits of the US, but was technically under the jurisdiction of the US. So, depending on how you interpret the Act, children born in The Canal Zone are in a weird no man’s land, where they don’t get citizenship as a result of being born in the US, but also technically aren’t on totally foreign territory, which would give them their parent’s citizenship. In 1937 (a year after McCain’s birth, not three years), Congress passed 50 Stat. 558, explicitly making children born in The Canal Zone to a US citizen parent US citizens [4]. There was no citizenship law 3 years after McCain’s birth, but the Nationality Act of 1940 was four years after, however, its significant change was allowing children born out of wedlock to a US citizen mother to be given citizenship [5].
[1] “persons heretofore born, or hereafter to be born, out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were or shall be at the time of their birth citizens of the United States, shall be deemed and considered and are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided, however, that the rights of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers never resided in the United States.” extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-10/pdf/STATUTE-1...
[2] “All children heretofore or hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were or may be at the time of their birth citizens thereof, are declared to be citizens of the United States; but the rights of citizenship shall not descend to children whose fathers never resided in the United States.” Original Statutes of 1878
[3] “Any child hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such a child is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States; but the rights of citizenship shall not descend unless the citizen father or citizen mother, as the case may be, has resided in the United States previous to the birth of such child.” 8 FAM 301.5 SECTION 1993, revised statutes of 1878 extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-48/pdf/STATUTE-4...
[4] “any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this Act, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.” extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-50/pdf/STATUTE-5...
[5] “The provisions of section 201, subsections (c), (d), (e), and (g), and section 204, subsections (a) and (b), hereof apply, as of the date of birth, to a child born out of wedlock, provided the paternity is established during minority, by legitimation, or adjudication of a competent court.” 8 U.S.C. 605; 54 Stat. 1139 https://fam.state.gov/fam/08fam/08fam030106.html
Consequently, that's also why Republicans push so hard for voter ID laws.
I don't know the US well enough to give you an exact equivalent, but "shoot the WASP" might be more or less the same thing. It wouldn't be any better if the same song sang the praises of a white member of the Weather Underground.
Deny rage -> of course not. I'd be furious too.
But singing songs like "bring my machine gun" and "shoot people from that ethnic group" just aren't justified, especially since South Africa has been a democracy for decades now.
There's at least a dozen different tribes, of which only two are white. There's been inter-tribal violence between all of them since time immemorial leading up to today.
Because I don't know a single South African who would describe historical intertribal violence and Dutch colonialism and apartheid as basically the same thing.
And elsewhere you say that because of this, violence against white South Africans are justified.
This is not only insane, but simply historically incorrect. I'm going to stop replying to you now (apparently there's a "HN Blocklist" Chrome addon!) but feel free to keep justifying calls for political and ethnic violence.
It should make interesting reading for others in the decades to come.
> gets a bunch of basic facts wrong
> stomps off, hits block button
The apartheid fans are not bringing their best I'm afraid.
Oh believe me, they are.
The Boer in question were the people enforcing apartheid for generations. They're also still the majority land-owners in South Africa due to the apartheid system. As of 2017 it was around 73% of Agricultural land owned by the beneficiaries of Apartheid.
I'm sorry but you can't just cry foul when your racism record setting attempt falls apart in the age of the internet and the victims hold a grudge.
I can't help but wonder if similar concerns will appear in the US, if they haven't already.
IIRC, you need a couple of people to sign affidavits that affirm you are who you say you are. That's the start of the "paper trail" and then you start rebuilding your document pool.
Getting married and changing your last name is similar (although with fewer documents etc).
It is more involved than just affidavits. The US uses databases on every citizen, some not formally acquired, that can be used to "duck type" individual identity. An affidavit is primarily used to bootstrap the entity resolution process. With only a couple touch points they can reconstruct identity with high probability. It may feel like a "trust me bro" process but it really isn't.
It is related to how the provided information on credit applications is not used to inform the creditor. They already have access to all of this information and are more interested in if your representation matches what they already know.
Obligations on parents to generate that paper trail exist now but there are still many ways people can fall into the cracks. The US has generally been far more accommodating of Americans without documentation out of necessity than I think people realize. Some parents choose this for their children, either intentionally or through negligence, and those children need a way to bootstrap their documentation as adults.
There was a large contingent of Americans born outside the US to American parents in the aftermath of WW2 that frequently had little or no documentation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/podcasts/trump-civil-righ...
The guest of this pod is the creator of the 1619 project and she is against DEI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project
Mass deportations, elimination of legal status, all these things tend towards one very very scary direction throughout history. And you know what they say about people who do not know the history...
(Just going to ignore the DEI comment because I don't know how that relates to anything here...)
But my MIL from Mao era has docs from the local officials that's all notarized, as does my wife. The dates might be... you know, not exactly right, but they're close, and importantly they're accepted by both the Chinese government and also other foreign governments for official purposes (immigration, etc).
I think I the article here we're talking about something fundamentally different from the last 70-ish in China. They're talking about people with like no official docs whatsoever, can't get healthcare, national ID card, anything. Very different from China 70 years ago, and very different from even pre civil war China.
黑孩子 and 黑户 were fairly common until the last 5-6 years.
The issues mentioned in the article were prominent in rural China and the lower tier of migrant workers before e-governance innovations along with a relaxing on the one-child policy started a decade ago.
Furthermore, the township mentioned in the article is itself one of those migrant areas in Cape Town, similar to what urban villages are in Beijing and other cities in China.
So South Africans not having birth certificates or any birth records is the least surprising.
They've been there over 2000 years, I think we can consider them native at this point.
European colonialists and apartheid justifiers try to shoehorn the Bantu migration as being just slightly before Europeans arrived when fossil records prove it was thousands of years prior.
Have you looked at a map? What would stop the oldest humans, who have been there hundred thousand years, from moving from the central African plans to anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa?
> They've been there over 2000 years, I think we can consider them native at this point.
> European colonialists and apartheid justifiers try to shoehorn the Bantu migration as being just slightly before Europeans arrived when fossil records prove it was thousands of years prior.
> What would stop the oldest humans, who have been there hundred thousand years, from moving from the central African plans to anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa?
The Khoisan have been in South Africa for 20,000 - 30,000 years.
While the Bantu-speaking groups brought advancements like agriculture, ironworking, and permanence settlements, they also displaced the original Khoisan peoples, pushing them from fertlie lands or hunting grounds. Raids or conflicts over cattle and territory also happened. Assimilation and intermarriage also occured, causing many Khoisan to lose their distinct langage and culture over time.
I didn't say that explicitly, but you are right that I'm implying that it is customory to use "native people" to refer to the original occupants of a territory, not subsequent waves of humans.
For context:
a) Khoisan (20,000 - 30,000 years)
b) Bantu-speaking groups (1,500 - 2,000 years)
c) white South Africans (300 - 400 years)
I guess you could say that there is a "degree" of nativeness, where a > b > c, but I would question the motives for doing so.
> No one considers the Roman empire not native to Europe
That's drawing arbitrary lines to suit your argument. Nobody would claim that the Romans were native to Gaul, for example.
I'm trying to understand what is the reason behind your points, but am struggling to do so. The less generous interpretation of your angel is that you're trying to say that white South Africans or Indian South Africans or Chinese South Africans are less native than black South Africans or that black South Africans are more native than the Khoisan. I don't know that you are saying this, but your argument does seem to point in that direction, FWIW.
Identification and segregation is an important element of any welfare system, to prevent the system being destroyed by an unlimited amount of persons drawing aid while only a relatively fixed small pool provide the aid.
The state in the more liberal countries did not usually introduce such measures to make it difficult to live there without ID until the state had pretty much fully taken over the prior job of the church (or family) to provide to the unemployed, sick elderly, etc.
On a smaller scale, imagine back in certain periods of the old days, when families were the main method of social security. If you could not identify who was your own brother or mother, you would constantly being scammed (or even not scammed, just overwhelmed) until you were broke or the system broke.
I don't have any answer how to roll back the nationalistic identification and Orwellian immigration systems without decoupling social benefits from citizenship/residency, or from becoming so incredibly wealthy you just don't care.
These kids can't access any services because they don't legally exist in government systems. No birth certificate means no school enrollment, no healthcare, no social grants.
You think a 15-year-old footballer who can't play in tournaments because he has no birth certificate is going to be helped by Bitcoin?
What school is letting them enroll because they have a hardware wallet?
This is a civil administration problem that needs government solutions: streamlined processes, digital systems, reduced fees, and political will.
However I don't see the binary extremes you see.
The undocumented people can pool together and start their own schools. They can start their own soccer league. They can hire a pooled doctor. They can put some amount of stored value into a crypto account, which might be better in some cases than hiding gold in a hole or something, because they aren't going to be able to access banking.
And yes, that situation sucks, and it's wrong, and it encourages apartheid-light, and is not an acceptable solution. But in the meanwhile, it would be better for them than nothing and it is something they might have the agency to do.
So there's already a lack of a stable, functioning government, and the solution you're touting isn't currently a reality, why? In the US when there's little friction in a marketplace people in some communities resort to using Tide laundry detergent as a medium of exchange. There's nothing stopping them from using bitcoin or cryptocurrencies currently, but navigating a market place, finding qualified teachers, finding motivation to use what little resources you have to use a novel medium to pay for teachers in a place with no opportunity, etc., doesn't seem too easy. One tool alone doesn't usually solve any problems.
I completely agree. The world of developmental economics has had so many great "One tool to fix everything!" ideas, but at the end of the day, they generally don't add up to much without a functioning government that's focused on serving its citizens.
Back in 2013, I loved the idea of Bitcoin. Then I actually tried using it. Such a pain. I switched to Coinbase until I gave up entirely on crypto around 2017 and became highly skeptical it was going to change the world as promised. I would love to hear that the world of self-custodied Bitcoin has become less onerous.
It is an ordeal to go the local DHA offices to do anything - the system is offline :).
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/20/world/america...
Temporal causality is not a difficult concept.
My own understanding of 20th century Haitian poltics is fairly limited. I don't know if "prioritized tourism via cruise ships over education" is a fair characterization of Magliore's policies in Haiti, or, assuming it is, that this constitutes a good casual explanation of the Haiti/DR economic divergence. I'm frankly skeptical - lots of places that are not Haiti have tourism as a major, government-supported component of the economy, and nonetheless are capable of providing some kind of useful formal education to their populace and have better economic outcomes than Haiti. I suspect the story in Haiti is a lot more complicated than this. But sure, if there's a specific education policy that the DR did implement in the 1950s and that Haiti under Magliore did not, that explains DR's greater economic development today, feel free to make the case.
While Cuba is pretty poor(and we can talk about embargo in those respects), they generally met their revolutionary goals. They got the mobsters out of Havana, who previously had massive sway in the government alongside the American ambassador. They massively improved literacy, put tons of effort into health for their citizens(prior to the revolution, a majority of cuban children suffered from foot parasites among other things), and did a relatively forgiving land reform to remove the big land-owners from power(ie Land reform in Japan post WWII by the US was considerably harsher policy wise iirc).
As far as a country with a huge trade embargo against it, they've done pretty well and built up allies around the world.
If Haiti followed a similar path, we'd see just as many complaints over their governance, but from a totally different angle.
As for DR, I think its still debatable. From the 30s to the early 60s, DR was under a dictatorship that was fairly brutal. After that, a democratically elected president was couped with US support, then essentially a man described as a puppet for the previous dictator was put into power for another 12 years. Perhaps the relative stability + having a ruler with US approval is enough to explain the relative success.
I think any time a country is kicked in the shins for being a little too democratic, there's going to be a period of rebuilding. That period gets longer each time they get kicked in the shins, with the more intelligent folks leaving each time, until they're left with the people you don't want leading a country. A self fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
> As for DR, I think its still debatable. From the 30s to the early 60s, DR was under a dictatorship that was fairly brutal. After that, a democratically elected president was couped with US support, then essentially a man described as a puppet for the previous dictator was put into power for another 12 years. Perhaps the relative stability + having a ruler with US approval is enough to explain the relative success.
Haiti was also ruled by brutal dictators in the mid-20th century, and was receiving aid from the United States for much of this time. So this can't in and of itself be an explanatory factor for why Haiti is so much worse off than the Dominican Republic.
While there might be structural issues in Haiti, a colonial apologist starts with simplified one sided history -> The colonizers civilized the country -> the people deserved it -> The better side won, survival of the fittest
What I have seen is that unlike the Star Trek post scarcity world visions, all discussions are stuck at some sort of national or ethnic identities at one end or a very simplified oppressed vs oppressor ideology at the other end which prevents discussing many ideologies based on their teachings through a modern civilized lens.
It does not look like the divisions would ever improve because we are now moving into a post labor world and the asymmetry is probably a feature that defines geopolitical clout and power and no one has the incentive to think bigger.
The colonialist apologist case with respect to Haiti is something like: rich white nations are already spending money and other resources providing humanitarian aid to Haiti, because the human need there is real and the native Haitian government is not capable of governing in a way that would fix these problems. If those same rich white nations were actually formally in charge of Haiti in a neo-colonialist poltical arrangement, they could govern it better and improve the lives of the average Haitian in a material sense. It's not directly related to the colonial history of Haiti, which is over 200 years in the past at this point.
I personally think there are serious issues with this argument, but it's not completely crazy to suggest that the revealed preference of many Haitians is to live under the governance of rich white countries, especially in light of Haitian immigration to the US which was a major issue in the 2024 US presidential election.
The only things that matter, according to those who love to shit on Haiti, is their apparent inability to self govern. This inability must have come from nowhere, or is genetically innate to the people.
It's crazy how every country who has had it's sovereign legs kicked out from under them multiple times just ends up being a failed state. Total mystery!
It's not the case that every country that has had its sovereign legs kicked out from under them multiple times just ends up being a failed state, and this is an important observation if you're trying to come up with a theory for why Haiti is in the state it is in. As the sibling comment mentions, a number of countries that today are peaceful and prosperous places to live, the sorts of places Haitians might want to immigrate to rather than live in Haiti, are countries that earlier in history were badly defeated in war and conquered - this descibes the losing WWII powers such as Germany, Japan, and Italy, it describes countries subject to some kind of colonial influence until well into the 20th century like Vietnam, South Korea, China, India, and many other places. Most of these countries are doing fairly well today, certainly much better than Haiti, which hasn't been directly ruled by a colonial power since the beginning of the 19th century.
Germany in particular was badly defeated and occupied twice in the first half of the 20th century and had crippling debt obligations imposed on it by (largely) France, and is nonetheless a much much better place to live today than Haiti is. This is a fact about the world that needs to be explained.
Could you please finish this thought? There are possible uncharitable readings that don't look so good.
Instead, they want to be congratulated for eventually being forced to open the box.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html