Walmart Expands Into Africa

Walmart just purchased a local chain in South Africa, and has plans to expand further into Africa. Not surprisingly, there are Walmart-haters in Africa too, led by unions.

South African unions announced plans to strike at Massmart stores, and South African government officials promised to review the deal. But Massmart itself says that it plans to open 50 to 100 new shops in South Africa and Wal-Mart itself plans to expand deeper into the 53 other countries of the African continent.

I wrote about Walmart-haters awhile back, who have succeed in depriving people of its benefits in some U.S. cities. It looks like South Africa may have Walmarts before places in the U.S. that could really use one, such as Detroit.

Holy Trumpet Lawsuit

South African soccer fans often make noise with an plastic trumpet instrument called the vuvuzela. (See video of vuvuzelas in action.)  But a religion called Shembe claims it as its "holy instrument." They object to rowdy soccer fans defiling their holy trumpets, and have filed a legal action to stop it from being played at World Cup games. The World Cup organization disagrees, and says that

the noise is an important part of South Africa's footballing culture.

What's a sporting event without spectators finding ways to make loud obnoxious noises? Who will win the battle of the holy trumpet?

South Africa, Not Much of an Ally

Jamie Kirchick has an article in Newsweek asking why South Africa is "acting like a rogue state." Does that sound too harsh? Here's what our supposed ally has been up to.

peddling arms to police states and terrorist havens (in deals that were revealed just a week before Clinton's arrival); continuing, as Mbeki did, to prop up the despotic Mugabe; and even doing China's bidding to keep trade relations intact

It's been selling weapons to Libya, Syria and Venezuela, and is considering arms sales to Iran, Zimbabwe and North Korea. At the UN it has opposed resolutions aimed at totalitarian states, and has a particularly cozy relationship with China.

Speaking only for myself, I've personally never considered South Africa an ally, although I wasn't really well-informed about all the things they've been doing. I've always been highly suspicious of the ANC, because of its communist influences, ties to various enemies of the U.S., and its use of terrorism in the fight against apartheid. As Kirchick writes, the idea of South Africa as a U.S. ally is little more than a "comforting facade." But no doubt we'll continue to pretend that the South African government is a friend of the U.S. for as long as possible.

Bad Ideas in South Africa

There's an interesting article at CATO called, "The Zimbabwe-ification of South Africa?" Apparently the South African government is considering expropriating land (ie stealing it from its owners by force), and redistributing it (no doubt to political supporters). Despite the terrible failure and economic destruction wrought by such policies in neighboring Zimbabwe, South African Marxists have learned nothing. Of course if they had, they wouldn't continue to hold Marxist views. Here's a comment by one of the South African ministers pushing such a program,

"It shouldn't be a situation where we can't get land because it's too expensive because it's owned by Americans, by Germans, by other Europeans and people outside this country, and not Africans. . . ." "To redress [the] imbalances of the past," Mr. Nkwinti continued, "the government must have enabling laws that can allow the pace and the price of land acquisition to be in the hands of the state, rather than in the hands of the seller."

This is typical of statists/collectivists everywhere, including here in the U.S. Look at the healthcare debate and you will see echoes of this sort of thinking. We don't like market-generated prices because they just don't meet our ideas of the way things should be. Therefore we will use the power of government in order to artificially force things into whatever mold we think should be best. The authors point out that,

Land expropriation does not lead to justice or prosperity. As the case of Zimbabwe shows, it is a road to economic destruction. South Africa must turn back now before it is too late.

Unfortunately this type of advice, based in reality and on examples of past failures, will likely fall on deaf ears. Ideology, "fairness," and the need to "do something" are just far more important.