Russell Lamberti

Why does the South African state systematically attack businesses?

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The state mounts incessant waves of destabilising general and race-targeted attacks on the productive economy. It does this to sustain its commitment to at least three core imperatives and paradigms.

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AGOA certainly has some concentrated benefits, but its overall macroeconomic impact is small.

By revoking AGOA, the US has therefore taken one of the more constrained measures available to it in cases where it deems a foreign government to be acting against US interests.

I interviewed Dr. James Myburgh of the Bremmen Centre for Democratic Research and @Politicsweb about the history and politics of farm attacks, and what the data and evidence shows about the scale, severity, and origin of the problem.

No one better on this subject than James. ⬇️

Piet le Roux and I discuss the rapid reconstitution of South Africa and how it must be shaped.
@pietleroux @Sakeliga

youtube.com/watch?v=WVhKIj…

It is sad to hear of RW Johnson's passing.

His analysis was often of tremendous value and his perspectives were distinctive, forthright, realist, highly perceptive, and at times genuinely novel. He provided a cogent vocabulary for describing the country's decline, and applied it with merciless intellectual force in his 2015 reboot of "How Long Will South Africa Survive?".

The audacity of the question alone says a lot about the man.

We forget how hard it was to criticise the state and its totalising and race-obsessed mismanagement just 10-15 years ago. Firstly, because of the electric fences placed around liberal and conservative critics in the first 20 years after 1994, but secondly because when decline became undeniable in the hangover after 2010 aspirational highs, it wasn't easy for many to perceive in the moment just how bad things actually were. Was this a bug problem or a feature problem?

RW Johnson was colossal in tearing down those electric fences and creating a schema for understanding the problem's true scale and a useful lexicon that gave the ideas popular purchase among dissidents.

It's not a stretch to say that Johnson's reemergence to prominence at that bewildering time inspired, emboldened, and gave a better framework to a host of writers, thinkers, podcasters, and analysts over the intervening years. He was an intellectual father to many and leaves enormously big boots to fill.

You didn't have to agree with it all to derive immense value from Bill's work, even if it was helping you clarify precisely how and why you disagreed with him. He was a worthy representative of a rigorous liberal realism - it was a relief to read someone who got to his target without the tedious rhetorical hedging of many modern thinkers and writers.

His contribution to contemporary South African history will be missed, though, of course, it all remains to be read and re-read for the gems it contains. I suspect with the passage of time much of his insight will prove uncomfortably prescient, but also constructively so.

RW Johnson was a national treasure.

R.I.P.