Will South Africa nationalise its mines?

Sixteen years after the end of apartheid, a white minority comprising approximately 10% of the total population controls 80% of South Africa's economic wealth. South Africa's white citizens are what Amy Chua has called "market dominant minorities". Market-dominant minorities are small ethnic minority groups that dominate national economies. Whites in Namibia and Zimbabwe, Chinese in Indonesia, Indians in Kenya, Lebanese in Sierra Leone, Spanish descendants in Bolivia and Chinese in Papua New Guinea are examples of other market-dominant minorities.


The end of the cold war in 1989 produced a triumphalist consensus that free markets and democracy, working in unison, would cause global moderation, peace, democracy and prosperity, thereby reducing conflict, ethnic hatred, religious zealotry and backwardness.


This triumphalism was embodied in Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis. For Fukuyama, the collapse of communism in 1989 signalled liberal democracy's final triumph over its ideological competitors. Liberal democracy had outlasted communism, authoritarianism, monarchy and fascism, and hence mankind's ideological evolution towards the best system of governance was at an end. The end was liberal democracy and the free-market economy. Fukuyama argued that the world would converge on these two forms of political and economic organisation, producing unprecedented prosperity, peace and stability.


But as the likes of Chua have made clear, illegal expropriations of private property, genocide in Rwanda in 1994, intensifying nationalism and ethnic conflict in the Balkans, and the rise of fundamentalism have shown how mistaken thinkers such as Fukuyama were about the outcomes of the spread of markets and democracy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/30/will-south-africa-nationalise-mines

need to be held at bay for success. Or it just switching deck chairs on the Titanic. I mean if the USA nationalizes anything it's the equivalent of corporation X controlling the output and gains.

Anglo-American, Gold Fields, etc made/make tons of money on the back of the Black population sweating in dangerous jobs for a pittance. On top of this, their culture was broken and families disrupted - the men worked for six months at a time away from their wives and children. It was almost like jail. Meanwhile, the fancy corporations had fancy homes, fancy food and fancy cars and lots of dough.

Unfortunately, this still carries on.

There is an interesting trial in South Africa now about the late mining magnate, Brett Kebble, who founded the Harmony Gold mine.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-07-30-kebble-trial-court-hears-of-journalist-on-hit-list

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_Gold_%28mining%29

There is so much intrigue in the Kebble story, it could be made into a film.