throwaway210222

> put others in a low income country shantytown with no access to any facilities, coaches, with poor nutrition …

When we actually do do that, we seem to get world-beating Kenyan and Ethiopian athletes.

Not so many affluent, well-fed Swiss ones though.

Genuine question: why as a HN reader - so probably quite scientific - why is it "striking" to you that after learning on this very forum of referendum where you found out that 30% voted to maintain Apartheid, a mere FOUR years later a poll finds 40% holding a similar position?

a) surely you are familiar with error bars?

b) where did you think that 30% went?

I would be astonished if the poll said otherwise.

I never know what the next step in these conversations is meant to be: a nation of people did a really bad thing. They - or their children their grandchildren clearly changed their mind when first given a real, unrigged vote.

Now it only happened because the evil party told them to and the world was forcing them to? So what ? They haven't really changed deep down? And the proof is somehow the absolute strangers in the minority who didn't change their mind?

I am going to have to call a halt to my participation here as: to quote teachrdan - is absurd.

> Well, sort of, except the National Party was campaigning for a 'Yes' [to end apartheid] vote.

I'm not sure how that minimised anyone who then voted "yes, I'm glad you are finally proposing that - its what I want"? Odd line to take.

But the Apartheid National Party did a lot stranger things than that - after a quick rebrand - they decided to merge with the ANC!

As I said - a complicated place.

Hi techrdan - can you lighten up on the insults. I'm really trying to discuss a topic with a teeny, tiny Overton window and I don't deserve you continued efforts to caricature me as a racist.

> Then how could the system have persisted for decades?

- surely I have explained at least one mechanism - in your words - "in distracting long detail";

- another one was to make sure no white kid ever learnt a black language. Most kids in the areas I spoke about above learnt French as a third language - not Zulu or even Hindi. This was deliberate;

- they went to enormous lengths to destroy any common knowledge of Sofiatown and it was a rejection of that the races could never live together. To show you what it meant: they renamed it "Triuph";

- they high-jacked the dominant protestant religion (ask Reverend Beyers Naude)

- in the mid 1980s the imposed a state of emergency that controlled all TV and news.

- any yes, like many places in the early mid 20th century - there were indeed a lot of racists.

But I suspect form the tone of your comments you aren't really asking in some good faith pursuit of knowledge of a complex place. I suspect you are rather employing a common rhetorical device to actually assert there "there other is no possible explanation - other than simple pure evil bigotry - for how it could continue for so long. And anyone who I feel doesn't agree with this is a bigot".

Its not cool and its not consistent with the site guidelines.

So let's discuss briefly the other Apartheid state - Northern Rhodesia. Here the whites-only voting was first-past-the-post as per the UK mother ship.

In all of the elections about 40% of the white population regularly voted against Ian Smith in just about all the districts. They won exactly ZERO seats in parliament.

40% is not "a few" people.

Voting structures matter and they get high-jacked. Look after yours.

s/1990/1992/ - thanks.

Of course a hell of a lot of people supported it - most of them now long dead. [This mandatory prelude is so tedious]

However, as I have shown, clearly not enough that the ruling National Party were prepared to trust their own people with continuing to vote for it. An the 1992 referendum proved their suspicions to be correct!

Hence the outrageous - from the start - manipulation.

If you think banal voting manipulation isn't as big a deal as the evil that lurks in mens' hearts then ask yourself - now that Iran has an Islamic democracy (they do hold elections) how does the current/next generation ever return to a secular democracy via the ballot - if that is what they want?

As as in Apartheid South Africa, enormous effort has been made by the initial true believers to prevent it from ever happening.

I could be wrong.

Not only that, but the National Party were so rabid that in 1948 D.F Malan - their new prime minister - proposed in an actual parliament speech to deprive white English-speaking citizens of the vote.

God alone knows how they were going to enforce that in a completely multi-lingual society.

Strange times. A warning to us all.

> I never thought I'd see an impassioned defense of apartheid South Africa on Hacker News. But here we are.

Good news mate - you still haven't.

But nice try

> It takes a lot of people contributing to uphold it [Apartheid].

Actually it really, really didn't.

Students of history will know that National Party (which assembled Grand Apartheid and ruled from 1948 to 1994) merrily gerrymandered the entire country on a scale seldom seem.

1. liberal (more English) areas like those near Durban were magically made part of conservative (more Afrikaans) farming areas hundreds of kilometres away. A good example is the affluent enclaves of Kloof and Hillcrest in Durban were somehow part of the [at the time] extremely conservative Voortrekker town of Greytown a mere 150km away;

2. a further law deemed that the rural votes in each such Frankenstein voting district counted 100%, the distant urban votes a mere 75%

3. this happened everywhere and ensured a massive majority for the National Party in every province;

4. there was by design - and in the most literal sense - no way for the white population to vote themselves out of Apartheid. It was so successful that for many years their was only ONE liberal opposition member of parliament [Houghton, Johannesburg].

I understand details are tough and cloud the cartoon good-vs-evil polemic you were no doubt exposed to. I guess one does get more dopamine from wild sweeping statements that reinforce and display your own ignorance and bigotry. I wouldn't use my real name either in posts like yours.

For the casual observer: let this be a cautionary tale when gerrymandering is attempted in your own democracy.

[PS. Southern Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - had a different, but equally effective voting mechanism to suppress the growth of a liberal opposition. For another day ]

> about 1200 GW of capacity

Since 1GWa* ≈ 8 million tonnes of CO₂ †, this is about a billion tonnes saved every year.

Sadly, we're about 3,000 Gt of CO₂ in excess in the atmosphere.

*: GWa: 1 GW 24h/d, every day, for a year

†: or about 1 Giza pyramid

> Framing the differences here as disrespecting other people's culture is a bit of a stretch, though.

What would you call the insulting hysteria that occurs when an English speaker doesn't change his language and culture to use some foreign-language word for a place?

You'll notice no one goes around demanding a billion Chinese change from 'Měiguó' to the 'USA'. Hell, even the Germans get away with calling 'Beijing' Peking.

Its just the poor, down-drodden Anglos. :)

The dogy bit is knowing that a large institutional order is coming.