this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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So he can still own it as a white man so long as he allows 30% to be owned by someone black, Cape Malay, Indian, San, KhoiKhoi or 'coloured', or indeed many people fitting any of those.
Not because he "isn't black".
Lots of countries have rules about local ownership; eg in Thailand businesses and properties have to be 51% owned by a Thai person. Of course the difference here is that for centuries the rules were increasingly enforced to treat certain races as foreigners, to the point of quite literally trying to declare parts of itself independent ie foreign. This creates a weird scenario after the fall of apartheid that is definitely uncomfortable to read but how do you undo centuries of this with carrot instead of stick when it's people like Musk and Peter Thiel?
Under current conditions Starlink cannot exist in South Africa. If we change a single variable, Musk's race to black, then Starlink can exist in South Africa (it would be >30% owned by a black person).
South Africa is discriminating based on race.
Sure. We can also change a single variable and have him sell 30% of it. And now he can be an apartheid nepo-baby and still run a telecommunications company in the nation his father helped to devastate.
What's your point?
And if he sells 30% of it to people of 'the wrong race', South Africa still won't allow in the company. The critical variable is the race of the owner(s); South Africa is demonstrably discriminating based on race.
Yes? I acknowledged that in my original comment.
As it turns out, just declaring everything fine now doesn't actually address the disparities of wealth and power when you have had much worse laws in place for much longer.
Happy St Patrick's Day! In Ireland we burned the mansion houses of English landlords after independence. I'm not going to judge non-white South Africans for enforcing a fucking minority shareholder policy.