The ANC veteran's nostalgia for apartheid
anecdote · personal/autobiographical ·
retold in 6 talks
An old ANC fighter from South Africa told him that among poor blacks the predominant experience is now nostalgia for apartheid, because living standards are no better (or worse with unemployment) while the old police state at least offered basic safety.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“the nostalgia for apartheid... standard of living for black majority is no better than under apartheid”
“she told me isn't this tragic that more and more the predominant ideology among the black poor majority in South Africa is I cry is nostalgia for apartheid because in their view apartheid was horrible but there was order”
“More and more among the poor black majority, the atmosphere which dominates is nostalgia for apartheid.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
F.W. Murnau1Nikolai Yezhov1Jamie Lee Curtis1Christopher S Fry1Wernher von Braun1Erwin Schrödinger1Hugh Everett III1Cecil John Rhodes1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
An old ANC fighter from South Africa told him that among poor blacks the predominant experience is now nostalgia for apartheid, because living standards are no better (or worse with unemployment) while the old police state at least offered basic safety., illustrating the self-antagonisms of liberal capitalism,race-antisemitism
27:11 Slavoj Zizek:Lenin,Stalin, China,India, Africa,Yugoslavia,Latin America, fascism, democracy, & West2024-02-03 · 1:25:29
An old ANC fighter expressed sadness that the black poor majority in South Africa now nostalgically views apartheid as 'orderly' compared to the current chaos, high inequality, and lack of social safety, highlighting the failure of decolonization., illustrating democracy,geopolitics-war
A high-ranking ANC official told Žižek privately that the situation in South Africa is a 'nightmare,' with growing nostalgia for apartheid among the black poor due to worse public order. Žižek uses this to resist simple blame-the-colonizer explanations., illustrating decolonization and its failures,post-colonial governance failure
1:39:33 Slavoj Žižek & Sean Carroll: Quantum Physics, the Multiverse, and Time Travel | RP #1182023-07-23 · 1:48:39
Black South Africans express nostalgia for the apartheid era because the standard of living was higher and there was 'basic order,' contrasting with current chaos and inequality, revealing the failure of the transition., illustrating geopolitics-war,communism-socialism
At a Birkbeck College roundtable on South Africa, a heroic elderly ANC activist nearly wept telling Žižek that the predominant spiritual attitude among poor black South Africans is nostalgia for apartheid: standards of living are comparable to before, but the authoritarian state provided basic safety that the current chaos does not., illustrating self-deception,ideology,the comfort of illusion,limits of leftist optimism
An ANC hardliner at Birkbeck told Žižek that poor black South Africans increasingly feel nostalgia for apartheid, it was oppressive but offered a stable, if low, standard of living and physical safety. Now inequality persists and violence has exploded., illustrating Mugabe game,consequences of revolution,moderately conservative communism