@joshbudlender.bsky.social
Postdoc at SALDRU, University of Cape Town: Labour & Development Economics. Firms and wages and structural transformation; programme evaluation; a bit of econ history & social policy. And some 🇿🇦 politics :) https://www.joshbudlender.co.za
Really excellent short interview on ABC about the SA Expropriation Act and claims of "white genocide" with Prof. Ruth Hall (@ruthhallplaas.bsky.social), acting director of South Africa's leading agrarian studies research unit, @plaasuwc.bsky.social.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6__b...
I genuinely feel sorry for government officials and politicians who have to engage with the Americans on the "merits" of the issue. How do you refute someone's deliberate fantasy where facts don't matter at all? It's like the Haitian cats and dogs thing all over again.
13.05.2025 09:09 — 👍 7 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0Mostly I think it's great that SA is, to substantial extent, avoiding getting sucked into this quagmire of nonsense. Perhaps a sign we're maturing. But does mean most of the "discussion" is led by grifters, morons and white nationalists (these categories not mutually exclusive)
13.05.2025 09:09 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0Notable how vast majority of SA knows this Afrikaner ethnic persecution/refugee thing is such obvious bullshit--literally made-up--that it's not even worth engaging with. You can't refute baldfaced fantasy with facts etc. But wonder if it makes reality less clear to rest of world
13.05.2025 09:09 — 👍 19 🔁 4 💬 3 📌 1Coördinates 😎
11.04.2025 10:44 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0Of course there were both pros and cons to doing my PhD in the US, but until recently I almost always strongly recommended it to people. Incredible to me that in the space of a few months I now have real reservations about it and just don't know what to think.
31.03.2025 21:09 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Spoke with first prospective South African PhD student today who was planning on doing his PhD in the US, but now feels he cannot commit to something so long in such an unpredictable & potentially oppressive environment. There will be more.
31.03.2025 21:06 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
More than 20 Metropolitan Police officers broke down the front door of a Quaker meeting house to arrest six women who had met to discuss climate change and Gaza. It is thought to be the first time in the history of the famously pacifist Quakers that police have forced their way into one of their places of worship. The women, aged between 18 and 38, were sitting in a circle eating hummus and bread sticks on Thursday evening as part of a “welcome meeting” for Youth Demand, which calls itself a non-violent protest group.
I know the right wing media finds it all very difficult so, in an attempt to be helpful, this is what an actual interference with free speech looks like.
30.03.2025 06:27 — 👍 2115 🔁 825 💬 72 📌 66Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.
26.03.2025 17:41 — 👍 36968 🔁 16527 💬 1887 📌 1070
Speaking truth to power.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Like, seriously???
24.03.2025 21:57 — 👍 15 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0Reading this appalling story, I don't see how anyone can in good conscience send their kids to Columbia -- not even as a political statement, but from a basic "will they take care of my kid?" standpoint...
24.03.2025 21:56 — 👍 111 🔁 31 💬 2 📌 1
📢 SALDRU is proud to host the "South Africa at 30 Years of Democracy" conference at UCT! 🇿🇦🎉 A deep dive into our progress since 1994 & pathways for the future.
📅 Funded by AFD and the EU Commission, supported by the Presidency, Treasury ZA & NPC.
#SA30 #Democracy #Research
Tbh setting up institutional social media accounts is not my favourite use of my time... if we have to start over again (and then risk being flagged again!) maybe we just forgo @bsky.app as a social media channel...
(yes we will verify via our own webpage, but university IT stuff to navigate first)
A picture of the University of Cape Town, where SALDRU is based.
Hello, Bluesky #EconSky! We're the Southern Africa Labour & Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at UCT, dedicated to challenging inequalities through policy-relevant academic research. We are one of the leading Labour & Development #Economics units on the continent. Explore our work: saldru.uct.ac.za
18.03.2025 10:48 — 👍 9 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0The Wuhan lab is STILL doing unsafe research that could trigger a pandemic AND getting prestigious pubs as incentive.😫
To fix this for the future, we have to admit we were deliberately misled on the possibility of a lab leak in the past. Horrid but true.
Gift link
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/o...
"Aligned to" is a way of saying that they have no proof that he provided anything that could be legally construed as material support to Hamas, or showed allegiance to Hamas in any way, but he said some things they decided are vaguely in alignment with Hamas and they're imprisoning him for it.
10.03.2025 05:28 — 👍 240 🔁 57 💬 9 📌 2UPDATE — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has now commented on the Trump admin’s detaining & attempted green card revocation of a Columbia Gaza encampment student negotiator:
“We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
Ofc in such a wide ranging piece there are going to be things which I personally am a bit unsure about. Key among them being perhaps overstating the elite-driven aspect of land expropriation politics. But a truly exceptional piece; also something all interested SAns should read.
20.02.2025 16:58 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
If you’re only going to read two things, then also read this, by Will. It’s truly brilliant.
jacobin.com/2025/02/musk...
Chotiner + Will Shoki combo as excellent as one would expect.
Seriously, if you’re not a South African and only read one article about the Trump/Musk demands vs the reality of SA today, this is the piece. And an excellent discussion for SAns too!
www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...
A good piece. This the flipside of Trump's maximalism, based on completely fabricated "facts" -- he actually makes it impossible for countries to comply, even if they wanted to.
www.news24.com/fin24/opinio...
There are a million more things one could show here. The claim is so factually absurd it would be never-ending. South Africa has many serious challenges. But the idea that persecution of whites is one of them is just pure fantasy, laughable if it weren't so grotesque...
08.02.2025 11:05 — 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
And I mean, let's just look at South African wealth inequality, in international perspective, with this in mind
(source: amory-gethin.fr/files/pdf/Ch...)
Has been decline in inter-racial inequality, but almost all driven by changes at the top. There are ~same number of black African people in top 10% as whites. But this is a country where black Africans are ~80% of population, while whites are ~8%. And look at that top 1%...
08.02.2025 11:05 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
At top of income distribution it's about jobs but also (generational) wealth. SA is obscenely unequal. And the top is absurdly white.
This graph shows racial composition of each part of SA income distribution, from poor to rich.
Source here & next tweet: amory-gethin.fr/files/pdf/Ch...
A big cause of this disparity is jobs and unemployment. And it's impossible to look at the numbers below and not see that it is directly a continued apartheid legacy (and main South African problem is *insufficient* redress & support to black South Africans, not other way round)
08.02.2025 11:05 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0What do those observed income gaps look like? How about poverty rates by racial group, from the 2014/15 LCS (2022/23 data coming out later this year):
Black African: 61%
Coloured: 39%
Indian/Asian: 6%
White: 1%
61% of black Africans live in poverty. 1% of whites live in poverty
Firstly, yes it is about apartheid. One way to see this: racial classification was (is) messy business. Many were on edge of being classified one way or another. Impact on men of being classified white rather than coloured? Huge income increase which explains >90% of observed gap
08.02.2025 11:05 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
