A South Africa nobody will ever tell you about

04 Oct, 2025

South Africa has been heavy in my algo feed recently:

• Trevor Noah
• Bryan Caplan on The Hanania Show
• this great story from David Nihill, an Irish comedian with the gift of gab, about the Grapefruit Ladies who kicked off an international movement to pressure South Africa to end apartheid.

I suspect this is laying the groundwork for an algorithmic and international push for a movement to censor Israel for genocide in Gaza

In It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Adapted for Young Readers), Trevor Noah shares how apartheid-era South Africa had four official races: white, black, coloured (mixed), and Indian. And a funny haha situation where Japanese were considered white because they wanted the cars, while Chinese were considered coloured or non-white.

In fact, the Japanese, Koreans, and Taiwanese were considered "honorary whites", while Chinese and Filipinos were considered coloured.

In the early 80s, South Africa was quite wealthy, with rich agricultural exports (wine! guava! grapefruits) as well as iron, steel, coal, uranium, textiles, gold and diamonds.

Taiwan was relatively poor, but competed fiercely on the global stage with: cheap electronics (that is, even lower manufacturing skill than light and medium industrial production), and knockoff clothing. This was before LCD screens, highly skilled Apple iPhone manufacturing¹, and world-class nuclear and semiconductor engineering.

By the mid 80s, South Africa faced deep economic sanctions from the UK and USA, as part of a global tide of approbation due to apartheid. 1946: India under Nehru. 1959: Jamaica. 1962: UN Resolution 1761 (non-binding). 1963: UN Resolution 181 (voluntary arms embargo).

Also by the mid 80s, Taiwan was losing diplomatic ties globally². Nixon had gone to China. President Carter³ established formal diplomatic ties with the PRC in 1979, abrogated the 1954 Mutual Defense Treaty, and adopted the weirdly named but somehow much celebrated policy of "Strategic Ambiguity" towards Taiwan.

But in order to buy delicious guava and citrus fruits (and probably some gold and diamonds too), Taiwan welcomed trade with South Africa. And as the gateway to Africa, South Africa appealed to Taiwanese merchants who wanted to sell cheap electronics, as well as finished clothing at Western standards but knockoff prices.

So Taiwan stepped in to trade with South Africa, and Africa welcomed Taiwan cuz who gaf about China back then. And the UN looked the other way, so that Asia could trade with Africa, which allowed South Africa to be less isolated.

Trevor Noah has an extended chapter, about "crime" in the ghetto⁴. It's complicated. Pirating music? How else are people gonna get the music they love. Mother bought 200 frozen meat patties, that fell off a truck? C'mon, those are stolen. No, we're going to eat this because we need to eat meat.

There's similar moral considerations around trading with a government that supports apartheid.

Or genocide.

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