“Decolonization” is all the rage right now, at least on the leftward side of the political aisle.
After all, it has the gloss, if not the reality, of justice. Much of the world was colonized by Western powers in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and no doubt many awful things were done in the name of spreading Western Civilization to the “uncivilized” nations of the world.
Now, of course, we have to recognize that colonization is hardly an exclusively Western phenomenon–it’s just that most of the history you know is of recent events, and of course, written history is a product mainly of Asian and Western cultures, although at the various heights of Arab societies, much was written as well. Not so much when it comes to the cultures that whinge about colonization the most–African and native cultures in the Americas in particular.
They were not, in the main, literate societies. But what we do know of Mesoamerican societies suggests that colonization was quite common in these societies as well. Cortez was able to defeat the Aztecs with 500 soldiers and 16 horses because native tribes joined up with him to wipe out the Aztecs.
But let’s stick with “decolonizing” from Western Culture. What does that mean, and what are the results?
🇿🇦 Residents of the once economically strong Johannesburg are facing squalor, lawlessness, corruption and the collapse of services.
So what happened to the ‘Golden City’? ⬇️https://t.co/GB9bkPVJ63 pic.twitter.com/ERMcCmHVJP
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) October 17, 2025
You can’t really look to the Americas, because most of the people whining about colonization are themselves products of Western Culture mixed with some indigenous practices. What language do they speak?
Spanish. Enough said.
So we have to look to Africa to see what “decolonization” means, and what comes from it. And the answer is, unsurprisingly, not at all pretty. It is, in fact, a history of societal decline and in many cases genocide. As these societies cast off the gifts of Western Culture, they revert to savagery that doesn’t just include dramatic declines in standards of living–destitution–but violence so brutal that it boggles the mind.
Africa is, by any measure, the home of human misery at a scale that it is difficult to imagine. We all, at least to some extent, know what the “decolonization” of Zimbabwe has led to. Nigeria is in the midst of a full-blown genocide of Christians that has been going on for a decade. There were the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, of course…
And South Africa, which had further to fall, has been on a course for societal implosion for decades.
Almost everybody celebrated the transfer of power from the Apartheid regime to the African National Congress, and with seemingly good reasons. The Apartheid regime was built on the fundamental injustice of a racially divided society, where minority whites ruled over relatively impoverished majority blacks. The entire political and economic system was based on racial categorization, and there is no moral justification for perpetuating such a system.
And yet…the process of decolonization has made things infinitely worse for everybody. The separation of people by race was unjust, yet the result of chucking that system was to replace it with a legal and moral system that still separates people by race and tribe, while also being utterly incapable of maintaining a modern society.
When Nelson Khethani moved to Johannesburg in 1980, he was struck by how clean the streets were.
Living in the central Berea neighbourhood of South Africa’s largest city through the 1990s and 2000s, after apartheid was dismantled, he recalls his homes being in “very, very beautiful buildings”.
Such memories are painful to reconcile with the city centre squalor Mr Khethani now endures.
The Carlton Centre Piazza, and the Hillbrow district, in the late 1970s and early 1980s : Credit: Daily Mail/Times Media and Creative Commons
The lower floor of his current accommodation in Joubert Park is heaped with uncollected rubbish and reeks of human waste. No one comes to clean or to empty the filth, and the overcrowded floors are full of criminals and sex workers, he says.
The streets around his home are crumbling into deep potholes, and drug dealers and robbers menace the area.
Mr Khethani’s block is not the only one to have fallen into such a state. Formerly well-to-do city centre neighbourhoods, including Hillbrow and Berea, contain many in the same condition.
This is a side of Johannesburg that South Africa will not be showing off to world leaders attending next month’s G20 summit in the city.
“I’ve seen it change so much over the years,” Mr Kethani, 74, says.
The decay is entrenched. Some neighbourhoods, in a place colloquially known as the City of Gold, have been without water for weeks as decrepit infrastructure gives up. Residents say local government services in the city, the capital of Gauteng, South Africa’s wealthiest province, are in freefall.
“Johannesburg is on the verge of becoming a failed city, almost like a failed state, like many African failed states at the country level,” William Gumede, associate professor at Wits University’s School of Governance, said recently.
South Africa, or at least the developed parts of the country, used to be a wealthy, functioning society that rivaled any in the world. Now, in its premier city, the authorities can’t keep the lights on, the water flowing, or the medical system from collapsing. Garbage and sewage dominate the streets in all but the few areas dominated by the elites–the same as in any third-world s**thole country–and the black citizens who were supposed to benefit from decolonization are much worse off than before.
“In the case of Johannesburg, a failed city is beset by systemic corruption, lawlessness, infrastructure collapse, and the informalisation and deindustrialisation of the city economy.”
The decline of South Africa’s biggest and wealthiest city and its commercial hub has been under way for decades, but is now dominating national politics as the main opposition party tries to dislodge the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
Nothing works. Nothing. People live in filth that, by almost any measure, is worse than what tribesmen faced 500 years ago while wandering the desert.
Among the city’s pressing problems are hundreds of “hijacked” buildings: empty or neglected properties taken over by gangs who fill them with tenants.
National unemployment is around 33 per cent and there is a severe shortage of housing.
Wealthy residents and their tax revenue depart as the situation worsens.
A street drug called Nyaope, a mix of heroin, cannabis and HIV antiretroviral drugs, is rife and drives much of the crime.
The collapse in public services means rubbish is not collected, roads are not fixed, and year by year things get worse. Earlier this year, it was reported that 45 of the 120 bin lorries in Johannesburg were broken down.
Images from Google’s Street View app are used by one widely followed social media feed called Jozi vs Jozi to provide a chronicle of the decay.
The city recently had 97,715 reported power cuts over nine months, with more than 5,000 serious enough to take out whole suburbs.
The biggest problem of all is water, says Ms Zille, with some neighbourhoods finding their taps non-functional for weeks at a time.
No water. No electricity. Filth in the streets.
“Decolonization,” at least to the extent that it means chucking Western Culture, is a horrible idea. That doesn’t mean that political systems with fundamental unfairnesses, such as the Apartheid system, should not be reformed–prosperity is not an excuse for fundamental injustice–but when “decolonization” means rejecting Western Culture, societal decline is inevitable.
Nobody, including the most committed Marxist or Black Nationalist, can look at Zimbabwe or South Africa and claim that these are well-functioning societies. They are authoritarian, corrupt, and failing their citizens.
If you have a subscription to The Telegraph — and you should, since it is a great newspaper — go check out the pictures included in the story. They are horrifying.
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