Why does South Africa matter? Its Gini coefficient is essentially identical to that of Brazil, so it’s certainly not unique in the challenges it faces. Yet it also reproduces some of the tensions and anxieties of a post-conflict society like Iraq, which I think of as akin to a sprawling inner-city on a national scale devastated by poverty and violent oppression. The Shia majority was so under heel for so long that it bears the marks of serious psychological damage. The same is arguably true of South Africa’s majority. One often hears that whereas Zimbabwean migrants are highly educated and possessed of a cultural self-confidence that I as an American take for granted, there was an intense internalization of the logic of apartheid, of racial inferiority. Unraveling this is a slow process, as the older generation has imbued the post-apartheid generation with this residue of cultural self-doubt. I’m a little wary of this kind of analysis, but it rings true.

Crudely, I guess I think South Africa matters because it strikes me as a microcosm of the world. The awkward co-existence of First and Third World ways of life in a single state is very vivid and immediate here, but of course it exists throughout most of the world. The middle-income countries — the Brazils, the Mexicos, the Egypts, the South Africas — are the future. Everything depends on their getting it right.

Wait a second. Toto’s “Africa” is playing in the lobby right now. This is my favorite song. In light of the setting, this seems like a cannily ironic gesture. My mind is blown.

…

As you can probably tell, I don’t have very systematic thoughts at the moment. The more I learn, the more I have to revise what had been settled views. This isn’t to say that my original assessments have been overturned — in broad outline, I basically believe the same things about the country and its prospects (fairly bright, R.W. Johnson’s brilliant polemics notwithstanding). It’s more in the fine-grained detail.

I haven’t spend much time in middle-income countries. I think it agrees with me. There’s something about the crazy energy of this phase of development, the self-fashioning, the reinvention of nationhood, etc. All gross generalizations, of course.