A few years ago there was a revolution in Egypt. It was all about democracy.
Except on the ground, in the year or two preceeding it, it was all about the economy. There'd been protests, riots, etc. The government kept backing down, but things were getting worse.
As soon as they said, "Democracy!" the West cared a lot more. There was a revolution and many assumed the economy would turn around. It didn't happen. (In fact, it's likely that the deep state made it worse. In any event, it's highly unlikely that all the things that made the economy crappy before the revolution would suddenly all change in just the right way, all at once, to make the economy boom. In fact, few things changed in the economy. What was crappy kept on going, at a constant velocity and in a constant direction in the absence of a non-zero external net force.)
In SA the two themes of racial equality and economic equality went hand in hand. For many, they were the same. The franchise is what blacks got. It's a lot of what they wanted, but the assumption was, as in Egypt, democracy would mean massive improvement in the economy. The '70s weren't good to SA. The '80s were miserable, with the economy barely moving.
The thing is, in SA there should have been a fairly dramatic rise in GDP in 1994. Sanctions that were crippling the economy were ending. There'd be a lot of good will and economic aid. There were really high expectations. They were misplaced.
In Slovakia in '93 and '94 there were similar expectations--they had nice new equipment and should have done really well when they broke away from the Czech Republic. Except that their new industrial base was obsolete, very Soviet, when installed. Then, in Slovakia, like in the '90s in SA and this year in Egypt, people have to find a scapegoat to protect Those Who Must Be Protected.
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