SIKANKU: Sixteen years after apartheid, South Africa remains polarized

By Etse Sikanku
Published: April 27, 2010 3:52 PM CDT

Sixteen years ago on April 27 1994, South Africa’s repressive; white supremacist regime came to an end after 46 years of apartheid.

That historic day arrived on the back of the larger than life Nelson Mandela, who declared a “rainbow nation”, to signify a new era of tolerance and diversity. Madiba’s hope then—just as now— was that South Africa will go on to become a bastion of African success.

The dream as he saw it then was that forgiveness rather than revenge would triumph. That moderation rather than extremism will prevail. And that despite its harsh history “the better angels” in South Africans will catapult the newly minted nation to prosperity. It all lay down right there before his eyes.

Except it didn’t.

A decade and a half after achieving this glorious moment, South Africa has decayed into a country with; one of the highest violent crime rates in the world, chronic poverty and the highest AIDs infection rates on the planet.

It’s a shame that some of the major challenges of the apartheid era-injustice and economic malaise—continue to plague many ordinary South Africans today. As Motsoko Pheko author of ‘The Hidden Side of South African Politics” aptly wrote, “their democracy is dispossession without repossession.”

Isn’t it ironic that part of the biggest threat to South Africa’s advancement today happens to come from not without but within the ANC itself? The rampant infighting within South Africa’s biggest party threatens to derail both previous progress and future initiatives.

Here, the question that needs to be asked is this: is ANC’s guaranteed electoral advantage leading to complacency within the party? Or was Mandela just too naïve about the future of South Africa’s “negotiated settlement”? Political freedom has been won but has this led to economic gains for ordinary South Africans?

In other words: Has poverty transcended issues of race to class as E.K Mathole suggests or is racial inequality still a major issue? With the abolishment of legal racism why is chronic deprivation still a major issue in South Africa today?

What would you say is the biggest threat to South Africa’s development as a nation? We’d like to hear your views on the current state of events in South Africa and what you think should be done or undone. Drop us a word or two if you can!

Zuma steps into the cauldron

Africa’s rainbow nation heads into a new era with the election of Jacob Zuma as the third president in the post apartheid era

By: Rejoice Ngwenya, Johannesburg, South Africa.

South African President-elect Jacob Zuma assumes political power on Saturday, 9 May 2009 riding on a sixty-five percent-but-less-than-two-thirds majority mandate. Shortly after the pomp and ceremony, his life at the helm begins in earnest in a fiery cauldron of popular expectations.

The majority of South African voters may have snubbed the rival Congress of the People [COPE] with a distant third place position and a seven per cent share of the political cake, yet this will hardly exonerate Zuma. More importantly, Helen Zille’s Democratic Alliance [DA] will colonise 67 seats after increasing its voters by over one million, giving her more leverage to fan the flames of legitimate dissent whilst gnawing at the power base of the larger-than-life African National Congress [ANC].

Most South Africans interviewed say they voted for Zuma’s ANC because the party still has a greater propensity to fulfil electoral promises. Yet despite the gains made in his Kwazulu-Natal home ground, the general whittling of votes from that party reflects an incremental bewilderment with an ANC establishment struggling to keep citizens pacified. A sweeping assumption here is that the Zuma courtroom drama took its toll on the party’s reputation. Some argue that his unclear ideological positioning that inconsistently swings from right to left made it easier for the non committal party faithful to switch sides. Others though, maintain that ANC radicals Julius Malema, Blade Nzimande and Zwelibanzi Vavi put off prospective sympathisers with their leftist dogma. Moreover, the DA “Stop Zuma” lobby is said to have been one of the sleekest electoral campaign by a Southern African opposition party. In its own sinister way, the ‘misfortune’ that befell ANC’s electoral juggernaut is a blessing in disguise for African democracy that can only thrive with multiple parties.

When Zuma gets to his office on May 11 2009, he will be confronted with a folder of unfinished business relating to the South Africa Municipal Workers Union driver strike for higher wages. Moreover, feminist advocacy group, Gender Links, has fired salvos on dissatisfaction with ANC’s gender policies, threatening to put Zuma’s polygamous exploits under further constitutional scrutiny. More answers will be required on crime, homelessness and a system that is gobbling up three hundred million Rands in unemployment benefits while the tide of HIV and AIDS infections is showing no signs of receding. Further down the line, it will be interesting how his government will finance a health and education system that is starved of qualified professionals.

On the regional front, Zuma has to contend with despatching restive arch-rival Thabo Mbeki to manage an increasingly fractious inclusive political arrangement across the border in Zimbabwe. Zuma has always argued that his party’s ‘quite diplomacy’ failed to reign on Robert Mugabe’s political excesses, but with signals showing a possible conclusion towards regional integration under the Common Market for East and Southern Africa [COMESA] framework, Zuma is unlikely to want to antagonise his regional partners. The Southern African Development Community - Council for Non Governmental Organisations [SADC-CNGO] recently made an assessment that the other thirteen members in SADC are uneasy with South Africa’s brand of exported economic and cultural imperialism. However, in the face of a vicious global recession and a declining market of hard goods in South Africa, Zuma is well-advised to keep his regional colleagues accommodating rather than defensive. In any case, balancing the demands for free trade, insulating industry from a crippling influx of cheap goods from China and resisting protectionist tendencies will take more than chanting liberation war songs!

Yet the question still lingers: will Africa ever embrace Jacob Zuma as much as they pampered the ego of Nelson Mandela and stroked the intellectual prowess of Thabo Mbeki? After all, these erstwhile Zuma predecessors can claim to have done what he can only dream of – iconic symbolism of the struggle against Apartheid, receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize and also being credited with the African Renaissance as part of the New Partnership for African Development [NEPAD]. The answer is: unlikely.

My submission is that Africa South of the Sahara is exasperated with ex-revolutionary political domination by the likes of ANC [South Africa], ZANU-PF [Zimbabwe], BDP [Botswana], Frelimo [Mozambique], CCM [Tanzania], SWAPO [Namibia] or KANU [Kenya]. Uganda, DRC, Rwanda, Lesotho, Swaziland and Angola all have ruling parties that have strong ties with the ‘revolutionary’ past. At a time when enlightened Africa was hoping that Zuma’s ANC would for the first time in a decade, share real political power, the echoes of domination still inundate the subcontinent. What this means is, according to members of civil society organisations, both the AU and SADC will keep shifting towards clumsy elitism that protects the interests of ‘old boys’. Developments in Madagascar and Zimbabwe reflect a desperate desire for political transformation outside the well-trodden paradigm of post-colonial hangover.

But then political miracles have been known to happen. For a long time, ANC’s pre-independence swan song was leftist pro-socialist rhetoric borrowed from liberation ties with the Soviet Union. However, when Nelson Mandela stepped out of Robben Island, his brand of inclusive government and racial tolerance gave birth to a new term – the rainbow nation. This is a system that even allowed an eccentric ‘tribe’ of Boer fanatics to establish Orania, their own ‘homeland’ in South Africa, unthinkable even by Mugabe’s primitive standards. Before long, multi-national corporations were laying siege to South Africa’s stock as free markets reigned supreme. Although the populist element in the Communist Party and Congress of SA Trade Unions [COSATU] rang alarm bells on increasing poverty and crime levels, both Mandela and his successor Mbeki stuck to the pro-liberal agenda. By introducing high-sounding terms like BEE [black economic empowerment] and RDP [Reconstruction Development Program], the ANC sought to narrow the gap of poverty. What we do not know is how much Jacob Zuma, even as vice-President contributed to South Africa’s intelligence of economic resurgence and global competitiveness.

But what we know is he has been portrayed as a not-so-educated, conservative but vocal adventurer who claims morsels of royal blood in his tribal veins. The Zulu traditional governance system is identified more with hereditary patriarchal chieftainship and military aggression than participatory tolerance. Therefore, whether or not Zuma will depart from this stereotype and tolerate effective opposition from COPE and DA or simply get Africa to pay more attention to him, time will tell.


Rejoice Ngwenya is President of Zimbabwean think tank Coalition for Liberal Market Solutions and an affiliate of www.AfricanLiberty.org

South Africa’s Final Stretch to Democracy

Jacob Zuma is widely tipped to be the next president of South Africa

by Rejoice Ngwenya, Pretoria, South Africa.

South Africa holds its fourth post-apartheid election tomorrow. Being an important economy within Africa and to other regions of the world, one should have expected the same media frenzy that characterized previous elections to be more than ever present, not least because the next FIFA World soccer tournament will be held in South Africa.

Barack Obama’lightning world tours, Somalia’s pirate attacks, Zimbabwe’s Government of National Unity and a host of other attention-grabbing world events have taken the vigor out of the intrigues surrounding this vital election. Besides, characters like Jacob Zuma and his controversial hangers-on and Nelson Mandela have not stopped making news, so before we know it, the world would have been completely oblivious to the fact that for once in Southern Africa, elections can be after all, be free, fair and entertaining!

But there also seems to be citizen’s interest fatigue in politics. It has fallen to its lowest ebb, such that no one wants to care any more. My feeling is that just like in Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, citizens are more obsessed with political brand names than individual value addition. The late Zimbabwe vice-president and nationalist Simon Muzenda is alleged to have once told supporters at a rally that even if ZANU-PF (his ruling party) fielded a baboon, the primate would still win! So does it not matter that the wheels of justice have been deflated when the National Prosecuting Authority drops charges of corruption against Jacob Zuma? The answer in Pretoria is short and curt: who wants to know?

It would appear however, that only mischief makers gastronomically aligned to the ruling ANC have managed to, albeit negatively, sustained local interest.

One such character is Julius, the fiery leader of African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) who ironically hails a stone throw from Zimbabwe’s Limpopo River and has proved that throwing political stones at political big wigs is another day’s work. And he has an opposite number, Mbazima Shilowa, the ‘genius’ behind the emergence of ANC’s most daring political competitor, Congress of the People (COPE)

And Julius has said all there is to say; killing for Zuma, two thirds majority for ANC, faked African dancing of one politician or another. He has also accused Inkatha Freedom Party’s (IFP) octogenarian leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi of hanging too long in the game. And soby now, the boyish protagonist is awaiting two outcomes – at least according to a waiter at a nearby Pretoria hotel – an outright win for ANC or his own ‘expulsion’ from ACNYL executive committee.

Reports, suggest that Andile Lungisa and woman youth activist Vuyiswa Tulelo are keen to replace the motor-mouth Julius who they say has spoiled the good image of ANCYL. As if good image counted in African politics. But views from the Tshwane streets are that it will take more than just charisma and high moral ground to ‘depose’ Julius.

Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s elections, Julius is assured a job, thanks to the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), a form of socialized quota to even the unbalanced labour market. Most analysts agree however that South Africa’s glaring income disparities have become more distinct even where the black government claims it is successful.

If anything, opposition contestants like Helen Zille of the Democratic Alliance(DA), COPE’s Mvume Dandala, Democratic Alliance’s Helen Zille, Inkatha Freedom Party’s(IFP) Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Independent Democrats’s Patricia de Lille and United Democratic Movement’s(UDM) Bantu Holomisa have at one time or other insisted that BEE is the password to wealth for a few ANC cronies like Tokyo Sexwale and Cyril Ramaphosa.

Worse still, when one is confronted with statistics that more than two-thirds of the South African population is considered poor, while those who live in shanty towns from Cape Town to Musina could as well even outnumber Zimbabwe’s entire population, BEE’s ‘success’ becomes just another term in the self-delusive game of pretense that politics solves everything. Certainly not in the case of the ordinary South African, who apart from being unemployed will have to grapple with poor public education and rising levels of violence and HIV Aids.

And so after South Africa’s electoral protagonists have so far spent nearly R400 million [USD40 million] on the campaign trail, will it be ANC’s Jacob Zuma, COPE’s Mvume Dandala, DA’s Helen Zille, IFP’s Mangosuthu Buthelezi, ID’s Patricia de Lille, UDM’s Bantu Holomisa ruling the political roost after Wednesday? Only ballot papers will tell.

Rejoice Ngwenya is director of Coalition for Liberal Market Solutions in Harare and an affiliate of www.AfricanLiberty.org