EIGHTEEN YEARS on from the end of white minority rule, and still every measure of South Africa’s progress, or lack of it, is inevitably going to be framed in terms of the yardstick of the apartheid years. Too often, sadly, the comparison is not flattering to the country’s new masters, the ANC. Income distribution, for example, is more unequal today. And, if anything, the ineptly managed police showed recently they were less inhibited by the rule of law when they massacred 34 striking miners than were their brutal predecessors.
The dismantling of the apartheid state and enshrining of a pluralist constitution that marks the country out as Africa’s outstanding and inspiring democracy are huge achievements for the ANC. As is a moderate but sustained economic growth of 3.5 per cent per annum over the last decade. But the party’s failure to tackle the huge challenges of poverty, inequality, 40 per cent unemployment, and the related epidemic of crime, combined with the sense that its own senior members have been able to milk the transition to establish themselves as the core of a wealthy new black middle class, have dashed the expectations of its base and tainted the party with corruption.
The explosion of industrial unrest and violence in the minefields were just waiting to happen, the inevitable byproduct of the growing social tensions. Some return to work has been temporarily achieved with pay increases, but the problems remain and are now manifesting themselves in politics.
The challenge by firebrand Julius Malema to President Jacob Zuma, who faces a renomination battle at the party’s December conference, reflects deep social cleavages gnawing at the party which has long sought uncomfortably to straddle and reconcile all classes in its ranks. Malema, a former head of the ANC Youth League, whose radical views led to his expulsion from the party, faces money laundering charges while four of his business associates have also been also charged with fraud, corruption and money laundering.
However, brushing off corruption allegations as politically inspired, Malema has successfully capitalised on the anger in the minefields to launch a blistering and telling attack on Zuma, who expelled him. Although he can’t stand for the presidency himself, his voice and anti-capitalist rhetoric still find an echo in the party’s more radical, young ranks and affiliated unions. His support for the expected candidacy of vice-president Kgalema Motlanthe is likely to trouble Zuma and an ANC leadership that has clearly lost its sense of direction.