Maravi

(HERALD, NEWAFRICAN) Mandela, 20 years on: Change, but for whom?

Mandela, 20 years on: Change, but for whom?
NewAfrican.

There has been change in South Africa, 20 years after Mandela’s release from prison on 11 February 1990. Apartheid is no more. Millions of South Africans get their basic water needs satisfied for free. The number of households with electricity has shot up from 50 percent to 80 percent. The banking system has expanded to embrace the black underclass. There is an expanding black middle class. However, most of these improvements are cosmetic! The wealth that is created is not circulating among the black majority. Shared poverty and debt is! Thus, 20 years after Mandela’s release, South Africa has become the world champion of inequalities, overtaking Brazil. Yes, there is change, but for whom? Pusch Commey of NewAfrican magazine based in Johannesburg looks at the realities on the ground.

THAT was the moment the world had been waiting for. A moment of truth.

A free Mandela meant a free world. An act of exorcism of an evil spirit called apartheid that would set black and white South Africa free.

On 11 February 1990, he walked out of the Victor Vester Prison in Cape Town, hand-in-hand with his then wife, Winnie Mandela. The world waited to welcome him as the messiah. When the history of South Africa is retold, one can conveniently calculate the years from BM (before the release of Mandela) and AM (After the release of Mandela).

Such is the significance of his triumph 27 years after his incarceration in 1963.

At the Rivonia trial in the same year, apartheid judges would of course find him guilty of terrorism and various trumped-up charges. They had the power to impose the death sentence. Mandela told them in their face that he was prepared to die for his ideal of a free South Africa. Perhaps sensing martyrdom, they chose to imprison him for life.

There have been analyses upon analyses as to why the formidable apartheid regime chose to negotiate itself out of power. It had little choice. Apartheid was a festering wound that was going to get worse with each passing day.

Already in the 1980s all the vestiges of this monumental human injustice was falling apart at the seams. Mass protests orchestrated by the United Democratic Front, the proxy of the exiled African National Congress, were paralysing the nation.

Already the Group Areas Act that separated black and white was no longer enforceable as black South Africans slowly found their way into white areas.

The overstretched security forces had lost their willpower. Bantustans created by the white overlords were not viable. The international community was becoming more strident, angrily calling for sanctions.

The country was becoming more and more ungovernable, and the interdependence of black and white along the labour and business fronts respectively meant that separate development was a delusion.

Historical events also expedited apartheid’s demise. While the Cold War between the West and East lasted, it was convenient for the apartheid regime to claim to be fighting communism. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union, that cover was blown.

Not to mention another moment of truth, when the much-vaunted apartheid army was soundly thrashed in Angola by Cuban forces and the MPLA at the famous battle of Cuito Cuanavale. Namibia’s independence from South Africa followed in 1990 and South Africa’s was not far behind.

Perhaps when the major banks abroad called in their loans to the South African government, the regime, hit in the pocket, had no choice but to close shop. Bankrupt Apartheid sorely needed a liquidator. But who would carry the white cross? F.W. de Klerk, the man who had the courage to call it a day, explains why apartheid did not work.

"The whites wanted too much land for themselves — they did not make the offer too attractive enough. Secondly, we, the different races, became economically interdependent, because of economic growth. Actually, we became an omelette. Thirdly, and maybe the most important reason, is that the majority of the blacks felt that, that was not how they wanted their political rights. So we admitted to ourselves that we had failed and we had to devise a new vision that would ensure justice for all." Noble words, but not the whole truth.

Die Groot Krokodil (the big crocodile) P.W. Botha, prime minister from 1978-1984 and executive president from 1984-1989, started the liquidation process. When he gave his "crossing the Rubicon speech" in 1985, the expectation was that the moribund apartheid policy would end. The Big Crocodile, however, developed cold feet.

Instead, he sought to place conditions on Mandela for his freedom, seeking to wrest the moral high ground from him. Either Mandela renounced violence, thereby breaking ranks with the ANC, or refused to renounce violence, thereby confirming his commitment to "terrorism" and the justification for his continued incarceration.

Mandela rejected the offer. In his reply, read out at a mass rally in Soweto by his daughter Zindzi, then a teenager, he refused to negotiate his freedom and pledged to the people that his freedom was inextricably linked to theirs.

When P.W. Botha had a stroke in January 1989, he stubbornly clung to power, until he was pushed out by his successor F. W. de Klerk, who started a chain of events that culminated in the unconditional release of Mandela.

Before then, there had been several contracts between the ANC, managed by the revered Oliver Tambo, and the apartheid regime, as well as several top level meetings with Mandela himself.

The events that unfolded after his release and the subsequent unbanning of all liberation movements are well documented. To his credit, F.W. de Klerk, in one fell swoop, unravelled everything and convinced the fearful whites that he was in control of the political process. It was simply the right thing to do. Up to this day, there are right-wingers who see him as a traitor. After the momentous February 11 release, negotiations after negotiations followed between all parties, interspersed with violence, leading to a new constitution and the first multi-racial elections on April 27, 1994.

De Klerk and Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 but even that has been contentious as De Klerk was seen as backing Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party in a low-intensity war against the ANC that claimed several hundred black lives in the run-up to negotiations — an action calculated to weaken the ANC.

Change, but for whom?

Twenty years on, how is South Africa doing? Politically, it has a thriving democracy, with one of the finest constitutions on the planet. There have been regular elections every five years. Democracy has taken root amidst the rule of law. The contestation for power within and without political parties rages democratically with occasional fireworks.

Gradually, South Africa has become a normal country where blacks and whites engage freely even though racial undercurrents simmer.

Some psychological scarring and trauma remain among blacks, although for whites, who have been freed from their demons, it is a breath of fresh air, especially when Armageddon did not happen as they had feared.

The country has remained fairly prosperous and well managed by a black government such that it is often said that whites have never had it so good — shedding their erstwhile pariah status and becoming accepted into the community of nations, with expanded business opportunities.

Today, ironically, white South Africa is more popular in other African countries than a black South Africa bristling with xenophobia.

With all the major economic pillars of the country firmly in white hands, the black majority has had to rely on the government to save their economic souls. It has not been easy. A sophisticated "First World" system built on the back of cheap black labour was only going to be sustained by a well-educated populace.

This had to be accelerated amidst the tensions that came with continued resistance on the economic front — 80 percent of blacks rule the politics, 10 percent of whites rule the economics. Economic dominance was facilitated by apartheid politics. At the end of the day, all politics boil down to bread.

Economic apartheid

In the euphoria of political freedom, many have forgotten the fundamental reason for slavery, oppression, subjugation, discrimination and apartheid — the economic. Much as African countries obtained independence from their colonial masters, the systems left in place and their management has ensured that wealth from these countries continue to flow upwards to the North. South Africa is the continent’s economic powerhouse but the size of its economy is equal to Finland or the State of Ohio in the USA.

Its huge reserves of natural resources, however, feeds the West. Within this powerhouse, 95 percent of the economy is owned by white South Africa. A cursory look at the shareholding structure on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange will reveal that blacks are not dining. Only a few politically blessed ones have their noses in there.

Then there is kith and kin economics practised by big companies in Europe and America who command big slices of the shareholding of major South African companies.

Another look at the juicy bits of the economy reveal distressing realities — 80 percent of blacks occupy less than 20 percent of professions, be it lawyers, accountants or doctors. In business, blacks hang on to the fringes. There is a disturbing absence of blacks in the value chain of most businesses. Huge numbers work the bottom as hewers of wood.

No wonder the trickle-down effect has been huge squalid informal settlements in the midst of opulence. Any threat of changing the situation is met with threats of capital flight back to the North and job losses for the wretched.

So why is economic apartheid not being fought vigorously as political apartheid? Part of the reason may be the free market system that rules the world, weighted in favour of race, warts and all.

Whose money and network ensures that a race will remain at the top of the food chain? It is so with South Africa. Property rights was the most important concern of whites as part of the negotiated settlement to a new South Africa. It is enshrined in the constitution. So the tinkering goes on endlessly 20 years after Mandela’s physical freedom, ensuring that 84 percent of the country’s land remains with 10 percent of the whites.

Successes

Some successes have been cited with respect to improvements in black lives. Millions of South Africans get their basic water needs satisfied for free. The number of households with electricity has shot up from 50 percent to 80 percent.

The banking system has expanded to embrace the black underclass — 63 percent of the population have bank accounts as against 45 percent 20 years ago. And 86 percent of households have mobile phones. There is an expanding black middle class. Most of these improvements, however, are cosmetic. They have little relation to the net worth of blacks or black participation in the economy.

The catch is, all this good news comes from a growing economy that has expanded black consumers and debtors but not black owners of the factors of production and black creditors. The wealth that is created is not circulating among blacks.

Shared poverty and debt is!

Thus South Africa has become the world champion of inequalities, overtaking Brazil in the process. Education is on the decline in black areas with deteriorating results. The achievement of distinctions in Matric Exams (after 12 years of education) is overwhelmingly white. Most whites can afford to attend the best schools and secure the best tuition.

The official unemployment rate is 30 percent, and overwhelmingly black. What is more, 5,7 million South Africans are HIV-positive, out of a population of 48 million, and the 5,7 million is made up of mostly black people, burdening a creaking public health system. Most whites enjoy medical insurance in first-rate hospitals.

Stomach first

The question remains — 20 years from today, will economic apartheid be defeated? Will there be the same local and international support for the eradication of economic apartheid? South Africa will need another Mandela.

The political one is heading for the sunset, sadly the economic one is nowhere on the horizon.

Interestingly, black people with political power in South Africa have not shown the same kind of zeal. It has been a case of stomach first. There has been a flourish of hungry entrepreneurs who have given birth to "tenderpreneurs". Access to political power has bestowed the right to give huge government tenders and contracts to friends and relatives with no capacity to execute.

Such tenders are simply subcontracted, mostly to white companies with the capacity to deliver. Conversely, huge kickbacks are received. It is taxpayer’s money that blacks feed on, not the creation of value in the marketplace.

And the politicians preside over this distribution with the "me first" mantra. Public servants have taken the cue, running side-businesses related to their sphere of influence.

No wonder inequalities in South Africa are found not only among the races but between blacks as well.

And where does that leave the ordinary black? In hell?

There has been talk about nationalisation of mines, spearheaded by the vociferous leader of the ANC Youth League, Julius Malema. At 28 years of age, his bulging waistline and lavish lifestyle belies his roots. Susan Shabangu, the outspoken minister of mines, has declared that such nationalisation will not occur in her lifetime.

Some ANC bigwigs find the topic uncomfortable, including the South African Communist Party, an alliance partner of the ANC. In all this, the president of the country, Jacob Zuma, stays mum. — NewAfrican.

Labels: NELSON MANDELA, NEOLIBERALISM

posted by MrK @ 5:33 PM