South Africa: Storm clouds over the Rainbow Nation
Henry George
The rise of Nelson Mandela and the ANC in 1994 and the end of the malevolence of apartheid in South Africa was meant to usher in a new era of social justice and racial equality in a nation in a continent that had never known either.
There were great hopes for the future, with many sure that the creation of a political ecosystem that relied on democracy and the removal of discriminatory laws and regulations would be a sure-fire recipe for success, which would be fair to each group on South Africa and would be guaranteed to lift up those who had been underrepresented politically and who had underperformed economically.
To say that this has not happened is an understatement. The rulers who govern South Africa today are classic examples of the archetypal extractive elite, who use the power of their office to extract power, prestige, influence and wealth for themselves and their close associates, be it family, friends or loyal politicians. It is political tribalism with an added layer of acquisitive moral corruption. And the people it hurts most are of course those the ANC claims to stand for.
The ANC has consistently promised economic prosperity and social justice since 1994. It had delivered neither. South Africa today is in a worse position than it worse position than it was 23 years ago. It should surprise no-one; when Marxism (as the ANC avowedly is) meets racial demagoguery it is never a recipe for success, for anyone, whatever their skin-colour. The gains made in giving the black South African population its political rights and extending to them their inherent natural rights like freedom of movement and association have been vastly overshadowed by increasing economic stagnation due in no small part to the mandatory quota system imposed on employers and decline, the decline of the countrys infrastructure which has led to protests over poor sanitation and drinking water and an increasingly unreliable electricity supply, the decline of its political institutions, the massive rise in crime and political incompetence and corruption and the massive drop in life expectancy.
To direct the increasing protests away from its own pathetic failures, the Zuma-run ANC scapegoats the large numbers of migrants in South Africa from other African countries looking for work. Attacks on black migrant workers have been on-going and increasing for over 2 years now. Added to this, the white minority have also felt the effects of the rising social tensions and the racially motivated scapegoating policies and rhetoric of South Africas governing party, with many who can afford it now living in veritable fortresses in an attempt to mitigate the greatly increased risk of deadly home invasions.
Mandelas dream of a harmonious and utopian post-racial nation, if it was ever as real as many hoped, is now dead, and has been for some time. The issue of crime alone is enough to consign all the hopes of the 90s to the landfill of history. If the sanctity placed on an individuals life is the barometer by which we measure how civilised a society is, then South Africa now falls far short. John Simpson admitted a while back that South Africa was (and is) so violent that it was tied with Iraq and Colombia for one of the most violent nations on earth. It became so violent that the ANC imposed a blackout on the release of crime statistics in order that its credibility as a government whose first duty to its people is to protect them from crime would not be undermined. The fact that this action had the opposite effect points to the ineptitude of the people in power. Statistics are now released once a year, and even then it is hard to gauge just how bad the levels of different types of crime are.
First, one must ignore the SAPSs (South Africa Police Service) tactic of playing down the levels of crime by comparing low-crime rate areas in South Africa with high crime-rate areas in other countries. One example is that of comparing Pretoria with Washington D.C.. Back in 2001, the BBC ran a story on the shocking rise in baby rapes, a fact that would be awful enough on its own if it werent for the fact that a woman is raped in South Africa every 26 seconds. Meanwhile, this estimate provided by the People Opposing Women Abuse group is disputed by the SAPS, who says it is more like 36 seconds. It is estimated that 40% of women will be raped in their lifetimes, that only 1 in 4 rapes are reported, and that 14% of those charged of child rape are convicted, while for adult rape the rate drops to 3%. As an aside, the phenomenon of child gang-rape has been given the sobriquet of Jackrolling. Western feminists, where are you?
The homicide rate meanwhile is just as shocking. From April 2004 to March 2005, 18,793 people were murdered in South Africa (population at the time 43 million). In the high-crime United States (then population of 299,398,00016) the country saw 16,740 homicides. Put another way, South Africa had sixty homicides per 100,000 people; the US approximately six. To add an extra layer of context, the Sharpeville Massacre of blacks, by police, protesting the pass laws in 1960 saw 69 people gunned down. That number of people was almost equal to those killed every day from 2004-05. The murder rate then dropped slightly (nothing to be celebrated here) but shot up again last year: in the twelve months to March 2016, there were 18,673 homicides, a rise of 4.9% over the previous year, up from 17,805 murders. This equates to over 51 murders a day last year.
The writer is a historian
