South African democracy needs another renewal
Joe Wright, 11 December 2013
The end of apartheid ended decades of sanctions against South Africa. The National Party, which ruled South Africa from 1948 until 1994 and introduced apartheid, segregated the country from the world as well as its people. When Mandela entered office in 1994, South Africa was emerging from three years of deep recession.
Since then, South Africa’s economy has essentially doubled in size, growing at rates of roughly 3.2% a year. Clean running water and electricity have been introduced to many more regions and segregation in schools has ended. The promise of political equality Mandela and the ANC first laid out in their Freedom Charter of 1955 has largely been realised. The ANC, however, must now pay more attention to its other promise: ‘The people shall share in the country’s wealth’.
The rampant unemployment among black people created by white minority rule is a particular example. Since 1995, unemployment has increased from roughly 17%, up to the mid-twenties where it has fluctuated for more than a decade. Youth unemployment currently stands at just under half. The chance of job seeker finding a job within a year is 41.7% according to the UN International Labour Organisation.
The gap between rich and poor is another. According to the Economist ‘Africa’s Gini coefficient—the best-known measure of inequality, in which 0 is the most equal and 1 the least—was 0.63 in 2009. In 1993 it was 0.59. After 18 years of full democracy, South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world.’ Ending apartheid itself has not addressed South Africa’s underlying problems in education or development. Indeed, purely in terms of economics, it has only managed to create a black middle class and a growing white lower class; the country’s problems are a little more shared between black and white. But a new kind of apartheid is emerging, between rich and poor, and physically reinforced by heavy security between wealthy areas and shanty towns.
Development of the scale expected in the years after 1994 was always going to require more time. Mandela’s role was to ensure politics took account of all people’s plights, the ANC today is responsible for acting upon them. But the pressure to do so has ebbed. Political corruption has set in with the ANC dominating elections, comfortable in relying on Mandela’s legacy to return them to office and enabling them to turn their attention more to themselves. There are some outward signs of the damage this is causing: though the country remains one of the biggest recipients of Foreign Direct Investment in Africa, it is once again struggling to attract the levels that drove its growth in past years; political corruption seems to be deterring investors and damaged business confidence.
The electorate are taking notice. The Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa’s official opposition headed by Helen Zille, was the only party to receive increased support in the 2009 elections. The DA now holds 67 of 400 seats in the African National Assembly, up from 50. Hopefully this points toward the beginnings of a second phase political renewal in which political complacency is punished at the ballot box.