Anton Harber reviews the progress of the new South Africa now that it has grown from babyhood to become a toddler
Six hundred days is not an awfully long time. A baby of that age — 20 months — might just be starting to use simple words, and would only recently have started to walk. It would still be teething.
Next week will see the 600th day since the new government was inaugurated — but it has moved beyond the stage of a baby taking its first strides. Twenty months is just about enough time to start seeing how the infant new South Africa is taking shape.
The dominant images of 1995 are, for once, not images of terrible violence and bloodshed. These were present, notably in incidents of crime. But mostly this was a year in which individuals, groups and organisations grappled with change — the difficulties, the complexities, the frustrations, the traumas … and the joy when it proved successful.
It was too soon to count many successes. It was a time in which South Africans were forced to face up to the harsh realities of change: that one million houses cannot be built in a year; that the process is difficult, often frustrating and only occasionally fruitful; that we lack skills and experience; that the magnitude of the problems we inherited surpasses our worst imaginings; that new South Africans can be as incompetent and as corrupt, or just as mediocre, as old South Africans … These were reasons — or excuses — used and used up this year, with varying degrees of
South Africans also revelled in the changes. Every aspect of our society was being recast — labour policy, penal policy, health policy, transport policy, broadcasting … There was no area left untouched by the project set out in our interim Constitution: to create a more open, more human and largely social democratic society. Undoubtedly, some great leaps forward were taken, such as in labour policy, land policy and justice. There were also some marked hiatuses: education being one example. Most significant this year, though, was not the successes and failures (see accompanying scorecards), but the fact that every individual and every institution had to grapple with change and confront their most deeply-rooted beliefs and habits.
1995 was the year in which we had to confront what we could and could not achieve, but most of all it was the year in which we all wrestled with the change going on around us.
These five vignettes are chosen to capture elements of that change.
1 Television watchers this week saw a squatter in Moffat Park, south Johannesburg, on his knees, his arms spread out, pleading with those who had arrived to destroy his home. “We merely ask for alternative land. They should not treat us as animals,” one squatter said.
Various defences have been raised by those responsible for this action against squatters. It was done legally, in terms of a supreme court order (just what the previous government would have said). You have to protect property rights, they said.
None of this negates the effect of seeing people’s homes — however ramshackle — being destroyed by a state that has promisd, and not yet delivered, thousands of new houses, nor opened up land for these people.
Under the old regime, Judge Richard Goldstone handed down a landmark decision which prevented evictions under the Group Areas Act unless the authorities provided alternative accommodation. It was a decision which effectively killed this horrendous Act.
This year there has been no such caution. In the tough battle between homelessness and the prevention of land invasions, it was the homeless and powerless who were losing.
2 The tall, graceful President Nelson Mandela standing with the diminutive Percy Yutar, the two having shared lunch, made a striking
In his inauguration speech, 600 days ago, Mandela laid out two priorities for his new government: reconciliation and the improvement of living conditions for the needy — in that order. It was the rare wisdom of Mandela which put reconciliation at the top of the list, contrary to populist expectations.
Mandela has been extraordinarily successful at the first task — though at substantial cost. His coup de grace was to visit Hendrik Verwoerd’s widow, Betsie, for tea in the miserable “homeland” of Orania. Far-right-wing leaders, having to be polite, respectful and pay obeisance to the new president, were reduced to a meek bunch of eccentric
The vision of Mandela shaking hands with quaint little Betsie was no longer horrifying, though it was still surprising. But it was not an empty gesture — it was a political triumph for the president signalling a clear victory over the right-wing fanatics.
Not so when the president decided to invite for lunch his former prosecutor, Percy Yutar, a man more hated than most during the Rivonia trial for his determination to see Mandela receive the maximum penalty. Unlike the Verwoerd encounter, this meeting served no political purpose, except to rehabilitate an individual and boost his dubious claim that he was responsible for Mandela not getting the death sentence.
It was a sign that reconciliation can go a step too far. It was also a reminder that it was wise to put reconciliation ahead of social reform in April 1994, and perhaps in April 1995. By April 1996, the priorities will probably be reversed.
3 William Makgoba arrived at his first University of the Witwatersrand council meeting wearing an Arab keffiyeh. Apparently, vice-chancellor Bob Charlton was so startled he forgot to introduce his new deputy. The flamboyant professor and the university hierarchy were off to a rough start.
No event this year captures the difficulties of transformation as clearly as the battle of Wits. No incident has so clearly brought out tensions simmering below the surface of this changing country, pitting Africanists against liberals and calling into question issues of standards, the independence of institutions such as this, and the role of race.
Race is the unspoken issue in many such events. Wits brought it out into the open in a conflict which focused attention on all the toughest issues of change.
Wits has always been a barometer of South African conflict, giving early signs of the direction our society is taking. It still is.
4 Gauteng premier Tokyo Sexwale emerged from the home of the widow and orphan of a victim of a terrible hijacking and said it might be an idea to consider a referendum on the death
This prospect was quickly dismissed by the government, but it did bring to the fore the battle between the populism of a charismatic politician, and the sense of justice the African National Congress brought with it to the government. It is a central dilemma of democracy: if the people want to string up criminals, will a government facing an election hold out against it?
Sexwale was looking for a quick-fix response to hide the reality: that there is no easy solution to crime in a country with high unemployment and a poor police force.
5 “Keep the last carriage on the gravy train for us”, read one poster during the September nurses’ strike in Gauteng. The focus of attention was on nurses toyi-toying over the grave of Florence Nightingale and the patients who were suffering as a result.
It was a truly new South African conflict. Nurses, for long underpaid, had not seen their expectations met — or even adequately listened to — under the new government. They had received increases, weighted (in a proper new South African fashion) towards the least well-off — but they also saw their colleagues across the corridor earning more than they. This was the result of inherited inequalities from the multiple structures of
The government told them they had to return to work. The authorities had added up the figures, and it was clear they could not afford to give the nurses what they wanted. For example, just to give the 94 percent of nurses who are women the same housing rights as men would cost R1-billion. The government had spent R400-million on this, and had no more to give.
The government insisted the nurses use the proper channels to air their grievances. The nurses said these were old South African structures and were flawed.
If this one can’t be solved, said health director general Olive Shisana, then we are all in trouble: “It’s the problem of the whole