THREE years after the changing of the guard in Pretoria, the ease of South Africa’s transition relative to revolutionary upheavals elsewhere in the world is testimony to the remarkable political skills of President Nelson Mandela.
It also shows the fundamental solidity and decency of ordinary South Africans of every hue.
Yet, for all the talk about change, many blacks are still denied basic shelter, a square meal a day and a decent education for their children.
That the overwhelming backlog of poverty inherited from the National Partyis virtually intact is not a reflection on the African National Congress alone. It will take longer than three years to remedy the situation.
The fact that every time the ANC makes a mistake it is seized upon with glee by those who want to see a black government fail should not be used to stifle debate or blind one to the shortcomings of an elected government that has struggled to come to terms with power.
The ANC’s accountability has been weakened by the absence of a credible opposition. The last redoubt of the Inkatha Freedom Party is in the autocratic villages of KwaZulu-Natal where the chief is king. Bantu Holomisa remains little more than a curiousity item at rallies, a catchment area for the disgruntled and the flakey of the ruling party.
The Democratic Party is enormously effective for its size, mainly because it is the one party that had experience before 1994 of its political role – that of a parliamentary opposition. But it has failed to reach beyond the ghettoes of white privilege and broaden its support base.
The NP dithers between consolidating its existing base as the party of the racial minorities or becoming part of a new force with a new name that can attract blacks as well. Either way, it will not offer a real challenge outside the Western Cape in 1999.
We are thus dependent on internal democracy within the ANC because that is where the decisions of most significance will be taken.
The signs, though, are not good. The contest for the leadership – for the president of all South Africans – was conducted far out of public view. Those outside a tight circle were reduced to Kremlinology, the old science of Moscow hacks who had to count monthly public appearances of Politburo members at tractor factory openings to determine who was in or out of favour.
Reports that contenders like Cyril Ramaphosa were kneecapped out of the race were greeted with paranoia and angry retorts inside the ANC. Yet Ramaphosa’s body language told a different story.
A suggestion that this newspaper made that the presidential candidates should be subjected to primaries in which they could publicly offer themselves for election by ordinary members was shrugged off with disdain. The notion that MPs should represent constituencies, and not owe their political skins to central party lists, was quietly shelved.
An intolerance of criticism, a conformity, even a fear among some MPs in the ruling party has become noticeable. This contrasts with vocal defiance in the regions. In the Northern Province and the Free State, even in the ANC Women’s League, ordinary members have defied the edicts of the party and voted their own candidates into power.
That is an early sign that the ANC hierarchy will not have it all its own way, and that the culture of democracy that was cultivated in the trade unions and civic organizations of the Eighties has left a permanent distaste for autocracy.
But the executive, wedded to its new life of power and privilege, is unlikely to rock the boat. Of the crop of ANC ministers announced exactly three years ago, nearly all are still at their desks. Only those who have displayed disloyalty – Bantu Holomisa and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela – were given marching orders.
In the private sector, people get fired if they don’t do their job. The government appears to have adopted the tradition of appointing ministers for life. The fact that the deputy president has to do Alfred Nzo’s job and that Nkosazana Zuma has an unfailing penchant for sticking her foot into it does not seem to disqualify them from high public office.
The crime rate rockets, but the jobs of neither the Minister of Law and Order, Sidney Mufamadi, nor the Commissioner of Police, George Fivaz, are in jeopardy. We are just fed more plans, more bland reassurances and the long summer holiday for criminals continues.
There is an exodus of highly qualified professionals from Johannesburg as the country’s industrial heartland is turned into a scary swamp of fear and loathing.
The state of education should be debated as a national emergency because the system in many rural black areas is worse today than when it was called Bantu Education.
Three years on, there is a distinct lack of vision on how to defeat poverty, how to give children an education that will give them a fair chance in a competitive world, and how to turn the corner against crime.
Thabo Mbeki has expounded a splendid vision of the African renaissance. This we support as a healthy sentiment. But it is unlikely to carry the country – most South Africans are still too isolationist and are more interested in what the government is doing at home and what it can deliver to them.
Having said all that, we would like to extend our congratulations to the ANC on three years in power and wish them the wisdom to do what is right for all South Africans. We will be watching.