A continental review body has warned that crime, poverty, unemployment and the ruling African National Congress party’s domination threatens South Africa’s post-apartheid democracy, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.
The paper said a 300-page report by the African Peer Review Mechanism submitted to President Thabo Mbeki’s government three weeks ago found that ”crime is one of the most difficult of the many challenges facing South Africa in the post-apartheid era”.
The high level of violent crime — partly fuelled by unemployment — was discouraging investment and causing many skilled people to leave the country.
The government’s black economic empowerment programme had enriched too few people too much and encouraged politicians to go into business, the Sunday Times quoted the report as saying.
It also listed rape against women, violence at schools, the immense gap between the rich and the poor and the division of society by race and class among the problems South Africa needs to urgently tackle.
”Race relations remain brittle and sensitive. Many whites, coloureds and Indians feel alienated and marginalised. Some blacks, on the other hand, feel too little has changed,” it said.
Mbeki’s government has said the report would be made public within six months of its presentation to heads of state at an African Union summit in January.
South Africa is battling some of the highest rates of murder and rape in the world and opposition groups and the media have accused the government of failing to curb the violence.
Last month the new United States ambassador to South Africa was reported as saying few people would travel to the 2010 World Cup if crime continued at current levels and that his government wanted to help work on strategies to get more police onto the streets to fight it.
The peer review mechanism is a cornerstone of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) plan under which the continent’s governments subject their policies to external scrutiny.
African leaders have acknowledged that some countries are reluctant to open up to scrutiny and so far only 25 out of 53 countries in the African Union have signed up for review. – Reuters