The latest episode of xenophobic attacks seems to be
dying down in South Africa.
A few weeks ago some South Africans in protest over
their having to forfeit economic opportunities to African immigrants, went on a
bloody rampage that accounted for at least seven people and dozens of injuries.
Pictures and footage of the bloodied victims with
deep gashes to all parts of their bodies or writhing in agony as flames
consumed them or literally being stalked and stabbed to death by their
persecutors, raised an international uproar.
Understandably the roots of this flare up are driven
by the deep economic fissures in South African society, a legacy of almost half
a century of apartheid policies, which denied Africans access to land,
suppressed their wages to make mining and industry more profitable and allowed them less than basic
social services.
"The net effect of these policies continue to reverberate through society two decades after majority rule was adopted....
In negotiating this new dispensation, former
President Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) were well
aware of the economic divide. A divide particularly galling for the black South
Africans because it was a situation that did not come about by mistake but by
design.
In fact the enormity of the task to even up society
must have been at the back of Mandela’s mind when he said, “After climbing a great hill, one only
finds that there are many more hills to climb.”
As it is after 20 years
in power the ANC has barely dented the huge inequality they inherited from the
white minority government.
According to Statistics
South Africa, the unemployment rate stands at 24.3 percent with blacks bearing
the brunt of these woeful statistics with nearly three in ten blacks between 15
and 64 years jobless.
In addition white
capital controls 70 percent of all land in the country, a figure largely
unchanged from 1994 when Pretoria embarked on a distribution policy that
despite the great demand has stuttered badly missing all targets.
The idea to maintain
the status quo after 1994 albeit with an official determination to redress the
inequalities, was a good one but the execution has fallen way short of
expectation.
The idea was, instead
of dismantling the white grip on the economy, let the most developed private
sector in Africa continue doing what it was doing – creating wealth, and
through official and moral intervention begin a process of redistribution while
not upsetting the apple cart will ensure the resources needed to finance
education and other social services and develop infrastructure into the
marginalised rural areas.
However the execution
of this project run into two major shortfalls.
One, that the
philosophy that grew this immense wealth did not go away with the ascendance to
power of the ANC. Through a combination of inertia and deliberate subversion
--- including co-opting a new politically connected black elite, the
redistribution was slowed or even halted.
Secondly, the growing
corruption among the black elite means that resources are once again being
concentrated in a few hands rather than being spread out to the majority.
Education, health and
infrastructure necessary to improve opportunities for the majority blacks are
qualitatively poor even for newly developed projects as public officials have
corrupted the procurement process and paid little heed to value for money.
The combination of a
legacy of inequality, being perpetuated by an increasingly corrupt bureaucracy
whose members are not averse to flouting their new found wealth around their
poorer cousins was always going to be a recipe for disaster.
They say revolution or
upheaval does not come from poor conditions but more from unmet expectations,
the bloodletting --- while unjustifiable, is an expression of this
disappointment and sense of betrayal.
"Stranger things have happened but South Africa going the way of Zimbabwe is, after the recent spate of bloodletting, not too farfetched a prospect....
The forceful redistribution of land was a last gasp
effort by a growingly unpopular government to stave off the pressure of
opposition. Cloaked as an economic solution by gutting Zimbabwe’s industrial
class Robert Mugabe brought the economy to its knees, suffering the ignominy of
abandoning the hyperinflated, local currency for the US dollar in effect
surrendering his country’s monetary policy.
They say nationalism is the last resort of the
scoundrel. It is not unthinkable that with its waning popularity and its back
against the wall the ANC may resort to such underhand methods to hang on to
power.
Now that would be one more thing for Mandela to turn
over his grave about.
