South Africa: the ANC after Nelson Mandela

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/15/south-africa-the-anc-nelson-mandela

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South Africa is a hard country to govern. Its size, its ethnic and racial divisions, its paradoxical combination of wealth and vulnerability to outside economic forces, and its history of violence and repression all make the task of running it an unenviable one.

The British fought a debilitating war to establish a state that would be a loyal dominion of the empire, but in the end lost political although not economic control of it to Afrikaners who recast it to reflect their own narrow aspirations. Then Afrikaners in turn found that managing this complex and far-flung country was beyond their abilities, and that their readiness to use physical force made the problem more rather than less intractable.

They conceded power to the African National Congress, if the truth is to be told, because their formula for rule was falling apart, and the ANC was the only organisation that had the will and the motivation to take on the task of government. A growing moral awareness also played its part, and so did the presence of Nelson Mandela, there when he was needed to ease the country through the transition. But Afrikaner desperation was the real key to what happened.

The difficult question now, as Mandela is laid to rest, is to what extent the ANC government is heading toward its own version of the impasse in which its predecessors found themselves. It is democratically elected by a majority of all citizens, which they were not. It is genuinely, if not perfectly, multiracial, which they were not. It has, in principle, the interests of all South Africa's inhabitants equally at heart, which they did not. These are its large, and properly celebrated, advantages.

Yet the ANC's formula for rule looks increasingly inadequate. There is, first, the almost royal process by which the president emerges, chosen within the party after manoeuvres and bargaining between tribal and union blocs. This has given South Africa, following Mandela, two less than outstanding presidents, the secretive and suspicious Thabo Mbeki, and the expansive, genial, but incompetent Jakob Zuma, who faces allegations of misuse of public funds. The party as a whole is open to the criticism that its structure, influenced by the South African Communist party, reflects the pernicious doctrine of democratic centralism. This is supposed to mean total freedom in discussion, then absolute obedience to the majority's will. As usually perverted, it means that decisions are made by a small group at the top and passed down, giving only the appearance of participation by members.

Direct elections for the president, giving the population at large a say, might make it more likely that the country gets the best leader available. Ultimately, a breakup of the ANC, leading to alternation in power between well-matched, ideologically distinct parties would be the long-term solution. But such possibilities are a long way off. The defects of presidents and of party might matter less if the ANC had delivered the better economic times it promised. But while many things have improved, the overall situation for most people is dire, with high levels of unemployment, poverty and violent crime. The economic trap from which the government has yet to devise an escape arises from the contradiction between the need to create jobs for those without work and the assertiveness of those in work, reinforced by the power of unions long allied with the liberation movement.

Hence the ANC's failure to move its people out of backward sectors such as subsistence farming into factories producing for export, and its soft attitude toward the international corporations that dominate its natural resources. One consequence is a ramping up of elements of public spending to a point that may not be sustainable for much longer. Again this comes back to politics: if the ANC leadership had more moral authority, it could ask for more from the South African working class. Presidential incompetence, party rigidity and ineffective economic policy all suggest the ANC is very much in need of a new start.

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