South Africa remains an outstanding success. It has transformed itself from dictatorship to democracy with very little violence. One has only to look at Syria or Libya (and many other countries as well) to see how this process can go very wrong. In South Africa, it went right and we should all continue to celebrate that success. This Wednesday, more than 25 million South Africans were able to vote in the country’s fifth free election and the first after Nelson Mandela’s death. The huge process was a triumphant reminder of how far the country has come. What was once an apartheid pariah state is now a beacon of hope for the rest of the world and Mandela’s leadership and tolerance have set new global standards for how politicians should seek reconciliation with their most bitter opponents.
However, there are important issues that need to be addressed. The permanent, overwhelming majority achieved by the African National Congress (ANC) is a problem. Its legitimacy as the main opposition movement throughout the apartheid period has not translated successfully into democratic politics, because institutionalising the revolution into a permanent party of government has been an open invitation to corruption and laziness. It would be better if the ANC split into two or three totally separate parties. The present sense of entitlement from the senior members of ANC is disturbing. South Africa has major problems that the ANC government has not tackled properly. Many public services are poor or simply not there, unemployment is around 36 per cent and has not come down much in more than 20 years, schools are poorly staffed and funded and South Africa is one of the fifth most unequal societies in the world.
Mandela’s successor as president, Thabo Mbeki, had said in the early 2000s that South Africa was still a country of two worlds: The first, rich and white; the second, poor and black. South Africa has come a long way, but it could still do a lot better and become a global economic leader and a moral force for good. Under the present government, that is not likely.
