South Africa Now And Into The Future

By Kole  Omotoso

Recently the African National Congress concluded its five yearly elective conference by re-electing Jacob Zuma as the leader of the party and consequently of the country. There was no surprise in this. His opposing candidate, Kgalema Mothlanthe hardly declared his intention to contest the position, nor did he campaign, leaving his supporters in limbo. He lost his deputy presidency position to Cyril Ramaphosa, variously described as billionaire and millionaire businessman. It is this particular election that has attracted the greatest number of comments. Why did the ANC elect Ramaphosa as deputy president of the party and sometime soon, deputy president of the country? What is he coming to do? What is expected of him?

South Africa is perceived internationally as being in difficult times. There had been no clarity about its economic future given the rampant mouthing of nationalisation by the champagne left such as Julius Malema, former president of the ANC Youth League. There have been downward ratings of the country by the self-declared raters of the world, outside of the country. And South Africa’s membership of BRICKS – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa –  is seen sometimes as a joke and at other times as some concession to African sensitivities.

Within the country, there is a lot of anger and frustration, disrespect for the President and frustration at the performance of the ANC government. There is corruption and ineptitude and lack of competence and disarray in the areas of education and skills development and training. Taxation of those in employment is causing anger because taxes get higher, cost of living rises and on the basis of five million tax payers, social grants and welfare programmes care for 11 million people, mainly black. And these black people ensure that the ANC gets voted to power every four years. There are the issues of President Zuma’s personal problems of suspended corruption charges as well as the incompetence of a great number of his ministers.

Yet, South Africa contains a minority per cent of people, mainly white and recently joined by some Indians, a few Coloureds and an even fewer politically connected blacks. You arrive at the International Airport and a modern railway system, built since the end of apartheid, conveys you to Sandton in under 15 minutes in a ride that is smooth, safe, and clean and on time. The airport itself is a work of first world standard with ten luggage carousels where the Lagos international airport has two ancient and aged carousels. The financial system is sound, some would say even sounder than those in the EU countries. If you drive in Johannesburg or you travel to other provinces, you are on well-maintained roads patrolled by up-to-the-minute police men and women. So, what’s the problem then?

Nothing that has not existed before in the history of South Africa. Thabo Mbeki spoke about South Africa being a state of two nations – the rich and the poor, the rich being white and the poor being black. A few others – Indians, Coloureds, Blacks – have joined the white in the rich part of the nation. Everywhere you look the contrasts of these two nations hit you in the guts. Overcrowded schools, schools without toilets and without electricity, with broken windows and no doors in the black areas accepting 29 per cent pass mark in the national matric exams and no qualification to get them to universities. Against these we find in the white areas better-resourced, better-equipped wealthier schools scoring 100 per cent annually at the same matric examinations. At the tertiary level, the story is the same. The traditional white universities are doing fine, thank you. Wits, University of Cape Town, the University of Stellenbosch are all sorted and admitting the children of the rich blacks and increasing the gap between the poor blacks and the rich blacks. Overcrowded township schools are being abandoned by those who can and teachers remaining in these schools are unmotivated and uncaring about their responsibilities to the township students. Miners are on strike and ready to die asking for more money. Farm workers are on strike in the Western Cape, demanding the equivalent of two dollars a day instead of the 50 cents they are paid at present. The police and the security coercive organisations do not shy away from dealing with these workers just as the apartheid government dealt with those who protested against its policies of long ago.

Both the government and the party know that the economic policies needed in the country must be pro-poor who have no education, pro-working class that has no skills, pro-rural people who have no infrastructure, pro-black who have no resources to fall back on unlike their white fellow citizens and pro-emerging black business without any guarantors and sponsors except the ANC government.

Yes, the government and the ANC make the usual noises except that there is no political will to make the change that would increase the number of blacks coming into the economy, reduce the gap between the rich and the poor and educate the previously disadvantaged blacks to avoid a future of continued poverty.

One needs to be careful which nation one is looking at when one arrives in South Africa – the first world of ease of travel and wealth of options? Or the third world of deprivations, lack of infrastructure and of hope?

.This article originally appeared in TheNEWS magazine of 04 February 2013