 |
|
|
|
Tue. Aug. 13, 2002
|
|
|
Politics in depth > Africa > Politics & Economy
|
|
|
|
|
|
Post-Apartheid South Africa
From Heroic Struggle to Struggle
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Squatter settlements under Apartheid |
I remember that day. I was playing cricket with friends in the rural countryside and we decided to abandon the game to watch the event on television. Many struggled to hold tears at bay as Impala jets dipped low over the Union Buildings in Pretoria, South Africa. It was May 10th, 1994, when the first democratically elected President was being sworn in. The feeling was beyond words; the pride, the victory… Apartheid was finally defeated.
The revolutionary struggle for liberation in South Africa was a combination of non-violent and violent confrontations, strikes, boycotts and international solidarity. Nelson Mandela was elected President and his party, the African National Congress (ANC), allied with the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), promised momentous changes for the dispossessed masses of this rich nation on the Southern tip of Africa.
Widespread violence and destruction were avoided. Given the seeming impregnability of apartheid, its collapse and the ANC victory was astounding. As one commentator, John Saul put it:
South Africa has been able to realize and to stabilize the shift to a constitutionally premised and safely institutionalized democratic order – making peace without suffering the crippling backlash from the right wing, both Black and White, that many had predicted and without suffering the collapse into chaos or dictatorship that some had seen to be threatened by the establishment of majority rule. Moreover, this political stability was sustained through the five years of Mandela’s presidency, reconfirmed by the very mundaneness of the 1999 election, and has carried unscathed into the Thabo Mbeki presidency. A cause for celebration, surely, on a continent where apparently lesser contradictions have proven far difficult to resolve.
The struggle for freedom was indeed tremendous and worthy of admiration. It continues to be celebrated throughout the world. South Africa has become synonymous, especially in the Arab world, with Nelson Mandela and, in some circles, with Nelson Mandela and Sheikh Ahmed Deedat, the founder of the Islamic Propagation Center International (IPCI).
The days of being restricted from all facilities that were boldly marked “Whites only” were over. No more did we have to tolerate being called “kaffirs,” “coolies” or “bushmen” (a derogatory reference to Blacks, Indians and Coloreds respectively). But there were greater challenges. Millions of South Africans were unemployed and homeless; many more were hungry and subject to a host of diseases and illnesses.
|
| Demonstrations against Apartheid in the 1960s |
The ANC had used a revolutionary and socialist rhetoric in its struggle against White rule. Mandela spoke of “the need for some sort of socialism to enable our people to catch up with the advanced countries of the world and to overcome the legacy of poverty.” The new government promised that “The engine of growth in the economy of a developing non-racial and non-sexist South Africa should be the growing satisfaction of the basic needs of the impoverished and deprived majority of our people. We thus call for a programme of Growth through Redistribution in which redistribution acts as a spur to growth and in which the fruits of growth are redistributed to satisfy basic needs.”
Ironically, the ANC soon dispensed with talk of socialism and, in 1996, announced that privatization was the official policy of the ANC. Also in this year the ANC abandoned its people and service delivery friendly program, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP).
The conservative neo-liberal macroeconomic policy of GEAR was embraced. This corporate friendly policy involves cuts in social spending, concessions to foreign investment and the privatization of essential public services, among other things. Taxes on the rich are cut, exchange controls and tariffs protecting unionized South African workers from imports from sweat shops were dropped. This has been described, in many circles, as one of the biggest assaults on South Africa’s working class population.
Coming to terms with such a reality is certainly difficult, especially for the majority of marginalized people. The struggle has indeed been a romanticized one and people have found it difficult to be critical of the former “liberators.” Understandably, many have become tired of struggling.
But recently the poor began to revolt, especially against the governmental policy of evictions from the public housing of those who cannot afford to pay their rent and the cut off or denial of essential services such as water, electricity and healthcare.
The consequences of government policies have been deadly. Ashwin Desai, a prominent political commentator and sociologist, states the matter starkly in his new book We are the Poors:
By 2002 over 6 million South Africans were HIV positive and without any access to the lifesaving medication that, even a not completely rabid neo-liberal budget, could safely satisfy. People were aghast at a comment made by the President’s spokesperson that medicines that prevented mother-to-child transmission of the virus were undesirable because of the healthy orphans it left the state to deal with. The majority of the population is living on less than R140 (about $15) per month. One in four Black children does not have enough to eat everyday. Only 3% of arable land had been redistributed and much of that had been given to Black commercial farmers and not to landless peasants. Over a million people had been disconnected from water because they couldn’t pay; 40, 000 children were dying from diarrhea caused by dirty water each year. Cholera returned with a vengeance, infecting over a 100, 000 people in Kwa-Zulu Natal alone. People starved in rural areas, throngs of street-kids descended on every town to beg and prostitute themselves, petty crime soared, and the jails reached 170 percent capacity. *
Resistance is at its infancy, but will surely grow if the ANC does not respond to the cries of the poor.
|
|
|
Imraan Buccas is specialized in globalization issues and post-Apartheid South African politics. He currently teaches at the University of Durban-Westville in South Africa. He has been active in student politics in the Apartheid era and has served the Muslim Students Association. He also contributes to many Muslim community media projects and assists with educational empowerment programs for community-based organizations within South Africa. You can reach him at ibuccas@pixie.udw.ac.za
|
 |
what is this?
This widget will help you to store, organize, search, and manage your favorite online content through a range of social bookmarking services. These services permit users to save links to websites that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, but can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, or shared only inside certain networks. Authorized people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or through a search engine. Most social bookmarking services also permit their users to vote and rank public bookmarks to determine which are the best ones according to the number of votes they get.
|
 Send content to your friend |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Contact Politics in Depth
|
|
|
|
|
IslamOnline.net is not responsible for the content of external linked Web sites.
|
|
|
|
|
