Is South Africa going down the same path?

Is South Africa going down the same path?
South Africa is increasingly displaying evidence of radicalism, radicalised, rhetoric and general disenchantment. There are similarities between what’s happening today and the mood in South Africa in the 1940s – the results of which altered the country’s course, for the worse.

The Good Old Days?  

South Africa has changed a lot since the end of apartheid 22 years ago. 

Many blacks will tell you things are better for them today, and in some ways they are. Blacks and people of mixed races are free to travel wherever they want and no longer need to get passes to enter certain parts of the country.

They can vote, and they now dominate the government. They run the military and police forces. There are quota laws mandating that businesses hire non-whites first. The government has a land reform process in which it uses tax revenue to purchase land owned by white people to give to blacks. The government also builds free housing to give to blacks. And of course, there are no more “Whites Only” signs at train stations.

But most things are not better. Black-on-black crime is through the roof. In the slums, where the police fear to tread, “necklacing” is frequent. Vigilantes beat accused criminals to exhaustion before forcing vehicle tires over their shoulders, dousing them with gasoline and lighting them on fire. What is left is hardly recognizable.

So it really isn’t that astounding that growing numbers of non-white South Africans—especially the older generation that lived during apartheid—admits to a certain longing for the old days. The reasons are obvious and transcend race. South Africa’s crime rate is among the highest in the world. Its official unemployment rate is around 26 per cent, but it is probably a lot higher. Its public institutions are corrupt, and law and order is failing.

Beyond the police force, Transparency International found that 74 per cent of people think all public officials and civil servants are corrupt or extremely corrupt, while 70 per cent believe the whole political system is corrupt. 

Then there is the obviously decaying infrastructure. Regular and unplanned power blackouts are now just part of South African life. Generation and transmission systems are all failing. What isn’t buried underground is stolen.

Sometimes the underground wires are stolen too. Tens of thousands of people inhabit suburbs that are plunged into darkness at random times. Hundreds are regularly left stranded on trains. South Africa’s well-maintained freeway system hides the dangerous, pothole-strewn secondary road grid, for which there is no money to keep up. 

Even South Africa’s world-class mining industry is collapsing. Once the world’s biggest gold producer by far, 22 years later, it is now fifth on the list and falling. International investors don’t want to build mines in a country that constantly talks about taking them away from “rich whites” to give to blacks.  

Meanwhile, as the population has skyrocketed, agricultural production has stagnated, and is now slightly beneath 1980s levels.  

For growing numbers of South Africans, the sentiment appears to be: At least back then I had a job, it was safe, and I had food in my belly. But for others, the failure of Nelson Mandela’s “peaceful” transition to improve the life of blacks is just proof that South Africa hasn’t gone far enough. They say it is time for blacks to turn up the heat and take full control of the country.  

Popular political hatemongers like former ANC youth leader Julius Malema are attracting large numbers of followers on his party platform of seizing the land and driving all whites out of South Africa. 

What happened in the 1940’s and later
Apartheid was a system of radical segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party (NP) from 1948 to 1994. Under apartheid, the rights, associations, and movements of the majority black inhabitants and other ethnic groups were curtailed, and white minority rule was maintained.

The word apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning separateness or “the state of being apart”

The Population Registration Act of 1950, which formalised racial classification and introduced an identity card for all persons over the age of 18, specifying their racial group.

Racial segregation began in colonial times under the Dutch Empire and continued when the British took over the Cape of Good Hope.

The second pillar of grand apartheid was the Group Areas Act of 1950. Until then, most settlements had people of different races living side by side. This Act put an end to diverse areas and determined where one lived according to race. Each race was allotted its own area, which was used in later years as a basis of forced removal.

This strategy was in part adopted from "left-over" British rule that separated different racial groups after they took control of the Boer republics in the Anglo-Boer war.

Legislation classified inhabitants into four racial groups, “Black”, “White”, “Coloured” and “Indian”. Coloured and Indian were divided into several sub-classifications.

Official teams or Boards were established to come to a conclusion on those people whose race was unclear. This caused difficulty, especially for coloured people, separating their families when members were allocated different races.

This created the black-only "townships" or "locations", where blacks were relocated to their own towns.

From 1960 to 1983, 3.5 million non-white South Africans were removed from their homes, and forced into segregated neighbourhoods.

The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between persons of different races.

The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 banned any party subscribing to Communism. The act defined Communism and its aims so sweepingly that anyone who opposed government policy risked being labelled as a Communist. Since the law specifically stated that Communism aimed to disrupt racial harmony, it was frequently used to gag opposition to apartheid. Disorderly gatherings were banned, as were certain organisations that were deemed threatening to the government.

Immorality Act of 1950 made sexual relations with a person of a different race a criminal offence.

In 1950s, a series of uprising and protests was met with the banning of opposition and imprisoning of anti-apartheid leaders. As unrest spread the military were called to suppress the uprising.

The Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act of 1951 allowed the government to demolish black shanty town slums and forced white employers to pay for the construction of housing for those black workers who were permitted to reside in cities otherwise reserved for whites.

The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 created separate government structures for blacks and whites and was the first piece of legislation to support the government's plan of separate development in the Bantustans.

Under the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953, municipal grounds could be reserved for a particular race, creating, among other things, separate beaches, buses, hospitals, schools and universities. Signboards such as "whites only" applied to public areas, even including park benches. Blacks were provided with services greatly inferior to those of whites, and, to a lesser extent, to those of Indian and coloured people.

Education was segregated by the 1953 Bantu Education Act, which crafted a separate system of education for black South African students and was designed to prepare black people for lives as a labouring class.

The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 created separate government structures for blacks and whites and was the first piece of legislation to support the government's plan of separate development in the Bantustans.

The government tightened pass laws compelling blacks to carry identity documents, to prevent the immigration of blacks from other countries. To reside in a city, blacks had to be in employment there. Until 1956 women were for the most part excluded from these pass requirements, as attempts to introduce pass laws for women were met with fierce resistance.

The Promotion of Black Self-Government Act of 1959 entrenched the NP policy of nominally independent "homelands" for blacks. So-called "self–governing Bantu units" were proposed, which would have devolved administrative powers, with the promise later of autonomy and self-government. It also abolished the seats of white representatives of black South Africans and removed from the rolls the few blacks still qualified to vote.

The Bantu Investment Corporation Act of 1959 set up a mechanism to transfer capital to the homelands to create employment there.

In 1959 separate universities were created for black, coloured and Indian people. Existing universities were not permitted to enroll new black students.

In November 1962, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 1761, a non-binding resolution establishing the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid and called for imposing economic and other sanctions on South Africa. This made it increasingly difficult for the government to maintain the regime.

Legislation of 1967 allowed the government to stop industrial development in "white" cities and redirect such development to the "homelands".

The Black Homeland Citizenship Act of 1970 marked a new phase in the Bantustan strategy. It changed the status of blacks to citizens of one of the ten autonomous territories. The aim was to ensure a demographic majority of white people within South Africa by having all ten Bantustans achieve full independence.

Interracial contact in sport was frowned upon, but there were no segregator sports laws.

Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 required the use of Afrikaans and English on an equal basis in high schools outside the homelands.


The end of Apartheid
2nd February 1990 State President F.W. de Klerk announces the begging of negotiated transition to end apartheid. The speech announces the unbanning of the African National Congress, Pan Africanist Congress and the Communist Party, the release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners, and the end of the state of emergency.11th February 1990 Nelson Mandela is released from prison after serving 27 years.

In January 1991 the minister of education, Piet Claase announced that segregation of whites and blacks in state-run schools will end.

9th January 1991 – Black children are admitted to schools previously reserved for whites only.

1st February 1991 - At the signing of a national peace accord F. W. de Klerk, State President of South Africa, promises to end all apartheid legislation and to create a new multi-racial constitution.

12th March 1991- The government tables a white paper to end racial discrimination in landownership and occupation.

14th March 1991 - Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, dubbed the "Mugger of the Nation", is found guilty and sentenced to 6 years imprisonment for her involvement in the death of 14-year-old Stompie Moeketsi. The sentence will never be carried out.

28th June 1991 – The Population Registration Act, in terms of which South Africans were classified into racial groups, is repealed.

30th June 1991 - The laws enforcing geographical segregation, including the Group Areas Act, the Native Land Act, the Native Trust and Land Act and the Asiatic Land Tenure Act, are repealed.

9th July 1991 – The suspension of South Africa from the International Olympic Committee is lifted.

4th September 1991 - F. W. de Klerk, State President of South Africa, announces a new constitution that will provide suffrage for black people.

3rd February 1992 – President F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress leader, are jointly awarded the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize at the Unesco headquarters in Paris.

17th March 1992 - The government holds a referendum about changing the constitution, paving the way to end apartheid. With the result being an overwhelming "yes" vote to continue negotiations to end apartheid.

23rd September 1993 - The United States Senate approves legislation lifting economic sanctions against South Africa.

10th December 1993 - President F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

27th April 1994 The multi-racial democratic elections was won by the African National Congress under Nelson Mandela.




Jacob Zuma - HIV and AIDS
8th May 2006 the former South African deputy president Jacob Zuma was today cleared of raping an HIV-positive female friend in a case that has alarmed Aids campaigners and jeopardised his political future.

The 31-year-old woman had accused him of rape after they had unprotected sex at his home in November last year, but a judge ruled today that the encounter was consensual.

The case has threatened Mr Zuma's hopes of becoming president, and health campaigners say his evidence during the trial has undermined years of promoting safe sex in a country where six million people have Aids.

As a former head of the South African national Aids council, Mr Zuma shocked many people by arguing, against scientific evidence, that there was little danger of him contracting HIV from unprotected sex.

He said taking a shower after having intercourse with the woman had reduced the risk of transmission.





2015 in South Africa
There was a number of social and political protests and movements form. At President Jacob Zuma's 2015 State of the Nation Address, the president was interrupted by an opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, who demanded that he pay back the money used on his Nkandla homestead.

South Africa also saw new xenophobic uprisings taking place, mainly targeted towards Africans from other countries. Foreigners were beaten, robbed and murdered during the attacks.

26 Jan 2015 ... In an open letter to President Zuma, Minister of Home Afrairs, Malusi ... the government has denied that there is xenophobia in South Africa, ...

28 Apr 2015 ... Xenophobia murder: Emmanuel Sithole - "Emmanual Josias' stabbed to death:
Zuma denied he was killed in xenophobia ...

29 May 2015 ... President Mugabe has called on (black) South Africans to direct their xenophobia towards whites – instead of blacks.

The social protest Rhodes Must Fall started in 2015 at the University of Cape Town to protest for the removal of statues erected in South Africa during the colonial era depicting some of the well known colonists who settled in South Africa.

In education, South Africa recorded a drop in its matric pass rate from 2013 to 2014. The protest #FeesMustFall was started towards the end of the year and achieved its primary goal of stopping an increase in university fees for 2016.

South Africa also saw the discovery of Homo naledi in 2015.

The South African national rugby union team came third in the 2015 Rugby World Cup

There are many instances providing hard, compelling and even irrefutable evidence of a party in serious decline: the arms deal shenanigans, the Guptagate scandal, the Schabir Shaik corruption case (in which Zuma was implicated), the fraud and corruption charges against Zuma himself, the role of ANC politicians in the Fifa scandal over South Africa’s winning the bid to host the 2010 World Cup, the grotesque and absurd Nkandla scandals, the unpardonable Marikana massacre of black miners, the killing of township protester Andries Tatane, the mismanaged Gauteng e-tolls debacle, the perpetual crisis at the SABC, the electricity crisis, and so on.



What is happen now?
In spite of such a promising start, South Africa’s current democracy is characterised by ambivalence. There is an increasing fervour for racial nationalism in the ANC’s policies.

And protests are increasingly characterised by radicalism and violence to express discontent. There is also the rise of populist militancy in the form of the Economic Freedom Fighters.

The high levels of unemployment and inequality also provide a source of genuine grievance.

Much of what is happening now harks back to a dark time in South Africa’s history. The National Party’s radicalism and exclusivist ethnic nationalism left a morally and economically bereft state. Today we stand at a similar crossroads.

South Africans face a choice. They could obstruct the country’s future prospects by being re-radicalised and polarised and by closing their ears to genuine grievances and injustices. They could also resort to methods not of compromise, accommodation and mutual respect, but of intolerance, radicalism and incivility.

Faced with these choices, South Africans would do well to heed the mistakes of the past.


South Africa’s financial looming financial crisis
Source: http://www.rdm.co.za/politics/2015/12/02/why-2016-will-be-south-africa-s-year-of-reckoning

“The ‘rocky road’ is our worst-case scenario for a future South Africa, featuring a powerful and interventionist development state that believes it can head off future political defeat by destroying democratic institutions in a desperate bid to cling to power,” said Cronjé.

We are on that road. We haven’t reached crisis point yet, but we are hurtling towards it at an alarming rate. The trouble is that neither President Jacob Zuma nor the ANC seem aware of what is happening.

Zuma can’t see it because he is out of his depth in economic matters. And the ANC can’t see it because it is too preoccupied with the looming succession issue. Zuma has established a patronage administration of loyalists to protect himself from the implications of his involvement in the arms deal and Nkandla scandals. Now those loyalists are worrying about what will happen to them when Zuma’s term ends.

The choice of successor seems to have boiled down to either Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa or Zuma’s former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. For anyone concerned about who can dig us out of the economic hole we are in, I would have thought the choice was obvious. Ramaphosa is the one with economic savvy. Dlamini-Zuma has none that I know of.

But the scared loyalists are pushing for Dlamini-Zuma. Never mind that as health minister, she was involved with former president Thabo Mbeki’s Aids denials, with endorsing an industrial solvent called Virodene as a quack remedy against HIV infection, and with the controversial Aids play Sarafina II that cost the country an outrageous R22-million. The loyalists want her because they hope that, despite the divorce, she will establish something of a Zuma dynasty that will continue to protect them as well as her former husband.

As for Zuma himself, his lack of perception is not confined to economics: it is equally lacking in his inability to project a clear political course for the country.

"We operate under capitalism," Zuma told the trade unionists. The national democratic democracies are not the system — are some system within a system. That’s why, if that is the situation, the crisis after crisis of the system will affect you whether you like it or not because if there is economic crisis it affects everyone within the system — the global system that is operating. In other words, it’s a class divided society."

Interpreting that gobbledegook is a challenge, but what I think Zuma was trying to say was: "We socialists (democratic democracies) are having to operate within a global capitalist system, and are subject to its uncertainties." And there lies the rub.

Under Zuma, the ANC has become an ideological hybrid, with a capitalist finance minister and Marxist-Leninist ministers of economic development and trade and industry. The result is gridlock. The administration cannot function as a unit with clear direction. So nothing is achieved. The country wallows in a trough of inertia while the problems mount.

The other problem with Zuma’s tortuous diagnosis is that it is self-exculpatory. None of SA’s problems are internally created: they all come from outside. They are the global system’s fault, not Zuma’s or the ANC’s. So presumably there is nothing we can do to about it until the great international revolution removes "the system".

Because of Zuma’s — and other ANC members’ — years of immersion in Marxist-Leninist doctrine, they have failed to see that the logical incorporation of socialist needs into a capitalist system is through social democracy. As the Nordic countries show, you need a strong private sector to generate the tax revenue to fund a healthy social security system. The ANC has labelled itself a social democratic party, but seems to have lost track of what that means.

The trouble with Zuma and his administration is that their inbred anti-capitalism makes them hostile to business. Instead of encouraging capital investment, both domestic and foreign, to create the jobs and tax revenue we so badly need, they disregard it almost to the point of antagonism. They regard foreign investors as exploiters who are extorting our workers and taking the profits gleaned from our resources out of the country. And they regard domestic capitalists as apartheid collaborators and economic exploiters from the past.

These are attitudes from the past that have stalled our progress and are now leading us towards economic crisis. And I believe we are not going to avoid that crisis as long as Zuma remains president. We cannot afford to have him at the top for another three years. He must go.

Hopefully the shock the ANC is in this year’s local government elections will jolt it into realising this. The longer Zuma remains number one, the greater the chances of the country landing in a full-blown economic crisis and of the ANC being blown away at the 2019 national election.

The sticking point is Zuma’s fear of those multiple charges of corruption coming back to ensnare him the moment he leaves office. The way to overcome that is to devise a soft exit strategy for him.

All that is required is for the ANC and the DA to reach an agreement to amend the Constitution to empower the new president to grant Zuma amnesty for those issues, as former US president Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal. Jointly, the two parties have the votes to do that. Zuma can then retire quietly to Nkandla while a new regime gets down to fixing the country.

The DA may object to this idea. But just as governing parties must sometimes place the national interest ahead of party interests, so too must the opposition.