Has South Africa Lost Its Way?

South Africa is in the middle of a period of political and economic unrest unlike anything the country has experienced since the end of apartheid in 1994. In March 2015, students at the University of Cape Town launched the #Rhodesmustfall campaign, aimed at bringing down a statue of the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes. Since then, students have regularly stormed the nation’s universities, labor unions have held strikes, and populist social movements have taken to the streets. The protesters have called for wholesale reform of the country’s economy and directly challenged the ruling African National Congress. And the ANC itself is in crisis, divided between supporters and detractors of South African President Jacob Zuma. On March 31, the country’s highest court ruled that Zuma had failed to uphold the constitution when he ignored a state order to repay government funds used in a $23 million upgrade to his private residence at Nkandla in KwaZulu Natal. And on April 29, the High Court in Pretoria ruled that the former head of the National Prosecuting Authority, Mokotedi Mpshe, had acted irrationally when he had dropped corruption charges against Zuma in 2009. Although the opposition failed in its bid to impeach Zuma, the National Assembly remains fractious and divided. The Nkandla revelations and growing dissatisfaction with Zuma have sparked broader protests about poor living standards, low economic growth, high unemployment, and political stagnation.

The roots of the current crisis lie in the country’s tortured past. Since the end of apartheid, the number of people who live in absolute poverty has fallen, and access to and quality of services has improved, but unemployment, crime, and housing remain the top three concerns of South Africans, as they have been since the mid-1990s. In fact, the gap between rich and poor has widened: South Africa’s Gini coefficient, a measure of economic inequality ranging from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality), increased from 0.62 in 2008 to 0.70 in 2013; by contrast, Brazil’s has fallen from 0.55 in 2009 to 0.53 in 2013. For all of those who expected great progress since 1994, the slow pace of change has been bitterly disappointing.

After the political stalemate of the late 1980s, the ANC made a bargain with the then ruling National Party: it would take power and focus on postapartheid reconciliation, while committing to economic policies that would disavow the appropriation of land and economic assets from the country’s white elite. In short, the ANC chose political power and social reconciliation over economic restitution and the redistribution of wealth.

The concessions hobbled the party during the critical years immediately following the end of apartheid, when economic restructuring could have had great impact. Apartheid policies had stripped the country of its natural wealth and impoverished its people, and the state had developed the capacity to provide services to only a small portion of the population. The government had pushed responsibility for the black majority to the Bantustans, self-governing territories that the architects of apartheid had established to house the country’s “African” populations. After the transition, the state had to expand its scope to include the millions it had previously excluded.

Yet political freedom did not lead to economic prosperity for the vast majority of South Africans. The ANC had not anticipated how much globalization had constrained the ability of the state to foster economic redistribution. What’s more, the ANC discovered that the state it had inherited lacked the resources to deliver on its 1994 campaign promise, “A Better Life for All.” The dual costs of maintaining the security apparatus and unequal welfare system necessary to sustain the apartheid state had drained the state’s coffers. The ANC had initially adopted a moderately redistributive economic program (the Reconstruction and Development Programme), but in mid-1996 it replaced this with Growth, Employment and Redistribution, which was modeled on the structural adjustment programs that the World Bank promoted in the 1980s. Many South Africans who had been deprived of basic services under apartheid continue to lack housing, electricity, water, and sanitation.

A NATION AT A CROSSROADS

For over two decades, these tensions have remained unresolved, and the weight of South Africa’s economic troubles is now beginning to crush ordinary people. Rising costs of living have stressed the majority to the breaking point. The price of petrol has been steadily increasing since 2010, when inflation was just over three percent; by 2013, petrol inflation had reached 5.5 percent. Combined with slow economic growth and the steady depreciation of the rand, the prices of all other domestic consumables have increased sharply. For example, although food prices dropped 18.5 percent worldwide in 2015, in South Africa they increased five percent; the South African Reserve Bank projects that the food inflation rate will grow to 11 percent by the end of 2016. A severe drought has exacerbated these trends. Excessive debt, unemployment, and grinding poverty have pushed many to a point where they are prepared to risk political action on a scale unseen since the struggle era.

Political freedom did not lead to economic prosperity for the vast majority of South Africans.

Workers and youth have formed the vanguard of the protests. Their joint awakening is especially important. Since 1994, the labor unions have been politically passive. Under the Tripartite Alliance between the ANC, the South African Communist Party, and the largest of the labor union federations, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the labor unions accepted compromised progress on workers’ issues in exchange for a seat at the political table. For the last 20 years, this calmed their leftist politics and their criticism of the ANC’s largely centrist policies. After South African security forces massacred 34 protesting workers at the Marikana platinum mine in August 2012, however, many unionists are no longer content with the compromise. COSATU has begun to fracture, the formation of a new labor federation is in the cards, elements of the ANC are breaking ranks, and the breakaway Economic Freedom Fighters, led by the charismatic former ANC member Julius Malema, has provided a focal point for the passions of the masses.

Under Zuma’s leadership, a culture of impunity has taken root at the highest levels of the ANC.

The ANC faces a crisis of legitimacy as it attempts to manage the protests. First, the ANC’s own policies and compromises are largely responsible for the deeper anger that motivates the protesters, and many young South Africans think that the ANC betrayed them during the transition. Second, under Zuma’s leadership, a culture of impunity has taken root at the highest levels. Zuma became head of state while already mired in controversy over rape and corruption charges. Under his leadership, the ANC has come to mimic the excesses of similar political parties across the continent: lavish salaries for public officials, political appointees that sap the credibility and effectiveness of state institutions, and ongoing corruption scandals. Many South Africans believe that a corrupt alliance of business and political elites has captured the state. They accuse elements of this elite—and especially the Gupta family, Indian immigrants to South Africa who have built a vast business empire—of exerting undue influence over political decisions. In December, Zuma provoked widespread criticism when he fired the widely trusted Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene, who had attempted to rein in government spending. The markets reacted negatively: 500 billion rand (more than $33 billion) disappeared from South Africa’s equity markets overnight.