EQUALITY STILL ELUDES THE RAINBOW NATION 20 YEARS ON

February 11, 2010,
By Mike Cohen
Bloomberg




South Africa marks 20 years since Nelson Mandela’s release from prison today, still struggling to change a society in which whites earn on average seven times more than blacks and one in four people don’t have jobs.

Since Mandela’s freedom after 27 years in jail and his rise to become South Africa’s first black president in 1994, racist laws have been scrapped, the economy enjoyed its longest period of expansion on record before recession hit at the end of 2008, and the black middle class has expanded. Still, Africa’s biggest economy has more than 2,600 shanty settlements that lack adequate running water and sanitation.

“When we look around us and see the number of our compatriots still living in squalor, attending under-equipped schools, crammed like sardines into unsafe minibus taxis, we wonder when the fruit of democracy will reach the tables of all of our people,” Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.

President Jacob Zuma, who took office in May, will spell out how his administration intends to transform the economy in his state-of-the-nation address tonight in Cape Town. He will also use the occasion to honor Mandela, who is scheduled to attend the speech.

Now 91 and in frail health, Mandela has largely retired from public life. He remains South Africa’s most revered figure.

The ruling African National Congress has planned several other commemorative events, including a rally this morning at the prison near Paarl, outside Cape Town, where Mandela ended his incarceration. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, his ex-wife, will re-enact the walk they took together upon leaving the facility.

Life Imprisonment

Mandela, a lawyer, joined the ANC in 1944. He was convicted of sabotage on June 12, 1964, sentenced to life imprisonment and was sent to Robben Island, the prison 7 kilometers (4 miles) off the coast of Cape Town. He was released on Feb. 2, 1990.

The day Mandela was released “was a day that promised the beginning of the end of indignity,” Tutu said. “Now, 20 years and four national elections down the line, our infant democracy is learning to walk. So much has been achieved, and there is so much yet to achieve.”

The government has built more than 2.6 million subsidized homes since 1994 and more than 13 million poor people have been given welfare grants. Still, South Africa’s 24.3 percent unemployment rate is the highest of 62 countries tracked by Bloomberg and it has one of the world’s highest murder rates.

Three Wives

Zuma, who has three wives and 20 children, has faced criticism over his personal life. He admitted to and apologized on Feb. 6 for fathering a child out of wedlock. Opposition parties and newspapers have accused him of undermining the government’s campaign to slow the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. One in nine South Africans is infected with HIV.

The ANC and its labor and communist party allies are no longer as united as they were during the struggle against apartheid.

Debate is raging within the ruling alliance about policies, including nationalization of South Africa’s mines, that the government should pursue to ensure that its wealth of diamonds, platinum, ferrochrome, manganese and gold uplift the poor.

“A vast transformation process has occurred, and it went off relatively peacefully,” said Fanie du Toit, executive director of the Cape Town-based Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. “The social fruits of that have not been tasted to the extent that it’s sufficient for South Africans to feel happy about it.”

Editors: Karl Maier, Peter Hirschberg.