The Fissures That Followed Mandela

Fernando Kaskais

May 2

Nelson Mandela at home in Qunu in 2011. (Adrian Steirn via Getty Images)

Thirty years after the historic end to apartheid in South Africa, life remains so precarious for so many that uncomfortable questions are being asked of leaders who failed to carry the reconciliation project forward.

BY SISONKE MSIMANG - Sisonke Msimang is the author of "Always Another Country" and "The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela."

There's a set of traffic lights at a busy intersection in the plush Johannesburg suburb of Rosebank that is often on the blink. Each time the power goes out — "load-shedding" is the technical term; the grid is on the verge of total collapse — cars pile up and stretch out in four directions. It's a hassle for motorists but a boon for a group of enterprising young men.

As drivers take their turns inching forward, the teenagers spring to action, appearing from the sidewalks and leaping into the middle of the intersection. They are often dressed in elaborate costumes — suspenders on their trousers, jaunty hats, face paint. Sometimes they direct traffic, but often they use the center crossing point as a stage, dancing frenetically as cars crawl past. They gyrate and show off and wave enthusiastically before walking from car to car, hoping that their captive audience will reward their efforts with money.

Like millions of their peers, these men have been pushed to the margins of South Africa's economy. Their energy suggests their potential, but 30 years after the end of apartheid, they live in a society that has not created opportunities for them. Their situation is emblematic of the hope and struggle that characterize life in South Africa today — a life so precarious for so many that uncomfortable questions about whether the soaring story of racial reconciliation that ushered in a new era in April 1994 came at the cost of economic progress for the poorest.

In May, South Africans will head to the polls to vote in only the nation's seventh national election. Many consider this the toughest electoral challenge yet for the ruling African National Congress (ANC). Surveys show that support for the party that was Nelson Mandela's political home until his death a decade ago is plummeting. Just over 40% of voters say they will support the once mighty liberation movement. The ANC faces the very real prospect of being forced into a coalition if it wants to maintain power.

Thirty years the ANC has been in power. It does not surprise me or many South Africans that a change of leadership is for the first time a real possibility. People feel betrayed. The political movement that played a crucial role in ending apartheid and establishing a new democratic order has failed to create jobs, address poverty or put a dent in the challenges of housing, education and a disintegrating health system. On their own, these problems would be enough to turn any electorate against its government, but for many people, the primary source of disappointment with the ANC is that it lost its moral compass and sold out to many of the same economic and political forces that it once fought against.

This is a long-running critique inside the country, where people have argued for years about the negotiated settlements that brought an end to apartheid in 1994. Critics argue that reconciliation made too many concessions to white South Africans, allowing them to keep the land and assets they had accrued over centuries of colonization and racist supremacy, and that the constitution — the culmination of negotiations and the foundation for the society in which South Africans now live — enshrined their judicial and economic power. When apartheid ended and the new constitution came into effect, most of the country's judges were white. Today, they still represent approximately 30% of the bench, even though whites only make up around 7% of the population.

"The political movement that played a crucial role in ending apartheid and establishing a new democratic order has failed to create jobs, address poverty or put a dent in the challenges of housing, education and a disintegrating health system."

This is what people — including many within the ANC — call "judicial interference." Former President Jacob Zuma went so far as to refer to the country as a "judicial dictatorship." White judges overturn decisions made by a largely Black executive arm of government, a constitutional order that has maintained Black subordination. More than half of South Africans report that they have little or no trust in the judicial system.

In the context of continued white economic privilege, deepening poverty and violent racial incidents — such as the near-drowning of two black teenagers at a pool in Bloemfontein by racist white men on Christmas Day in 2022 or the expletive-ridden verbal attack launched by a white woman who used the k-word 48 times in a four-minute video — South Africans are reassessing their commitment to reconciliation and re-evaluating the institutions they established a generation ago, a dramatic swing that has its roots in the apartheid system the country was so desperate to end.

Apartheid was instituted in 1948 when the Afrikaner National Party swept to power with the goal of "preserving and safeguarding the racial identity of the White population of the country." Apartheid, which means "apartness" in Afrikaans codified segregation, which had already been in place, and became the law of the land...

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