[News] South African elections

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John Minto: ANC victory highlights the lack of a credible choice

20.04.2004  - COMMENT

The African National Congress has coasted to an easy victory in the South 
African elections. More significant than its two-thirds of the vote, 
however, was the greatly reduced voter turnout.

 From more than 90 per cent in the first post-apartheid election in 1994, 
voter turnout dropped to about 70 per cent in 1999 and is predicted to be 
just over 50 per cent this time.

This reflects soaring mistrust in the ANC among black voters in South 
Africa's poorest communities. The ANC victory, for those who voted, merely 
reflects the lack of a credible national alternative.

Voter mistrust has a simple explanation. Most black South Africans have 
suffered a reduction in their standard of living after 10 years of ANC 
rule, and there are ominous signs that South Africa will implode in the 
coming years if ANC economic policy continues to favour the wealthy at the 
expense of the poor.

Following its election to power, the ANC developed an economic strategy 
known as Gear (Growth, Employment and Redistribution). This promised 6 per 
cent annual growth by the year 2000, and 400,000 new jobs every year. It 
has not delivered.

The official jobless rate grew from 16 per cent in 1995 to 30 per cent last 
year. However, when discouraged job-seekers are added in, the actual 
unemployment rate now stands at 42 per cent nationwide and more than 80 per 
cent in some rural areas.

The process was accelerated from 1996 when the ANC adopted a World Bank 
plan for South Africa's economy which, among other things, involved 
commercialising and privatising government services. About 20,000 people 
lost their jobs when South Africa's Telekom was sold, and another 30,000 
became redundant in a privatised electricity sector.

Many millions of blacks have now lost access to essential services, such as 
running water, electricity and telephones, because they cannot afford to 
pay the charges set by the private corporations.

Predictably, poverty has deepened, with the economic gaps between blacks 
and whites widening.

According to the Chronic Poverty Research Centre at the University of the 
Western Cape, the average income of black households dropped by 19 per cent 
from 1995 to 2000, while over the same period the average white household 
income grew 15 per cent.

Absolute poverty levels increased from 20 per cent in 1995 to 28 per cent 
in 2000.

It is not the hopes of South Africa's impoverished black majority which 
have been fulfilled by democracy but those of South Africa's corporations, 
global investors and the white minority.

While the incomes of the black majority have been reduced, the corporate 
sector has been on the gravy train. Corporate tax rates were cut from 48 
per cent in 1994 to 30 per cent by 1999.

Many activists dubbed the ANC policy "reverse Gear" as its effects bit, and 
wealth was transferred from the poorest sections of South African society 
to the richest.

These issues are familiar to New Zealand. Our economy was hijacked by the 
Labour Government of 1984 and delivered to the private sector; the ANC has 
done the same thing in South Africa with precisely parallel effects.

Organisations are now beginning to emerge in the black communities across 
South Africa to challenge the ANC. Typically they are organising around 
community service issues, such as housing, water and electricity, and are 
met with the same brutal violence as the white minority once dished out to 
black activists.

In February, in scenes reminiscent of the darkest days of apartheid South 
Africa, two black school students, 17-year-old Dennis Mathibithi and 
15-year-old Nhlanhla Masuku, were shot and killed by police as they joined 
a protest to prevent poor families being evicted from their homes in the 
township of Kathlehong.

In the run-up to the election, ANC activists disrupted meetings organised 
by community groups such as the Anti-Privatisation Forum and the Gauteng 
Landless Peoples Movement. There are ominous signs that South Africa will 
implode in the coming years because there is no indication that ANC 
policies will do more than change the colour of the skin of those who 
conduct the repression.

In essence, South Africa has shifted from racial apartheid to economic 
apartheid.

New Zealanders were right to join international protests against apartheid, 
and we are right to now hold the ANC Government to account for its betrayal 
of that struggle.

* John Minto was formerly the national chairman of Halt All Racist Tours.




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