South Africa
Editorial
Stabroek News
April 28, 2004
South Africa's general election two weeks ago which resulted in an overwhelming victory for the African National Congress (ANC) as was expected, captured the world's headlines. However, the reaction was one of deep surprise and relief as this was the country which only a decade ago had been wracked by the apartheid system. In response to such daily structural violence inflicted on the African majority by a white minority, there had been organised violence as an implicit part of the struggle of the ANC which had once been classified as a terrorist organisation, expert in bombings and the full arsenal of protest violence.
Much of the world's surprise came from the fact that despite its recent history, there had been over the decade, since the abolition of apartheid, very few of the conflictual situations which affect so much of the rest of Africa. Many have attributed this to the powerful influence of Nelson Mandela who emerged from twenty-eight years in jail with no bitterness, no programme for revenge. But part of the credit must surely go to the last white minority President F.W. de Klerk who had persuaded the practitioners of Apartheid to lay down their guns in favour of democracy, whatever its results.
The Mandela/de Klerk consensus has endured - which most certainly has a lesson for leadership in other divided societies.
This was the third election in ten years all won by the ANC which improved its position as compared with the last election winning seventy per cent of the vote. But the opposition group, the Democratic Alliance which is supported by white South Africans and other minorities including Indians, is reported to have also improved its position to 15% with it is said the support of some black dissident voters. The ANC failed to carry one province - Kwazulu - Natal province. It will be recalled that since the days of Chief Buthelezi who ruled there this was a province which took positions independent of the ANC.
In terms of parliamentary politics the dominant party in that province, the Zulu dominated Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) has a working alliance at the national level with the white supported Democratic Alliance.
Discussing the then forthcoming South African election and the inevitable victory of the ANC the London Economist (April 10 - 16) observed editorially on one-party dominance, in words which will resonate further afield:
"ANC shows a worrying tendency to value loyalty to the party above that to the state, or the concept of democracy..... when a single party controls power and patronage, those who enter politics for personal gain will gravitate towards that party. A lack of electoral competition breeds corruption and stifles criticism."
Yet the ANC has not won exclusively on the basis of the ethnic factor and its role in the historic struggle. It has solid achievement to its credit. It has built more than a million houses. But progress in other fields including education, health and job creation (forty per cent unemployment ) has been slow. Moreover there are two overarching problems which steadily threaten to disturb the political stability which is the major achievement of the ANC. They are the need for land reform and the nearly unmanageable incidence of AIDS.
On land the situation is similar to that in Zimbabwe with most of the readily cultivable land under white ownership and control. However the South African government under the leadership of President Thabo Mbeki has been able to contain an explosive situation by a range of mechanisms which include but do not wholly depend on acquisition/confiscation. Restitution of land to those who had lost it under the apartheid system has taken the form of alternative land or compensation or grants to households to buy land. In addition, there has been tenure reform which protects tenants from eviction from white farms and confers property rights for those living in communal areas. Yet the pace is considered by black farmers to be unacceptably slow with the redistribution over the decade amounting to only two million hectares, just three per cent of commercial farm land. Land reform remains an Achilles heel and explains the ambiguities in President Mbeki's approach to the problems of Zimbabwe.
The AIDS epidemic in South Africa is of proportions which threaten the economy, the structure of society and its key institutions. For reasons which are still not clear but which derive from the leadership's misunderstanding of the nature of the disease, it was only until recently, last November, that the government undertook to provide anti-retroviral drugs to clinics and hospitals.
But the long delay means that according to one estimate, twenty per cent of the adult population may now be infected. The issue of the London Economist already quoted states that a South African secret government report says that one hundred thousand civil servants are HIV positive which the Economist adds threatens the state's capacity to function.
The AIDS situation may well undermine the leadership role which South Africa has assumed in that continent. President Mbeki clearly has a vision of his country playing a global role. Already, South Africa has been host to major world conferences namely the World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002 in Johannesburg in which President Jagdeo participated and in the year before in September 2001, the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and related issues.
South Africa's dominant role in Africa has recently been recognised in the formation of a trilateral organisation reflecting the dominant regional leadership in Latin America, Asia and Africa. In June 2003 in Brasilia, the India, Brazil and South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) was founded at a meeting of their three Foreign Ministers. This was no sudden initiative, the IBSA was the result of ongoing consultations and the decision of the three Heads of State/Government when they met, on the margins, so to speak, of the G-8 (the group of leading industrial countries) conference in Evian, France.
In the Brasilia Declaration, global political and economic issues are reviewed and strong positions articulated including on United Nations Reform and in particular the Security Council, coping with the new threats to security including terrorism, co-operation in defence matters, overcoming the vast digital divide on the new information and communication technologies, the protection of their vast genetic resources and so on. It was agreed in Brasilia that subject ministers and officials of the three states will meet from time to time, that the next meeting of their Foreign Ministers will be in Delhi this year and that they will work towards the holding of a Summit meeting. To ensure that matters discussed are implemented the three Foreign Ministers agreed to establish a Trilateral Joint Commission.
At Cancun last year these three states provided the catalyst for the emergence of the group of 20, with which China is associated, and which played such a powerful and decisive role at that conference.
What seems to be emerging alongside the rather looser groupings such as the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 is a powerful new diplomatic entity. As the three are committed to "pursuing policies, programmes and initiatives in different international forums to make the diverse processes of globalisation inclusive, integrative, humane and equitable" it must clearly be a matter of the highest priority to ensure that Caricom's concerns are presented on an ongoing basis to the three Foreign Ministries.
Several Caricom Member States have embassies in Brazil and India. Guyana has announced that it intends to restore its Embassy (High Commission) in Delhi. But as far as it is known there is virtually no representation in South Africa. Guyana has an Honorary Consulate there, the Consul has resigned and will shortly be replaced.
Is not South Africa the place in which a serious effort might be made to establish a Caricom Mission which represents the interests of the whole grouping? Caricom States played vanguard roles in advocating the struggle against apartheid. It is now time to ensure that in South Africa, Caricom has a powerful friend to take care of its interests in international fora.