WORRYING ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA
A few days ago (July 18,
2015) I was asked to give a brief talk at an event in Brantford, Ontario—the location
of a branch of Wilfrid Laurier University, where I work—on the occasion of
Nelson Mandela Day. This is a worldwide movement to encourage people everywhere
to devote 67 minutes to volunteer work, in recognition of Mandela’s own 67
years of public service.
I was asked to give an
inspiring speech, but as an academic I’m more likely to be a worrier than an
inspirer. Indeed, in 1994 I reviewed a book entitled Advancing Human Rights in South Africa by Albie Sachs, one of the
leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa (you can find my review
in the Journal of Contemporary African
Studies, vol. 12, no.2, 1994, pp. 222-25). I doubted Sachs’ contention that
South Africa could become a social democratic country, in which economic human
rights were protected as well as constitutionalism, the rule of law, and
non-racialism (this time protecting non-black minorities rather than the black
majority).
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| Albie Sachs Source: Bates News |
Here’s some good news:
Housing:
since 1994, the government has built 1.4 million housing units for more than 5
million people.
Electricity:
54-58% of the population had access to electricity in
1993-1996; by 2012 that figure had risen to 85.4%.
Clean Water: only
59% of the population had access to clean water in 1994; by 2013 that figure
had risen to 94.7% of the population.
Education: 98%
of children that should be in grade 6 are actually in school, and the
percentage of black South Africans age 20 and up that has received no education
fell from 24% in 1996 to 10.5% in 2011.
Land Redistribution: from 1994 to 2013, 4.2 million hectares of land was transferred
through the government’s redistribution program, and 3.08 million hectares was
subject to restitution, for a total of approximately 7.3 million hectares. Between 3,712 and 4,813 farms has been
redistributed since 1994, benefitting over 220,000 people.
Now here’s some bad news:
Unemployment rate: the unemployment rate was estimated at 20%- 31.5% in 1994, and rose to
24.3% -35.6% 2013, depends on how you define unemployment.
Crime: The
rate for sexual offenses is 118.2 per
100,000 people; for murder it is 32.2 per 100,000 people; and for kidnapping it
is 7.8 per 100,000 people; these are very high rates.
HIV/AIDS: 12% of the population has HIV/AIDS, and for adults aged
15-49 the rate is 19%. South Africa
does have one of the world’s largest ARV treatment programs, but it was delayed
for several years under Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s successor as President, because
of his and his health minister’s disbelief in the efficacy of AIDS medications.
Researchers at Harvard University calculated that Mbeki’s AIDS denialism was
responsible for 330,000 unnecessary deaths.
Informal settlements: In 1996, 1.5
million households lived in informal settlements across South Africa: in 2011
the number was 2 million. This means the government hasn’t been able to keep up
with population growth in providing housing.
A lot of what’s going on in
South Africa today has me more worried than when I wrote my review in 1994.
There’s the (almost)
constitutional crisis in June 2015. That’s when President Al-Bashir of Sudan,
who is under indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide
in Darfur, visited South Africa for a meeting of the African Union. Countries
that are party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, including South Africa, are
supposed to arrest anyone under indictment if they are on that country’s territory.
The South African government did not arrest Al-Bashir. In fact, when a South
Africa court ordered that he be temporarily detained until it could consider a
request to have him arrested, the government helped to spirit him out of the
country.
There’s also increasing pressure
on the free press, according to a recent article in The Economist (June 17,
2015, p. 40). The government pressures the South African Broadcasting
Corporation to be biased in its favour, and uses government funds to purchase
independent privately-owned media and convert them into government mouthpieces.
 |
| President Jacob Zuma Source: IOL News, Henk Kruger |
And there’s severe prejudice
against the GLBT community. This is no surprise. In recent years GLBT rights
have become flashpoints for rhetoric against the West and defense of so-called “traditional”
ways of life in countries such as Zimbabwe, Namibia, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda
as well as South Africa. I’m afraid that many black and/or “traditional” South
Africans view the South African constitution, with its “rights-for-everyone”
approach, as another example of white imperialism.
 |
| Julius Malema Source: The Voice of the Cape FM |
An estimated 3.1 million
South African blacks lost their property under apartheid. Many of them were
then confined to supposedly “independent “ Bantustans, essentially dumping
grounds for “surplus” blacks. Lots of these people are still landless and their
children and grandchildren are jobless, without a role and recognition in
society. They are fertile grounds for populist demagoguery.
Joblessness and lack of social
roles also helps explain the high crime rates in contemporary South Africa. I
think one of the reasons for these high crime rates is that many of the men who
commit crimes grew up under apartheid; a 35-year-old criminal would have been
born in 1980. The apartheid government deliberately destroyed the black South
African family. Many fathers lived in migrant work camps and rarely saw their
children; many mothers had to leave their children alone for 12 to 16 hours a
day as they travelled from peri-urban black townships into white areas to work
as domestic servants. Schooling for blacks also was inferior.
So there’s a portion of the
South African population that may be very susceptible to populist rhetoric.
Julius Malema knows this. Populists reject constitutionalism, the rule of law,
and standard civil and political rights. If Malema takes power, I am afraid that
the inspiring South African experiment will end in disaster.
1. Free yourself.
2. Free others.
3. Serve every day.
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