A History of South Africa

by Leonard Thompson

  The rights of women also formed part of an ongoing debate about the role of traditional courts. Self-styled traditionalists in the ANC, including Zuma, wanted to confer judicial powers on hereditary chiefs.223 Assemblies of chiefs and tribal elders would become courts of the first instance for 14 million rural people, a huge voting bloc Zuma wanted to control. These traditional courts would use customary law, which, contrary to the constitution, typically gave women a subordinate status. Another concern was untoward influence over voting. In Zimbabwe, Mugabe had relied on a chiefly system to limit the number of registered voters, ferreting out those thought to oppose the ruling party.

  The Opposition

  The political commentator Justice Malala expressed the views of many when he described Zuma as “the worst leader the ANC has ever had. He’s a lost cause. He merely fights to save his own skin and to stay out of jail.”224 Certainly, impatience with the scandal-ridden Zuma government to effect positive change invigorated a growing opposition. The DA in particular benefited. In the 2009 national elections, when it ended its campaign with a “Stop Zuma” pitch, it garnered more than a million new votes, obtaining just under 3 million votes or 16.7 percent of the total, a huge transformation from its 1.7 percent showing in 1994.225 Thus, it was the only party to grow in each of the three most recent elections. It had kept the ANC below the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution, become the first party to win a majority in the Western Cape since democratic elections first began in 1994, increased its numbers in Parliament from 47 to 67, and added ten more seats in the National Council of the Provinces. The DA’s showing also improved in eight of the nine provinces, taking its seats in provincial legislatures from 51 in 2004 to 65 in 2009. The May 2011 municipal elections—with relatively high voter turnout—saw the ANC win 62 percent of the vote and the DA win just under 24 percent, including outright control of Cape Town and 11 of 24 municipalities in the Western Cape. The ANC won the vast majority of municipalities in every other province. The IFP took slightly more than 3.5 percent, and COPE just over 2 percent.

  Meanwhile, in order to present a greater challenge to the ANC, in August 2010, the DA and the ID announced an antigovernment alliance in which, by design, the ID would cease to exist in 2014.226 There also was periodic speculation that Mbeki would return to politics. Since his resignation, he had concentrated mostly on the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, aimed at promoting the African Renaissance. Although he had never endorsed COPE, he had not been active in the ANC either. Now Mbeki appeared to thunderous applause at the ANC’s centenary celebrations in early 2012. In his Oliver Tambo Memorial Lecture at the University of Fort Hare in October, also part of centenary celebrations, he took a swipe at Zuma, saying the country “should be led by people who conduct themselves by always and practically keeping with moral practices informed by commitment to serve the people.”227

  Zuma’s February 2013 speech at the opening of Parliament further united the opposition. Although he emphasized development, many of the projects he mentioned had been in progress for years.228 He addressed the numerous recent, horrific sexual attacks on women but did not propose any major new campaign. He also claimed the government was doing its utmost to fight corruption. Many political analysts and the opposition parties condemned the speech as extremely weak and lacking in leadership. Already, several parties had been offering a series of talks under the banner of the Multiparty Forum—a name redolent of the Multiparty Negotiating Forum that had approved South Africa’s interim constitution—examining the possibility of forming a coalition to contest the 2014 national elections. Just before Zuma’s address, eight of these parties, including the DA, the IFP, and COPE, held a press conference at which they expressed “extreme disappointment” in the speech, which they said “delivered no hope.”229 In advance of the press conference, the ANC issued a press release alleging the independent political parties “are once again being hoodwinked into an unholy alliance with the Democratic Alliance (DA).” It said there was a “gullible troop of opposition leaders not aware that they served as useful idiots in the DA’s scheme to influence the internal leadership election process of the ANC in Mangaung.” Zuma followed this theme during the parliamentary debate that, in South African custom, came days after his speech. He characterized opposition unity as a blurring of views, which, in a democracy, was “a problem.”230

  There was further political excitement just days later when, after months of speculation, Mamphela Ramphele made a major announcement.231 Steve Biko’s former Black Consciousness partner as well as a doctor and anthropologist who had been the vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town and managing director of the World Bank but never a member of the ANC, she had become a successful businesswoman. Speaking for symbolic appeal at the old Women’s Gaol on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, Ramphele said she was forming Agang SA or, in its English translation, Build SA, whose purpose was to “focus on rekindling hope that building the country of our dreams is possible in our lifetime.” Agang would become a full-fledged party in June with plans to contest the 2014 national elections. While the opposition parties’ reaction generally was favorable, there was discussion in the media, just as there had been with Ramaphosa’s ascension as Zuma’s heir apparent at Mangaung, as to whether Ramphele’s ties to big business—she resigned from positions on the boards of some of South Africa’s largest and sometimes labor unfriendly companies before the Agang SA launch—would cloud her judgment.

  The ANC looked for conspiracies. Secretary-General Mantashe declared, in anachronistic language straight out of the Cold War, “We are hoping against hope that it is not an American initiative aimed at destabilising our country.... We are very much alive to concerns by Western powers that liberation movements in Africa are too powerful.”232 Also inclined toward left-wing hyperbole was Julius Malema, the disgraced former head of the ANCYL who had had his possessions and multimillion rand real estate auctioned to satisfy R16 million in debts to the South African Revenue Service. He also was facing money-related criminal charges he insisted were trumped up by Zuma. In June, he launched—like Ramphele from Constitution Hill—the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).233 Distinguishing EFF from Agang and other opposition parties, he said it would “move away from a discourse of reconciliation to one of justice.” Its “anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist ideology” included land appropriation and nationalization of mines without compensation as nonnegotiable. Whites would be “forced to share.” Malema styled himself commander in chief and, using outmoded leftist liberation struggle terminology, members called each other comrade. With his history of capitalist excess, Malema might have been better suited to the title poseur in chief, but his message was likely to appeal to some of the poorest, least educated, and most marginalized citizens.

  Zuma’s Foreign Policy

  Zuma initially gave hope to human rights advocates. In a shift from Mbeki’s opposition to an International Criminal Court indictment of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur, the government announced that, his invitation notwithstanding, if Bashir attended Zuma’s inauguration, he would be arrested.234 In a symbolic change of perspective, the Department of Foreign Affairs became the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) because, the rhetoric went, relations and cooperation signified engagement, not just presence.235

  Beginning in July 2009, however, the AU took a series of actions favoring Bashir and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.236 South Africa did not comment, a silence many construed as approbation born of a desire not to offend other African countries. Moreover, by not objecting to these decisions, the country violated its International Criminal Court treaty obligations. On Libya, it supported U.N. Security Council resolutions; it voted for a no-fly zone although it opposed NATO incursions. It refused to do the same regarding Syria. Zuma’s special adviser on foreign relations said “global politics” determined South Africa’s decision; its biggest trading partner, China, also had not supported sanctioning Syria.23
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  The Zuma government displayed a lack of concern about human rights violations close to home as well. In 2011, the South African Reserve Bank said it would extend a R2 billion loan to Swaziland guaranteed by the South African government despite Swaziland’s failure to abide by a 2004 bilateral agreement requiring it to implement various human rights guarantees. The DIRCO minister defended this move because the government had a policy of “non-interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, and especially a neighbouring state, [which] would not make it possible for South Africa to attempt to bring about political change in any country unilaterally.”238 Meanwhile, despite its new emphasis on cooperation, under Zuma, as under Mbeki, South Africa failed to ratify many major international human rights instruments239 and, since Mandela’s presidency, had frequently ignored its reporting responsibilities in compliance with treaties to which it was a signatory.240

  A highly contentious foreign policy episode involved the proposed 2010 visit of the Dalai Lama to attend Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s eightieth birthday celebrations. South Africa, presumably keen to please China, with which Zuma had greatly expanded relations, repeatedly delayed issuing the Dalai Lama a visa until he withdrew. Tutu blasted the regime as “worse than the apartheid government,” saying it had betrayed the liberation struggle and the constitution.241 When the Supreme Court of Appeal heard an urgent application from COPE and Inkatha and determined that the minister of home affairs had “unreasonably delayed her decision,242 Tutu proclaimed the ruling a “credit to South Africa’s judicial system”; he said he looked forward to inviting the Dalai Lama to his ninetieth birthday festivities.243

  The behavior of the Zuma government could be termed inconsistent and, less charitably, a rejection of Mandela’s human rights–based policy, something not altogether surprising given the domestic move toward authoritarianism and disdain for democratic rights.244 In October 2011, Zuma, in an address on aspects of foreign policy, said little about human rights.245 Under the terms of a bilateral agreement, he did send 400 SANDF troops to the Central African Republic to support its president by training the military and, very likely, to protect South African mining interests. After thirteen soldiers died trying unsuccessfully to prevent the fall of Bangui to a rebel coalition, the parliamentary opposition, which had not been briefed, was shocked.246 The lack of communication led to allegations that the ANC viewed the armed forces as its exclusive domain.

  Zuma, who had assumed Mbeki’s role of regional mediator, also came under attack for following Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy stance on Zimbabwe.247 Since the Mbeki-brokered election accord, the country had continued to struggle. Local groups and international observers reported that typical violence, thuggery, and fraud accompanied special voting in mid-July 2013 for the police and military officers who would serve during the upcoming elections. When Lindiwe Zulu, Zuma’s international relations adviser, questioned Zimbabwe’s ability to have free and fair elections, Mugabe attacked her as “a stupid, idiotic street woman,” in other words, a dumb prostitute.248 To the astonishment of women’s groups in particular, instead of assailing Mugabe, Zuma said his officials had made “unauthorized . . . regrettable and unfortunate” statements.

  The Economy

  The global financial crisis of 2007–8 negatively affected South Africa. Coupled with the virtual cessation of economic growth after 2008, foreign direct investment dropped dramatically from R74.4 billion in 2008 to R11.4 billion in 2010.249 The country was unlikely to meet its 2015 MDG employment target. With a sluggish economy and a growing young population, many predicted unemployment rates, officially pegged at around 20 percent but estimated by outside observers to be between 40 and 50 percent, to continue to be among the highest in the world.250

  In 2010 high levels of poverty in the majority of the population led to a U.N. Development Program’s Millennium Development Goals country report classification as a low-income country.251 Data from the National Income Dynamics Study found 47 percent of South Africans living below the poverty line—56 percent of Africans, 27 percent of Coloureds, 9 percent of Indians, and just 2 percent of whites. The U.N. Development Program’s Human Development Index (HDI) ranked South Africa 110 out of 169 countries in 2010.252 The HDI’s Human Poverty Index (HPI) placed South Africa 85 out of 135 countries. Whereas under apartheid poverty in South Africa was largely a function of race, now it was increasingly defined by inequality within population groups as the gap between rich and poor in each grew markedly.

  In February 2010, the OECD found that South Africa was one of the world’s most unequal societies.253 While interrace inequality was still high, it was diminishing slowly, but intrarace inequality prevented overall inequality figures from declining. The change in the country’s ethnic composition, with a rising African population and a declining white one, meant that intra-African income distribution was all the more important in determining inequality. The OECD acknowledged that the government had improved access to housing, electricity, water, and sanitation. It had also reduced poverty via social assistance grants—the poorest 20 percent got two-thirds of their income this way—instead of expanding the labor market, even though the years studied, 1993 to 2008, represented South Africa’s longest-ever period of economic growth. Thus, it was not economic achievement but social welfare that had caused the relative improvement in poverty levels. The report questioned the viability of grants as a means of ending economic inequality, especially as the economy slowed. It noted that because many of the unemployed were school leavers, the longer-term goal should have been to help them enter the labor force and remain there. Expanded educational opportunities had not helped alleviate poverty because the system did not give people skills required by the labor market.

  B-BBEE also had not achieved a greater distribution of wealth and was mostly perceived as a failure.254 It had, after all, created a class of African millionaires and billionaires, often disparagingly called the “usual suspects.”255 These included possible president-in-waiting Cyril Ramaphosa; Ramaphosa’s brother-in-law Patrice Motsepe, with a fortune estimated at R14.2 billion; and Minister of Human Settlements Tokyo Sexwale. A 2011 University of Cape Town study maintained that of the richest 10 percent, nearly 40 percent were black, whereas this group had been almost entirely white under apartheid; 29 percent of the absolute wealthiest also were black.256

  By 2012, Euromonitor International found that the Gini Index showed South Africa with the highest income inequality in the world,257 in a category with such deeply divided countries as Brazil and South Africa’s neighbor and former pseudo-colony Namibia. Extreme income inequality had been relatively constant between 1990 and 2011 while the income gap between rich and poor had widened. The middle class had grown by 6.5 percent to 4.7 million between 2006 and 2011 but still was not even 10 percent of the population. Helping to create these huge disparities in wealth was a corruption pandemic. Seemingly, no government department—national, provincial, or local—from the presidency to the most remote rural office was untouched. By one estimate, by 2013 approximately one-tenth of South Africa’s annual GDP, some $50 billion, was lost to corruption and graft, money that otherwise could have been used to help right the country’s many economic wrongs.258 Even the minister of finance, Pravin Gordhan, admitted that corruption was “becoming a cultural problem.”259

  These unresolved problems had prompted Moody’s, the credit rating agency, to downgrade South Africa in 2012, citing “long-standing, socio-economic challenges,” including “the fractiousness of the environment,” a negative investment climate worsened by problems with transportation, electricity, and other infrastructure, high labor costs and low productivity, high unemployment, and the persistent gap between the rich and the poor. Labor troubles were also a factor, especially the violent events at Marikana.260

  While the Moody’s rating was a blow, the government placed much hope in trade and investment, particularly in its ever-growing relationship with China, which had become a significant in
vestor in the economy.261 China also was one of South Africa’s partners in a trade association of emerging national economies known as BRICS, an acronym for its members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.262 In 2011, BRICS established the Forum, an independent international organization fostering commercial, political, and cultural cooperation among member states. In March 2013, at the fifth BRICS summit, in Durban, members announced they would create a world financial institution to rival the Western-led International Monetary Fund.263 The South African business community was unimpressed. In April, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s monthly Business Confidence Index showed business confidence at its lowest level in thirteen years.264

  Labor Unrest

  Labor unrest continued. It was a legacy of the last years of the antiapartheid struggle when COSATU and its affiliate, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), gained exceptional political influence. Labor and the economy became victims of their success. The widespread use of strikes often yielded wages higher than in other developing countries. This made South Africa less attractive to foreign investment and its attendant job creation in a world where capital is highly mobile and seeks the most docile workers at the lowest cost. Domestically, despite union gains, miners, especially, worked in desperate conditions. By the time Zuma took office, although the 360,000-member NUM was the largest affiliate of COSATU, many workers saw the NUM leadership as unsympathetic. Expelled NUM leaders had founded a new union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which built on worker dissatisfaction with NUM’s closeness to mine owners and their powerful Chamber of Mines. AMCU sought members in the worst shacks and shanties, places so miserable and crime-ridden that they were no-go areas for the police. For such people, the analyst Justice Malala suggested, what would happen in August and September 2012 was “a strike against the state and the haves, not just a union matter.”265