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A squandered legacy

NELSON MANDELA'S life was worth commemorating for several reasons. One reason, which was not properly evaluated during the past week, was his – and the ANC’s – remarkable conversion from socialism to the free market in the early 1990s.

Learned books have been written by historians about how the South African Communist Party (SACP) swallowed the ANC almost wholesale, and how the ANC took over the SACP ideology. This also applies to Mandela before his arrest in 1962 and even during his period of incarceration.

But during the late 1980s two fundamental things started changing.

The first was that communism was crumbling. In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and two years later, the Soviet Union itself fell apart. This pulled the socialist rug from under the ANC/SACP’s feet.

Secondly, apartheid proved unsustainable. The blacks refused to accept it, making their point forcefully with riots and their support for the ANC. During the PW Botha years, several of the pillars of the apartheid policy were removed by the government itself.

And so, when Mandela was released and the ANC/SACP and the government met each other across a table to negotiate, both were in fact ideologically bankrupt.

For a while, the ANC/SACP kept speaking of nationalisation and a “mixed economy”. Mandela, who called himself “a disciplined and faithful member of the African National Congress”, followed this example.

But even before the two movements were unbanned, numerous South African businessmen travelled to Lusaka to speak to the exiled leaders. The businessmen had heavy discussions with the ANC ideologues, and long hours – oiled with lots of alcohol – were spent reviewing the opposing viewpoints.

It is fair to say that neither side convinced the other, but the discussions did improve the mutual understanding of the other's points of departure.

Nevertheless, the turning point in this regard was not so much the unbanning of the ANC/SACP in 1990. It came when Mandela attended the yearly economic leaders’ conference in the snow-clad town of Davos, Switzerland, in 1991.

When he returned to Johannesburg, Mandela declared at a press conference that “you could cut the atmosphere with a knife” every time the word “nationalisation” was uttered.

For Mandela, this was conclusive. After Davos, the ANC started changing its economic ideology drastically.

This meant that the negotiations between the National Party government and the ANC/SACP up to the changeover in 1994 did not have to concentrate on their basic economic approach. Of course, there were still important differences, but these were questions of detail, not so much of economic principle.

In power the ANC – having broken the SACP’s stranglehold – has also, by and large, continued with its new-found free market approach.

This has had advantages as well as disadvantages.

On the one hand, it means that although South Africa’s economic performance has since 1994 been less positive than one had hoped, it was a far cry from the catastrophe expected by some during the 1980s. To a large extent, the economic furniture of the country remained intact.

This meant that the economic implosion experienced by many African countries (Zimbabwe!) was avoided.

On the other hand, this has given many ANC cadres the freedom to view the state as a milk cow for their own enrichment, rather than a tool to uplift the poor. Hardly a day goes by without news of a government minister or high official being accused of mismanagement or corruption.

The uproar about Nkandla and the alleged use of tax money for the building of President Jacob Zuma’s private palace complex is a typical example.

This means that the difference in prosperity between rich and poor (which, by the way, corresponds ever less with the divide between white and black) is not lessening, but increasing. Of course, a sizeable black middle class has come to the fore, which is positive. But the great mass of the poor have stayed poor or have become even more impoverished.

And this, of course, may have dire implications in the long run for South Africa’s political stability. This point was forcefully made by the thousands who booed Zuma during the commemorative service for Mandela in Soweto this week.

In the end, the bottom line is this. We have much to be thankful for. The fears that South Africa would become a communist state after an ANC takeover have been proven wrong. We have a relatively strong economy with a good basis for further development.

Mandela helped to create that foundation. Alas, the present leadership have failed to exploit the potential created by Madiba.

We will miss his flexibility, his integrity and his leadership.

 - Fin24

* Leopold Scholtz is an independent political analyst who lives in Europe. Views expressed are his own.


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