“Since we have achieved our freedom, there can only be one division among us: between those who cherish democracy and those who do not.” Nelson Mandela, shortly before leaving office as president, urged constant vigilance against South Africa’s enemies, “even if they come from within our own ranks”. Democracy was the cause for which he lived and for which — as he told the court that sent him to prison for 27 years — he was ready to die. For him, the success of the long march to freedom in South Africa was a triumph for all humanity.
When he won the Nobel Peace Prize with Frederik Willem de Klerk in 1993, for demolishing apartheid and laying the foundations for a free society, Mandela talked movingly in his acceptance speech of how people inside and outside South Africa “had the nobility of spirit to stand in the path of tyranny” since they saw that “an injury to one is an injury to all”. He spoke about fighting for a world of democracy, freed from “the scourge of civil wars and external aggression and unburdened of the great tragedy of millions forced to become refugees”.
How sad, then, to see the betrayal of this legacy by his party and protégé, Cyril Ramaphosa, who now runs the country as President. The African National Congress promised “a better life for all”, but instead seems terminally corrupt and incompetent, something symbolised by the power cuts lasting up to 16 hours a day, as winter looms in a country that is cursed by high crime rates, rampant inequality, raging unemployment, grinding poverty, and woeful schools. Meanwhile, its flailing leader, Ramaphosa, is doing his utmost to smooth the path of tyranny for Vladimir Putin.
It is no wonder that, after three decades in power, the ANC is widely expected to lose its governing majority in next year’s election. Voters know that the party, founded 111 years ago to fight for rights of black Africans, is to blame for the energy crisis in the continent’s most industrialised nation, following years of mismanagement and theft. Typical was the $27 billion construction of two big coal-fired plants, where costs tripled under Jacob Zuma’s presidency as his cronies plundered the country and yet still failed to deliver their planned power due to delays and defects.
There is toxic talk on the Left of revolution sparked by the power shortages that are blamed for bankrupting businesses, water shortages, huge traffic jams, opportunistic robberies, rotting food, and even decomposing corpses in morgues. Last year, South Africans experienced more than twice as many power cuts than ever before, reducing the nation’s GDP by about 5%. This year has already been worse. Eskom, the state-owned electricity generator, is warning people to prepare for even more blackouts as the cold weather arrives.
Many voters hoped that Ramaphosa, a former trade union leader who became a rand billionaire after apartheid, might set the country on the right track after Zuma’s corrosive nine-year stint in office. Yet the outgoing chief executive of Eskom fled after surviving an attempt to poison him with cyanide in his coffee six months ago, then blamed ministers of covering up corruption by gangs stealing $50 million a month from the firm. But the president’s image was shredded by the “farmgate” scandal, in which he was accused of covering up the theft of between $580,000 and $5 million in foreign currency that had been hidden in sofa of his luxury game ranch. He acknowledged that the cash had been stolen and, having failed to inform the police, claimed it was payment for buffalos sold to a Sudanese businessman. He avoided impeachment due to the loyalty of his MPs.
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