Afrika Mayibuye II (A comment on the previous post)

An interesting comment was made related to my previous post about post-apartheid South Africa: "Seems like a rather one-sided and not very refreshing article... Since you're there wouldn't it be more interesting to relate to your readers personal perspectives and insights rather than things we've mostly already read and heard?I mean is Africa a better place now? Do people live in better conditions? Can you honestly attribute all the current problems to Apartheid? Certainly you could tell us more insightful and intriguing things on this subject..."

Reply:

The point was to give those who are not that fluent on the current situation in South Africa a brief overview of the country's past and how the effects of the white regime are still felt and experienced today. I no doubt will relate personal experiences at some later stage when I feel that I have the ability to do so in a constructive manner, not simply recounting "that time I met a racist" or "my close encounter with the ANC".

Is South Africa a better place without apartheid? Yes. Do people live in better conditions? Many do, but many more still live in townships or informal settlements. It is perhaps easier to illustrate the legacy of apartheid through statistics. Since the first free elections in 1994 the new government faced the following: first (and surpising to the newly elected government) there was no money to be spent on the ambitious development plans Mandela had promised to deliver. While the ANC had expected to inherit the wealth the white government gained from South Africa's mineral deposits, the "treasure chest" was in fact more than empty. The previous government had left a record budget deficit of 8.6 percent of the gross domestic product and its foreign exhange reserves were down to less than theequivalent of three weeks of imports. More worryingly, 92 percent of the governments revenues was spent on the cost of debt service, leaving only 8 percent for actual capital spending...that's not a lot.

Socially, the situation was just as dismal. Out of a population of 40 million, 22 million lacked sanitation (7,5 million in urban centres), 12 million lacked a clean water supply, 23 million had no access to electricity and some 2 million children were without schools. A quarter of the people lived on less than half of the poverty-line income and one-third of the population was illiterate.

Administratively: a whole new structure for local and provincial government had to be implemented because all institutions were dominated by and geared towards whites. Nine new provinces had to be formed from the former "homeland" territories and 800 segregated local authorities had to be transformed into 300 multiracial bodies. The police service required a complete overhaul (it was at the forefront of enforcing apartheid laws) and the army had to be reorganized to incorporate the ANC's guerilla army and former homeland armies. The entire education system which had been segregated for each racial group needed restructuring. And while white education offered very high standards in all levels of schooling, black public education had suffered from decades of deprivation: one-third had no electricity, a quarter had no water, a half had no sanitation, one-third of the teachers were unqualified and many more were under-qualified.

Makes for very dull reading perhaps but by no stretch of the imagination can you expect all these issues to be smoothed out in ten years time. It is impossible to claim that South Africa is either going to win the struggle of the post-apartheid years or lose it, but nothing's ever been accomplished in Africa (or anywhere else) through negative thought so I remain quietly optimistic about the future of this country.

Can I claim that all current problems are related to apartheid? Of course not. But the facts stated above do show us that the country was in already in trouble during the final years of the white regime. In later years no doubt these economic problems would have worsened regardless of government: a white government would have been sinking slowly due to international sanctions and desperate attempts to hide 22 million people; a multiracial government could expect to be struggling for a long time, as it is currently, because 22 million people suddenly all need to be "part of the system". The only difference is that the whites ruled through oppression and racism, not democracy and equality.

I realize that this particular article is not that interesting to you, but I'm targetting a slightly larger audience who perhaps do not know some of the details of South Africa's past and present. Knowing its past is in the end the only way to fully understand the present.

On a side-note, I did not intend this blog to be academically sound but merely relate my own expriences while in South Africa. The whole racial issue, as well as South Africa's current social and economic climate, are however so complicated that I chose to devote one article as an introduction to more personal stories.

The information related above was found on several SA government websites (notably the department of statistics), the autobiography of Nelson Mandela "The Long Road to Freedom" and the excellent recent publication "The State of Africa" by Martin Meredith.