generalspeaking

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

W[h]ither South Africa?

"When Nelson Mandela dies, the place is not likely to explode.
"Whether South Africa falls apart at the seams or not I don't think is dependent on when Nelson Mandela dies South Africa will likely continue to bumble along as we are doing at the moment. There are worries and there are concerns, but I don't believe the country is unravelling. South Africa is coping, South Africa will cope.
"The current Nelson Mandela, the man who lives today, is not influencing directly the politics in the South Africa of today. But it is insulting to Mandela to suggest that his lifetime's work will unravel at the end of this life."
"Our country holds together not because of the Nelson Mandela of today, but because of what he did over his lifetime. When he took over the government of South Africa, when the ANC came to power, he maintained the country's institutions. Those institutions have the ability to arrest the politics of destruction as the country goes through this transition."
Nathan Geffen, Cape Town-based columnist/author

The man has reached his 94th year; he is frail and elderly, his health has long been compromised, some of that because of the conditions he suffered during his 27 long years of prison incarceration. It is his legacy and the memory of what he attained through civil disobedience, through his refusal to resort to violence to achieve justice in South Africa in removing the Afrikaans minority administration over black South Africans that gained him his preeminent place in the canon of world figures leading peaceful change in attitudes and colonial presumptions.

Nelson Mandela served only one term as President of his country. And that term was not entirely without some questionable associations, as evidenced through his accepting the presence of thoroughly nasty human-rights-abusing Liberian President Charles Taylor at the presidential palace in 1997, when it was revealed that another guest, model Naomi Campbell, was given blood diamonds by Taylor. The revered former President of South Africa was followed in his office by presidents whose controversial ignorance on AIDS lent no lustre to The African National Congress.

The current President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, personifies that ignorance, and is as well a rapist. In a country as violent as South Africa, with high crime rates that seem resistant to security efforts, with endemic poverty, inadequate housing, lack of employment opportunities, and police forces that employ mortal violence against striking union workers, there is nowhere to go but up, and Jacob Zuma, himself guilty of corruption and using public funds to enhance his private holdings, does his country no favours.

"Already you see a shift from people who lived through apartheid, who were directly involved in the liberation and the transition [to] people more interested in personal riches. Right now, the ANC is still able to cart out Mandela and others as symbols that say they are the only legitimate party of liberation.
"There has been a general unease regarding the political future of the country. Mandela's death will probably contribute to that unease", and the unease to which Dave Thomas of New Brunswick's Mount Allison University, specializing in South Africa and the ANC makes allusions is quite different from Mr. Geffen's take.

South Africa is beset with racial unease, with an ever-increasing economic divide, a fractured ruling political party, and runaway corruption. But perhaps all is not yet lost: "Yes, there are problems but they are still holding free and fair elections, there is a vibrant media that is largely able to voice criticism of the government, there's a vibrant civil society and judiciary which has been relatively free.
"South Africa is still providing an example on the continent as a robust democracy", insists Professor Thomas.

Labels: Africa, Corruption, Culture, Democracy, Human Relations, Political Realities, Racism, Social-Cultural Deviations, Traditions