The Price of Freedom a Special Report on South Africa June 5Th 2010
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The price of freedom A special report on South Africa June 5th 2010 SouthAfrica.indd 1 25/05/2010 12:06 The Economist June 5th 2010 A special report on South Africa 1 The price of freedom Also in this section Your friendly monolith The ANC remains all•powerful. Page 2 Colour me South African Learning to live in a rainbow society. Page 4 Jobless growth The economy is doing nicelybut at least one person in three is out of work. Page 5 A new kind of inequality Black economic empowerment has had unintended consequences. Page 7 Hold your nose The smell of corruption. Page 8 The great scourges Since embracing full democracy 16 years ago, South Africa has made A black middle class is emerging, but poverty huge strides. But, says Diana Geddes, not everything has changed for and crime blight millions of lives. Page 9 the better PORT matters in South Africa. In his thinking that they were still in the rich Last in class Snew year’s address to the nation, Presi• world. Much of the infrastructure is as Education needs to take a giant leap. Page 11 dent Jacob Zuma described 2010 as the good as you will nd anywhereparticu• most important year in our country since larly those parts that have been given 1994. To outsiders, playing host to this multi•million•dollar facelifts in prepara• Don’t get ill year’s football World Cup seemed perhaps tion for the tournament. Ten spectacular Or if you do, go private. Page 12 a less momentous event than holding the stadiums have been newly built or upgrad• country’s rst fully democratic elections ed at a cost of 15 billion rand (see box, left, that established a black•majority govern• for currency conversions). Visitors arriving Still everything to play for ment 16 years agoespecially when the na• at O.R. Tambo, the main international air• The case for optimismand the many tional team, Bafana Bafana, may be port, will be whisked into Johannesburg caveats. Page 13 knocked out in the rst round. But with the by the Gautrain, Africa’s rst high•speed kick•o on June 11th, just days after the rail link (pictured above). And many of the country’s 100th birthday on May 31st, the country’s hotels and restaurants are world• world’s eyes will be on Africa’s leading class, including Bushmans Kloof hotel, Exchange rates economy for the next few weeks. three hours’ drive from Cape Town, recent• May 25th 2010 Can the miracle nation, which won ly voted the world’s best by Travel + Leisure $ £ ¤ plaudits around the world for its peaceful website, and Cape Town’s La Colombe, 10 rand = 1.25 0.88 1.03 transition to democracy after centuries of ranked 12th in this year’s S.Pellegrino list of white•supremacist rule, conquer the bitter the best restaurants. divisions of its past to turn itself into the Acknowledgments rainbow nation of Nelson Mandela’s Not as rich as it looks In addition to those mentioned in the text, the author dreams? Or will it become ever more But in reality South Africa is no more than would like to give special thanks to: Antony Altbeker, Kader Asmal, Ed Cameron, Frans Cronje, Adrian Gore, Paul mired in bad governance, racial tension, a middle•income developing country with Graham, William Gumede, Adam Habib, Alan Hirsch, Adele poverty, corruption, violence and decay to a GDP per person of around $10,000 (at Kirsten, Russel Loubser, Leon Louw, Justice Malala, Temba turn into yet another African failed state? purchasing•power parity), a quarter of the Masilela, Sue Möller, Johannes Ndebele, Temba Nolutshungu, Cheryl de la Rey, Michael Spicer, Dave With Zimbabwe, its neighbour to the American gure. On a per•head basis, it is Steward, Gaba Tabane, Athol Trollip, Linky Tsotetsi and north, an ever•present reminder of what the seventh•richest country in Africa by David Welsh. can happen after just a couple of decades some measures. The average hides huge of post•liberation single•party rule, many disparities. Under apartheid, whites were A list of sources is at South Africans, black and white, worry encouraged to believe they were part of Economist.com/specialreports that their country may be reaching a tip• the Western world. It was only when they ping point. had to start sharing their streets, goods and An audio interview with the author is at Western fans arriving in South Africa services with their darker•skinned compa• Economist.com/audiovideo/specialreports for the World Cup could be forgiven for triots that they began to wonder whether 1 2 A special report on South Africa The Economist June 5th 2010 2 they really were. Many now complain the rst country to perform a heart trans• about falling standards. Yet most whites plant, and some of its doctors are still have done rather well since apartheid end• among the best anywhere; yet its people’s edbetter, in fact, than most blacks. They health record is among the world’s worst. still enjoy a good life, helped by cheap do• And, leaving aside war zones, it is one of mestic help and rst•class private medical the most violent and crime•ridden coun• care and schools. tries on the planet. This special report will For the majority of South Africa’s look at South Africa the way that most of blacks, however, the living is not so easy. its people see it. The results are often harsh. Although many of the poorest now get some kind of government support, it is The bright side only a pittance. Most blacks still live in Yet there are some encouraging signs that shoddy shacks or bungalows without the contrasts are getting less stark. South proper sanitation in poor crime•ridden Africa has recently cut its murder rate in townships outside the main cities. Their half; virtually eradicated severe malnutri• schools and hospitals are often in a dire tion among the under•ves; increased the state. And, in a country where there is little enrolment in schools of children aged sev• public transport, most blacks do not own a en to 15 to nearly 100%; provided welfare car. Although it has the world’s 24th•big• benets for 15m people; and set up the gest economy, South Africa ranks a dismal world’s biggest antiretroviral treatment 129th out of 182 on the UN’s Human Devel• in the world index, where 1 is completely programme for HIV/AIDs. opment Index (and 12th in Africa). free and 7 totally unfree. What about race? South Africa remains The country’s constitution, adopted in South Africa is a land of contrasts. It has obsessed by it. That is hardly surprising 1996, is one of the most progressive in the fabulous mineral wealth, with 90% of the after 350 years of racial polarisation, in• world. It enshrines a wide range of social world’s known platinum reserves, 80% of cluding nearly half a century of apartheid, and economic rights as well as the more its manganese, 70% of its chrome and 40% when inter•racial sex was a criminal of• usual civil and political freedoms. Discrim• of its gold, as well as rich coal deposits; yet fence and non•whites were even banned ination is banned not only on the grounds 43% of its population live on less than $2 a from using the pavements. The subject of race, gender, age and belief, but also of day. It has just announced plans to develop waxes and wanes. Only last August Mr pregnancy, marital status, sexual orienta• a satellite programme (with India and Bra• Zuma was warning his compatriots tion and culture. Every one of the coun• zil) and is the leading candidate to host the against reviving the race debate. But the try’s 49m people79% black, 9% white, 9% world’s biggest science project, the Square murder in April of Eugene Terre’Blanche, coloured (mixed race) and 3% Asian/Indi• Kilometre Array radio telescope; yet in in• leader of a white•supremacist group, and anis guaranteed equal protection under ternational maths, science and reading the racist outbursts by Julius Malema, the the law. Freedom House, a Washington• tests it performs abysmally. It has sky•high leader of the powerful Youth League of the based research foundation, gives South Af• unemployment yet at the same time suf• ruling African National Congress (ANC), rica a respectable rating of 2 in its freedom fers from crippling skills shortages. It was have brought it to the fore again. 7 Your friendly monolith The ANC remains all•powerful OLITICAL division based on colour ce for the foreseeable futureuntil Jesus to have been anti•apartheid activists, only Pis entirely articial, and when it dis• comes, as Mr Zuma puts it, not altogether 3% chose to vote for the ANC in 1994, appears, so will the domination of one col• reassuringly. whereas 60% voted for the ruling National our group by another, said Nelson Man• The ANC claims to be a non•racial Party, the architects of apartheid. Today dela at his trial in 1964. The ANC has spent party. In government it has been scrupu• just 4% of whites say they support the half a century ghting against racialism. lous about maintaining the correct racial ANC, compared with 92% of blacks. Most When it triumphs, as it certainly must, it balance. Of the present 35 cabinet minis• opt for the Democratic Alliance, led by Hel• will not change that policy. ters, four are white; of the 99 provincial en Zille, the white premier of the Western By and large the ANC has remained premiers and ministers, nine are white.