South Africans are sitting on a time bomb

PRESIDENT Mugabe, on his last visit to South Africa, received an ovation from black South Africans. Many people read it in different ways. To me it was a symbolic gesture—a reminder that most South Africans had not forgotten one of the ANC's promises—that almost a third of arable land would be redistributed by 2000. Today the figure is less than 4 per cent, and the target year has been altered to 2015.

The hard truth is that South Africa today sits on a time bomb.

Every time I read about the response of South Africans and their media—especially the independent media—to the crisis in Zimbabwe, I am concerned that many do not seem to understand the extent of the problems they face today, and are likely to face in the future—and how those problems will be a déjà vu to what is happening in Zimbabwe today.

I have listened to various programmes and broadcasts and read individual statements on blogs and various fora by South Africans, who have harshly criticised the government and people of Zimbabwe, whom they have labelled docile and incapable of helping themselves.

But this is only a handful of South Africans—the middle class, and new middle class that is benefiting from South Africa’s ‘independence’ and so-called black empowerment initiatives.

It is interesting that a handful of people—in a country with millions living in abject poverty—can mock a country that had a protracted war of liberation to free itself, when in fact they had a negotiated settlement.

Zimbabweans, who today opt for peaceful means and not take to the streets to resolve their crises, know the struggles of yesteryear and the meaning of ‘war’—in real terms—and its disastrous consequences on the physical and mental being of human beings.

Zimbabweans experienced a protracted guerilla war against colonialism, against white settlerism, that saw many casualties incomparable to anywhere in Africa—innocent and combatant. No other country on the continent experienced what Zimbabwe and its peoples, its parties including the main ones Zanu PF and PF Zapu—the liberation war parties that brought successfully fought for independence—experienced.

Ironically, at exactly the same time, Zimbabweans were involved in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Some of us literally grew up with members of the African National Congress living in our midst getting help to crumble the evil system.

Today, South Africans, especially those sitting comfortably, and oblivious to the impending problem, need to realise that they are sitting on a time bomb.

South Africa in 2008

"Our country belongs to all who live in it," says the opening words of the ANC's Freedom Charter, declared more than half a century ago. Do these words ring true today in South Africa?

A young author and friend of mine, a South African (born and bred) tells me, “On Sunday we celebrated Unfreedom Day—not Freedom Day.” His feelings were echoed by South African shack-dwellers’ movement, Abahlali Basemjondolo, who aptly summarized their problem:

“Since the last UnFreedom Day we have been beaten, shot at and arrested on false charges by the police; evicted by the land invasions unit; disconnected from electricity by Municipal Security; forcibly removed to rural human dumping grounds by the Municipalities; banned from marching by the eThekwini City Manager; slandered by all those who want followers not comrades; intimidated by all kinds of people who demand the silence of the poor; threatened by new anti-poor laws; burnt in the fires; sick in the dirt and raped in the dark nights looking for a safe place to go the toilet.”

18 years after the release of Nelson Mandela by the President F.W. De Klerk—an event many people prefer to call ‘independence’—many black South Africans still live in abject poverty and are victims of a ‘post-independence apartheid system’, perpetuated through a racist extreme Right Wing South Africa and a corrupt police force.

Mandela, on his release on 11 February 1990 said, “On this occasion, we thank the world community for their great contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. Without your support our struggle would not have reached this advanced stage. The sacrifice of the frontline states will be remembered by South Africans forever.”

How quickly they forgot—especially in relation to Zimbabwe.

Mandela also said, “Today the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognise that apartheid has no future,” yet 11 years later, the ‘apartheid system’ is still alive and well, and millions of black South Africans are still living in slums without running water or electricity—with no material change to their lives. Poor South Africans are fleeing the country to Europe and America in more numbers than during the apartheid era.

Estimates of poverty by the Southern African Poverty Regional Netword, SARPN, show that the proportion of people living in poverty in South Africa has not changed significantly since 1990.

Households living in poverty have sunk deeper into poverty and the gap between rich and poor has widened. Unemployment rate in South Africa is one of the highest in the world, 36% to 42% since the year 2000 (Global Poverty Research) and is around 60% to 70% among blacks living in the homelands.

South Africa today is the most dangerous country in the world to live, which is not at war—due to the levels of poverty-necessitated crime. South African police crime statistics show that there were 21 683 murders in the year 2000.

Worse than apartheid era

South Africa is worse today, in crime terms, than it was under apartheid.

A United Christian Action Report on Murder in South Africa reveals that according to the official statistics, in the 44 years from 1950 to 1993, there was an average of 7 036 murders per year. This covered the turbulent strife of the apartheid years of warfare, conflict, terrorism, riots and repression.

However, in the first eight years (of peace) of the new democratic dispensation, under the ANC, an average of 24 206 murders are committed each year.

If Interpol statistics are accepted, then the murder rate in South Africa during the ‘independence’ years has averaged 47 882 per year.

Crime syndicates

A report from the World Economic Forum claimed that South Africa’s organised crime was second only to Columbia’s. The country today boasts frightening drug cartels and an omnipresent mafia. It is also claimed that one in four police officers in the greater Johannesburg area is under criminal investigation as we speak.

In 2005 there were “about 700 extremely well financed and superbly armed crime syndicates operating in and from South Africa” (SA Police). However, it was also reported that “not a single ring leader of any of the 700 crime syndicates operating in South Africa has been arrested.”

In a recent survey by Grant Thorton Chartered Accountants, 84% of all small businesses in South Africa indicated that crime was an obstacle to their growth.

Land distribution, reform

South Africa could find itself on a worse trajectory than Zimbabwe walked with regards to land reform and land engineering. The New Statesman calls the issue of land, ‘South Africa’s new struggle,’ suggesting that correcting the injustice of apartheid land engineering is the greatest challenge South Africa faces. Rectifying a century of exclusion, confiscation and forced removal will be difficult, if not impossible without a radical, sustained and committed approach.

Despite assurances by the country's commercial farmers that they are intent on making land redistribution and black economic empowerment work, many South Africans are still marginalized from the commercial farming sector, and still await the ‘Promised Land’.

Land reform was one of the main promises made by the African National Congress (ANC) when it came to power in South Africa in 1994. It has proved a complex and slow-moving process, and one and half decades after the first democratic elections, the government has found itself defending its record on delivery.

Land reform remains one of the most onerous challenges facing ‘post-apartheid’ South Africa. Many black South Africans feel the land redistribution process is not going fast enough. According to Business Day (in 2004), South Africa had to increase delivery fivefold to meet the target of transferring 30% of land to black people by 2015. Only 4%, or slightly under, of agricultural land previously owned by whites has been transferred as of 2008. This is ‘not very productive’ agricultural land.

Land claims commissioner of South Africa Tozi Gwanya, estimated in the Sunday Times that "close to half our land reform projects have failed" —a frank and ominous admission.

For the government of South Africa to reach its target (transferring 30% of white farmland to blacks by 2015 as stated earlier) they would have to double, triple or even quadruple the annual rate of transfer. But how do they do this when white farmers—like in Zimbabwe in the early 1990s—resist that move and are only willing to transfer the ‘not very productive’ agricultural land?

South Africa has to import more and more food at escalating prices because local farmers are not growing enough. Farm workers in South Africa, 10% of whom are Zimbabweans, today till the fields in conditions akin to the Caribbean and American slave labour conditions

Education, a Verwoerdian legacy

It is true that “South Africa has some excellent public and private schools, but undoing the damage done to education by Verwoerdian policies is no laughing matter, and still remains a huge challenge for the South African government.

An audit some years ago found that close to 80% of public schools were dysfunctional,” according to Politicsweb. South Africa’s director general of education in an open letter to school principals in August 2006, said that “since the introduction of the National Curriculum Statement, many teachers believe they do not have to teach reading any more.” This was an extremely startling admission. This year (2008) the minister said, “It is time to declare war on the failure of foundational learning in our schools.”

Today 20% of black South Africans living in poverty can read and write and many of those have only basic R&W skills.

Infiltration of ‘disastrous’ foreign capital

Britain's Department for International Development has played a dubious and questionable role in South Africa—for an organisation that aims to reduce poverty. In South Africa, DfID is, according to New Statesman, “a privatising agency that greases the way for multinationals to take over public services.”

According to the magazine, “In 2004, the department paid the Adam Smith Institute, an extreme right-wing think tank, £6.3m for plans to ‘reform’ the ‘public sector’ in South Africa, promoting ‘business-to-business’ links between British and South African companies whose singular interest is profit.”

Foreign capital has not delivered the intended gains in South Africa—a premonition to the £1 billion ‘rescue package’ promised the MDC by Britain and its allies.

The time bomb will explode, inevitably

“It is clear that no one should tell someone else that they are free. Each person must decide for themselves if their life is free,” says Abahlali Basemjondolo.

Zimbabwe today faces insurmountable problems, which will be overcome. This is a truism. We are just forerunners to these ‘post-colonial’ problems in relation to South Africa, just like we were first in achieving independence.

Our time bomb exploded and we are working through it. South Africa’s time bomb will explode, inevitably, and they will have to deal with it—whether they like it or not. It seems the effects of the ‘explosion’ will be more gargantuan than the Zimbabwean one.

The sooner South Africans realize that, the better.

itayi@talkzimbabwe.com