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The ANC in 1994 promised ‘a better life for all’. In retrospect, the outcome of the democratic era has been mixed. If we assume that ‘a better life’ means a longer, healthier and wealthier life for the majority, then the evidence, as recorded by the South African Institute of Race Relations (2012), is very ambiguous.

 Life expectancy for South Africans has actually declined from 62.9 in 1990 to an expected 58.6 in 2015).

 South Africans’ well-being, as summarised by the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Index, has managed to improve, but at a dismally slow rate (from 0.615 in 1990 to 0.619 in 2011, whereas the corresponding figures over the same period for Ghana, for instance, have seen a much greater improvement, from 0.418 to 0.541).

While these indicators are depressing, those regarding the number of people living in poverty are only faintly more encouraging (although definitions of poverty are highly contentious). According to one measure, for instance, whereas some 49 per cent of Africans lived in ‘relative poverty’ in 1996,³ this figure had fallen to 45 per cent in 2011 (having risen to a high of nearly 59 per cent in 2002); average household income for Africans having increased by some 210 per cent between 1996 and 2011 (at current prices).

Official statistics show that the proportion of households with access to free basic water increased from 59 per cent in 2001 to 85 per cent in 2010/11; functioning sanitation facilities increased from some 5 million in 1993/94 to 10.9 million in 2010/11; and electricity increased from 51 per cent to 74 per cent, and so on, over the same period.

Similarly, there has been an overall improvement in the standard of housing, the number of formal dwellings having increased from 5.8 million in 1996 to 11.3 million in 2011.

All such indicators are inevitably selective and patchy, varying markedly along racial lines, across province, and between town and country, and so on, with life expectancy having been severely affected by HIV/AIDS. Yet the general message is that the standard of living of people at the bottom of society has been rising – the result of the government’s expansion of the number of recipients of social grants, which leapt from 3.4 million in 2001 to over 15.5 million in 2011/12.

Nonetheless, for all that the ANC in government can claim major credit from such indicators, a widespread response is that although such general indicators are well and good, the overall performance could and should have been a lot better, and that poorer people’s expectations remain hugely unsatisfied, not least because inequality remains so vast, albeit somewhat deracialised since 1994. To many at the bottom of the heap, inequality may have in reality become more visible (and hence more politically salient), as at all levels of society ANC-connected elites appear the major beneficiaries of programmes such as BEE and access to jobs in government and other wealth-making opportunities. Nor does it help that the rich display a penchant for highly visible consumption, with those at the top of the corporate pile raking in vast salaries. Meanwhile, although white poverty is beginning to make an appearance, the overwhelming proportion of senior jobs in the corporate sector continue to go to whites and, overall, whites have done very well (in income terms, educational access and jobs) under ANC rule. In consequence, while the ANC can validly claim that much has changed for the better since 1994, the response from its own constituency is that change has not been fast enough, and that far too many continuities with apartheid South Africa remain. The result is a disconcerting lack of social coherence, with the post-1994 glow of national reconciliation increasingly assaulted by class and racial divisions.

Present trends point to a worrying trajectory, with accompanying dangers for democracy. While the relationship between democracy and development is extremely difficult to disentangle, general perceptions are that the quality of democracy in South Africa is declining.⁴ From a comparative perspective, this is not unusual. Brief reference to the experiences of Zimbabwe and India, two countries which have faced not dissimilar challenges to South Africa, may be instructive.

Zimbabwe’s record is particularly relevant to that of South Africa because it has played out against a similar background of liberation struggle fought against settler colonialism. The independence election in 1980 brought Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu PF) to power, ruling in coalition with its rival Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) as the junior partner. The coalition soon collapsed, however, when Mugabe found reason for a brutal crackdown on Zapu, which eventually sued for peace and dissolved itself into the ruling party in 1987. The resultant political calm did not last for long, for democracy then came under assault in the early 2000s with the rise of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Formed out of the trade union movement and civil society in response to the economy’s plunging into a severe downturn, the MDC posed a major challenge to Zanu PF hegemony which was marked by the government’s defeat in a constitutional referendum in 2000.

Shaken to its core, Zanu PF resorted to increasingly authoritarian behaviour. In a bid to win back popular support, Mugabe now threw government support behind a campaign of seizure of white farms, launched independently by ‘war veterans’, regardless of the cost. As the economic crisis (and inflation) spiralled out of control, the MDC continued to grow, despite facing mounting repression and Zanu PF’s skewing of elections. Its moment of triumph arrived when, with the economy in tatters, it won a narrow majority in the National Assembly elections in 2008, with its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, only denied a victory in the presidential election by official rigging, which forced him into a run-off with Mugabe. However, this proved to be a step too far, for Zanu PF now launched into full war mode, inflicting such brutality upon MDC supporters that Tsvangirai ultimately opted to withdraw.

Effectively backed by South Africa and its most powerful partners in the regional body, the Southern African Development Community, Zanu PF now clung on, not only to the presidency but also the most powerful positions in a regionally-negotiated coalition government. Although the MDC played a significant role in the years that followed in pulling the economy back from the brink, its leaders were themselves to fall victim to many of the sins of incumbency (translating political office into wealth), and were never able to challenge the grip which Zanu PF, backed by the military, maintained on state power. The culmination was a victory for Zanu PF in an election in 2013 which, while owing much to its manipulation of the electoral machinery, also reflected its putting on an election campaign (centred around populist themes of indigenisation and empowerment) to which the MDC had no effective answer.

If democracy has been effectively subverted in Zimbabwe, it has survived severe challenges in India. India’s colonial history of direct domination by Britain is contrasted with that of South Africa’s domination by settler colonialism, but there are strong connections between the two countries. Notably, the ANC initially modelled itself on the Indian National Congress and, once independent in 1947, India was a major source of strength to the anti-apartheid movement. India, like South Africa, was a highly diverse country (despite the breach with Pakistan) demanding that Congress preach national reconciliation under Pandit Nehru just as the ANC was later to do under Nelson Mandela. Although its electoral majorities were never as large as were later to be secured by the ANC, Congress was politically dominant for the first twenty years of democracy. As the party of liberation, it won major victories in the first three national elections until, in the late 1960s, it began to experience internal splits and contestations (similar to those experienced by the ANC today). The outcome was a lurch to political authoritarianism under Indira Ghandi and populist nationalisation of key sectors of the economy, only for a divided party to then be defeated in the late 1970s when Congress stood down from power nationally. Subsequently, formerly-dominant Congress has variously been in opposition, or a majority or minority player in coalition governments. In short, India has survived as a democracy, but only as a very messy one, even marred at times by sectarian (notably Hindu-nationalist) extremism and intolerance.

Twenty years after its own liberation, South Africa – like Zimbabwe – is facing a mounting economic crisis and increasing social and political strains. This crisis is not as extreme as that faced by Zanu PF in the early 2000s, yet the ANC is similarly faced by stagnating growth, worsening unemployment, acute inequality, widening mistrust between government and large-scale capital, and associated divisions within its own ranks. Its response is in many ways similar to the line pursued by Zanu PF: consolidation of a ‘party-state’; stress upon the right of the party elite to rule on behalf of the people; a determination to subordinate wayward elements within Cosatu to Alliance discipline; a militarisation of the police, and so on. Ambiguities about the virtues of constitutionalism combine with populist initiatives to counter challenges by the opposition, whether the Democratic Alliance to the right or the populist Economic Freedom Front (EFF) (formed by Julius Malema, formerly president of the ANC Youth League after his expulsion from the ruling party) to the (quasi-)left. However, although it may well be argued that the ANC shares many liberation movement pathologies with Zanu PF, and while many within the ANC lionise Mugabe for his anti-imperialist and forceful Africanist rhetoric, the foundations for democracy in South Africa appear more firmly rooted. The ANC has remained committed to free elections; although under considerable political pressure to ‘transform’ the judiciary remains independent; and, perhaps above all, civil society remains robust (a lively media, widespread social protest, emergent social movements and rowdy political debate), despite ANC attempts to clamp down upon trade union independence and to encroach upon wider freedoms. Just as the immensely diverse nature of Indian politics and society appears to dictate the continuance of democracy, so the diverse nature of South Africa appears to strain against the long-term political dominance of the ANC.

Yet the Indian developmental trajectory presents its own huge challenges. The rise of the socially conservative Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the late 1970s was to see the triumph of market-oriented policies, which were also rapidly adopted by Congress. The outcome was period of remarkable economic growth, with Congress statist policies largely reversed, and with India now featuring as an ‘emerging market’ based upon the development of a new industrial economy. This has been accompanied by the growth of a middle class, which many observers view as laying a foundation for further development and entrepreneurial energy (although others claim that it is fragile and precarious). However, as in South Africa under the ANC, India’s capitalist growth continues to foster gross social inequality, and does little to address deeply-entrenched levels of poverty and pervasive underemployment and unemployment. This is highlighted, notably, by the successes in combating such social ills by the very different strategies pursued at state level in Kerala, where competing political parties pursue some form of developmentalstatism by whatever the political party that comes to power (for a South Africa/Kerala contrast see Williams 2008).

Although such broad-brush comparisons are dangerous, they may be suggestive. Ultimately, the ANC will make its own future and will, one hopes, learn from the experiences of other ruling parties in the global South in order to avoid the worst of their mistakes and to emulate the best of their policies. However, for all that the ANC puts forward as its desired goal that of the pursuit of a ‘democratic developmental state’, disturbing trends point to the dangers of its increasingly resorting to authoritarian and populist measures. After twenty years of democracy, things in South Africa may well get worse before they get better.

The ANC’s new deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a key drafter of the country’s Constitution (and former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers) embodies in many ways the tensions inherent in South Africa’s body politic. While Zuma continues to blemish the image of the ANC with his gaffes and at times incomprehensible public utterances (causing his spokeperson in January to plead with the media to stop asking him to decipher his president’s remarks), Ramaphosa by contrast is urbane, erudite and highly knowledgeable about ANC policy. After the launch of the ANC elections manifesto in January, it was Rampahosa and not Zuma who was thrust into the media spotlight, to conduct lengthy interviews with television stations, explaining the intricacies of ANC policy. He effortlessly addressed many piercing questions, admitting to ‘shortcomings’ and the need to continuously improve, coming across as convincing, affable and believable. He harks back to the Mandela era of hope and reconciliation

Of course, you would have to forget that it is the same Ramaphosa that represents much that is wrong about black empowerment – he became an instant billionaire after he left politics in 1994, and is the darling of big business. In other words, he represents the conversion of black working class empowerment to black elite enrichment, a chief characteristic of twenty years of democracy. Along with Trevor Manuel, he is the main champion of the orthodox economic trajectory now embedded in the National Development Plan, skillfully brushing aside objections from Cosatu (‘their issues are being dealt with by a special tripartite commission,’ he told the television channel ANN7’s Hajra Omarjee on 12 January – omitting to mention that this commission had not yet met six months after it was formed). It is, however, his role in the massacre of Marikana mineworkers in August 2012, as a board member of Lonmin, that rankles critics most. Lawyer Dali Mpofu, now a member of the EFF, accused him of being part of a ‘toxic collusion’ between the state and business, in that he urged ‘concomitant action’ by government against the striking mineworkers, who he described as ‘criminals’. On the next day, thirty-two mine-workers were mowed down by police (see Pillay 2013).

That, in essence, is the ruling party of South Africa, which has presided over the country’s still fragile democracy over the past twenty years. As a key component, alongside business, of a fractuous but coherent power elite, it simultaneously embodies the hopes and fears of South Africans. However, the state of the ANC and government is only one aspect of an assessment of where we are as a country. To quote Max Du Preez (2013):

My lefty friends in New York moaned and bitched about George W Bush when he was president and called him names … But they didn’t say America was rotten and start making plans to emigrate – we might have a weak and ineffectual government and a rather embarrasing president right now, but our country and our people are as vibrant and strong as we were when we negotiated that unlikely settlement in 1994 … There is a lot more to South Africa and South Africans than Jacob Zuma and his present crop of ANC leaders. In fact, there is a lot more to the ANC than Zuma and Co.

NOTES

1 Workdays lost to strikes during the period 1989-1994 ranged from a low of 3.09 million to 4.2 million. Between 1995 and 2006, they ranged between 650 000 and 3.1 million (SAIRR 2010-2011: 417).

2 Gross labour market figures need careful dissection, but some indication is given by the reduction of non-agricultural private sector employment from 3.9 million in 1990 to 3.08 million in 2001(SAIRR 2002/2003: 149).

3 The term ‘relative poverty’ refers to ‘people in poverty … defined as those living in households with incomes less than the poverty income’, which varies according to household size (SAIRR 2012: 322-3).

4 ‘The South Africa chapter of Human Rights Watch’s 2012 World Report states that the country ‘continues to grapple with corruption, growing social and economic inequalities, and the weakening of state institutions by partisan appointments and one-party dominance.’ The 2011 Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance shows that although South Africa ranks fifth overall among African governments, its scores have consistently declined over the past five years, with a significant reduction in scores for rule of law, accountability, and participation. Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press report downgraded South Africa from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’ status in 2010 (Beck 2012).

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