Life in South AfricaSo Mandela's gone: What Now?What sort of a president will Thabo Mbeki make? After the globetrotting don't - give - a - damn approach of Nelson Mandela, will Thabo step into the breach and sort South Africa out once and for all, or will it just be more of the same? Before the elections, I was sceptical that post - elections South Africa would be very democratic. The African National Congress (ANC) has gone to a lot of trouble to blur the distinction between the Party and the State -- Mandela himself has stated that whites made two big mistakes: the first was voting for apartheid, and the second was not voting for the ANC. Not voting for the ANC has been made out to be racist, unpatriotic and a hankering after the "good old days". Some whites have joined the rush by publicly announcing that they would be voting for the ANC. During the elections, the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation -- previously the voice of the National Party, now the voice of the ANC) bombarded its viewers with the notion that the Democratic Party (DP) was the party of white racists. Funny, considering that the DP was the thorn in the side of the old apartheid regime, and have simply used the same arguments against the ANC! The elections themselves seemed to be characterised by a sense of goodwill, although there are disturbing indications of corrupt electoral practices. For some unknown reason, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) handed the ANC 800 000 votes and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) 200 000. This momentarily pushed the ANC over the 2/3 mark (the ANC has at the same time strenuously campaigned for a 2/3 majority "to deepen our democracy", and denied having done so (I guess that's the benefit of having an illiterate electorate)) and made the IFP the "Official Opposition". This caused much jubilation and dancing in the streets until an opposition party member with a pocket calculator and a Grade 7 education pointed out that the sums did not add up! In another instance, a voting station with 2000 registered voters returned 17000 votes! In my own case, I was surprised to note that, after all the fuss had been made about people needing bar-coded identity documents, the scanners were not used! (The opposition parties had made a lot of fuss over the fact that only people with bar -coded identity documents would be allowed to vote, disenfranchising a sizeable number of their supporters). What also struck me as odd was the fact that the IEC provided voters with pencils with which to make their crosses. I can just imagine over-zealous ANC supporters erasing all the non-ANC votes and putting crosses in the ANC box. In short, from where I sit, this was not a free and fair election! Be that as it may, the end result is that the ANC has won the election with 266 seats (one seat less than it needs for its beloved 2/3), the DP is the second largest party, with 38 seats (the "Official Opposition" -- under South Africa's electoral system there is no single party which plays the role of Official Opposition), and the other major players being the IFP 34 seats and the National Party 28 seats. At the time of writing (13 June 1999) it's too soon to say how the Mbeki government will legislate. What's been interesting to date is that the ANC has lost the Western Cape province to the opposition parties, who have formed a coalition called the Multi - Party Government. The ANC's trade union partner the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has responded by saying that unless the ANC was given a major role in the Western Cape government, it will start mass action (strikes & protests). What this appears to be, is an attempt to use non-democratic means to overturn a supposedly democratic election! ANC Western Cape leader Ebrahim Rasool has been whining that the "white parties" were ganging up on the ANC in order to keep it out of government, and that it is "immoral" to keep the party which represents the "poorest of the poor" out of any coalition. What's interesting about that is that the party which represents "the poorest of the poor" has no qualms whatsoever about spending R47 million on Thabo Mbeki's inauguration! It's been left to the rich white parties to complain that this money could be better spent -- South Africa's roads are falling apart, essential services like policemen, teachers and nurses are grossly underpaid, and the average South African is a lot worse off than in 1994. But hey, what do I know -- I'm just a settler racist and hankering after the old days, not so? Whether Western democracy in South Africa will survive the next 5 years remains to be seen. South Africans are being conditioned to regard anything other than an ANC government as unpatriotic. The SABC has become the voice of the ANC, limiting any hope of meaningful political discussion. ANC members have been appointed to leadership positions in supposedly independent bodies. The ANC, by attempting to introduce quotas in rugby and cricket, has shown an inclination to regulate matters which fall way beyond its competence as a government. Is this the beginning of the end? Time will tell! Mailto: |