Monday, January 05, 2009

South Africa, from bad to worse?

The end of Apartheid and the election of the ANC to power was supposed to see the grinding poverty of the townships ended, but the ANC have turned out to be powerless to run capitalism in a way that would end exploitation and poverty. Despite 15 years of power the ANC are just another political party dedicated to running capitalism.
We say this without the benefit of hindsight:

"Like all decent-minded people, Socialists are pleased at the coming demise of the obscene system of institutionalised race discrimination of apartheid. Although the coming of a non-racial regime in South Africa will allow the "non-whites" there a dignity and respect as equal human beings which they have been denied up to now, the ending of apartheid will not amount to "liberation" for the working class in South Africa. Capitalism without apartheid - which is all even the ANC wants, despite its talk of "socialism" (in reality, nationalisation, or state capitalism) - will remain capitalism and so exploitation for profit, bad housing, inadequate health care, cheap schooling, unemployment, poor transport, police brutality, pollution and all the the other problems workers have to endure under capitalism will continue as well." (After apartheid what? Socialist Standard, March 1990)

And in an interview shortly before she died, the anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman described the present ANC government as "..an enormous disappointment." "She listed Mbeki's questioning of the link between HIV and AIDS, his inept ministers, corruption that she said "was everywhere you look," his support for Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe ("so distressing") and the black empowerment program which, while intended to help those discriminated against under apartheid, has, she claimed, succeeded only in making a few of the politically connected very rich..."They [the A.N.C.] have been unable to move on from the past: everything has a racial background. If I criticize Mbeki because of his disastrous policies on AIDS, it is because I am a racist."

"What Suzman found most inexcusable was how the party that was supposed to transform the lives of black South Africans had failed so miserably at its primary task. "There are miles and miles and miles of shantytowns today, many more than before," she said. "No running water, no sewerage, nothing. There are, yes, a handful of extremely rich people whose lives have changed dramatically. But the vast majority have been left behind. Unemployment is 26%. And we have a serious crime problem, and the link is clear: people are getting fed up with this non-delivery of policies, and understandably so."

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