South Africa's democracy: from celebration to crisis

Abstract

This essay is based on a reading of a selection of texts that have been published around the tenth anniversary of South Africa’s much celebrated democratic election of 1994, though not necessarily for that purpose. It focuses mainly on political commentaries which have appeared since 2002 in various anthologies, journal articles, magazines and newspapers at a time when the excitement and euphoria had died down and the African National Congress (ANC) government faced an assessment of its first two terms in power, and growing problems during its third. South Africans across the board have begun to take stock of the progress (or lack of it) made in the country since the transition to majority rule. Between 2005 and 2008 journalists, sociologists, economists, political scientists and others, including rank-and-file members of the governing Alliance partners (ANC, South African Communist Party [SACP] and the Congress of South African Trade Unions [COSATU]), have taken a strident tone. The essay also visits central features of current politics in South Africa, discussing media and other reaction to Jacob Zuma’s powerful political claim to the presidency, his cultivation of the image of popular champion of the oppressed and his capitalization on growing resentment against Thabo Mbeki’s authoritarian ‘top-down’ style of governance. It examines the increasingly negative interpretations of the ANC government’s performance in key areas, especially health, land policy, restitution for apartheid human rights’ abuses recorded by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and the economy. The review does not pretend to be comprehensive, but reflects some of the more robust critique that now challenges earlier valorizations of the achievements of 1994, which pitched apartheid against democracy and praised the Mandela era