When he was a child, for Tsepo Thebe, apartheid was crossing the street, a name change and a yoghurt. At 39 years old, Thebe has a vague memory of the last throes of apartheid, the white racist regime that was installed in South Africa in 1948 and legalized the loss of basic rights for the black or mixed-race population that had been practiced for centuries before. But for him, that supremacist structure remained in the details.
“I remember at school they told you that if you came face to face with a white person, you had to cross the street to let him pass and not scare him or that, if you had a long African name, they would change it to an easy English one, like James , David or Nelson. I also remember the first time I saw yogurt in the supermarket, I had never tried a luxury like that, that was something for white people, who had a refrigerator at home.”
This week South Africa celebrates 30 years since the definitive collapse of that injustice that forced the black population to serve the whites and condemned them to poverty.
Although the apartheid regime officially collapsed two years earlier with a referendum, it was on April 27, 1994 when the first multiracial and free elections were held in the South African country, which Nelson Mandela won in a landslide after spending 27 years in prison.
Since then, April 27 is a holiday and Freedom Day is celebrated so as not to forget the times when being racist was a legal imperative: during apartheid (segregation in the Afrikaans language) there were beaches closed to the black population, benches in parks only for whites, neighborhoods segregated by race, schools separated by skin color (education for the black community was reduced to service jobs for whites) and even interracial relationships were prohibited.
At last weekend's commemoration events, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa stressed that those open ballot boxes changed everything. “Few days in the life of our nation can compare to that day, when freedom was born (…) That day, South Africa changed forever and marked a new chapter in the history of our nation, a moment that resonated throughout Africa and in everyone. On that day, the dignity of all South Africans was restored.”
Although South Africa is a better country than 30 years ago, when human rights were determined by skin color, the largest economic power in the southern African cone celebrates its first three free decades with notable unrest and the ethical anxiety of the party. liberator, the African National Congress, which has lost the massive support of the population. Free South Africa is no longer synonymous with ANC. In less than a month, on May 29, the country will hold its closest presidential elections since, according to analysts, for the first time the party that has always governed in democracy could lose its majority.
If in the last elections of 2019, the ANC already achieved its worst results, with 57% of the votes, the latest polls suggest that the liberation party could obtain only 40.2% of support. In front will be the Democratic Alliance, which has changed its image as a white party thanks to its commitment to black or mixed-race candidates in decision-making positions, or the radical Fighters for Economic Freedom, led by the outspoken Julius Malema.
There will be an unexpected rival: Jacob Zuma, South African president from 2009 to 2018 and repudiated for his corruption scandals, has taken charge of a new party, the uMkhontho weSizwe, “Spear of the Nation”, in the Zulu Xhosa and Ndebele language. The name is not innocent: that is the name of the defunct armed wing of the ANC during apartheid.
The reason for social discouragement towards the government is supported by figures. According to the World Bank, from 2022 South Africa will be the most unequal country in the world.
And it's not just that 10% of the population still controls 80% of the wealth, it's that the distribution of money is marked by skin: a household of a black family earns on average 11 times less than a household where all its members are white.
Unemployment, officially 33 points, also has racial nuances. Among the black population it exceeds 40%, five times more than among whites. And among young black people, the situation is even more dramatic because six out of ten do not have a job.
Corruption and the inability to reduce inequality or improve the educational or health system have lost confidence in the ANC, which can no longer live off its aura as a liberating party. Fewer and fewer South Africans remember those times: 77% of voters registered for the elections are under 29 years old.
For Sowetan's South African political reporter, Sisanda Mbolekwa, the slowness of some progress has meant that the 30 years of South African freedom are marked by lights and shadows. “For a nation that liberated itself through years of bloody and selfless struggle, our journey over the past three decades has been as inspiring as it has been disappointing. Inspiring for his resilience in the face of hardship, his commitment to democratic values and the protection of human rights here and abroad. Disappointing in its inability to foster equality and bring economic justice to the majority of Black people,” she wrote this week. Despite everything, Mbolekwa sees the glass as half full. “The truth is that we have a lot to celebrate. Although many believed that ours would be a failed state, it is not.”
