|
|
|
|
Foreign Affairs
Mbeki's South Africa
Jeffrey Herbst
Summary: Despite remarkable progress since the end of apartheid, South Africa today is badly wracked by AIDS and severe wealth inequalities, with a leadership still fixated on racial struggle. After more than a decade in power, the ANC has yet to reconcile its various ambitions: curbing racism, promoting political participation, and advancing the interests of all South Africans.
JEFFREY HERBST is Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Miami University, in Ohio, and a co-author of "The Future of Africa: A New Order in Sight?"
A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES
In the 11 years since it abandoned white minority rule, South Africa has become two different countries. The first is a dramatic success story: once wracked by violence and synonymous with human rights abuses, this South Africa now boasts a stable political system based on a liberal constitution defended by honest courts. It holds regular, free, and fair elections, and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) enjoys enormous support. This South Africa boasts an economy that, encouraged by a pro-business government, is growing much faster than it did under white rule in the 1980s and is attracting ever-larger amounts of foreign investment. The country's activist president, Thabo Mbeki, has presided over what he calls an "African renaissance," helping the continent resolve some of its worst crises without meddling from the Western world.
The other South Africa barely resembles the first. In this country, the dominant ANC holds such a commanding lead in parliament that it effectively rules the country on its own, viewing any kind of opposition with suspicion. The economy is not growing fast enough to lift the population out of abject poverty or to address the huge structural inequalities. In this South Africa, former Marxist activists turned top government officials remain highly ambivalent about the private sector and foreign investment, and many of their attempts to improve the fortunes of their constituents have resulted in little more than the enrichment of a few black patriarchs. Meanwhile, this South Africa is being ravaged by AIDS, thanks in part to the government's bizarre refusal for years to acknowledge the link between HIV and AIDS and its insistence that the disease can be treated with a homemade remedy. President Mbeki responds to criticism by playing the race card. And he has pursued a questionable foreign policy, coddling local dictators while failing to pay enough attention to critical problems at home.
Paradoxical as it may sound, these countries are one: both visions accurately describe South Africa today, at least parts of it. In many respects, the country has indeed made enormous progress since its last white president, F. W. de Klerk, left power in 1994. In its 11 years in office, the ANC government has refrained from pursuing retribution, and the country is now enjoying an economic upswing, thanks to conventional economic policies that feature strong curbs on government spending and the liberalization of trade and capital flows.
At the same time, the government's attempts to narrow South Africa's severe wealth inequalities have largely failed, serving mainly to enrich a small black elite. President Mbeki frequently resorts to the language of class and racial struggle to lash out at his critics. He has made enormous diplomatic contributions to Africa, helping end the civil wars in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But he has refused to criticize the disastrous policies of Robert Mugabe next door in Zimbabwe. And his policies on AIDS have been bizarre at best, severely negligent at worst.
These glaring contradictions in South Africa's politics are unlikely ...