Having swept to power in 1994 with Nelson Mandela at the helm, the ANC won its third election in a row this week. But what have been the benefits for the people of South Africa? Seamus Martin returns after a decade to find the country a far better place, except for the AIDS crisis
Just a few days ago, South Africa's Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, visited a workers' hostel in Vosloorus, a township about 20 kilometres east of Johannesburg. Had he done this 10 years ago his life would certainly have been in danger. In those days, as the apartheid regime drew its final breath, Vosloorus and the nearby township of Katlehong were areas of murderous violence in which hostel residents, mainly Zulus and supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party of Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, were at war with the African National Congress (ANC).
Seemingly uncontrollable violence, partly tribal and partly political, and fed by the appalling injustice of the hostel system, came close to sabotaging the country's first democratic elections in 1994. The hostel dwellers, all of them male, and almost all of them traditional Zulus, came to the Johannesburg area in search of work. Accommodation was provided for them but not for their wives and families, who were forced to remain in their townships and villages hundreds of kilometres away in KwaZulu-Natal.
Not surprisingly, a violent all-male culture was spawned in these dreadful conditions. Hostility between Inkatha and ANC supporters, particularly in the townships around Durban, was quickly replicated on the East Rand. There were killings almost daily. People spoke of incipient civil war.
But polling day in the nation's first democratic election on April 27th, 1994, which brought a huge majority to the ANC under Nelson Mandela, also brought the new South Africa into being.
That Deputy-President Zuma could visit the Vosloorus hostel and the little cottages for workers' wives and families that now surround it, marks one of the very positive results of 10 years of ANC-led government. Nelson Mandela's commitment to nation building and reconciliation between South Africa's many ethnic communities has borne fruit but apartheid's tentacles stretched menacingly into every area of life and a great deal still remains to be done to rid the country of its legacy.
Apartheid, it should be remembered, ran its intensely evil course for half a century, while democracy has been around for just a decade. There have been solid achievements in house-building, education and the provision of water, but almost every positive result of majority rule has been overshadowed by the spread of HIV-AIDS and by its threat to the very survival of millions of South Africa's citizens.
I arrive in Vosloorus shortly after the deputy president has departed. It is a warm, humid day at the beginning of the southern hemisphere's autumn. Our guide and helper is a young man called Zolani Mente. He is secretary of the local Treatment Action Committee (TAC), an organisation that campaigns fiercely for the rights of people with AIDS and those who are HIV positive. Zolani makes no secret of his own condition. His scarlet T-shirt bearing the statement "HIV Positive" is there for all to see, so too are his sunken cheeks, his thin form and his bloodshot eyes.
TAC's national chairman, Zackie Achmat, has been vituperative in his attacks on President Thabo Mbeki. "We say: comrade Thabo Mbeki, it's nice to see you once in five years visiting our communities. We still want to see you visit hospitals where people are dying," he told a recent public meeting at Cape Town's city hall.
His invective against the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who advised HIV-positive people to eat plenty of beetroot, has been equally strong. "How long must this go on? How long must our children die while Manto talks about beetroot?" the TAC chairman asked the audience at that same meeting.
But the ANC, despite HIV-AIDS, has commanded an intense loyalty among its supporters. The scarlet T-shirt with the words "HIV Positive" is not the only statment made by Zolani on our Vosloorus visit. His sun-visor conveys the simple political message "Vote ANC". Had he worn that in or near the Vosloorus hostel 10 years ago he would most probably have been shot on sight.
Loyalty to the party which brought democracy to South Africa is intense despite all the hardships black South Africans still endure. Even though he is critical of the government's AIDS policy, Zolani is still an ANC supporter. His visits to the hostel area nowadays, however, are not political. As a TAC official and a member of the local Home Based Care organisation, he comes on missions of mercy.
He takes us to see 39-year-old Phumzile Ngkobo, who lies on her bed in the largest of the two little rooms she calls home. She came to Vosloorus in 2001 to try to help an older sister but on that great day in 1994 which heralded apartheid's end, she queued from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in her home area of Pietermaritzburg in Natal in order to cast the first vote of her young life. Her ballot was marked clearly for the ANC. She voted ANC again in 1999 because, she says, the canvassers told her she would not get a house if she did not vote.
She voted and she got a two-roomed house. "I was very happy then owning a house for the first time and knowing it would not fall down like the old houses that were made of mud." The happiness did not last long. Her husband died in a car crash in February, 2001, and later she was diagnosed as HIV positive.
With Phumzile is her son, Khetha, who will be three in June but in some ways looks younger and in other ways older. My immediate instinct is to compare him with my own grandson, Jimmy, who is precisely a year younger. Khetha is considerably smaller and far less energetic, more like a one-year-old or an even younger child would be in Ireland. But his face bears an old man's expression of age and sad experience as he lies unsmilingly beside his mother.
Khetha is infected with the virus too.
Phumzile's experience of the tragedy that AIDS inflicts is not confined to herself and her young son. Two of her sisters have died of the disease. Duduzile died in 2001 aged 25, and Thembizile the following year aged 33. Another sister, Delizile (37), declares that she is not HIV-positive but Phumzile has her doubts. "I think she's ill. She's losing weight."
Despite all this, the recent government decision to provide anti-retroviral drugs, although it has come very late and information on how to receive them is scant in this part of Vosloorus, has given Phumzile hope.
"I will go to the clinic and ask for them," she says, adding that she knows of no-one in the area who has received them.
Phumzile may not have received medication for her condition but she did get counselling and that has made a big difference to her life. She looks on things in an extremely positive manner and expresses the hope that Khetha will survive and grow up to be a doctor "to help the people who are sick" and to take over the house she was so proud of in Pietermaritzburg "because he is the only boy amongst the girls". That house, now occupied by what Phumzile calls "an old woman of 60" who looks after her sisters' children, is one of more than a million little homes constructed under ANC rule. To European eyes they look small and extremely basic but to black South Africans they are an immense improvement on the conditions they were forced to endure under the apartheid regime.
There is little doubt the house-building programme has been the ANC's greatest success story over the past 10 years. When President Mandela was inaugurated with great pomp in May, 1994, the number of people living in shacks was estimated to be between five million and 7.7 million. The shacks were, and still are, extremely primitive constructions made of cardboard and scraps of corrugated iron. Open sewers ran between the hovels.
When apartheid ended, about 16 million people had no access to clean water and 60 per cent of the population was without electricity.
Now, according to the independent weekly newspaper, the Mail and Guardian, 1.6 million houses have been built for the poor and fresh water supplies have been brought to a further nine million people. As a result, the former housing minister Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele was given an award last October by the United Nations Human Settlement Programme.
But the massive home-building programme has failed to make the impression on unemployment. Officially, unemployment stands at just over 30 per cent, though many believe it to be closer to 40 per cent. Opposition parties of the right and left made this a major issue in the election campaign but it is difficult to imagine them doing much better than the current government.
Parties to the left of the ANC have concentrated on what they consider to be the neo-liberal economic policies of finance minister Trevor Manuel which have led to a strengthening of the rand and a resultant reduction in competitiveness of South African exports. Many on the left advocate revolution in place of the ANC's reformism but even if revolution were to provide the answer, the people, after all those years of struggle, are unlikely to have any enthusiasm for such an adventure.
One of the left-wing groups, the Anti-Privatisation Forum, went as far as to call for a boycott of the election, declaring parliament to be a "bourgeois institution".
In her home in Vosloorus, for example, Phumzile Ngkobo was not sure if she would vote this time, even though she had supported the ANC with differing degrees of enthusiasm in the elections of 1994 and 1999.
Another major problem that has arisen over the past decade is corruption within ANC ranks. Deputy-President Zuma is one of the leading ANC members who faces corruption allegations and more of these may emerge during the trial of his business partner, Schabir Shaik, which opens later this year.
Even more widespread allegations have been made against the ANC's Youth League, whose leading activists in 1997 founded a company called the National Youth Trade and Investments Corporation (NYTIC). In bidding for state contracts, NYTIC and its leading members were accused of having conflicting interests and of benefiting from political connections in attempts to gain state contracts. The youth league's response has been that while some of its members and senior officials are involved in business, they do so on a personal basis.
Corruption is nothing new in South Africa and it has not been confined to the majority community or to members of the ANC. In the days of apartheid, the National Party, dominated by the white Afrikaner community, was riven by corruption scandals some of them of international dimensions.A great strength of South Africa's democracy has been the independence of its judiciary, which is likely to deal with political and other instances of corruption impartially and with some severity.
Despite its many failings, the new South Africa, the AIDS epidemic excepted, is believed by the majority community to be a far better place in which to live than it was under the regime which came to an end 10 years ago this week.
Seamus Martin is a former Africa correspondent for The Irish Times
Monday: Seamus Martin reports on disillusionment with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
