In his provocative, brilliant book, Empire, historian Niall Ferguson argues not only that Britain Made the Modern World, but that colonisation brought many benefits to former colonies. Ferguson, points, for example, to India’s vast and essential network of railways, and its strong civil service — both legacies of the empire.
Britain built lots of railways in South Africa, too.
They’re mostly lying in ruin, with the high voltage cables supplying them mostly stolen (which is how South Africa manages the feat of exporting more copper than its mines actually produce).
So, what happened?
The same thing that’s left the rest of South Africa on the brink of being a failed state: three decades of ANC rule.
Three decades have passed since the end of Apartheid and the widely celebrated introduction of democracy in South Africa. Three decades since Nelson Mandela’s vision of a rainbow nation, in which people of all skin colors would live together in prosperity. [Parliamentarian Siviwe Gwarube], though, now finds herself standing before the ruins of that dream. “The country is collapsing at a monumental scale.”
South Africa, the most developed economy on the continent – a nation that in the 20th century didn’t have to shy away from comparisons to Europe – now finds itself, following decades of economic malpractice and political incompetence, on the brink of the abyss. The reasons for the collapse aren’t difficult to find, says Gwarube. “At the top of all our problems is governance. Governance has broken down in South Africa.”
Like so many “decolonised” African nations, the Bwanas have simply been replaced by the Bosses: tribal “big men” focussed on little else than lining their and their family’s pockets. Ability and competence are not even in the running, compared to patronage and nepotism.
Fully 298 of 1,944 city and municipal councilors in the [KwaZulu-Natal] region are illiterate – a rate of 15 percent. It looks as though the curse that befell many post-colonial countries in Africa now has South Africa in its grips – a curse that saw politicians take over control following independence despite a complete lack of expertise or thought-out development plans and ultimately run their countries into the ground. The cautionary tale most often told is that of the once booming neighboring country of Zimbabwe, which dictator Robert Mugabe and his one-party government turned into a poorhouse […]
Most of the representatives from the African National Congress (ANC), the party that liberated the country and now holds an absolute majority in parliament, pay little mind to the needs of the people who elected them, says Gwarube. In fact, she continues, many of them have little understanding of how parliament works and don’t even know what the separation of powers actually means. “It’s greed and corruption,” she says.
Even the sainted Nelson Mandela was all-too-willing to descend to corrupt patronage when it suited his family’s interests. According to veteran anti-Apartheid campaigner Horst Kleinschmidt:
“In 1990, he called me in London and asked for $60,000 from our aid fund for the criminal proceedings against his wife.” Winnie Madikizela-Mandela had been charged with kidnapping and was suspected of murder. “I refused, because we only supported victims of the Apartheid regime.”
During Mandela’s tenure, senior ANC officials began to enrich themselves without restraint, in accordance with the motto: “Now it’s our time to eat.” “They had no scruples. They saw it as their reward for the fight for freedom,” says Kleinschmidt. Under the leadership of President Jacob Zuma, from 2009 to 2018, the new power elite was particularly brazen, a time when the term “state capture” began making the rounds, referring to systematic corruption whereby narrow interest groups take control of state functions for personal gain […]
The failures of the ruling elite has plunged South Africa into a dire political and economic crisis. Six out of 10 young South Africans are jobless and more than half of the country’s 60 million residents live in poverty, according to the World Bank. Furthermore, South Africa’s murder rate is one of the highest in the world, with around 25,000 victims per year. Since Apartheid, more than half a million people have met a violent death.
For the fiscal year 2021-2022, the auditor-general found that 219 of the country’s 257 municipalities did not have clean audits. In countless cities and municipalities, the infrastructure, administration, education system, health system, sewage and garbage collection are all subpar or completely dysfunctional. In many places, not even the trains are running, while some regions are forced to go for days without running water.
No wonder South Africans joke that the difference between the Titanic and South Africa is that at least the Titanic had its lights on when it sunk.
“9910. That was the train I used to take to work every day. The last one ran six years ago,” an aging Black man says in disgust as he walks past the station entrance. He adds caustically: “We used to have work when the whites were in charge, and life was better.”
It’s hard to believe: A 60-year-old Black man, who was oppressed and exploited for half his life, misses the Apartheid era?
Spiegel
Well done, ANC.
