Sean Rego ’26

Opinions Editor

South Africa has been in a tumultuous state for the past thirty years
Image Courtesy of the Council on Foreign Relations

There were a few things I could’ve written for the last Spire issue of this semester, but none appealed to me more than the anniversary of one of the 20th century’s most celebrated events. On April 27th, South Africa observed her 30th year since democratic elections, which ended the many sordid decades of apartheid that riddled the nation. To this day, South Africans call this holiday Freedom Day. 

 In 1994, all eyes were on South Africa. From Cape Town to Durban, the people were ready for change and universal enfranchisement. The world watched on expectantly as State President F.W. de Klerk shook hands with Nelson Mandela, fresh out of his 27 year long imprisonment. As the ballots poured in, it became more than clear that South Africa had elected her first black president. For that beautiful moment in 1994, after the traumatizing Cold War and before the woes of the new millennium, the Rainbow Nation shone as a culmination of democracy and liberty. And yet, 30 years later, we’ve seen just how unfortunate a nation can become on one-party rule.

South Africa is certainly in jeopardy, and it can surprisingly be traced back to the liberating party of the nation. After the dismantlement of the Apartheid, the people rallied largely behind the African National Congress. The ANC has many things of which it should be proud of post-Mandela though management isn’t one of them. In the wake of such overwhelming victories over opposition parties (sometimes by as high as 50 percentage points), the ANC neglected its mandate and consent over its population. The perception that the ANC had defeated the Apartheid largely let them ignore actual problems, ranging from infrastructure to the economy to race relations. The fact is that the ANC, which has ruled for 30 years, forgot that post-democratizations need to be consolidated and maintained in order to keep an electoral mandate. After Mandela, the ANC simply forgot this, living in a dream of post-liberation.  

The outside world, however, is just as guilty. Think of 2010, when South Africa held the World Cup and people cheered on the Rainbow Nation to the tune of Waka Waka and vuvuzelas. Those same stadiums, built to glorify South Africa’s entry into the Western liberal order, now stand amongst cities troubled with high crime and murder rates. Similarly, South Africa became the fifth member of the fantastical BRICS alliance, implying that the nation was a rising power economically speaking, which sadly could not be further from the truth. South Africa’s GDP, while still quite formidable, has lost much of its 1990s growth levels and even has fallen behind less developed countries like Nigeria. Overall, the (over)estimations of the outside world have been just as bad as the ANC’s own ignorance. 

Fundamentally, this has led to a decrease in the quality and efficiency of life in South Africa. Loadshedding, or the purposeful suspension of electricity to certain areas for some time, has become a commonality in South African cities, and has drastically increased since 2020. With the ANC doing little to help the situation, it looks as if loadshedding will only increase in 2024. Then there’s also water scarcity, which has also plagued many South African cities, but none so gravely as the second largest, Cape Town. Back in 2020, there was actually a close call where the city almost ran out of drinkable water after a particularly harsh dry spell. Granted, this is not solely a political dilemma, but it certainly can have been managed better to avoid such a close call to such a disaster in one of the Southern Hemisphere’s most important cities. 

 Lastly, and perhaps most painfully, the ANC’s biggest neglect has been corruption. I can’t pretend that I know even half of the situation of the ongoing corruption scandals, but I can say that each case involves major politicians in South Africa. From former President Zuma to the recently-charged speaker of parliament to even the current President Ramaphosa, politicians are being found with money laundering, bribery and illegal arms deals. They have nullified their promises to the South African people, and frankly, have proven that injustices are still salient 30 years after apartheid. South Africa has been too long entranced with ANC euphoria of post-liberation and tragically have fallen far from the massive legacy of Mandela and his contemporaries. 

So what’s the solution for the ailing Rainbow Nation? I unfortunately don’t have a perfect answer, though I do believe democracy may well provide us with one. The polls are telling us that South Africans are displeased with the ANC’s 30 years in power and wish more than ever for change. Granted, the ANC still retains roughly 40% of the vote in April polling, but it’s a far cry from the glory days of the party’s domination and would entail a decrease by about 17% points from the last election. This would force the ANC to form a parliamentary coalition, the first in the regime’s history. 

There are some viable options. The leading opposition, the Democratic Alliance, runs on a far more conservative-liberalist approach and promises to rid the country of corruption and fix its infrastructure. The DA has proof behind their words; the Western Cape, which is the only province they control, has far better roads and less corruption than the rest of the nation. Another rising party is the Economic Freedom Fighters, which is extremely left-leaning, but may offer an interesting spin on African liberation in tandem to anti-Capitalism. The EFF’s really big problem though is that it not only supports Russia’s current war in Ukraine, but also Hamas’s war on Israel. 

Probably, the ANC, if it wins only 40% of the vote, will have to align with either of these two. I’d like to think that the ANC would choose the less bumpy path with the DA, but I can’t say for certain that such an alliance can be made. Yet whatever the outcome of the 2024 election in South Africa is, it’s gearing up to be a referendum against the ruling party– one they are set to lose the majority of the support of South Africans. Ultimately, the failures of the ANC in South Africa reminds us that one singular event or man– as glorious and great as both may have been in those shiny days in 1994– cannot secure a country’s stability or integrity forever. No, it is up to representatives for and of the people to guide their country through the perilous storms of the world, lest they lose or ruin it. No better is that exemplified than in the precarious situation of the Rainbow Nation. 

Copy edited by Colette Potter