South Africa's Election a Triumph of Democracy

The biggest winner in South Africa’s May 7th parliamentary election is democracy itself. Twenty years after the first all race ballot, Nelson Mandela’s rainbow nation is alive and well in the country of 50 million. The election is a triumph of constitutional government and rule of law.

Eighteen million people, 74% of registered voters, peacefully cast ballots at 22,000 polling stations across nine provinces from the Cape of Good Hope to the Limpopo River on the Zimbabwe border. It was South Africa’s 5^th democratic election since 1994 and the first since the death of Mandela last December. Voting took place without violence or disruption. Not one of the 29 parties contesting the election cried foul or claimed vote rigging.

Helen Zille congratulates Jacob Zuma on ANC victory

As with neighboring Botswana, the peaceful South African election provides a model for a continent where—sadly--free elections are rare.

As predicted by polling organizations, Mandela’s African National Congress won by a landslide. The ANC, founded 102 years ago, has won all five of South Africa’s democratic elections, although its victory margin has gradually eroded.

Headed by 72-year-old Jacob Zuma, the ANC got 11 million votes, 62% of the total. The result was only marginally below the 66% it won in 2009.

The official opposition, the Democratic Alliance headed by the premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille, boosted its vote to 4 million or 22%, up from 16.6 % five years earlier. Significantly, the DA extended its reach beyond minority whites and mixed race voters, winning 700,000 black votes.   

The biggest surprise was the rise of the far left Economic Freedom Fighters of expelled ANC Youth League president Julius Malema. His party was founded only eight months ago. Its message of nationalizing mines and banks and redistributing white farms resonated with youth and the poor. The EFF’s trademark in the campaign was the red beret popularized by the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.   The EFF won one million votes, 6.3% of the total, more than what had been predicted. 

South Africa’s new parliament convenes in Cape Town on May 21^st.  It will again be dominated by the ANC but the ruling party will not have the two-thirds majority it hoped for. A two-thirds majority is needed to amend South Africa’s 1996 constitution. 

Of the 400 seats in parliament’s lower chamber the ANC will have 249, the Democratic Alliance 89, and 25 for the EFF. The remaining 37 seats are split among 10 smaller parties.  With the presence of the flamboyant, populist EFF, the new parliament promises to be lively as the ANC is challenged from the left and the right. Parliamentary debate is televised by the South African equivalent of C-Span.

The May 7^th election also chose legislatures for South Africa’s nine provinces. The ANC triumphed in eight but the DA tightened its hold on the Western Cape where it has been dominant since 2009. The DA majority in the province rose to 59% while the ANC fell to 34%. The DA hoped to win Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg, but fell short with 31%, to 54% for the ANC.

The ANC landslide means that Jacob Zuma can serve a second five-year term as president. However, the ANC’s executive council can remove Zuma as party leader and president, an action Zuma employ to oust then president Thabo Mbeki in 2007. That extreme measure is considered unlikely as Zuma appears to have firm control of the party apparatus.

Since 1994 the ANC has governed in a tri-partite alliance with the communist party and the trade union federation. The coalition is fraying amid a split in the labor federation and dissension elsewhere. While Zuma’s minister of trade and industry is a communist, that party has been unable to persuade ANC leaders to embrace its call for state control of what the communists call an untransformed free market economy.

Zuma’s choice of cabinet ministers will be a marker for the future direction of South Africa’s economy, the most developed and industrial on the continent. Two years ago Zuma promised large-scale job creation and faster economic growth.  That hasn’t happened as growth slowed to 2% last year while five percent growth is needed to bring down a 25% jobless rate. Analysts are unsure whether Zuma’s new government will hold to its embrace of a mixed economy or become more friendly to business.

Barry D. Wood, a long time observer of South Africa, recently spent five weeks in several parts of the country.

    

The May 7th Vote in the New South Africa

To understand the new South Africa, look no further than the red-robed female jurist presiding at the televised trial of blade runner Oscar Pistorius. “My lady,” as she is addressed in court, is Thokozile Masipa, a 67-year-old lawyer from Soweto. In 1998 she became only the second black woman appointed to a South African high court.

Judge Thokozile Masipa (photo: SABC) 

Here is a judge who in apartheid days in Pretoria could have aspired to being no more than a “tea lady,” or at best a secretary. Now, 20 years after South Africa’s first free elections, it is she who will decide the fate of an Afrikaner Olympian who 18 months ago was a national and even global hero. As an effusive Archbishop Desmond Tutu likes to say, “what a country!”

On May 7th South Africans vote in the fifth parliamentary election since the end of minority rule in 1994. It is the first test of voter sentiment in the land of 51 million since the death last December of Nelson Mandela, the iconic father of South African democracy.

This is likely to be the last election in which Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) wins a landslide victory. Polling data suggests that the ANC, which has ruled for 20 years, will again receive over 60% of the vote. In 2009 it got 65%, and the IPSOS polling organization predicts that with a high turnout the ANC majority this time could reach 67%.

But polling data doesn’t tell the whole story. The current ANC leader, President Jacob Zuma, is unpopular and has been booed at public events. His sexual indiscretions and lengthening corruption trail embarrass many. The ANC’s alliance with the communist party and trade union federation is unraveling. To its right, the pro-business Democratic Alliance is making gains and its tally could reach 23%, while on the left the new Economic Freedom Fighters of firebrand Julius Malema is projected to get 5%.

The ANC campaigned on the theme “we have a good story to tell.” In many respects this is true. The South African Institute of Race Relations says ANC support rests on its success in improving living conditions of the poor. Since 1994 three million housing units have been constructed, electricity and water connections have been extended into rural areas, and welfare grants have increased from three million to 17 million poor people. The number of blacks in the middle class has doubled to 10%.

But arrayed against this are huge negatives. Corruption is widespread at the top, swirling in particular around the president. A report from the public protector says Zuma personally benefited from $20 million of public money spent on “security upgrades” at his rural Nkandla residence. There are multiple cases of theft in state enterprises and no bid contracts have gone to unqualified ANC cronies under the country’s flawed black economic empowerment program.

Public primary and secondary education has deteriorated with opposition leader Mamphele Ramphele saying, “it is worse now than it was under apartheid.” Crime is endemic, particularly in Johannesburg, although statistics indicate an improvement over the past two years. The biggest deficit for the ANC is the economy. Unemployment remains stubbornly high at 24%, with several economists saying the real rate is closer to 35%.

South Africa’s economy grew by only 2% last year while 5% growth is required to reduce joblessness. There is persistent labor unrest and strikes are typically settled with wage hikes well in excess of inflation or productivity gains.

For me, having spent considerable time in both the old and the new South Africa, the country’s long-term future is bright. Its institutions are proving to be surprisingly robust. All major groups in the rainbow nation of 11 official languages affirm allegiance to the 1996 constitution that US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg extols as “a great piece of work,” embracing “fundamental human rights and independent judiciary.”

South Africa’s media is vibrantly free as evidenced by daily accounts of official corruption and wrongdoing. Despite the ruling party holding 2/3’s of parliamentary seats, debate is far ranging and contentious. South Africa has its version of C-SPAN where viewers last month could watch an opposition leader speak directly to the president, accusing him of having failed and “ hideously transforming” the party of Nelson Mandela.

Public Protector Thuli Madonsela is identified by Time magazine as among the 100 most influential people of 2014. In March she released a scathing 400 page report of upgrades to the president’s home that was broadcast live even on state television. Constitutional lawyer Izak Smuts calls the report “an outstanding example of the strength of our democracy.”

Property prices, always a good barometer of confidence, are rising in urban centers, particularly Cape Town and the adjoining Western Cape, the only South African province not governed by the ANC. White flight is negligible, an important factor as five million whites disproportionally possess skills needed to efficiently operate Africa’s biggest industrial economy.

Two decades ago South Africa was blessed with visionary leaders who built a foundation for future progress. The essential deal between Afrikaner president FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela was majority rule—full democracy and an end of white rule—in return for constitutional protection of individual freedoms and property. The civil war that had long been predicted was avoided. Immense problems remain, not least income inequality. But as countries as disparate as the US and China are finding, there are no quick fixes, although education and equal opportunity are essential.

Should the ANC vote fall below 60% or if it loses its majority in Gauteng where Johannesburg is situated, Jacob Zuma will likely be recalled by the party, just as his predecessor Thabo Mbeki was unceremoniously ousted by a leadership group headed by Zuma.

I think of South Africa as a land where two mirrors are visible to all who care to look. One is Zimbabwe, the rich country to the north that under Robert Mugabe 30 years ago made a strong start and then descended into despotism and collapse. The other is the Western Cape, whose bright image the ANC would extinguish because since 2009—unlike the rest of South Africa-- a multi-racial coalition has succeeded in providing quality services while minimizing corruption.

Barry D. Wood was a reporter in South Africa in the 1970s and has returned regularly since 2010. Follow him on twitter @econbarry.

Remembering Portugal's Revolution That Changed Africa

Forty years ago a brave band of junior officers overthrew Portugal’s dictatorship. On April 25th, 1974 thousands poured into Lisbon’s plazas in celebration. Flower sellers did a brisk trade in red carnations that poked from the barrels of soldiers’ rifles. Marcelo Caetano, the despot who headed the fascist government in power since 1932, fled to Brazil.

The young captains behind the coup had seen for themselves that the colonial wars in distant Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique could not be won. To me, an aspiring journalist eager to get to southern Africa, the carnation revolution was a signal that dramatic changes lay ahead. A glance at the map suggested that the white Rhodesians who had defied Britain by declaring independence in 1965 would face increased pressure as their Portuguese allies departed from Mozambique.

Arriving by ship in Cape Town in late 1974, I became a writer at South Africa’s Financial Mail magazine. I soon traveled to Lourenco Marques and Beira and from there by train to Salisbury, the colonial name of Zimbabwe’s capital. In Mozambique I found a white community divided between those welcoming independence and those who wanted out as quickly as possible.

Interviewing Portugal’s last governor-general and one of the coup plotters, Victor Crespo, it was clear that haste not caution guided the revolutionaries in Lisbon. Mozambique’s Frelimo insurgents were similarly surprised by the speed of Portugal’s planned withdrawal. Negotiations in Zambia quickly produced an agreement to hand over the territory that is twice the size of California to the Marxist guerrillas. The accord contained no provision for elections.

An eerie calm settled over Mozambique in early 1975. A transitional government went about its business but big decisions like nationalizing banks and industries were put off. Tensions rose. Fear was near the surface. Radio stations and newspapers rehearsed citizens on the texts of Frelimo’s socialist anthems while the middle and upper classes worried their property would soon be seized. Refugee flights to Lisbon became more frequent.

Back in Johannesburg on the anniversary of the first Portuguese coup, I put a red carnation in my lapel and went to the offices of a Portuguese bank. Stepping from the elevator I met a banker who upon seeing my carnation tore it from my jacket and crushed it. He fumed, “Eu sou um fascista (I am a fascist).”

As independence day (June 25th, 1975) approached, Frelimo leader Samora Machel left Tanzania and journeyed the length of Mozambique, as Frelimo rhetoric described it, “from the Ruvuma to the Maputo.” When he reached the capital I was among the crowd at the airport observing the charismatic leader in battle fatigues step from his plane.

There was torrential rain the night of independence, soaking the thousands at the soccer stadium watching the Portuguese flag lowered and Frelimo’s banner for the People’s Republic of Mozambique hoisted. At city hotels war reporters, several fresh from Vietnam in flak jackets, clustered at telex machines that clattered with their dispatches. The experienced among them called out the calibers of the celebratory gunfire heard in the distance.

Returning to Johannesburg there was confusion over the name of the Mozambican capital. The notice board at what is now Oliver Tambo airport mistakenly spelled out “Can Pfumo,” as it was not yet known that the name was Maputo.

In Angola, the even larger oil rich territory on the Atlantic, official Portuguese conduct was disgraceful. Unable or unwilling to seek cooperation among three rival guerrilla armies, Portugal chose simply to sail away when their flag was lowered on November 11, 1975. Terrified of ethnic conflict, thousands of settlers fled, many crossing into Namibia with the few possessions they could carry. The stage was set for great power intervention, including later ferocious clashes between South Africans and Cubans. Angola’s cruel civil war went on for two decades.

Upon independence Mozambique made good on its promise to close Rhodesia’s vital rail links to Beira and Maputo. Still defiant, the Ian Smith government responded by stepping up its war against insurgents, a brutal conflict that killed thousands and continued several more years until Smith sued for peace and Zimbabwe won independence in 1980.

In the 1980s South Africa assumed from Rhodesia the supplying Renamo rebels that wreaked havoc and destabilized Mozambique’s government. In 1986 Machel was killed when his plane mysteriously crashed inside South Africa on its approach to Maputo. His successor Joachim Chissano was less of an ideologue and in 1989 Frelimo abandoned socialism and gradually embraced multiparty democracy and a market economy. There is a competition to replace the Mozambican flag still emblazoned with an AK 47 rifle.

Mozambique flag, 1975

Mozambique is in the midst of economic boom with foreign investment pouring in to mineral and natural gas resources in the north.

Buffeted by crippling sanctions and mounting unrest, South Africa’s last apartheid leader F.W. DeKlerk shocked the world in 1990 by ending apartheid and freeing Nelson Mandela. He began negotiations with the ANC. The result was the new constitution and South Africa’s first free elections whose 20th anniversary has just been observed.

In Portugal the flirtation with Marxism was of short duration. Banks and big industries were nationalized just as in Mozambique and Angola. But in Portugal they were privatized in the 1980s as Western Europe’s poorest country opted for modernization and membership in the European Union, which it joined in 1986.

Now in his ‘80s, Victor Crespo, the Portuguese naval officer I met in 1975, has been reflecting on the 1974 revolution. He told a Lisbon broadcaster that democracy overcomes all adversity and that the will of the people will triumph over today’s economic hardship. Crespo didn’t speak of democracy in 1975.

The Portuguese revolution set in motion many events, most immediately in the African colonies. It importantly hastened independence in Zimbabwe and Namibia and contributed to the coming of democracy in South Africa. In Europe the carnation revolution inspired the Spanish and Greeks who similarly overthrew their own dictatorships.