South Africa: peace is only the start

Even when there is a peaceful settlement, things can go badly wrong, if less dramatically so.

South Africa’s negotiations leading the country from apartheid to democracy stand out for some as a “miracle” ‒ a fairy-tale moment when history came together, and the actors played their perfect roles. To an extent this is correct. But the historic transition to democratic rule in 1994 proved the start of another not less damaging but less clear-cut struggle for governance and stability.

During the first 14 years of the ANC government, South Africa not only avoided the civil bloodbath many had expected, but managed to grow its economy, regain its international position under Nelson Mandela’s towering leadership, and extend basic services to a majority of citizens. However, the second half of the ANC’s 30 years in power proved much more challenging. After the removal of Thabo Mbeki and the election of Jacob Zuma as president, South Africa fell victim to widespread corruption and state decay, which continued virtually unabated, despite early promise to the contrary, in the subsequent presidency of Cyril Ramaphosa. But the signs had been there earlier on that the ANC would engage in corrupt practices aimed at the self-enrichment of its leaders, and that the peace would not be won.

Such a redistributive process was legalised (and, indeed, legislated) through black economic empowerment, which was ostensibly aimed at improving the lot of the impoverished but, in fact, gave politically connected individuals stakes in large corporations based on government stipulations. But there were those in the ANC for whom this was never going to be enough. The 1999 Arms Deal provided further opportunities for illicit commissions, a deal that increased from R30 billion to an estimated R142 billion by the time it was finally paid off in 2020.

Such commissions became common practice, and were amplified during the Zuma era through so-called tenderpreneurship and other schemes that cut in middlemen (and middle-women) to government contracts. The Zondo public commission of inquiry into state capture estimated that one-third of South Africa’s R5 trillion GDP was squandered during this time.

Another major problem facing South Africa has been rising levels of violence. To put this into perspective, police minister Bheki Cele admitted in February 2023 that 7 555 people were murdered between just October and December 2022, and 3 144 of these were by firearms. During the year an average of 30 people each day were being shot and killed, or 10 950 in all, more than were killed by the Rhodesian security forces in 15 years of armed conflict.

Given the alarming levels of violence and crime, the largest platinum and gold producer in South Africa, Sibanye-Stillwater, spent approximately 2% of its R100 billion turnover on security in 2022, while losing the same amount each to loadshedding (electricity blackouts) and theft. The levels of risk place a considerable discount on South African assets and make more difficult the sale of the country on the international stage to investors: Sibanye-Stillwater reckons on a 35% discount on its share price for its African operations. This risk premium also makes large-scale capital investment unlikely, at least in the mining sector, where recovery and profit are calculated over a generational time scale.

The country’s governance record and its patronage-driven political economy explain why. For example, of 257 municipalities in South Africa, just 41 received a clean audit in 2021, of which the majority were run by the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA). The Auditor-General reported that 73% of municipalities in the DA-run Western Cape received clean audits (22 out of 30), while municipalities in the other eight provinces mostly run by the ruling ANC averaged just 8% (or 19 councils out of the 227 ruled by the party).

In 1960, the average South African’s share of global per capita GDP was 107%. While it is important to note that racial inequity was deeply entrenched under apartheid, the average income nonetheless tells us that South Africa was punching above its weight on the world stage when it came to economic performance. Sixty years later, in 2020, the average South African’s share of global GDP had plummeted to just 54% of the global average. While the world moved ahead, South Africa fell back sharply. The effects can be seen in rising unemployment and rising criminality. Unemployment, in its expanded definition, which includes those discouraged from seeking work, was at 42.6% in 2022. The government’s statistics showed that long-term unemployment had almost doubled in the 10 years since 2012.

The problem remains low rates of economic growth. While there is more to life than economic growth, irrespective of where the poverty line is set, economic growth is necessary to ensure no one lives below it.

In this respect, South Africa has lost the peace. The question is: why?

The answer lies partly in the character of the ANC itself. Increasingly, the Mandela and, to an extent, the Mbeki years appear as an aberration from the general model of governance pursued by the ANC. In his book on the ANC in exile between 1960 and 1990, External Mission, Stephen Ellis shows how the influence of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the decisions made on funding during the 30 years of armed struggle had a lasting effect not only on the ANC as a party but on the ANC government itself after 1994. On the one hand, the ANC’s history has hurt its tolerance of dissent and encouragement of a diversity of opinions, so essential to a functioning democracy. On the other, this history makes it clear that the ANC of today is not that of Nelson Mandela or even Thabo Mbeki, but rather of a “tsotsi” (gangster) element within the ANC that was involved in the armed struggle.

Instead of grappling with the challenges and building upon a vision for a post-apartheid society, the ANC quickly reverted to two trends prominent in liberation movements: blaming the outside world for its problems and denying responsibility for its failings and role. Such delusion, while suiting the movement, has long been a feature of the SACP, which was at the core of ANC thinking during the exile years in particular. For instance, the seventh congress of the party, held in Havana in 1989, produced a new manifesto, “The Path to Power”. This document, written less than six months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, included mention of “more and more peoples taking the path of social progress” – a clear allusion to Marxism – and “the growing instability and internal crises of modern capitalism”. At the same time, the Eastern bloc was collapsing under a dire economic situation, a product of central planning, lack of investment, inflexible thinking, an ageing industrial sector, a huge military machine, and a population increasingly drawn to Western consumerism.

There were those in the ANC who thought, nevertheless, that the outcome of the struggle in and for South Africa would be different from that prosecuted by ZANU, the MPLA or Frelimo, given that the ANC did not effectively conduct an armed struggle inside South Africa (though it tried) and had a longer history than the other liberation movements in the region. But even in exile, an atmosphere of suspicion and intolerance permeated the ANC’s camps, leading to factionalism, injustice and, at times, brutality. The camps in Tanzania and Angola suffered from all the usual problems of military bases – boredom, poor food, few amenities, lack of female contact, and widely differing conditions for the commanders and ANC commissars and the rank and file. But there were other frustrations, including tribalism, differences in strategy, and suspicion seeded by the apartheid security forces. The ANC’s response was predictably heavy-handed, with the formation of a powerful (and seemingly unaccountable) security wing known as the National Intelligence and Security Department and, informally, as Mbokodo, a Xhosa word referring to the millstone for grinding maize. The climate of fear was exacerbated by the construction of Camp 32 (also known as Quatro) as a detention facility, and by various pogroms, purges and executions. Mbokodo was headed by Jacob Zuma after he became the ANC’s head of intelligence in Lusaka in 1987.

The ideological thinking and authoritarian practices were fuelled in part by the weak grip of the ANC’s leadership but also by the nature of their foremost supporters and their ideological line. Russia and China supplied around half of the movement’s annual $100 million budget by the end of the 1980s (the Scandinavians much of the other half), in large part thanks to the SACP, which kept the movement alive during the 30 years of its banning.

The character of the organisation during its exile years was another reason for the rapid conversion of the ANC-led government into a mafia state. Key ANC members, including the head of Umkhonto we Sizwe (and later minister of defence), Joe Modise, were alleged to have run criminal syndicates from the Frontline States, involving car, diamond, drug, rhino horn, ivory and counterfeit smuggling. This may have commenced with the blessing of the ANC hierarchy, which saw it as a way of raising funds. By mid-1980, the ANC Working Committee was concerned about drug smuggling by members of the organisation, which it listed as a concern alongside “violation of security”, embezzlement, and what it called “racket with ANC tickets”, referring to fraud perpetrated with airline tickets. To this day the ANC remains silent about these networks “in which military logistics and personal profit had become hopelessly mixed”.

The Art of War and Peace by Greg Mills and David Kilcullen is published by Penguin Random House.