A History of South Africa

by Leonard Thompson

  By then, Mbeki had become embroiled in the scientific controversy about the cause of AIDS by appointing an AIDS advisory panel that included several members of the tiny minority of specialists, commonly known as AIDS dissenters or denialists, who disputed the widely accepted theory that HIV causes AIDS.133 Their views fit nicely with Mbeki’s idea that poverty was a major contributor to the AIDS/HIV pandemic. Thus, he said that poverty should be addressed in lieu of a singular focus on AIDS itself. In reply, 5,000 scholars, including several Nobel Prize winners, publicly reaffirmed the HIV theory,134 and at the Thirteenth International AIDS Conference, held in Durban in July 2000, Mbeki drew much criticism for confusing South Africans and distracting the health services from addressing the epidemic. Mbeki was undeterred. He preferred the poverty explanation to what he regarded as the Western racist underpinnings of AIDS theory replete with old stereotypes of African promiscuity.135 Mbeki took an extreme position in a 100-page paper he wrote in 2001 and circulated anonymously to the ANC leadership. Echoing the remarks Mbeki made at the University of Fort Hare earlier in the year, it argued that the HIV/AIDS thesis was part of “centuries old white racist beliefs and concepts about Africans.”136 Although in 2003 Mbeki’s cabinet overruled him and the government approved a plan to make ARVs universally available, by 2005 not even half of those eligible received the drug regimen.137

  Making matters worse and holding South Africa up to global ridicule was Mbeki’s minister of health, Manto Shabalala-Msimang. She had spent 28 years in exile. Now she defended the government’s position on AIDS with the argument that South Africa could not afford ARVs. In 2002, it became clear that cost was not paramount when Tshabalala-Msimang blocked U.S. funding to assist in the distribution of ARVs in her native KwaZulu-Natal. Tshabalala-Msimang’s views on the treatment of HIV/AIDS drew international condemnation, especially her advocacy of beetroot, garlic, lemon, and African potatoes. These, she said, “are absolutely critical—first of all to have a beautiful face and beautiful skin—but they also protect you from disease.”138 The media mocked her as Dr. Beetroot, and in August 2006 the U.N. special envoy for AIDS in Africa said South Africa promoted a “lunatic fringe” attitude.139 By that time, life expectancy had fallen to 49 years, thanks to AIDS-related fatalities, which—with 4.2 million infected by the virus—saw deaths nearly double between 1999 and 2005.140 Despite the uproar, Mbeki never removed Shabalala-Msimang as minister.

  Education

  After describing South African education as in crisis soon after he assumed office, Minister of Education Kader Asmal periodically made positive forecasts. In January 2000, he vowed to improve the matriculation pass rate by 5 percent a year, and in February he promised to break the back of illiteracy within five years.141 Instead, the crisis deepened. The education department continued to make unsuccessful changes in school curricula, there was still a desperate shortage of qualified teachers, especially in mathematics and the sciences, and conditions in many schools remained chaotic. The leaders of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) refused to relinquish the powers they had exercised in the apartheid era, and by June 2000 students around the country were disrupting classes and defying the government. Many schools in Alexandra were reportedly controlled by gun-toting youths. In July 2000, a UNESCO study found that grade 4 South African pupils had among the worst numeracy, literacy, and life skills in Africa. That was a dreadful augury for the future of a country where a dearth of skills was already one of its greatest weaknesses.142

  Government-funded higher education continued to decline. The schools were not producing enough people qualified for university entry. In 1999, of the half-million students who took the final school exam, only 272,000 passed; of those, only 69,800 obtained the exemption that allowed entry into higher education and only 20,000 passed advanced mathematics. Moreover, not all who were qualified entered the government-funded universities and technikons, because by 2000 there were numerous private colleges, which concentrated on providing job-oriented training and attracted increasing numbers of students. As the government restructured the universities to shift the emphasis away from the humanities, faculty morale at the formerly white universities fell to an all-time low,143 and the historically black universities struggled with financial problems and student unrest.

  Ever-larger infusions of capital into the education system marked Mbeki’s presidency. The 2007 budget provided for R16 billion for education, with R13.3 of that going to higher education. In addition, there was another R88.7 billion in education money in the year’s provincial education budgets.144 The financial outlays were not used effectively enough to meet the country’s growing need for an educated population. In 2007, Education Minister Naledi Pandor told Parliament that neither the legacy of apartheid nor inadequate resources sufficed as explanations for continued failures.

  As for tertiary education, by 2006, only one in ten South Africans had any type of tertiary qualification. There had, however, been strides toward racial and gender equity. Three out of five of the nearly 750,000 university students were African, while only a quarter were white, a reversal of the apartheid proportions, while 14 percent were Coloured or Indian. Fifty percent of students were female. Overall enrollment figures also increased. The gross enrollment rate for 20-to 24-year-olds rose from 13 percent in 2000 to 16 percent in 2006, but graduation rates were low.145

  A 2008 OECD survey of South African education found that low graduation rates meant that higher education was not able to yield the “high quality human capital needed to propel and sustain” social and economic development.146 The low retention rates were a function of student lack of preparedness. Also unprepared were the large numbers of junior faculty members who had been hired by universities in an effort to change the ethnic profile of academics, who, under apartheid, were almost all white. The report recognized that the government had engaged in restructuring to make tertiary education “more accessible, equitable, integrated, rational and manageable.” In practice, this meant that through mergers the government had reduced the number of public institutions from 36 to 23, and the comprehensive universities were “in a state of disarray.”

  Crime

  There was little, if any, abatement of crime. For example, in June 2000 a group of workers went on a rampage in the Helen Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg, trashing the hospital, breaking property, and throwing patients out of wheelchairs in protest against the arrest of several colleagues for intimidation and assault. White-collar crime was also thriving. For example, three South African Airways pilots and four other people appeared to have bought and sold license examination papers, and the chief of civil aviation himself bought a dubious pilot’s license.147 An American medical journalist described her visit to South Africa in May 2000. “Everyone I met warned me to be careful. . . . The sense of suspicion and paranoia seemed to me to pervade even the fancy shopping malls, tourist beaches, and expensive hotels.”148

  In September 2004, early in Mbeki’s second term, the official annual crime statistics indicated that most types of crime had diminished in the previous year.149 However, many in the media attacked the validity of the statistics. Among these was journalist Charlene Smith, who had become a major voice opposing violence against women since she herself had been raped. She claimed that South Africa had the world’s highest rate of rape.150 In what had already become a familiar retort by the ANC in general and by this president in particular, Mbeki said the detractors, including Smith, were white racists who wanted the country to fail.151 Mbeki also castigated the Citizen newspaper and other critics as pessimists who were suspicious of black rule.

  In January 2007, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), which Mbeki had been instrumental in creating, released a draft report on South Africa.152 It found that with approximately 50 people a day being killed, South Africa’s murder rate was the second highest in the world. It also noted that despite a falling rate of serious crime, rape and violent robberies were more frequent.153 Mbeki’s reaction wa
s to claim to an interviewer that people’s fear of crime was exaggerated.154 Similarly, when the final APRM report appeared at the end of the year and indicated that the level of violent crime was unacceptably high, Mbeki lashed out at the panel’s acceptance of “a populist view.”155 His indignation did nothing to quell anxiety among the citizenry, whose fears often took the form of xenophobia directed at the large numbers of illegal immigrants from elsewhere on the continent. The newcomers often received blame for South Africa’s crime, unemployment, and housing shortages. Passions exploded in May 2008 when riots rocked many townships, particularly in Gauteng, leaving 42 dead, hundreds injured, and thousands homeless.156 Prominent among the victims were Zimbabwean economic refugees from Mugabe’s failed state. Widespread criticism of Mbeki’s inattention to the issue of illegal immigration followed.157 Mbeki said he would set up an official investigation of the riots. He also, in a first for postapartheid South Africa, authorized the use of military force against the rioters.

  Corruption

  Perhaps more than riots, growing corruption greatly diminished South Africa’s prospects for eradicating poverty. Surveys found that more than half the population believed that corruption was common among government officials. Nearly half of the population thought civil servants were crooked, and a third felt the same about managers of private businesses. Mbeki was quick to dismiss allegations of official corruption as racist, and in December 2006 he criticized as anti-black newspapers that published stories about ANC and government corruption.158 In April 2007, speaking at the Fifth Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and Protecting Integrity, held in Sandton, Mbeki acknowledged that corruption was antithetical to democracy and development, but still he returned to the notion that Westerners viewed corruption as “peculiarly African . . . something to do with the biological character of the African.”159 In the end, it was this obsession with racism that crippled Mbeki’s ability to deal with many pressing social issues. It was also one that led many South Africans to welcome his departure from office.

  The Interregnum of Kgalema Motlanthe

  Motlanthe’s caretaker presidency was marked mostly by continuity rather than change. In his first speech to Parliament, in September 2008, Motlanthe indicated that he would follow the established ANC path and not “reinvent policy.”160 His cabinet by and large reflected his desire for stability. Motlanthe reappointed Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel after Manuel tendered his resignation, a move regarded as indicative of Motlanthe’s intention not to alter South Africa’s economic course. There were, however, two major cabinet changes that signaled new policy directions. First, Motlanthe appointed Nathi Mthethwa as minister of safety and security and promised to address the issue of rampant crime. Second, he moved controversial health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to the post of minister in the presidency and in her place appointed MP Barbara Hogan, a long-time ANC activist who had spent eight years in Pretoria Central Prison in the apartheid era. Hogan, reportedly a close friend of Motlanthe’s, had been a vocal critic of Mbeki’s AIDS policy.

  Hogan acted quickly to reverse Mbeki’s policies. In mid-October she announced to an international AIDS vaccine conference, “We know HIV causes AIDS.”161 In November, a study by Harvard researchers estimated that had South Africa provided antiretroviral drugs to those with HIV, including drugs for pregnant women to prevent MTCT, the premature deaths of some 365,000 people could have been prevented.162 Hogan’s response was, “The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa.” She sought to provide every HIV-positive pregnant woman with the ARV nevirapine. Her work received international recognition, and in April 2009 Time magazine named her one of the world’s 100 most influential people.163

  Motlanthe was, however, ensnared in controversy surrounding his December 2008 decision not to reinstate the national director of public prosecutions, Vusi Pikoli. Mbeki had suspended Pikoli in 2007 to protect Commissioner of Police Jackie Selebi from an arrest warrant obtained by Pikoli. The government then established a commission of inquiry into Pikoli’s fitness to serve, known as the Ginwala Commission for its head, Frene Ginwala, chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal and former speaker of the National Assembly. The commission’s report, issued in November 2008, was generally favorable to Pikoli,164 and when Motlanthe, said to be bowing to ANC pressure, ignored its recommendation to reinstate Pikoli, the opposition and the media vilified the president.

  The episode was not part of a pattern of scandal of the type that beset the flamboyant Zuma. The Zuma camp worried that Motlanthe would eclipse him when the quiet, scholarly interim president carried out various changes that gained him considerable respect among members of the ANC, the parliamentary opposition, and the public, who gave him extremely high approval ratings.165 Motlanthe created emergency teams to cushion job losses, pushed for racial and political reconciliation, and offered international solutions to the worldwide financial crisis. His foreign policy, however, was controversial. He praised Mbeki’s leadership on Zimbabwe, and regarding the Dalai Lama he went even further than Mbeki, who, under Chinese pressure, had refused to meet with the spiritual leader during a 1999 visit. With South Africa now China’s top African trading partner,166 after the government repeatedly delayed granting him a visa the Dalai Lama withdrew from a peace conference sponsored by South African soccer officials to draw attention to the following year’s World Cup, the first to be held in Africa. His fellow Nobel Prize winners Anglican archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu and former president F. W. de Klerk announced they would boycott the event, as did members of the Nobel Committee; the Nobel Institute’s director found it “disappointing that South Africa, which has received so much solidarity from the world, doesn’t want to give that solidarity to others.”167

  Motlanthe’s presidency was perhaps most notable for the crisis in the ANC that Mbeki’s resignation had provoked. On October 8, 2008, just two weeks after Motlanthe took office, the pro-Mbeki Minister of Defense Mosiuoa Lekota announced that he had served the ANC with “divorce papers.”168 He said there would be a national convention to discuss the ANC’s future and the possible creation of a new political organization.169 This prompted various well-known Mbeki supporters in the ANC to leave the party, and thousands of rank-and-file members to burn their membership cards publicly. The incipient movement held a convention in Sandton on November 1, attended by more than 5,000 people and representatives of other political parties, with the exception of the ANC.170 By November 15, the new party had chosen the name Congress of the People (COPE), an obvious reference to the 1955 Congress of the People at Kliptown, which had adopted the Freedom Charter that had so informed the antiapartheid struggle. This was not lost on the ANC, which sued unsuccessfully for an interdict preventing COPE from using the name on the grounds that the ANC itself was affiliated with the 1955 gathering.

  The formal launch of the party occurred at a three-day conference in December, at which Lekota became president.171 Thereafter, he was joined by various former ANC luminaries, including Mbeki’s nonagenarian mother. The platform was one of multiracialism and multi-culturalism in government, promoting the free market and eschewing any connection to Marxism.172 Most significant was the position on electoral reform. COPE sought to abolish pure proportional representation whereby voters choose a party, not individual candidates. Instead, candidates would be elected directly by their constituents and could be removed only by the courts, thus increasing individual accountability and diminishing the grip of party machines.

  The Democratic Alliance (DA), the United Democratic Movement, and the IFP all welcomed the new party and its potential to dilute the ANC’s dominance. Even before the party’s official launch, COPE candidates, running as independents, won 10 of 27 wards in the Western Cape municipal by-elections, while the ANC carried only three.173 The new party contested the 2009 general elections with the Rev. Mvume Dandala, a Methodist with impeccable theological credentials, as its presidential candidate, and won 7.42 percent of the vote.174 It also took th
e leadership of the opposition in the legislatures of the Eastern Cape, Free State, Limpopo, and Northern Cape, and won representation in all nine provinces. The strengthening of contrary voices would characterize the Zuma years.