• English Site
• >World
• >South Africa
• >

  Disillusionment and Frustration: South Africa Looks Beyond the ANC

Disillusionment and Frustration South Africa Looks Beyond the ANC

By Horand Knaup

Part 2: 'We Need People with Moral Credibility'

"Does South Africa even need such stadiums?" asks Holmes -- and he is not the only one questioning the need for this additional infrastructure. In Cape Town and Johannesburg large concerts and events could be held at these venues. But what about in Port Elizabeth and in Durban? A dreamlike summer success story like the one Germany experienced is not to be expected: The matches will be played in the South African winter, and the national team -- or Bafana Bafana (The Boys) -- has little chance of surviving the qualifying round.

But Jacob Zuma, the candidate, acts as if all of this is hardly a concern. He dances in Langa Stadium, and his supporters cheer him on. "We are the oldest party in the country. We have top people, and we have heroes. And there were quite a number among our ranks who died for freedom." The past is all that the ANC still has to offer.

Methodist bishop Paul Verryn has his church in downtown Johannesburg, where very few whites dare to venture. For the past 11 years he has been here, in a nondescript high-rise building that serves as a drop-in center for refugees, the unemployed and the sick. They spend the night in the main hall of the church, and camp out in the hallways. It reeks of sweat, and sometimes also of urine.

"Politicians talk about poverty," says Verryn, "but they have no idea of the desperation that comes in here every day." He has just been talking on the phone on behalf of a Zimbabwean refugee who is caught in a bureaucratic nightmare. Ordinary people show "a blind allegiance to the ANC," says Verryn, "but there is a great need for new political values."

He says that Zuma is the last person who could represent these new values. The bishop has forbidden him from appearing in his church: "There is a latent racism, and Zuma endorses this. I can really understand why some people are leaving the country."

'I'm Just so Sick of It'

Hout Bay is one of the better neighborhoods in Cape Town. Investment banker Lara Ellis, 36, lives here together with her husband, a former career soldier, who worked for the ANC in the townships. Two children, a garden, a pool, a dog -- it looks like a carefree life.

Ellis is one of the more enlightened whites in South Africa who once placed great hopes in the ANC. She and many others were inspired by Nelson Mandela, and then bitterly disappointed. Now she has packed her bags and is ready to leave the country. "The ANC said it wanted to unite the country," says Ellis. "And what happened? Exactly the opposite." She says that she expects nothing from Zuma. She can't imagine how he ever became ANC president.

Her main complaint is the lack of security. This was the reason why she and her husband moved from Johannesburg to Cape Town. Even in Hout Bay she says that they regularly hear gunfire. And ever since she discovered an intruder standing in front of the glass veranda of her living room, Ellis says she just wants to leave: "I'm just so sick of it."

The award-winning white caricaturist Jonathan Shapiro says that he has had enough of the ANC. During the apartheid regime, he supported the struggle for liberation. But in early September he published a caricature which portrayed the heads of the trade unions, communists and the ANC youth league holding down the goddess of justice, as if to rape her, and Zuma standing with his pants open in front of her. That's when Shapiro found out that the top-ranking party officials have very little tolerance for criticism.

The drawing was an allusion to the massive pressure that Zuma's supporters exerted on the justice system when it looked as if his case would go to trial last summer. For days Shapiro's caricature made headlines across the country. "May he rot in hell!" said party members at public events. "It came quickly and brutally," says Shapiro, "I've never experienced anything like it." Zuma is now suing him for roughly €500,000 ($700,000).

A Potential Crisis for the ANC

Ibuyisuue Swartbooi could be helped with much less money than that. She is a teacher at a primary school in the Cape Town neighborhood of Khayelitsha. There are 1,000 pupils, large classes, and small rooms -- and her school is one of the better ones in Khayelitsha. The buildings are made of brick and there are blackboards, benches and chairs in the classrooms. And yet they still lack the most rudimentary things.

Many children get off the bus hungry every morning and first have to be given a breakfast. "When we do written exercises, many of them have no pencils," says Swartbooi, "and there are only 16 textbooks for 40 pupils." Not surprisingly, the results aren't great. Not even 30 percent of the pupils manage to graduate from primary school. "I received a much better education in the days of apartheid," says Swartbooi.

Those who are disillusioned with the ANC are gathering around former Defense Minister Mosiuoa Lekota and ex-province premier Shilowa. They are the ones who launched COPE, and they have a great deal of supporters among the intellectuals, city dwellers and the middle class. They maintain that they have acquired roughly 430,000 members since October. This number cannot be confirmed, but it has thrown the ANC into a crisis the likes of which it has never experienced before.

"The comrades in the ANC were only intent on securing personal advantages," says Nyameko Pityana, who was for many years a member of the South African Human Rights Commission and vice-chancellor of the University of Pretoria. He has gone from being a supporter of the ANC to one of its critics -- he estimates the voter potential of COPE at over 20 percent. This is the figure that could push the ANC under the 50-percent margin -- and would represent the greatest possible political disaster for the grand old party of Africa. "We need people at the top who have moral credibility," says Pityana.

Do the members of COPE fit the bill? Mbhazima Shilowa, a huge man with a broad face, has squeezed himself into an eggshell white suit and is wearing a pink shirt. Such a fine outfit certainly doesn't make him a man of the people. But what Shilowa does have in his favor is that neither he nor Lekota face allegations of bribery or corruption. That is a rare quality among top members of the ANC.

Otherwise, their political platform seems rather vague: "We are a party with an egalitarian approach," social-democratic policies that focus on promoting growth and fighting poverty, says Shilowa. The Congress of the People wants to appeal to the middle class, and also to whites. He only makes concrete statements when the topic turns to the ANC. Shilowa says that "they have lost their principles." And he says that the way Mbeki was treated "was a putsch. He was given the boot."

Their political platform may be unclear, but their media tactics are brilliant. Every two to three days, COPE presents a new prominent ANC defector, followed by a wave of new headlines. The ANC invariably reacts according to the same pattern: It orders its members to attend COPE rallies and disrupt the events.

Even one of Lekota's aides was beaten up recently by unknown assailants and sent home with a message: "Tell your boss, he's next."