Once again South African news is dominated by apartheid issues – but not the kind we’re used to.
The country’s rulers, the African Nation Congress (ANC), are coming in for some intense scrutiny. It has been said before that South Africa is like a double-decker bus ‘travelling with the rich on top and the poor at the bottom’. Now, with poverty levels on the up and connections between the ANC and lucrative South African mines being revealed concerns that the country is hosting economic apartheid are mounting.
On the tenth anniversary of the ANC taking power research was compiled which revealed that in that time 2 million jobs had been lost, job creation was being restricted by limited skills in sectors like IT, low wages were being kept low and the economy was failing to grow fast enough. It seemed that the good the ANC had achieved (increasing South African exports, lowering the country’s budget deficit etc) was failing to make up for the bad which ran alongside it.
Now, frustration regarding the country’s unequal distribution of wealth is intensifying. A politics professor at the University of Johannesburg described the situation in the following manner: ‘The anger and rage [felt] by the poor in South African society is partly directed at the political elite but it’s also directed at the economic elite. The ANC’s economic policies since 1994 have not been solely focused on redistribution; they have been focused on growth – to the ignorance of redistribution’.
The recent miner’s strike, and the controversy surrounding it, has sparked increase debate about the widening class divide and further fanned the flames of discontent.
Days before the strike entered it’s forth week prosecutors had to bow under the enormous weight of public pressure and provisionally drop the highly unusual murder charge levelled at 270 miners. The 34 miners they were accused of killing had actually been shot by police during chaotic violent action. As it stands the charges could be reinstated once the investigation is complete.
On Monday rubber bullets were fired at miners striking outside the Modder East gold mine in Gauteng province. This police action has drawn even more attention to the ANC and its policies because of the mine’s political connections. It has ties to both national icon Nelson Mandela and South African president Jacob Zuma.
A former youth wing leader of the ANC has since made several provocative remarks. Julius Malema has stated; ‘The reason our government is failing to intervene in the mines is because our leaders are involved in these mines. President Zuma’s foundations receive funding from the mines, and that is why he cannot stand against the mines. Comrades you only have yourselves, you must stand up and fight for your rights.’
Malema, who had previously been expelled from the ANC, also demanded that the South African President resign in light of the recent violence.
Fissures in the structure of the country are numerous, and a wedge is also being driven between the miners themselves. Some feel that the National Union of Mineworkers (the industry’s main union) is too closely tied to the state and mine owners.
Despite the fact that the mineral reserves found in South Africa are estimated to be worth in the region of $2.5 trillion (making them some of the world’s most valuable) the people employed to mine them are paid so little that many live in squalid poverty.
When asked about his increasingly disillusioned view of the ANC retired archbishop Desmond Tutu stated; ‘People are going to sleep hungry in this freedom for which people were tortured and harmed. It is difficult to believe people are getting such money and benefits and are driving such flashy cars while the masses suffer in cramped shacks.’
And it could be that the worst of the bloodshed is yet to come.
A splinter union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), has threatened that the country will be blighted by war if immediate improvements are not made to miners living conditions and salaries.
The AMCU has promised that production at all mines will not only stop but that the situation will descend into anarchy if positive steps aren’t taken.
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