Charlie van Gelderen
"Your hopes and dreams are about to be realised" said Nelson Mandela on his release in 1990.
Four years later, South Africa’s teeming millions queued outside the polling stations to vote for the first time in their lives. They believed that their dreams were really coming to be realised; that the long nightmare of apartheid was at last coming to an end.
What were they voting for when they gave the ANC/SACP alliance such an overwhelming majority?
First of all they were voting for The Freedom Charter, the document on which the alliance based their appeal to the newly enfranchised electorate. What is the situation eight years after that historic election?
The Freedom Charter promised that "The People shall share in the country’s wealth". Today, 5 per cent of the population control 88 per cent of the nation’s wealth and, as in the years of apartheid, the overwhelming majority of that 5 per cent are white; the overwhelming majority of the 95 percent are black.
The legal trappings of apartheid may have been shed with the coming to power of a Black government but this has done nothing to lessen the huge economic gulf which divided Black from white.
The ANC government has simply taken over the role of guaranteeing the continuation of the giant monopolies. It has given South African capitalism a new lease of life. The emergence of a small Black capitalist class does not threaten the domination of these oligarchies.
On the contrary, it acts as an additional buffer between capital and labour. Cyril Ramaphosa, former leader of the Miners and Secretary General of the ANC, today sits on the board of the giant Anglo-American Corporation.
The Freedom Charter promised that "the Land shall be shared among those who work it". This must raise a hollow chortle from the landless millions. Wealthy white farmers continue to control more than 80 per cent of the land. Their existing property rights are guaranteed by the new constitution.
On April 15, a white farmer shot and killed a baby being carried across ‘his’ land, by her eleven year old cousin who was also wounded. He was not going to have Blacks trespassing on his farm.
"All shall enjoy human rights" declares the Charter. Tell that to the people living in the rural districts of the Eastern Cape where the women have to walk half a mile to draw water from a well where cattle drink and defecate — where there is no sanitation, electricity or other facilities which put quality into life. There is no work, despite the Charter’s promise of "Work and Security".
"There shall be houses, security and comfort for all". Under apartheid, the former General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, estimated that half the Black population lacked a secure roof over their heads. As the Minister for Housing in the ANC-dominated government, he was going to change this.
There has been no such change. Millions still live in the same squatter camps as they did under apartheid. The police, often under white command, still bulldoze "illegal" settlements.
Why is this the situation? Why has there been no fundamental change in the condition of the people? The answer is really simple. The ANC with the compliance of its SACP allies has reneged on its promises.
In 1990, Nelson Mandela said that the ANC in power would take over the great monopolies, including the mines and the financial institutions. "That is the fundamental policy of the ANC" he said. "It is inconceivable that we will ever change this policy".
That was before the elections, that was Mandela the world -famous prisoner of the apartheid regime.
President Mandela spoke a different language. "We will reintroduce the market to South Africa", he told a New York audience. These words were balm to the ears of international and South African capital. Capitalism was safe in his hands.
So we have the answer to the question we asked earlier - the perpetuation of capitalism is the root cause of the ills which still persist in post-apartheid South Africa.