The conclusion of our 8-part Culture series

The new South Africa

The 1994 election took place relatively peacefully, despite isolated bombings by some Afrikaner militants in a desperate last-minute attempt to prevent ANC rule over the whole country. However, there were so many electoral irregularities that it took 2 weeks for the results to be announced. In what was generally interpreted as a negotiated result the ANC and their alliance partners won over 60% of the national vote and control over 7 of the 9 new provinces, the NP 20% and the Western Cape, and Inkatha 10% and Kwazulu Natal. Viljoen’s FF showed poorly with less than 5% of the total vote, despite his well-funded campaign to convince the Afrikaners that his party would represent their interests in the new scheme of things. The liberal opposition (DP) as well as the former guerrilla movements of the PAC and Azapo were decimated, leaving the political scene in the new South Africa to be dominated by the Big Three parties.

As was expected, Mandela became the country’s first black president, with De Klerk becoming deputy president and Buthelezi put in charge of home affairs. For managing the transfer from white to black rule Mandela and De Klerk were duly rewarded with a shared Nobel peace prize. To media-indoctrinated observers in the rest of the world it seemed as if centuries of injustice had finally been corrected. When South Africa hosted and unexpectedly won the rugby world cup in 1995, the first time the country was allowed to participate in the tournament, euphoria reigned in the new South Africa. Heaven on earth at last! Or so everyone was made to believe…

A mere 5 years into the new government’s rule was enough to convince the majority of the white population, Afrikaners and English, that things were not going as well as was promised by Mandela and De Klerk. By now violent crime, including an alarming wave of farm murders, and widespread corruption had become hallmarks of the new South Africa. In 1999 the veteran ANC leader announced his retirement in favour of the jet-setting Thabo Mbeki, and the general election later in the year saw a much lower voter turnout than the previous one. Nevertheless, the ruling party again won the election with a large majority, as was expected. But in a surprising development the DP became the new official opposition in parliament by drawing 1.5 million votes, around 10 percent of the total. This was the result of an aggressive election campaign by the party leader Tony Leon, capitalising on the discontent of many South Africans with ANC rule. Remarkably, large numbers of Afrikaner nationalists, who had mostly abstained from voting in 1994, voted for Leon’s party. In addition the DP maintained its traditional white English support base, and drew many Coloured and Asian votes. To add injury to insult to the former official opposition, of which De Klerk had in the meantime retired as leader, Buthelezi’s Inkatha finished in third position, ahead of the NP in fourth place.

By this time the majority of the Afrikaner people had become apathetic as far as national freedom was concerned, due (at least in part) to their loss of political power. They were thus again in the position of the Boer people at the end of the Anglo-Boer War, although in a stronger position economically. Small groups were engaged in cultural activities, notably to preserve the Afrikaans language against the ANC government’s policy of anglicisation. But for the most part the Afrikaners since 1994 chose to focus on economic survival and even physical survival, given the disastrous levels of violent crime. In this they were not much different from millions of other South Africans, such as the impoverished black masses and many Coloured people.

Into the third millennium

A few words should be mentioned regarding demographics, to further dispel the propaganda of a white minority oppressing a black majority. At the beginning of the twentieth century the total population of what was to become the Union of South Africa numbered around 5 million. Two thirds (67%) of this number belonged to one of the black peoples (total 3.5 million), while the Afrikaners and English whites numbered just over a million, or 21 percent of the population. The ratio of black to white was therefore just over 3 to one. In their turn the Coloureds numbered less than half a million and the Asians just over 100 000. A century later, at the time of the 2001 census, the total population had increased to around 45 million, in other words a nine-fold increase. The black population now stood at 35 million (79%), the whites at 4.5 million (10%), the Coloureds at 4 million (9%) and the Asians at one million (2.5%). Remarkably, the percentage share of the Coloured and Asian groups had remained fairly constant over the previous century. However, the country’s blacks had increased not only their number ten-fold but also their share of the total by 12 percent. During the same time the white population had grown only four-fold and had declined as part of the whole by over 10 percent. The ratio of black to white now stood at 8 to one. Some oppression!

In the early years of the new millennium the opportunistic NP leadership had first joined forces with the DP to form the Democratic Alliance (DA) with Leon as leader, and two years later switched allegiance to climb onto the ANC bandwagon. Despite the continuing crime wave, high levels of unemployment and other glaring deficiencies in government, the ANC obtained a huge 70% of the national vote in the 2004 general election, as well as control over all 9 provinces. Apparently the right to make a cross on a ballot paper every 5 years was deemed more important by the majority of the country’s black people than such trivialities as law and order, civilised standards and values, economic development and cultural rights. As in the previous two elections the rural Zulus of the Kwazulu Natal province served as an exception to this rule, the majority continuing their support for Inkatha. The DA obtained increased support from white, Coloured and Asian voters, so that the electoral alliance of the DA and Inkatha drew over 20% of the total vote. The NP was finally destroyed at the polls, to the relief of most South Africans. Sadly, this did not prevent the last NP leader from being rewarded with a cabinet post in recognition of services rendered to the ANC during the preceding years.

As far as public morality is concerned, South Africa had been continuing the downward slide upon which it had entered during the 1970s. In common with most of the western world, the country experienced a large-scale breakdown of traditional values such as the integrity of family life, proper upbringing of children, respect for law and order, decent behaviour towards others, and so forth. By the 1990s South Africans were being treated to the spectacle of homosexual and lesbian parades demanding ‘equal rights’ with heterosexual persons, the latter increasing becoming branded as ‘homophobic’. By 2007 South Africa had joined the ranks of ‘progressive nationhood’ by the legalisation of homosexual marriages, thereby flouting the religious sensibilities of most Christians and Muslims as well as traditional African beliefs.

The fourth general election in which all adult South Africans were eligible to vote took place in 2009. As in the previous three elections the ANC won the national election easily, garnering 65% of the vote. Although it lost the two-thirds majority obtained in the previous two elections, the ruling party won victories in 8 provinces. The election proved to be a considerable boost to the DA, having worked hard to gain popular support since becoming the official opposition in the national parliament 10 years earlier. Under the dynamic leadership of Helen Zille, the party in this election increased its share of the national vote to almost 17 percent, representing just under 3 million voters. Moreover, the DA wrested control of the country’s most prosperous province, the Western Cape, from the ANC by winning just over half the province’s votes.

Another noteworthy performer in the 2009 election was a party formed only a few months earlier, the Congress of the People (Cope). Although hampered by presenting a largely unknown leader to the electorate, the new black party drew an impressive 1.3 million votes nationwide. Since Cope was formed by dissident ANC members and waged a campaign based on a return to traditional ANC principles, it can reasonably be assumed that the vast majority of its votes came from former ANC supporters. This has been the first time since 1994 that an opposition party has succeeded in drawing a substantial number of votes away from the ruling party. In the process Cope replaced the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) as the third largest party on the South Africa political landscape, a position the IFP had held since 1994. Furthermore, in the ANC heartland of the Eastern Cape, the new party became the official opposition in the provincial parliament. Should Cope continue to grow in future elections it would be a cause of considerable concern to the ANC leadership, hitherto assured of easy victories due to the uncritical loyalty of the country’s huge black electorate.

Will the Afrikaners and Zulus and other freedom-loving South Africans ever be able to live in a system in which cultural diversity is respected, in which law and order is more than empty rhetoric, and in which merit is more important than colour? Perhaps this way of thinking is completely unrealistic, given the country’s convoluted history and complicated demographics. The only viable alternative then would be regional autonomy to those population groups that do not wish to lose their culture and values to the bland conformity of Anglo-American materialism and superficiality. In the case of the Afrikaners, this would mean an autonomous region somewhere in the western or southern parts of South Africa, being the only place where they could establish a majority of the population and become economically self-sufficient. Only time will tell if this alternative will remain a dream or become reality.