South Africa is at a crossroads, exactly 30 years after the sensational election of the country's first black president, Nelson Mandela, following the end of the loathed apartheid system.
Thank heavens it wasn't raining last Tuesday morning, as it can do in late autumn in South Africa . It would have meant a drenching for the most unusual politician fighting today's election — a 32-year-old farmer's son called Chris Pappas, who is white and gay.
We were in the village of Mzimkhulu, an area the ANC has controlled for three decades, letting corruption run riot, poverty soar and community halls like this one collapse into ruins. Leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema, at the far-Left party's manifesto launch in February EXCLUSIVEREAD NOW: SUE REID: Rise of Europe's new far Right: From Spain to Greece, an army of young nationalists is on the march... so will they trigger an earthquake at the ballot box? Advertisement And when he was made leader in South Africa's first democratic election in May 1994, he created his famous 'rainbow nation' — as well as an economic miracle.
'The outcome was a disaster especially for ordinary black people who were impoverished while a tiny ANC elite became fabulously rich,' says Andrew Kenny, a respected South African commentator. Meanwhile, rocketing crime figures show there is now a murder every 20 minutes in South Africa, with distrust of the police at an all-time high.
Hideous inequalities are fuelling the unrest. Last week, South Africa's mining companies revealed the mind-boggling salaries of their, often white, top directors, with some earning £30,000 a day.Crucially, the ANC is being rejected by young blacks — the so-called Born Free generation who cannot remember apartheid — as they rebel against the only government they have ever known.
Party members hand out free sanitary products at their meetings in order to highlight period poverty and have a huge female following. Malema hopes that any pact between the EFF and ANC — a deal described here as the 'bloodbath' scenario by middle-class blacks and whites — would allow him to push through at least part of his radical manifesto.
Shockingly, some of the convicted farm assassins have sung 'Kill the Boer' as they tied up their victims before knifing or shooting them. Nevertheless, 29-year-old Litha, a well-spoken hotel junior manager, told me fervently: 'We young, everyone I know, will vote for the EFF. Today, sewage and refuse spills on to the streets. The water is constantly being turned off and a decomposing corpse was found in its supply system last year.
Also prominent in this election battle is the country's scandal-plagued former president Jacob Zuma — he succeeded Mandela in 1999 — who was convicted of contempt of court in 2021 for refusing to testify at an inquiry investigating corruption during his reign. Pappas believes such attitudes can be changed — although tellingly, he is flanked by security men and, before now, has been hustled away from hostile audiences objecting to his white skin.
In Pappas's mayoral constituency of uMngeni with 120,000 residents, he is on good terms with black voters. When he came to office in 2021, overthrowing the ANC, his first decision was to hire a public buildings manager. Pappas installed solar power to get round the unreliable electricity supply, and street lamps now make it safer to walk at night.
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