South Africa: The quiet after the storm

As I mark two years of setting up Rain Barrel’s office in South Africa, our springtime in verdant Pretoria has been shaken by the police massacre of 34 striking miners on August 16 in a dusty mining community about 120 kilometers west of here. The country continues to reel from the still-unexplained violence at  the Marikana platinum mine, and the rest of the world is wondering again about the future of this troubled country.

My wife and I have had the privilege of meeting hundreds of people from all walks of life here over the past two years.  Being inquisitive foreigners, people are quite open to us about their experiences and hopes and fears  despite the insularity of the Afrikaans-speaking community and the notable reticence of the Black South Africans in their interactions with white folk.

We have come to understand very well that this is not the rainbow nation that Nelson Mandela envisioned. Although enormous efforts have been made by South Africans to address the intentional  institutional neglect of the majority of its citizens under Apartheid,  the government and 76,000 civil society organizations have only begun to build the human capacities to deliver basic social services  in the poorest areas. Clearly, capacity building has not been fast enough.

The unrelieved poverty of the Black townships, tucked away mostly out of sight of the flashy urban centers, remains a bitter reality for millions of South Africans.  Lack of infrastructural and human capacity aside, there is the more glaring problem of corruption. We are reminded every day, in the newspapers and on talk radio, of the growing public outrage about the corruption involving the ANC governing elite. These problems feed on each other.

The massacre has shaken our optimism and, for many South Africans, it is seen as a jangling wake-up call.  The squalid hostels around the Marikana mine and the conditions in the mines themselves stand in sharp relief to the power and wealth of the mining sector (although the Lonmin mine in question is facing a serious financial crisis).  The shootings made painfully clear to everyone  how little things have changed in the last two decades for much of South Africa’s working class.

Spontaneous protests about  poor  service delivery throughout the country are at record highs. Township youth endure numbingly poor schooling and then face endless unemployment.  No one – – despite the daily litany of exposes in daily newspapers — seems to be able to  stop the siphoning off of public funds for water, electricity, sanitation, health and education services. Poor people, the rank and file of the ANC, are fed up.

What happened at Marikana remains unclear. Was it a case of poorly trained and ill-prepared police panicking in the face of panga-wielding wildcat strikers? Was it, as emerging eye-witness reports suggest, a calculated massacre with follow-up executions of wounded miners, aimed to crush worker insurgence? Was it simply a showdown between rival unions? My gut feeling goes with the incompetence explanation over the cold-blooded conspiracy view. But I realize now that the reality of the violence is more complex than anyone can explain. We await, not holding our collective breath, the report of the investigation requested by an increasingly hapless president.

Indeed, it is with enormous apprehension that all South Africans wait to see what happens next.

The massacre was tailor-made for Julius Malema, ousted ANC Youth League leader. Juju has masterfully stepped into the vacuum of leadership left by the collective round of finger-pointing. He points to the corruption (of which he is a well-documented beneficiary) and cynicism of the mine owners who hide behind the government  and union leaders. I am reminded of the clever mix of demagoguery and truth-telling rhetoric of  Reverend Al  Sharpton in the 1980s. Both men have decried the undeniable legacy of institutional racism —  with the critical difference being that Malema’s disaffected followers represent a huge portion of South African society.

An eerie quiet has  followed the Marikana massacre as people absorb the shock.

At a talk last week, the General Secretary of COSATU, the main trade union coalition, wondered out loud if Marikana was the spark that could lead to a resurgence of labor unrest which had fueled the movement to bring down the Apartheid regime from the 1970s onward.  Will this wake-up call be heeded? Can the COSATU and the National Union of Mineworkers retain the confidence of their rank and file? Can the ANC stem the hemorrhaging of its “struggle credentials” and regain the confidence of its constituents as they choose new leaders – – including the president — in the coming months. And just how will business leaders , here and abroad (many of whom are abettors of the corruption tainting the ruling elite), respond to a the climate of uncertainty.

Something is terribly wrong.   Still, we are reminded by some that South Africa has been on the brink  many times in recent decades; that the doomsayers have always been vocal and disappointed; and that this moment of crisis is no different.  Somehow, they say, South Africans will  muddle through and thrive despite the enormity of the challenges.  For the first time, I’m not so sure.