Interesting development in South Africa

[Karl Marx's Camel]

From 2002:


The number of black people who believe life was better under South Africa's apartheid regime is growing, according to a survey published yesterday.
In a rebuke to the African National Congress government, more than 60% of all South Africans polled said the country was better run during white minority rule.

One in five black people interviewed gave the regime which jailed Nelson Mandela and denied them the vote, a positive rating - a result which analysts attributed to crime and unemployment. In 1995, fewer than one in ten gave apartheid a positive rating.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...,858369,00.html (http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,858369,00.html)


Then the situation in South Africa must be really shit these days, in terms of crime and unemployment?

[Amusing Scrotum]

I suspect the reason for these results, is pretty complicated....but a rose tinted view of the past, certainly plays a factor. But it's still surprising and, personally, I think finding out the exact question asked in the poll would be worthwhile. I mean, they might of just asked "do you think standard of life, in general, was better 20 years ago?" And it may well have been. As Bob Mattes comments, "Apartheid was a harsh, repressive, but seemingly efficient government which made the trains run on time."

For some reason, people love it when the trains run on time. It's become a euphemism, in a way, for a higher standard of living. When the trains ran on time, you could do a weekly shop for £20....and so on.

Another important point, whilst Mattes talks about the "harsh" and "repressive" nature of the Apartheid regime, as far as I know, the Police remain remarkably brutal....and young black men, in particular, continue to be constantly harassed. So for a lot of people, the lack of repression isn't all that obvious.

Plus, again as far as I know, there hasn't been a drastic increase in the standard of social services or with regards employment prospects....things that, unless I'm mistaken, were promised. So, again, the "prosperous" non-Apartheid South Africa isn't going to seem all its made out to be too a lot of people....unemployed families in particular.

Of course, whilst superficially this may seem like bad news, there are some indicators that this represents a certain degree of consciousness within the South African working class. "Only one in 10 people believed their elected representatives were interested in their needs and fewer than one in three felt today's government was more trustworthy than the apartheid regime." That kind of basic, gut level opinion is something which creates an environment where communist politics have more scope....after all, at some point, you need people to break with capitalist politics and its representatives.

Therefore, a growing alienation from bourgeois politics is hardly a bad thing, even if, as in this case, it takes on a slightly myopic and strange format. Personally, I'd be very interested to see what various South African communists (and anarchists) make of this, does anyone know of a particular good group that publishes its stuff on the web?

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2006, 05:18 AM
Then the situation in South Africa must be really shit these days, in terms of crime and unemployment?
Oh, absolutely. A consequence of the structural crisis of capitalism, maybe some stuff about gold prices and other mineral prices on the world market, and "neoliberal" style economic policies - privatizations and so forth.

On the other hand, the ANC government has built a lot of new housing in the townships, etc. For many people that just doesn't outweigh everything else in their economic situation.

I've heard this before - for years, it's not new - but also that, if you ask these folks who say it was better before, if they want to go back - of course they say no way.

As A.S. says, in large part it reflects working-class dissatisfaction with capitalism. (The anti-crime and "law and order" stuff, while an understandable response to high crime rates, doesn't point in a progressive direction.) But the ANC remains popular; its electoral domination is overwhelming.

Some reports from South Africa:
On some causes of economic downturn (http://www.themilitant.com/1997/6146/6146_15.html)
On ANC economic policy, among other things (http://www.themilitant.com/2003/6701/670110.html)
Are South African workers demoralized? (http://www.themilitant.com/1998/6240/6240_32.html)