Neo-liberation: as South Africa celebrates its first decade of freedom, the country struggles with deepening economic apartheid and conflicts with the ANC.

In the wake of South Africa's elections and in the midst of nationwide celebrations of the "First Decade of Freedom" from apartheid rule, various political and social forces within South Africa are assessing the gains of the last 10 years and the challenges of the next decade.

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Despite the ANC's massive triumph at the polls, significant fissures have appeared that threaten to eventually rupture the broad alliance represented in the ANC.

The main debate within the ANC centers on the government's economic and job-creation policies. "We need a comprehensive public works program to create jobs and develop the country's infrastructure," according to Glen Farred, an organizer with the South African National NGO Coalition (SANGOCO), an alliance of non-governmental advocacy groups.

Despite these tensions, the results of last April's elections in South Africa were a ringing endorsement of the ANC, the country's first democratically elected ruling party. The ANC, the party of former South African President Nelson Mandela, won 70 percent of the vote nationwide and emerged as the top vote getter in all nine South African provinces. The prestige and power of the liberation movement-turned-political party overwhelmed the fractured opposition parties and propelled the ANC to win its third five-year term as the ruling party with its largest ever margin of victory.

Coming to Power

The ANC came to power in 1994 against all odds. The decade of the 1980s produced a radicalized mass movement headed by underground ANC operatives in alliance with the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). This "tripartite alliance," as it is called, achieved one of its strategic objectives--to make apartheid unworkable and render the country ungovernable.

Under pressure from the mass movements and international sanctions, the ruling National Party released Nelson Mandela from 27 years of imprisonment in 1990 and the ANC leadership-in-exile returned to the country to negotiate an end to apartheid. The ANC-led government, elected in three successive contests, has made outstanding advances in insuring freedom and stability. The oppressive system of white minority rule called apartheid has given way to an open democratic society.

South Africa's constitution has been hailed as the most progressive document of its kind in the world. It ensures a wide range of political, economic, civil and human rights, including freedom from discrimination based upon race, gender, sexual orientation and creed; a prohibition of the death penalty; freedom of speech and assembly; freedom of the press; and recognition of the right of every citizen to adequate education, housing, food, water and social security. Apartheid-era repressive laws have been repealed and a plethora of progressive laws that guarantee affirmative action, trade union rights, women's rights and other measures have been enacted by the South African Parliament.

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The ANC has reformed the country's governing institutions and has set the basis for the participation of all South Africans in the political life of the country, despite its inexperience in public administration and government. In the process, the ANC has come to occupy a broad middle ground in the South African political spectrum and has crowded out the predominately white parties to its right, the Democratic Alliance and the New National Party, as well as the parties to its left, including its historic rival, the Pan-Africanist Congress.

The Great U-Turn

One of the stated aims of the ANC at the time of its un-banning was to come to power in a democratic election and to implement policies contained in the historic Freedom Charter. The Freedom Charter, adopted by the ANC and its allies in 1955, envisioned nationalization of strategic industries and comprehensive land reform to benefit the disenfranchised majority.

Instead of implementing Freedom Charter policies, the ANC made what liberal South African journalist Allister Sparks called "the great U-turn." Even before the ANC took power in the 1994 elections, the liberation movement was convinced that nationalization would alienate western governments and investors as well as international lending institutions.

In 1993, the Transitional Executive Council of the South African government, which included the ANC and the National Party, borrowed $850 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), ostensibly for relief from a drought that had ended 18 months earlier. The loan carried with it some of the classic restrictive conditions that the IMF had imposed upon other indebted nations--cuts in government spending and public-sector wages, lowering of import tariffs, privatization of basic industries and other measures. The ANC's acceptance of the terms of the loan signaled to western investors that the new South Africa would be a safe haven.

In 1994, the new ANC-led government faced a myriad of economic and political problems--a sluggish economy and a hostile investment climate, unequal trade terms for its commodities and manufactured goods, a substantial foreign debt to private lending institutions and international lending institutions, a bloated bureaucracy populated with antagonistic civil servants left over from the apartheid era, an insolvent government treasury and a racially polarized population. The ANC ran and won the election based upon its policy plan, the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP), which called for significant state intervention in the economy to alleviate poverty.

However, in an attempt to boost the economy and to win favor with western investors and governments, the RDP was overshadowed by GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution) a government policy that critics have derided as a continuation of the same neoliberal policies imposed by the IMF.

Poverty and AIDS

How has the South African government fared in terms of addressing the endemic poverty of the apartheid era? Some data provided by the government are striking. Government welfare programs to alleviate poverty have grown from 10 billion Rand ($1.7 billion) in 1994 to 34.8 billion Rand ($5.8 billion) in 2003, while the number of recipients has grown from 2.6 million to 6.8 million. Since 1999, real expenditures for social services have increased substantially, providing millions of households with housing, electricity, water and telephones in urban townships and rural areas. Classroom sizes have been significantly reduced and the high school graduation rate has risen.

And after a nationwide effort of militant actions and lawsuits by the Treatment Access Campaign, the government was forced to increase expenditures on HIV treatment and care for the 4 million HIV-positive South Africans. As a result, government spending for HIV treatments will mushroom from 30 million Rand ($5 million) in 1994 to 3.6 billion Rand ($600 million) in 2005.

But IMF proscriptions for jumpstarting the sluggish South African economy have proven to be ineffective. The South African government's policies of reducing trade barriers, financial liberalization with the unrestricted movement of capital, and privatization of government assets have not led to increased foreign investment, a thriving economy, or more jobs as predicted.

In fact, unemployment and economic inequality have increased over the last decade. Since the ANC took power in 1994, over I million jobs have been lost and the official unemployment rate of nearly 30 percent is concentrated among black South Africans. Meanwhile, 60 percent of South Africans, overwhelming black, earn 17 percent less than they did in 1996, the year GEAR was implemented. Land reform programs have lagged and government programs to promote black economic empowerment have only succeeded in establishing a tiny black elite.

Instead of the hoped-for growth in Gross Domestic Product of 5 to 6 percent per year, the rate for the last 10 years has only been between two and four percent per year. A number of factors have discouraged foreign companies from investing in the new South Africa--many of the country's mineral resources are depleted, there is a severe shortage of skilled workers, crime is high, and many investors have a negative image of Africa in general (what current President Thabo Mbeki calls "Afro-pessimism").

Tripartite Tensions

Some of the economic and social policies of the ANC government have created severe tensions between the ANC on the one hand and the social movements, civic organizations, COSATU, and the SACP on the other. In some cases, the friction between the ANC and its allies has developed into outright revolt against government policies and actions. COSATU has led the opposition to what it calls "creeping privatization" as well as the trade liberalization policies of the ANC, sometimes resorting to general strikes and other militant actions. New social movements have also arisen to challenge government policy on a range of other issues, including land reform, HIV/AIDS policy and education reform.

The ANC's opposition has fallen into three categories. Some forces, COSATU and the SACP among them, are resigned to the fact that the ANC is the only game in town and have resolved to work within the alliance to negotiate or otherwise wrest concessions from the ANC and the government.

Those who denounce the ANC as sellouts and call for a complete break with the party are at the opposite end of the spectrum. The Landless People's Movement, a group calling for accelerated land reform, for example, led an unsuccessful boycott of the April elections to protest government policy.

Between the two extremes lie other forces, like the Alternative Information and Development Centre, a public-policy development and advocacy group, which recognize that in the short run, working within the ANC to influence its policies is a practical imperative. However, they anticipate an eventual rupture of historic alliances within the ANC and the formation of a viable opposition party. Some expect such a development to take at least a decade.

Over the next few years, pressure will mount on the ANC to address some of the issues near and dear to its constituents. Calls for accelerated land reform and for a massive public works program to alleviate unemployment are building. But a challenge to the ANC's neoliberal policy framework is still weak. Whether substantial progress toward economic liberation for South Africa's black majority will occur over the next decade is an open question.

Gerald Lenoir visited South Africa in April as part of the Africa Peace, Reconciliation and Justice Study Tour organized by the Africa Initiative of the American Friends Service Committee. He was a leader in the U.S. anti-apartheid movement and is currently a co-coordinator of the Priority Africa Network, a San Francisco Bay Area coalition advocating debt cancellation and economic justice for African countries.