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      DEMOCRACY

      AND

      DELUSION

      10 Myths in South African Politics

      Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh

      Tafelberg

      For my parents

      Introduction

      Two decades of rainbow mythology have soothed South Africa into a state of chronic complacency. We were sold a lie: that the vote would resolve our country’s fundamental problems, if we only had the patience to wait. Somehow, over the past two decades, we’ve replaced a vision for dramatic social change with another soaked in the ‘tranquilising drug of gradualism’.1 Today, South Africans are confronted with an ironic problem: appreciating the scale of our country’s problems. This book argues that we require a painstaking reappraisal of the first two decades of so-called ‘freedom’ in South Africa; a hard look at the image staring back at us. To move forward, we must have the courage to scrutinise our situation anew. We must break free from the comforting confidence of orthodoxy. Only then can we begin the long and difficult struggle for a deeper freedom in the future.

      Deeply conservative dogmas are holding South Africa back. They transcend traditional political divides, and enjoy wide dissemination through a sophisticated infrastructure of power. Confusingly, these creeds are draped in the language of ‘liberation’, ‘non-racialism’, and ‘prosperity’, while serving the interests of the narrowest elite. They can be summarised in ten myths which, together, constitute South Africa’s democratic delusion.

      I will tackle the deconstruction of these myths in this book, and also in the companion rap album of the same name. For each of its chapters, there is a corresponding song. Combining a classic and traditionally esteemed form of expression – the essay – with a contemporary one – hip-hop – is emblematic of the myriad and seemingly paradoxical forces that bind South Africa today. Music can capture the discordant emotion of modern South African life, but it can’t always parse its nuances. Only writing can do that.

      In one sense an ‘essay’ – from the Old French essai – is an ‘attempt’ or ‘stab at’ something. A deeper look reveals that the French derives from the Latin exagium, meaning ‘weigh’ or ‘weight’. One root of exagium is agere, which literally means to ‘set in motion’ – as the tongue of a balance scale moves when weight is applied to one of its sides.2 The writer and historian Teju Cole makes the same point from a different perspective. He suggests the purpose of an essay is not to settle a debate, or to ‘give one’s take’ on a question, but to bring once-disconnected thoughts into a new, coherent conversation. The best essays, according to Cole, bring diverse ideas ‘into the same room’.3 Essays are both endings and beginnings. Their true value is not in resolving conversations; it’s in triggering them. That’s the aim of this book: to set in motion a fresh conversation about South African politics.

      Writing this book in the tumultuous period between 2014 and 2017 has been bewildering. I’ve scratched my head, laughed, and cried – sometimes at the same time. In a 24-hour news cycle, depth is often sacrificed in favour of novelty. This allows and perpetuates a kind of collective political amnesia as room is constantly made for the next new story. In all this confusion, a clearheaded analysis of the South African situation is all the more urgent. Not everything can be captured in a tweet. Even if it could, it would disappear in two hours, buried in plain view at the bottom of a million timelines. This book is not just a collection of essays, but a reference guide. One that sorts through the information we’re all swimming in, and separates the vital from the trivial. The themes I explore here – the ideas I bring into this room – will be with us for a long time to come, even if the events through which I examine them are contingent and fleeting as part of the fast-paced news cycle.

      One thing is certain: the time for gentle persuasion has long since passed. Though what follows is designed to be provocative, I hope you will suspend outrage long enough to give it a fair hearing.

      MYTH ONE:

      Living Conditions Are Steadily Improving

      When it comes to ‘people-centred’ development … there has been so much knowledge, so much policy, so much agreement on what needs to be done, and so little to show for it.4

      – Benjamin Bradlow, Clifford Shearing and Joel Bolnick

      In the 2014 election, the ANC campaigned on a short, powerful message: ‘we have a good story to tell’. It was a devilishly effective slogan, perfectly framing the myth of slow but steady progress since 1994. It conveyed the mistaken idea that life was improving for all South Africans; things weren’t perfect, but they were getting better each day. If we were patient, sooner or later we’d reap the abundant benefits of democracy. Sadly, this just isn’t true. This chapter attacks the long-held assumption that living standards have improved dramatically since apartheid. It argues that South Africa made unacceptably slow gains in the first decade of democracy, and that in the second it regressed. I do this by first examining economic indicators like poverty, inequality, and unemployment. Since 1994, these indicators have all worsened. I then turn to service delivery, focusing on housing, water and sanitation, and electricity, and show that there has been inadequate progress in these fields. While there are potential objections to these arguments, to my mind too much use has been made of meaningless definitions of ‘progress’ that don’t focus on tangible change.

      The economy

      There’s no way to sugar-coat it: since 1994, inequality, unemployment and poverty have been on the rampage. Let’s begin with inequality. South Africa is now the most unequal economy in the world. In 1994, South Africa and Brazil vied for this ignominious honour. Their Gini coefficients5 – a measure of income inequality – were both around 0.60 (1.0 indicates one person owns all the wealth). In the following twenty years, Brazil managed to lower its coefficient to 0.52, while South Africa’s grew to between 0.63 and 0.69.6 Today, the share of total income owned by the top 1% is higher than it was in the late colonial era.7

      If income inequality is worrying, wealth inequality is downright grotesque. Recent investigations into South Africa’s tax system illustrate the malaise. Whereas the top 10% of income-earners make 50–60% of all income, the top 10% of wealth-earners own 90–95% of all wealth.8 Even the so-called middle class owns very little wealth: although they earn 30–35% of all income, they only own 5–10% of all wealth. As economist Anna Orthofer explains: ‘while there may be a growing middle class with regards to income, there is no middle class with regard to wealth: the middle 40% of the wealth distribution is almost as asset-poor as the bottom 50%.’9 In other words, the poorest 10% of South Africans have no detectable wealth whatsoever. Put simply, wealth inequality in South Africa dwarfs income inequality, which is already the world’s worst:

      Although the top income shares are very high in their own right, they pale in comparison with the top wealth shares. Compared to income, wealth is much more concentrated in the hands of the few. Whereas the Gini coefficient is 0.69, the wealth Gini coefficient is 0.9 to 0.95 – again the most abject in the world.10

      This leads Piketty to lament:

      Now that we are 25 years after the fall of apartheid, we are all puzzled by the fact that inequality is not only still very high in South Africa, but has been rising and, in some way, income inequality is even higher today than 20 years ago, which is extremely puzzling for all of us.11

      Like income disparity, wealth disparity assumes racial dimensions. The radically disproportionate share of South African wealth is still in a small group of mostly white hands. Wealth disparities among the white population are also significantly lower. On the other hand, wealth disparities inside black and coloured communities are high, given that few have seen tremendous wealth while the clear majority languish in landlessness and poverty. Incredibly, 80% of the black population owns no measurable portion of South African wealth.12

      Compounding this is the unemployment crisis. In the first quarter of 2016, narrow unemployment13 was 26.7%, the highest since the system of collection started in 2008.14 This record only lasted until the third quarter of 2016, when unemployment reached 27.1%.15 That record was broken

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