A Democratic South Africa, 1994-2014: An Assessment

When an inclusive democracy was inaugurated in South Africa in 1994 it was hailed throughout the world as one of the greatest "good news stories" - and one to draw a curtain over a century that witnessed two bloody world wars and numerous bitter racial, ethnic and religious conflicts.

Twenty years later people are almost as perplexed about South Africa as they were in the time of apartheid. It seems as if the government is pushing the country towards a precipice and are ignoring all warnings.

The prospects looked so good back in 1994. Freed from the shackles of apartheid and boycotts the economy lifted its head and some experts were predicting that acute poverty, acute unemployment and the large racial gap in income and life expectancy would be eradicated soon.

Extensive integration of schools and universities proceeded surprisingly well. A world class politician as president made us the envy of countries around the world. On the sports fields the national teams performed better than anyone would expect.

Twenty years later the picture looks starkly different. The economic growth is barely more than 2 percent, far below the rate needed to soak up unemployment, national debt is ballooning and business confidence is badly shaken. The election has shown that the dominant party controls virtually all the supposedly independent watchdog bodies, except the Public Protector. In this election the South African Broadcasting Corporation has turned into a comrade in arms of the ruling party.

More and more the question is being asked: What went wrong?

One cannot address this question without first touching on what has been done well. As the South African Institute of Race Relations has pointed out, the government got much right. Large numbers of black and coloured people received houses and the supply of running water and electricity was greatly expanded. The number of people on social welfare increased to 17 million.

But in the same breath it has be mentioned that with growth stagnating the expansion of services is a dangerous policy. Unemployment increased 150 per cent, and there seems to be little hope of a turnaround in the unemployment situation, something which would enable government to lessen its welfare burden. From a figure of 1,45 million in 1994 the number of people employed by the state and semi-state corporations rose to two million.

The salaries of those in the middle and upper levels seem quite unrealistic. The Economist recently reported that, adjusting for purchasing power parity, the average employee of Eskom receives a higher salary than a German professor. South Africa is not an exception in its high public sector salaries. The Economist reports that of the 30 countries in a Eurostat data base half are spending more on public employees than they were in 2007, even in cases where the headcount has fallen. Governments simply failed to implement planned spending cuts.

The government's role in the economy and its spending in South Africa on what can be called social protection has increased enormously. John Kane-Berman writes as follows about the last twenty years in a recent "Liberty Bulletin" of the Institute of Race Relations: "Government revenue as a proportion of GDP has gone up from 22% to almost 29%. Expenditure has increased from around 28% to 33%. Leading to a rise in the budget deficit. Social grants and civil service remuneration in 2008 accounted for 44% of total government revenue.

Just around the corner lies a fiscal cliff. In an article in the recent issue of the Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe, Prof Jannie Rossouw, head of the Scholl of Economic and Business Sciences, in cooperation with Fanie Joubert and Adele Breytenbach, calculated that if present trends persist the government's spending on social grants and the remuneration of civil servants will account for all government income by 2026.

Way back in 1953 Alan Paton published an article with reference to apartheid. He called up the image of a man trapped on a cliff and posed the question whether it is a tragic or a comic dilemma. One can now repeat the same question with respect to the present ruling elite. On can also keep in mind the famous dictum of Abba Eban, the Israeli politician: "Men and nations turn to rationality after they have exhausted all alternatives."

What went wrong after 1994? Before 1994 the ruling group was drawn from only one part of the population. For historic reasons they were drawn from the best educated and the most enterprising part of the population. After 1994 this group was excluded from government. Now it was the chance of the blue workers and white collar revolutionaries in exile. Together with the recipients of welfare grants they are likely to give the ANC an overwhelming majority in the next election.

What also went wrong is the assumption, enthusiastically supported also by normally sober academics, that a mass populist movement like the ANC would be curtailed by a constitution when it is confronted with difficult choices.

We were warned before 1994 by people who had the benefit of comparing other societies who faced the same difficult constitutional choices. Pierre van den Berghe warned that majority rule has been the ‘great moral alibi of Black Nationalism' in Africa. He explained: ‘If your constituency has the good fortune to contain a demographic majority, racism can easily be disguised as democracy. The ideological sleight of hand, of course, is that an ascriptive, racially-defined majority is a far cry from a majority made up of shifting coalitions of individuals on the basis of commonality of beliefs and interests.'

Donald Horowitz, generally recognised as one of the greatest authorities on constitution-making in deeply divided societies, stated: in 1991: If minority rule means black majority rule and white minority exclusion something has gone wrong. It need not and should not mean that and, at the threshold if it does not mean that whites will have no reason to choose an inclusive democracy." Finally there is Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at Oxford University who stated: "I am not aware of any divided society that has been able to achieve stability without power-sharing."

South African were put on the road of believing that "constitutionalism" provided a wonder formula for our conflict by progressive lawyers and academics. They articulated the new dogma that human rights, as part of a well-structured constitution, were enough to protect minority rights, making mandatory power sharing to protect the rights of minorities superfluous.

Whereas democratic pluralists such as Arend Lijphart propagated power sharing as the best approach to ruling highly divided societies, the new doctrine of human rights claimed that properly entrenched individual rights, independent courts and a vigorous civil society were strong enough to safeguard a minority's rights and protect it from discrimination. But this was a novel, largely untested approach that by the mid-1980s had produced few encouraging results in deeply divided societies in the developing world. A common trend was for politics to bypass the legislature and migrate to the courts - to the increasing chagrin of the executive, which set out to destroy their independence.

The Institute of Race Relations has recently warned that legislation is on its way that gives effect to a decision last year by the Constitutional court that expropriation of private property does not amount to expropriation if it is done by the state not on its own behalf but as custodian for others. John Kane-Berman remarked: This removes one of the obstacles to radical redistribution. It strikes at the very heart of the free enterprise system.

Perhaps the ANC will realise that a grab of private property would be unwise while the state seems to be heading for a fiscal cliff. Or perhaps not.

Hermann Giliomee is a historian and vice president of the Institute of Race relations.

This is an extended version of an article that first appeared in Rapport.

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