Black Sowetans still waiting on prosperity
Thirty years after their first democratic elections, many residents are poorer than ever
SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA Solomon Cwaile still remembers the anticipation and hope he felt casting his vote in South Africa’s first democratic elections in April 1994. Then 24 years old, he had survived an impoverished childhood, campaigned to overthrow apartheid and endured the dark hell of prison. But that day, after six hours of standing in line in the blazing sun, Cwaile made his mark and helped propel a profound change for his country.
“It was a special moment,” Cwaile told the Star recently in Soweto. “It was freedom: There will be opportunities for us. There will be equality for everyone.”
But in Soweto, South Africa’s most populous Black urban community and Nelson Mandela’s former home, many are disheartened that the hard-fought revolution has not improved their lives. The community is teeming with luxurious new villas behind high security walls. But it is also home to shantytowns with limited access to clean water and electricity.
“That vote to end apartheid was about equality and justice,” Cwaile said. “But now I don’t see the positive coming out of it for the people.”
Many things have improved in the 30 years since Nelson Mandela was elected as South Africa’s first Black president. Mandela’s leadership marked the end of decades of racial segregation and the beginning of an inclusive and democratic political system.
It was also the start of a marked improvement in basic services and infrastructure for the country’s marginalized Black communities: Households residing in formal dwellings increased from 65 per cent in 1996, to 89 per cent in 2022. according to official statistics. Access to piped water in residences also increased from 44 to 60 per cent in the same period.
But some things have not improved. The African National Congress government’s attempts to redistribute wealth have had little effect in alleviating poverty. The gap between rich and poor remains the largest in the world and has actually increased since the end of apartheid, according to World Bank data. Economic advantages have skewed toward the elite, both white and Black, so that 10 per cent of the population still owns more than 70 per cent of the wealth.
Soweto, which adjoins Johannesburg, the country’s commercial capital, was once the epicentre of political campaigns to overthrow South Africa’s harsh institutionalized system of racial segregation. In 1955, anti-apartheid activists in Soweto embraced the Freedom Charter, a set of values that still guide the nation. Among them is the promise that “the people shall share in the country’s wealth.”
One muggy Sunday afternoon in the Diepkloof neighbourhood of Soweto, a white Audi sedan pulled into the driveway of a modern luxury home behind a high wall. The community is 99 per cent Black but physically reminiscent of Johannesburg’s traditionally white suburbs, with its pristine sidewalks, manicured gardens and private security. The majority of Black residents here were “born free” and were never subject to apartheid’s bigoted laws that restricted Black South Africans’ rights to own land, to access education and to seek employment.
But just across a dry ravine near the affluent street where the Audi drove, children searched through piles of garbage in a slum of corrugated iron houses that lack running water and electricity. This side of Diepkloof bears the scars of historical segregation and systemic inequality, with its crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded shacks, and makeshift dwellings. People here are still waiting for their share in the country’s wealth.
“For the majority of Black South Africans, very little about the economic reality of their lives has shifted,” said Prof. Antoinette Handley, a scholar of business in Africa at the University of Toronto. She said the country’s political transformation has not been met by a meaningful economic transformation.
Apartheid’s systematic undereducation and segregation of Black South Africans are difficult to repair, Handley added. The country’s education system has improved but is still one of the worst performing among OECD countries. Black employment, government capabilities and the country’s human resource productivity cannot advance, she said, until Black teachers are better trained and Black schools have better resources.
Handley also said that the apartheid-era segregation of Black people to townships that were far from white communities has left physical obstacles to employment that drag on the economy.
This is a familiar problem in Kliptown, a shantytown suburb of Soweto, where several residents said that they can’t afford taxi fare to look for work in wealthier areas.
In Kliptown, 45,000 people live in ramshackle shacks just inches apart. Children play in the dusty craters of narrow dirt paths separating homes from shared toilets and from tiny gardens of corn, beets and greens. Water is collected from a shared fountain that serves as a meeting point for exhausted mothers.
One of the women at the fountain was Simphiwe Buthelezi, 31. She carried one of her four children on her back and held another by the hand. Gesturing at the dilapidated dwellings, Buthelezi said she is distressed by the state of her country 30 years after the end of apartheid.
“I want (the government) to come down here and see how we live,” she said.
“I wish they would provide us with food for the children.”
Buthelezi is among the millions of unemployed in South Africa, which has one of the highest jobless rates in the world. More than a third of all adults and 60 per cent of youth aged 15 to 24 are unemployed, according to Statistics South Africa, a government agency.
Several unemployed men who had just received their meagre government support grants celebrated over beers on the steps of the community outbuildings. They were eager to tell the Star how the promise of apartheid has not been kept.
“We would like to live in proper houses, not in shacks,” said Reibohile Radebe, 24, a dusty grey shirt hanging on his lanky frame.
“We worry about feeding our children,” said Thabang Shomang, 40, a father of four who sees no point in sending his children to school if it won’t help them get jobs.
“Things have changed, but they have not changed,” said Akhona Mazaly, 30.
Once an economic success story, South Africa’s real GDP per capita today is lower than it was 12 years ago. The murder rate has skyrocketed, increasing by more than 50 per cent as a result of socio-economic stagnation, according to the Institute for Security Studies, an African organization that aims to enhance human security.
Inadequate financial reparations for apartheid that could have transferred wealth from the “haves” to the “have-nots” have crippled the country, said Jaco Barnard-Naudé, a law professor at the University of Cape Town. Pressure from the global community to let the market solve wealth inequality and a weak national culture of philanthropy have further marginalized needy South Africans, he said.
The private sector and the elite have a “responsibility to come to the aid of those wronged by apartheid,” Barnard-Naudé said. Otherwise, the country will continue to have a “high concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.”
South Africa’s poor are not just suffering financially but also psychologically, Barnard-Naudé said. The Truth and Reconciliation process failed to provide healing for the many Black citizens who bore unresolved and intergenerational trauma from the horrors of apartheid, he said. Sorrow and anguish like that felt by Canada’s First Nations, he said, is fuelling much of the country’s violence, crime and government corruption.
On Soweto’s Vilakazi Street, heavily armed police checked cars and pedestrians seemingly at random as they passed by memorials to the country’s fight for freedom. The street was home to Mandela’s family before he was imprisoned, and in 1976 it was at the centre of a peaceful protest against the use of Afrikaans as the main teaching language in schools that turned into a bloody confrontation with police. At least 176 protesting students were killed and hundreds more died during the nationwide unrest that followed; Soweto residents also launched a rent-and-utilities boycott against the white government in the 1980s that served as a catalyst for the negotiations that eventually ended apartheid.
“When you look at the community, with all its history … it is so disappointing,” said Collen Gumede, an information technology co-ordinator in Soweto. The African National Congress government is not meeting people’s basic needs, Gumede said. Many communities do not have utilities, proper roads, schools or health clinics, “things that should be basic human rights,” he said.
“People are losing hope in the governing party.”
In many ways, Black Sowetans say they are crying out for the pragmatic and intelligent leadership that Mandela stood for when he promised a better future for all South Africans in 1994. Ironically, a lot of them are being driven by that longing away from the ANC, Mandela’s party, as they get ready to vote in an election in May.
The ANC has been in power for 30 years. It won the 2019 election with 57 per cent of the national vote. But today it is battling to maintain its majority in an election scheduled for May 29, as many citizens worry about the future and an array of smaller parties try to woo voters with promises of jobs, housing and an end to water and power shortages.
The governing party is plagued by internal power struggles, mismanagement and corruption at all levels, said Michael Braun, a University of Toronto PhD candidate in contemporary South African politics.
According to a recent Ipsos poll, nearly nine out of 10 South Africans believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
“This is not betterment,” said Lebu Katabe, 24, who lives in Johannesburg in the Mandela Square neighbourhood of Soweto.
“Things have been getting worse and worse.”
One day Solomon Cwaile found himself chatting with his four-yearold son about his school friends. The child started talking enthusiastically about one of them in particular. Cwaile noticed something that was part of his deep history in this nation. His son’s friend had a name that sounded Afrikaans. To Cwaile, that was one of those familiar signs of race. So he asked his son the old question:
“Is this friend of yours Black or white?”
“I don’t know. I will ask him tomorrow,” the boy replied.
From that day, Cwaile started feeling embarrassed judging everyone by their skin colour, he said.
Cwaile realizes that many of Mandela’s hopes for the country have been fulfilled. The “born free” generation enjoys eased racial tensions, better education and full participation in civic life. The end of apartheid has allowed South African youth to shape their futures and express themselves freely, reflecting the rich diversity of South African identity.
Still, next month when he lines up to vote, Cwaile will not be filled with the same excitement that he felt 30 years ago. His child seems to offer him hope, but he is not sure he can do the same for his child.
“I will exercise my vote once again next month. But I have no hope that things will get better.”
‘‘ For the majority of Black South Africans, very little about the economic reality of their lives has shifted.
ANTOINETTE HANDLEY PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS IN AFRICA AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO