The disparities between South Africa’s mainly middle-class beneficiaries of economic transformation and their less well-off countrymen has been brought into focus during the run-up to local government elections on 1 March.
Sporadic violent protest against the slow pace of service delivery across the country over the last two years has highlighted the anger and resentment among those living on the margins of society, nearly 12 years after the end of apartheid.
Elections are stirring up controversy in South Africa, as people went to the polls today to choose their municipal leaders. The economic divide is evident and can’t be ignored:
The situation has been framed within an economic context, and he now speaks of “two economies in one country”. One is advanced, sophisticated and diversified, based on skilled labour which has become more globally competitive; the other is mainly informal, marginalised, and unskilled populated by those who are unemployable or under-employed by the formal sector.
Those trapped in the ‘second economy’ have yet to see the benefits of South Africa’s relatively robust economic growth. They live in informal settlements, in shacks constructed of sheet metal and wood, often without electricity and water. They appear to have little hope for a better life, and have become increasingly agitated at the slow delivery of the houses, jobs and services promised when the ANC came to power in 1994.
Importantly, as a piece in the Washington Post’s Express indicates (see page 9), people are losing hope in that electoral promises of higher standards of living will actually materialize. Obviously, elections are an important part of having democracy, but it is what happens between the elections what really makes a difference and if politicians fail to live up to their promises people can lose interest in participating in democracy. South Africa seems to be learning and re-learning this lesson, and voter turnout will be one of the more important statistics in these elections. Early estimates in one of the provinces put the turn out at nearly 23%, fairly low in my opinion for only a third election since 1994, when the apartheid ended.
Published Date: March 01, 2006