With South African Elections, Mandela's Legacy is Fading Fast
CNN is reporting that the African National Congress (ANC) is likely to maintain its majority in South Africa's first national election since the death of its former leader, Nelson Mandela. That means that the current president, Jacob Zuma, will almost certainly maintain his position despite huge scandals and terrible performance on everything from combating crime to promoting economic growth.
CNN also reports that a new party, The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), will gain ground. That too is bad news for South Africa. The leader of EFF, Julius Malema, is an unabashed fan of Robert Mugabe, the homicidal tyrant who has destroyed Zimbabwe.
Click above to watch Rob Montz and Reason TV's powerful documentary "Life After Liberation: Triumph and Tragedy in South Africa," which charts the dismal failure of the ANC to follow up on Mandela's promise of a better, freer, wealthier country. Go here for full text, downloadable versions, and more resources.
How bad is it? Desmond Tutu, the Nobel laureate who like Mandela fought against the apartheid system, now says bluntly: "This government—our government—is worse than the apartheid government."
Such a dismal turn of events is as unbelievable as it is tragic.
The video originally aired on Monday. Here's the original text:
South African voters are headed to the polls this week for the fourth national election since 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected president after the end of the apartheid regime.
Their country represents epic history in our lifetimes. After a decades-long struggle against brutal, state-run racial segregation, the black liberation movement emerged victorious in the early 1990s. Led by the transcendent figure of Mandela, South Africa swiftly dismantled the apartheid apparatus and, defying dour predictions of a bloody race war, peacefully transitioned to majority rule. Mandela's government ushered in pluralistic democracy on a continent long-defined by colonialism and autocracy. State officials established remarkably robust constitutional protections for individual rights.
Black South Africans would finally be afforded the economic and social opportunities they'd been denied for so long.
Or so everyone had hoped.
Two decades later, Mandela's promise of renewal has largely gone unfulfilled as Mandela's party, the African National Congress (ANC) has maintained its huge electoral majority. The beautiful dream animating the South African experiment is crumbling amidst ongoing corruption, violence, and failed economic policies. As Nobel Peace Prize recipient Desmond Tutu has said of the current regime, "This government—our government—isworse than the apartheid government."
"Life After Liberation," directed and hosted by Rob Montz, details the role played by political monopoly in South Africa's post-apartheid decline. The documentary shows how the ANC has grown corrupt and complacent—and how widespread resentment of the ruling political class is now fueling the rise of a populist demagogue, Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters, who is pushing precisely the sort of Mugabeist socialist policies that have ruined so many other African countries.
About 10 minutes.
Produced, written, and edited by Rob Montz. Camera by Josh Swain.
