The political dominance of a single party in a country is not necessarily a bad thing. Provided its political leadership continues to pursue a strong vision and is able to renew itself and maintain its vigor, a dominant political force with strong continuity can be a real positive. South Africa, however, is an object lesson in what can go wrong when a single party, more interested in perpetuating its power and patronage,loses sight of the compelling vision handed on to it by Nelson Mandela. Almost 20 years after the African National Congress came to power, the country is mired in corruption, incompetence and rising labor unrest. The richest and most advanced economy in Africa is slowly grinding to a halt. Typical of the mismanagement that is driving away investment and causing despair among South Africans who still want to believe in the Mandela dream is the national power company ESKOM. An inexcusable failure to build new power stations, let alone maintain existing generating sets and support and expand the power distribution network, has meant widespread power cuts. Most crucially, natural resource and heavy manufacturing industries have found themselves without power. There are still many good people within the ANC but their ability to stop the downward slide is severely limited by the incoherent struggles between rival power blocs. Though the party continues to talk in terms of “vision”, it seems very much the case that the only dream most of the top ANC cadres have is to cling on to their power bases for ever and a day. Ordinary people still trapped in the poverty of the townships have pretty well had enough. The widespread labor unrest in the mining industry during which the government used armed police to gun down 34 protesting strikers last August seemed to set the seal on the betrayal that a rising number of South Africans feel has been perpetrated by the ANC. They had hoped for and been promised so much more in the heady days of Mandela. Better housing, reliable utilities, decent schools, improved health care, more jobs and welfare support for those who had no work - all of this was going to be a “priority” for the ANC. Almost 20 years on and such promises seem laughable. President Jacob Zuma, who has hung onto ANC leadership and therefore is likely to be re-elected president next year, gave a speech that just about admitted that his party had made mistakes, but then airily repeated all the old promises of 1994. Former World Bank managing director Dr. Mamphela Ramphele has this week launched a new party to challenge the ANC. Because of the widespread respect Ramphele enjoys, her initiative is likely to have greater success than the 2008 attempt to challenge ANC hegemony by a group of disaffected party members. However, to really succeed Ramphele will need grassroots support and an efficient party organization, as well as some powerful backers in business. The ANC establishment is not going to make this easy for her. Apart from party thugs, who are increasingly used to sort out awkward political problems that will not otherwise go away, Ramphele can expect the ruling party to deploy the resources of the state to check any serious progress that she starts to make. The ANC now believes it has an automatic right to power and will not take kindly to a serious challenge to that view.
