A minority of adult South Africans have just cast their votes for political parties few people trust. They did so to elect local governments that increasingly don’t work. There is a story to tell about why things got this way, a story many resist.
For the first 17 years of the democratic era two fortuitous circumstances sheltered SA from confronting its real character. The first was that apartheid’s fall was understood as a world-historical moment — the death, finally, of the last regime on earth where people still could not vote because of the colour of their skins.
It was this global moment, rather than anything intrinsic or domestic, that fashioned Nelson Mandela as a godlike figure. And it was the presence of Mandela, not just the flesh-and-blood man but the myth, that made a relatively peaceful transition possible. His sainthood had a mesmeric quality; it put a wounded country in abeyance while a fantastical version of itself thrashed out the terms of a new order.
The tackling of a fundamental question was postponed: the fact that SA was a long way from forging a national identity. What it meant to be South African ranged too vastly across the population. Whether we had really made peace with what had happened between us was a question put indefinitely on hold.
Another fortuitous circumstance, also external, came to SA’s assistance. The industrialisation of China, unprecedented in speed and scale, brought a commodity boom that would last for more than a decade. Although few South Africans would see it this way, it delivered a gift of plenty. When the country conducted a census in 2011, it found that life had improved for everybody.
The income of the poorest fifth had increased by more than 25% in the last decade. The government had built 3-million houses and given them away to the poor. It had grown the welfare system and now made monthly cash payments to a quarter of the population. And through all of this government ran a primary surplus.
SA has only had truly to live with itself — unsheltered, naked — since the boom ended after 2011. It is a commodity exporter whose fortunes are hitched to global cycles; it soars when things are good and busts when they aren’t. It is an inefficient manufacturer whose industries only flourish behind tariff barriers. And it is a country in which trust between citizens is scarce.
The last time SA had to confront all these features at once was in the 1980s. And what a terrible time that was. A stagnant economy, spiralling debt, the breakdown of local government across swathes of the country, and a war of attrition between South Africans who found it hard to cohabit in the same place.
We thought these things were the morbid symptoms of apartheid breaking up. They were, in part. But they were also a boilerplate experience a country like SA goes through in cycles. Just like Brazil, or Argentina; the wider one’s lens, the more recognisable SA’s experience becomes.
Here and now, in 2021, SA is a decade into a downswing. The commodity super cycle began winding down in 2011. SA’s per capita income began declining shortly after. Since then, politics has essentially been a fight over a shrinking pie. Such politics is always horrible. Everyone looks gluttonous and unpleasant.
The last time SA climbed out from a trough it had supersized help: the glamour of apartheid’s demise; then a once-in-a-lifetime rise of a new industrial power. Neither is available this time around. The country has only its own resources to see it through. Like brave and creative leadership. Like the capacity to create social cohesion in a context of widespread mistrust. These are hard, hard asks.
None of this is either fair or surprising. Life on the periphery has never been a picnic.
• Steinberg teaches part-time at Yale University.
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