“Democratic” South Africa – some observations

In spite of the democratic ideals by which the current government, the ANC or African National Congress, won the 1994 election is awash with corruption at all levels. From talking to former taxi drivers, the various homestay families, residents in the community and from reading the press, corruption here extends all the way from the bottom to the top. At the top, the ANC leaders are definitely not setting a good example for the rest of the country. Recently, the news has been all about a story in which the Deputy President Zuma accepted bribes to help a local businessman secure a government arms contract. Both the businessman and Zuma’s roles in this shady deal have been uncovered and Zuma and other government officials are now under pressure to resign.

From the bottom, we took a tour of the African (Black) townships on Sunday. Many of these shanty towns are constructed from corrugated iron and lack basic services like food and water. We also saw a series of tents in place of one square block of these shanty towns. Apparently, a fire had destroyed this area of townships and the government had used emergency monies to provide tents and food to the people here and then transition them to public housing. However, upon further inquiry it seems that residents of other townships often will set up a shack in the shanty towns and then burn it all down so that they can get a new house from the government plus food and services then sell it for a profit. My host dad tells me of other schemes in which people acting as local government promise the poor a subsidized house, take their deposits and disappear, fake doctors sell prescriptions to people, people steal electricity from street lights on homemade wires and sell it to the poor. I have been to a local pub in Langha where I talked to someone who passed himself off as a government official by giving me some false information about the poverty and lack of housing in the area and suggesting that we should “arrange a meeting” if I wanted to help the local residents.

In short, corruption is rampant here and goes from the top to the bottom. Many of the elected representatives use their political privilege as a cash card and young adults and teenagers roam the streets of the poor townships working up schemes to trick the rich and the poor out of their money. The attitude really is one of “why work when I can just take money from people with a clever scheme?”