South Africa - 17 years after Mandela's release

Exactly seventeen years ago today Nelson Mandela was released from prison. This was (and is) a cause of celebration for those in the anti-apartheid movement and others championing 'human rights' (see also 'Might is Right' ) By way of contrast, Socialist comment was more cautious:

"Like all decent-minded people, Socialists are pleased at the coming demise of the obscene system of institutionalised race discrimination of apartheid. Although the coming of a non-racial regime in South Africa will allow the "non-whites" there a dignity and respect as equal human beings which they have been denied up to now, the ending of apartheid will not amount to "liberation" for the working class in South Africa. Capitalism without apartheid - which is all even the ANC wants, despite its talk of "socialism" (in reality, nationalisation, or state capitalism) - will remain capitalism and so exploitation for profit, bad housing, inadequate health care, cheap schooling, unemployment, poor transport, police brutality, pollution and all the the other problems workers have to endure under capitalism will continue as well." (After apartheid what? Socialist Standard, March 1990)

Will, then, Socialists be joining others to "honour this giant of a man"? No: the poor in South Africa are as poor as they were under apartheid, the wealthy just as rich, and H.I.V./Aids just as rampant. The inequalities, even with so-called black leadership, are just as pernicious and just as debilitating to those who neither own, nor control the country they inhabit. The poor have exchanged one master for another and they both conform to the stereotypes of capitalism. We own; you do not. We control; you do not. We live in luxury; you live in poverty. Nothing changes; everything stays the same. Mandela notwithstanding.

RS