South Africa - The African Mirror

Apr

2024

South Africa’s first election was saved by a Kenyan: the fascinating story of Washington Okumu, the accidental mediator

WHAT'S sometimes forgotten about the 26-29 April 1994 vote that installed the African National Congress (ANC) government in South Africa is that, until the last minute, it looked like violence would consume the voting process. An 11th-hour agreement on 19 April brought the Zulu-majority Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) into the contest. Inkatha had been boycotting the process and challenging the ANC in violent street protests. The peaceful election brought enormous relief to the country and the world. A Kenyan, Washington Okumu, alternately described as a professor or a diplomat, was credited with the negotiation. But few observers knew who he…

Apr

2024

By The African Mirror

South Africa extends troop deployment in Mozambique and Congo

NEWS

SOUTH Africa's military will extend the deployment of its troops in conflict-hit Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement. The extension, for an unspecified amount of time, will keep 1,198 personnel of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in eastern Congo, where they are part of a U.N. peacekeeping force helping Congo fight rebel groups. The statement also said that 1,495 SANDF members would continue their operations in Mozambique, where they have been supporting the government's fight against violent extremism in northern areas since 2021. South Africa's military deployments abroad have come…

Apr

2024

By DUANE JETHRO

History for sale: what does South Africa’s struggle heritage mean after 30 years of democracy?

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

ONE of my favourite statues is the one of Nelson Mandela at the Sandton City shopping centre in Johannesburg. Larger than life, its oversized bronze shoes shimmer in the evening light, polished by the hands of many passersby who crowd around to take pictures with it. At the entrance of a square in the mall, it’s a jovial image of the former South African president in a lively jive: a decidedly odd juxtaposition of a liberation fighter at a site of luxury retail. One message it seems to convey is the celebration of the commercial riches brought about by post-apartheid…

Apr

2024

By CONRAD ONYANGO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Cheaper calls ring in Ethiopia, South Africa and Kenya

NEWS

MOBILE phone users in Ethiopia and South Africa will enjoy lower calling rates between operators from May while Kenyans are already seeing savings, as African communication regulators move to adopt pricing models that benefit customers. The Ethiopia Communications Authority (ECA) has adopted a top-down pricing model that will ensure uniformity for all players, while the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) is looking at a wholesale model with rates charged depending on a telco's size. While these models differ, these regulators have a common goal - to bolster competition among operators and offer consumers more choice and competitive prices on off-net calls. According to a statement by…

Apr

2024

By SANDY AFRICA

South Africa’s security forces once brutally entrenched apartheid. It’s been a rocky road to reform

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

ONE of the important tasks that faced South Africa’s democratic government after 1994 was to reform the apartheid-era security apparatus. The African National Congress (ANC), which was voted into power, had a laudable vision in the 1990s for reforming the police, military and intelligence services. Determined that South Africans would never again be subject to the brutality of the security forces, it ensured that the core principles it stood for were written into the country’s democratic constitution. Putting the vision and principles into practice, however, has not been easy, and fraught with setbacks. Over time, the abuse of power, a…

Apr

2024

By KARIN STROHECKER

South Africa faces upside risk to inflation, financial conditions, central bank governor says

BUSINESS

SOUTH Africa faces upside risks to its inflation outlook, Central Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago said, but the latest data has not shown evidence of price pressures from food despite adverse El Nino weather wreaking havoc across Africa. Data out on Wednesday had shown headline inflation fell to 5.3% year-on-year, down from 5.6% in February and coming in a touch below analyst expectations. In its March decision, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) said headline inflation was expected to reach 4.5% - the midpoint of its target range - only at the end of 2025, later than previously forecast. "There are upside risks to the…

Apr

2024

By MARK SWILLING

South Africa’s electricity crisis: a series of failures over 30 years have left a dim legacy

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

IN 1994, apartheid ended and the African National Congress (ANC) won South Africa’s first-ever democratic elections, promising “Electricity for All” as part of its Reconstruction and Development Programme. Back then only 36% of all South Africans had electricity in their homes. The development programme promised to double that number by electrifying an additional 2.5 million homes by 2000. This seemed achievable – during the 1980s, the state-owned power utility Eskom’s build programme was so aggressive it had surplus electricity. Some power stations even had to be mothballed. By 1994, South Africa’s coal industry was generating high-quality coal which was exported…

Apr

2024

By JAMES OATWAY and THANDO HLOPHE

Man named Vote will cast ballot for change in South Africa

NEWS

WHEN Mariana Ubisi went into labour in her one-room home in rural South Africa, millions of Black citizens were queuing to vote in the election that would bring Nelson Mandela to power. It was April 27, 1994. Swept up in the excitement, Ubisi and her husband named their newborn son Vote. "I imagine it was because we were hearing the chants saying 'vote, vote, vote' on the radio," said Ubisi, a traditional healer in Lillydale, a poor village in Mpumalanga province. As Mozambican refugees who fled war in their country in the 1960s, Mariana and her husband Ernesto did not…

Apr

2024

By HUGH CORDER

South Africa’s Constitutional Court at 30: a solid foundation but cracks are showing

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

SOUTH Africa’s Constitutional Court stands out as one of the few government institutions that have protected and advanced the constitutional vision of a participatory democracy and social justice. Many other government institutions which ought to have allied themselves with the court have been weakened or have failed to deliver. The court has consistently championed one of the fundamental values to be found in section 1 of the Constitution, 1996. This requires that the exercise of public power be accountable, responsive and open. Despite this, but also because of it, the court faces challenges from outside and from within. The duty…

Apr

2024

By STEVEN FRIEDMAN

Good Jew, Bad Jew: new book explores why the West views brutality against Ukrainians and Palestinians differently

LITERATURE

IN a recently published book Steven Friedman, who has written extensively on the political and social aspects of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, explores the racist underpinnings of the West’s responses to Israel’s war in Gaza. This is an extract from the book, Good Jew, Bad Jew. Ugandan academic Mahmood Mamdani sees a link between the violence of the coloniser and the slaughter of Jews and Slavs by the Nazis. The racial theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and others who claimed the Aryan race was superior meant that Jews and Slavs, who were both regarded as not Aryan, could be…