The ANC has yet again won a majority in South Africa’s general election despite its disastrous record, killing hope that the country will turn in the right direction. And the West must stop pretending this is just a glitch.
What’s wrong with the country that went to the polls on Wednesday to vote for a new National Assembly, goes well beyond the hard facts – unedifying as those are.
It’s not that half the population lives in absolute poverty, that more than a quarter of adults are unemployed, or that the country has yet again been declared officially the most unequal in the world. Nor is it the economic growth rate that has stagnated at below a two percent average for a decade, as the rest of the world recovered from the global crisis, or the regular blackouts, the violent crime rates, or that one in five adults is infected with HIV.
Rather, the story since 1994 is of a country being given a historic chance to show the way to prosperity
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