EDITORIAL: Lessons from across the Orange
Noses are bloodied in South Africa, where a fierce democratic battle is raging following Wednesday’s watershed election.
True to recent opinion polls, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) staggered below the 50% mark it desperately craves as of last night, with over two million votes counted. Of course the picture can change as counting continues - for better or worse.
The ANC’s hardships in this election are a culmination of industrial-scale corruption, high rates of crime and load-shedding, among other sins of governance.
This betrayal of trust is not unique to the ANC. Liberation movements in the region have been over-reliant on history as fodder to garner votes, often with very little to show for their post-independence achievements.
Instead of building on the socioeconomic foundations that they have inherited from their erstwhile apartheid enemies, they have dilapidated the facilities and neglected each one of them. In Namibia, the Katutura State Hospital is Exhibit A. The less said about Independence Stadium, the better.
The sporadic islands of success that have been achieved are simply not enough, and South Africans sensed that. Like the Arab Spring of 2011, failure by the ANC to gain an outright majority might inspire similar scenarios in neighbouring countries.
Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF was the first liberation movement in the region to taste defeat in 2008, but it was saved by the opposition stupidly agreeing to a coalition government. Today, voters decide based on the present. The past matters only marginally these days.
True to recent opinion polls, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) staggered below the 50% mark it desperately craves as of last night, with over two million votes counted. Of course the picture can change as counting continues - for better or worse.
The ANC’s hardships in this election are a culmination of industrial-scale corruption, high rates of crime and load-shedding, among other sins of governance.
This betrayal of trust is not unique to the ANC. Liberation movements in the region have been over-reliant on history as fodder to garner votes, often with very little to show for their post-independence achievements.
Instead of building on the socioeconomic foundations that they have inherited from their erstwhile apartheid enemies, they have dilapidated the facilities and neglected each one of them. In Namibia, the Katutura State Hospital is Exhibit A. The less said about Independence Stadium, the better.
The sporadic islands of success that have been achieved are simply not enough, and South Africans sensed that. Like the Arab Spring of 2011, failure by the ANC to gain an outright majority might inspire similar scenarios in neighbouring countries.
Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF was the first liberation movement in the region to taste defeat in 2008, but it was saved by the opposition stupidly agreeing to a coalition government. Today, voters decide based on the present. The past matters only marginally these days.
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Namibian Sun
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