Mandela Delivers--but Pressures Mount

South Africa is much better off than could have been expected one year ago when Nelson Mandela was elected president. Apartheid is legally dead. A non-racial democracy is taking root. And despite fears that foreign investors might see Mandela’s government as risky for business, domestic and foreign investment is flowing into Johannesburg and other major cities. Coca-Cola is back; so are IBM and Ford and others. However, despite the good economic news there are still promises to keep for millions of poor blacks who are without jobs, housing, schools and other basic necessities.

The black majority deserves credit for its patience. Recent public opinion polls indicate that most are inclined to give Mandela more time to deliver. However, the people cannot be expected to remain patient forever.

Mandela’s critics charge that the president has put wooing business ahead of improving the living standard. (These critics include his estranged wife, Winnie, whom he recently ousted from her Cabinet post.) The business climate is indeed friendly now, even though Mandela’s African National Congress had often espoused socialism in its struggle toward freedom. Economic growth is clearly needed to reduce an unemployment rate of 40% among black workers.

Prosperity requires political stability and peace, and Mandela has made good in this regard. The feared blood bath in retribution for more than three centuries of racial oppression has not materialized. The sporadic violence between Zulus and ANC followers has been reduced mostly to a war of words. Although a protest in Natal province on the April 27 anniversary of the election did turn violent, it fell far short of the rampages that have marked a long internecine political war. Even right-wing white extremists have been marginalized, though, like the Zulus, they still demand an independent homeland.

But all is not calm. Street crime is a problem; students riot; trade unions are restless; Zulus protest. Overall, however, Mandela’s government has operated fairly in the transition from white minority rule to democracy.

Mandela concedes that his government has fallen short of his goals during his first year in power. Yet, as he emphasized in his anniversary speech, equality has replaced inequality. Unity has replaced racial divides. Peace has replaced conflict. A future of freedom has replaced a history of oppression.

The president has four more years in his term of office to reverse more than three centuries of evil. The incremental progress made in this important first year should provide a lesson for other nascent democracies, and hope for poor black South Africans.