A year after Mandela’s death, South Africans are literally in the dark

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — In Nelson Mandela's country, one year after his death, a feeling of grim frustration has taken hold.

South Africa is a land of highest highs and lowest lows — and over the past few months, the pendulum has swung to the pessimistic end of the spectrum.

As South Africans paused Friday to remember their former president and reflect on his legacy, the country's weighty challenges — a sputtering economy, resurging crime, political paralysis — were front and center.

It doesn't help that many of us are in the dark. Huge swathes of South Africa's cities have been without electricity for hours and days as Eskom, the musty old power utility, enforces "load shedding," or rolling blackouts. The power cuts in recent weeks have been the worst in many years as Eskom struggles to meet demand.

This isn't the only state entity in trouble — postal workers just last week returned from a months-long strike. With no mail delivered since August, and with Christmas nearing, there is a massive backlog of letters and parcels.

All of this spells trouble for an already faltering economy, with GDP growth forecast at just 1.4 percent for 2014.

 

When Mandela was ill, visitors to his home in Houghton, Johannesburg left small stones painted with messages. Faded now but still there.

A photo posted by Erin Conway-Smith (@erinconwaysmith) on Dec 12, 2014 at 1:38am PST

After years of declines, crime has increased over the past two years, especially the most violent and terrifying categories: murder (now at 32.2 per 100,000 people , compared to 4.7 in the United States), aggravated robbery and carjacking.

In recent weeks there have been several violent, racially motivated incidents in the Cape Town area, in which white men attacked black citizens unprovoked.

The leadership is little help. Parliament has been in a state of chaos in recent months, as opposition parties led by the small but vocal Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) hammered the ruling African National Congress and called on President Jacob Zuma to pay back public money spent on upgrades to his rural Nkandla homestead.

In one late-night incident, armed riot police were called in to remove a female EFF member of parliament who called Zuma a thief and a criminal, and refused to withdraw her statement. Several other MPs were knocked around and suffered bruises and bloody noses in the process.

 

Banner along Oxford Road in Joburg today.

A photo posted by Erin Conway-Smith (@erinconwaysmith) on Dec 12, 2014 at 5:06am PST

And then there's the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation's report, released Thursday, which shows growing "apartheid amnesia."

According to the Reconciliation Barometer, in 2003, 86 percent of South Africans agreed with the statement that apartheid was a crime against humanity. A decade later that figure has decreased by 10 percent. Among white South Africans, only 53 percent agree now that apartheid was indeed a crime against humanity.

With Mandela gone, the country might need to find a new source of inspiration to keep moving forward.