Race and Ethnicity

The murder of George Floyd by a policeman and the ensuing protests against racism and police brutality in the United States have ignited similar protests in Europe. Large crowds, especially in the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium, are demanding public acknowledgment of the links among slavery, European colonialism, and contemporary racism. European protesters, perhaps in solidarity with Americans, have borrowed anti-police rhetoric. But, with the exception of the French, by and large, European protestors tie racial abuse in their own countries not so much to the police but to the persistence of the glorification of colonialism or, at best, a collective amnesia about its effects. In the United States, Black Lives Matter protestors are calling for the removal of statues of Confederate leaders, and many have since been removed. In Europe, protestors are calling for the removal of statues glorifying men made famous or rich by the slave trade and colonialism. In Belgium, statues of King Leopold II, whose personal, brutal rule of Congo may have caused the deaths of up to half of the territory’s population, are being defaced, and some have been removed. In the United Kingdom, protestors pulled down a statue of Edward Colston, (1636–1721), an official of the Royal Africa Company that transported an estimated 84,000 Africans to slavery in the Caribbean and the mainland British colonies, perhaps 20,000 of whom died in the notorious “Middle Passage.” His extensive, local philanthropy was built on the profits of the slave trade. A statue of Winston S. Churchill opposite the Houses of Parliament was vandalized because of his advocacy of the empire and colonialism, and his personal racism. There are calls in the United Kingdom for the erasure of Cecil Rhodes’s name from public institutions. Student-led protests, dubbed #RhodesMustFall, led to the removal of his statue in 2015 at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. However, there is probably greater public support for the removal of reminders of slavery in the United States than there is in Europe with respect to colonialism. Already in the United Kingdom, there has been a backlash against attacks on national heroes such as Winston Churchill. Though Britain, France, and the other European states abolished slavery in the nineteenth century, they nevertheless carved up much of the (non-white) world among themselves. In Europe as in America, racism often provided the intellectual justification for colonial rule and white supremacy, and accounted for their popularity among the general public. Reflecting little understanding of Charles Darwin and “natural selection,” the common presumption was that each "race," mostly defined by skin color and other obvious physical characteristics, had an objective, fundamental "character," and there was a "natural" hierarchy with whites at the top, blacks, at the bottom, and "browns" (mostly in Britain’s Indian Empire) in between. America is now attempting to come to terms with how slavery and racial segregation remains central to the Black experience today. In a similar vein, European colonialism is central to understanding African countries, almost all of which were former European colonies. American legal emancipation in 1865 and the ending of legal segregation a century later did not erase the lasting damage they caused. African independence after 1960 has not undone the consequences of colonialism. As influential Nigerian academic Peter Ekeh wrote, “Our post-colonial present has been fashioned by our colonial past.” The anti-colonial dimension in the European demonstrations ignited by George Floyd are a welcome acknowledgement of that reality.

Human rights abuses at home undermine U.S. global leadership.

A U.S. police officer’s killing of George Floyd has sparked protests around the world against racial injustice and police brutality.

The U.S. government’s response to anti-racism protests risks causing lasting damage to American credibility and influence in protecting minorities and oppressed groups worldwide.

Stephen Paduano is the executive director of the LSE Economic Diplomacy Commission and a doctoral researcher at the London School of Economics, where he studies African political economy with an emphasis on U.S. and Chinese policy. The reports that have surfaced in recent days in Guangzhou, a city in southern China and the site of a diplomatic crisis with Africa, are undeniably grim. Videos and images show young African men being dragged in handcuffs by Chinese authorities, pinned face-first in the pavement, shepherded by riot police down an empty street, and made to sleep outside after apparently being evicted. In one short week, the city’s startling and unabated racism has lit up capitals across the African continent. As the news has spread, the anger has grown, and it would now appear that the China-Africa relationship is entering an uncertain chapter. In some respects, good may come of it. A sober reassessment of this relationship by African officials, stripped of the “win-win” rhetoric Beijing often touts, will be necessary for African states to achieve better partnerships on more even footing. However, there is still serious reason to worry. With the livelihoods of Africans abroad under siege, the situation at home is little better, requiring ambitious multilateral assistance. A deterioration of Africa’s relationship with its largest trading partner and official creditor will serve no one’s interests—neither those of the Africans, nor those of the Chinese, nor indeed those of the Washington officials who may be pushing for such a rupture. Although there have been flare-ups in the China-Africa relationship in the past—the periodic anti-China riot in Zambia, the sporadic attack on Chinese workers in Angola—this crisis is unprecedented with its continental scope and high-level rebukes. In recent days, leading political figures, including the chairman of the African Union, have put out statements and released videos questioning and criticizing their Chinese counterparts. In one, Nigerian Speaker of the House Femi Gbajabiamila instructs the Chinese ambassador to watch the clips from Guangzhou as he says, “We will not allow Nigerians to be maltreated in other countries.” In a similar spirit across the continent, Kenya’s Daily Nation ran the headline, “Kenyans in China: Rescue Us From Hell.” Undeniable though the reports are, Chinese officials have thus far been intent on denying them. China Global Television Network, a state-backed media organization, dismissed the story as “fake news.” Its embassy in Harare concurred, making a counter-accusation about Zimbabwe’s mistreatment of Chinese migrants and adding a claim that all this is just a U.S. attempt to “sow discord.” Back in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian dismissed the concerns outright. “We treat all foreigners in China equally and we reject discrimination,” he told reporters. In the past, African officials have often been reluctant to criticize their opposite numbers in Beijing on any issue—keeping mum on Hong Kong and Xinjiang, toeing the line on Taiwan, and showing support over U.S. objections throughout the trade war. In exchange, China has provided not only consumer demand, access to capital, and a blind eye towards misdeeds, but also an ear and an amplifier for grievances with the West. However, the scale of the outrage in African media and the Chinese refusal to brook further criticism around coronavirus have entrenched both sides. Now their delicate balance, the “all-weather friendship” in Communist Party parlance, appears to be coming to naught. To make matters more fraught, U.S. officials have swooped in to add criticism. Its top diplomat to Africa, Tibor Nagy, called the Guangzhou reports “appalling,” as a State Department official said the episode was “a sad reminder of how hollow the PRC-Africa relationship really is.” In Washington, in truth, these events are likely to be a welcome development in the long-desired decoupling of China and Africa. Since former National Security Advisor John Bolton declared a return to “great power competition” on the continent in 2018—singling out the “disturbing effects of China’s quest to obtain more political, economic, and military power”—administration officials have opportunistically chided Chinese activity in Africa and looked to drive a wedge. But beyond expressing legitimate concerns about the treatment of Africans in Guangzhou, U.S. officials would be wrong to add fuel to this fire. Africa is not a theater for “great power competition,” despite what this administration may say, and at this moment international cooperation is in everyone’s interest. With the World Bank projecting that sub-Saharan economies will contract by 5.1 percent in 2020, marking the first continental recession in twenty-five years, multilateralism has become urgent. Indeed, African officials continue to make clear that the international community must come together to help their countries weather this storm. Late last month, Africa’s finance ministers called for $100 billion to provide much needed healthcare funding, debt relief, and other fiscal support. The U.N.’s special adviser on Africa subsequently revised that number to $200 billion. Last week, as well, a group of prominent African figures added a call for a two-year standstill on debt repayments in order to ensure that states do not have to spend more on servicing their debt than they do on healthcare—as is currently, unfortunately the case in Angola, the Gambia, Ghana, Zambia, and elsewhere. Multilateral coordination will be tricky but necessary, and China has a central role to play. Although there have been reassuring signs of seriousness from western institutions—the G20 is reportedly moving forward with the proposed debt moratorium, the World Bank has announced it will deploy $160 billion globally, and the IMF has put together $500 million for grant-based debt service relief—these efforts fall far short of what is needed. After all, the G20 would only suspend those nations’ official debt, much of the World Bank’s funds will be allocated beyond Africa, and the IMF initiative only relates to twenty-five designated countries (six of which aren’t African). For Africa, the missing link, undoubtedly, is China. As Africa’s largest creditor, with a history of “hidden lending” and employing interest rates nearly double those of development banks, it is clear that any recovery effort requires China’s multilateral engagement. Without it, well-intentioned relief runs the risk of doing little more than bailing out Chinese creditors, who in turn may be further encouraged to engage in unsustainable lending practices (as was the concern after the HIPC debt relief initiative of the early 2000s). However, the Chinese have been wary to step forward into this new and uncertain role as a globally responsible, development-oriented stakeholder. Their engagement thus far has been limited to an unspecified donation to the IMF’s relief fund and the personal donations of Chinese billionaire Jack Ma. With Washington more used to criticizing China than working with it, it is understandable why larger-scale Chinese leadership has been slow to come. The Guangzhou episode and Washington’s subsequent saber rattling have not made the U.S. task of constructive engagement any easier. In the weeks ahead, there will be no job more important than bringing China to the table on African aid and multilateral debt relief. In order to do so, the U.S. and the West will have to swallow the pride of thinking they can go it alone. So too will they have to resist the temptation of chiding China away. But in turn, it is high time for China to right the wrongs of its fast-and-loose lending, give real meaning to its “all-weather friendship,” and become the global leader it claims and seeks to be.

In what Catherine Powell calls the "color of Covid," the pandemic has highlighted a range of underlying inequalities on race—including on the job front—now exacerbated by the health crisis and the emerging stay-at-home economy.

Thirty years after South African President F.W. de Klerk ordered his release from Cape Town’s Victor Vorster Prison, Nelson Mandela’s reputation as a genuine hero of the twentieth century holds up. With de Klerk and others, Mandela led the successful transition from apartheid to non-racial democracy, forestalling the race war that many thought was inevitable. Nelson Mandela’s outreach to the privileged white minority preserved South Africa’s modern economy, unlike in Zimbabwe where liberation movements expelled or made settlers unwelcome and the economy collapsed. His unswerving commitment to democracy and the rule of law grounds South Africa’s constitution, which is regarded as among the world’s best in terms of protecting human rights. Nelson Mandela faced criticism from Robert Mugabe, the deceased Zimbabwe tyrant, and many others. That criticism was and still is, essentially, that Mandela conceded too much when he agreed to continued control of the economy by whites and that he did not follow a policy of redistribution of white wealth to the black majority. These criticisms are ahistorical. The transition was a negotiated settlement between the liberation forces of which his African National Congress was the most important. The apartheid-era National Party maintained control of the state and its security apparatus. In other words, the end of apartheid did not represent the liberation movements’ defeat of the National Party. Without the compromises Mandela made, a peaceful transition would have been unlikely and the prospect of a race war and economic collapse would have increased. Today, South Africa faces slow rates of economic growth, the persistence of poverty, especially among the black majority, and poor governance exemplified by the Jacob Zuma administration. Despite these challenges, the institutions established by the constitution enables South Africa to persevere, because it provides a framework for addressing the challenges that persist. 

Nigeria has been added to a list of countries whose citizens will in some way be restricted from entering the United States. According to a White House statement, Nigeria is not complying with “the established identity-management and information sharing criteria assessed by performance metrics. Nigeria does not adequately share public-safety and terrorism-related information, which is necessary for the protection of the national security and public safety of the United States.” Therefore, "The entry into the United States of nationals of Nigeria," with some exceptions, "is hereby suspended." The new measures, announced on January 31, affect only immigrants—those who wish to live permanently in the United States—not short term visitors for business or tourism. Temporary visitors from Nigeria to the United States have already declined following the introduction of tighter visa issuing procedures in the summer of 2019. The issue, according to the statement, would appear to be technical. As such, one would have thought it could be worked out at a technical level, perhaps with enhanced U.S. technical assistance to relevant Nigerian ministries. The statement mentions such assistance, but cites insufficient progress for imposing the ban anyway. But the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy [PDF] prioritizes countering Russia and China by, among other things, strengthening economic ties with Africa, and Nigeria is the first or second largest economy and most populous country in Africa. Banning immigration from Nigeria while at the same time working for closer economic ties with Africa to counter Russian and Chinese influence indicates policy incoherence within the Trump administration. It is bound to have a dampening effect on the development of closer economic ties between the United States and the Giant of Africa. Over time, the immigration ban is also likely to reduce the remittances to Nigeria from the United States, at present about $24 billion annually. Those likely to be most negatively and personally affected are American citizens and permanent residents looking to bring close family members to join them in the United States.  Democratic presidential candidates have condemned the decision. Senator Bernie Sanders said, “It is outrageous that Donald Trump continues to push a racist travel policy that dehumanizes immigrants and their families for his own political purposes.” Senator Elizabeth Warren characterized the measure as a “racist, xenophobic Muslim ban.” Former Vice President Joe Biden said, “Three years ago he [President Trump] took aim at Muslim-majority nations. This time he targeted primarily African nations—including Nigeria, the largest economy and the most populous nation on the continent…It is a disgrace.” And former Mayor Pete Buttigieg said, “Three years ago, this president fanned the flames of hatred with his Muslim travel ban. Less than a year from now—on my first day in office—I will end it. The United States has always prided itself on its diversity, and it will again.”  In the hyper-partisan political environment in the United States—nine months before presidential elections—it may be harder for the Trump administration to walk back a bad decision. President Trump’s base is not sympathetic to immigration, and generally has applauded other administration steps to reduce foreign settlement in the United States, notably the draconian reduction in refugee admissions.

The South African Police Service (SAPS) has ended a sit-in at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) compound in the capital, Pretoria. Some two hundred people have been arrested, according to the media, and others are being held to determine their immigration status. The sit-in had lasted for a month with up to seventy participants, identified by the media as refugees and asylum seekers. The protestors were demanding that the UNHCR resettle them in other countries because of their fear of xenophobic violence centered in South Africa’s townships. The episode has been highly problematic. The protestors were demanding what the UNHCR could not do. Under international law, the UNHCR has a role with respect to persons outside their own country because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on religion, ethnicity, political views, or membership in a particular social group. While media reports are unclear, it is highly unlikely that most of the protestors had gone through the South African adjudication process to qualify for asylum or refugee status. In South Africa as in the United States, adjudication of refugee or asylum claims is a lengthy process. It is likely that most of the protestors were economic migrants. The UNHCR has no remit for those who go to another country seeking economic betterment.  South Africa has by far the most advanced economy on the continent. As such, it is a magnet for immigrants, documented and undocumented. Borders are highly porous; the largest number of foreigners in South Africa appear to be from close neighbors, especially Zimbabwe and Mozambique. This population, usually very poor, ebbs and flows depending on conditions in the home country. There are also higher-profile migrants from countries further afield, such as Congo and Nigeria. Wealthier, they attract sensationalized media attention. Nigerians, for example, are frequently identified as drug dealers. As is nearly always the case, the clearing of a sit-in is a public relations disaster for the police. In racially-charged South Africa, there are international media shots of a white policeman pepper-spraying a black mother and her child, though, according to the New York Times, the SAPS racial make-up mirrors that of the population, which is 80 percent black.  Stepping back, South Africa is dealing with what is likely to become more common: the unregulated movement of people from poor areas and countries to wealthier ones. Like most countries, South Africa does not have in place a solution to this new challenge. As elsewhere in Africa, borders are porous and fundamentally artificial—they were drawn by colonial governments without reference by and large to the indigenous peoples. For example, the Tswana people are to be found on both sides of the Zimbabwe-South Africa border.

The 1999 transition of Nigeria from military to civilian, democratic government, is a defining moment in Nigerian history, representing the beginning of the longest, uninterrupted government since independence in 1960. But what exactly transpired during the period of transition, which began in earnest with the death of military dictator Sani Abacha in 1998, is not entirely clear. Max Siollun, in a fascinating study of the period, Nigeria’s Soldiers of Fortune, has done us a service by illuminating some of the behind-the-scenes machinations of that period, and putting to bed some of the rumors that passed for history. Abacha’s rule was unusually brutal for Nigeria, and unrest was spreading. Following his death, the cabal of military leaders and businessmen who ran the country concluded that civilian government should be restored, though the privileges of the military must remained intact. Moshood Abiola, a Yoruba from the southwest, had won the most recent presidential election in 1993, and at first glance would have seemed to be the most likely choice for the next civilian president. But, he was unacceptable to the military for reasons that still remain obscure. Abacha, after all, had jailed him on trumped-up charges and seized power following his election; the Muslim north was associated with the military and Abacha, who was a northern Muslim. Championed by the Yoruba establishment but unacceptable to the northern establishment, Abiola represented a roadblock to a transition. But, just as he was about to be released from government custody in 1998, Abiola died suddenly and in the presence of a small but high-level U.S. delegation that was taking tea with him.  Their deaths, in effect, cleared the way for democracy. With Abacha gone, the elite cabal could move to restore civilian government, and with Abiola gone, the military and the north would be placated and acquiesce to the transition. The deal that the cabal brokered led to the election of the Yoruba Olusegun Obasanjo as president, returned the military to the barracks while keeping open opportunities for them to profit personally in the new system, and established the regime of power alternation by which the presidency rotated every eight years between the south and the north, called “zoning” or “power shift.” This final convention was particularly important for the north, who had dominated military government and were fearful of a southern-dominated civilian government. Hence, the deaths of Abacha and Abiola were convenient, perhaps too convenient, and so the rumor mill operated overtime. It was frequently said that Abacha died of poison injected into apples with which Indian prostitutes teased him. Abacha was a notorious womanizer with reports of strange goings-on at the chief of state’s residence in common circulation. As for Abiola, rumor abounded that the military poisoned him to prevent his release. (His food taster was off duty.) He, too, was a notorious womanizer, but by the time of his death, he had been in jail for years Max Siollun, in his book, has carefully investigated the death of Abacha and Abiola. Systematically examining the evidence, he credibly concludes that both Abacha and Abiola died of heart disease, in Abiola’s case exacerbated by the bad conditions in which he was imprisoned. So the poisoned apples and the Indian prostitutes have been consigned to legend, as has Abiola’s absent food taster. In Nigeria, as everywhere else, convenient coincidences sometimes happen.

Jennifer Davis, an American anti-apartheid activist, passed away on October 15. Among her many legacies, she mobilized public pressure on the U.S. Congress to overturn President Ronald Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. Born in Johannesburg and a graduate of the prestigious University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), she and her husband eventually moved to New York. Soon after, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Like other white, highly-educated anti-apartheid activists, she was strongly influenced by the racism of Nazi Germany and the subsequent holocaust.  From 1981 to 2000 she was the director of the American Committee on Africa that coordinated NGO opposition to apartheid and made it a mass movement. She went beyond the Sullivan Principles, which called on American companies doing business in South Africa to treat their South African employees the same as they treated their employees in the United States. She pushed for Americans to boycott South African goods, and for Americans to divest from companies that profited from apartheid.  Within the governing African National Congress, there is frequent criticism that the United States came late and only half-heartedly to the anti-apartheid struggle. Jennifer Davis is a reminder of the important role played by civil society in heightening public awareness in the United States of apartheid—which eventually led to real legislative action—and that the international anti-apartheid movement acquired significant American support.

Hugh Trevor-Roper—historian, essayist, master of Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge, regius professor of modern history at Oxford, a life-member of the House of Lords—argued in 1965 that Africa had no history prior to European exploration and colonization. In his 1965 book, The Rise of Christian Europe, he wrote that “there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness,” its past the “unedifying gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe.” In the over fifty years since he wrote those words, modern scholarship has utterly demolished Trevor-Roper’s views. Nevertheless, they persist in dark corners. A corollary to his view was that traditional African religions were demonic and utterly inferior to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  The Kenyan John Mbiti, an Anglican priest, theologian, and academic, died on October 5 at the age of eighty-seven. He led the reappraisal of traditional African religions that sees them as equal to other world religions. He argued that traditional African religions were specifically congruent with Christianity, and that Christianity was more than Europe: “The days are over when we will be carbon copies of European Christians. Europe and America westernized Christianity. The Orthodox easternized it. Now it is our turn to Africanize it.”  While he had his critics, he opened an ongoing academic and theological conversation that starts with the value of traditional African religion. Upon his death, tributes ranged from Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who characterized him as “key father of African theology.” Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, praised Mbiti for his “sense of justice for indigenous peoples.” Mbiti moved easily among African and European academia. It is perhaps ironic that Mbiti earned his PhD at Trevor-Roper’s University of Cambridge.  As is well-known, Christianity is growing rapidly in Africa, while it is in relative decline in Europe and North America. The Gordon Theological Seminary estimates that here are 631 million Christians in Africa, 601 million in Latin America, and 571 million in Europe. These totals include a wide range of churches that self-describe as Christian. Many of the African churches incorporate elements of traditional religion. The Vatican estimates that the number of Roman Catholics in Africa has increased from 45 million in 1970 to 176 million in 2012.  

On October 23, Mmusi Maimane resigned as the leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA). His resignation was preceded by that of the DA mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba on October 21, and immediately followed by that of the party’s federal chairperson, Athol Trollip. Maimane resigned from parliament on October 24. The slew of high-profile DA resignations can be viewed in the context of the resignation of former Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille in 2018. Maimane’s resignation appears to have been triggered by an internal DA finding that he bore heavy personal responsibility for the party’s poor showing in the May 2019 elections, though the context for his and the other party resignations appears to be race.  A quarter-century after the end of apartheid, most whites enjoy a standard of living common to developed countries, while most black South Africans remain poor, despite the emergence of a handful of black millionaires and a slowly growing black middle class. Maimane and Mashaba are black, de Lille is Coloured (the largest racial group in Cape Town.) Mashaba and de Lille have explicitly complained that a white cabal within the party has worked against their efforts on behalf of “transformation” that could address black poverty and make the party more attractive to the black majority.  Helen Zille, the white former mayor of Cape Town and premier of the Western Cape in 2017 had been ostracized by the DA over her comment that colonialism was not “all bad.” But she was just elected the party’s federal council chairperson, a senior position. Her return is seen by commentators as a sign that the DA is moving to the right and becoming more explicitly the party of white interests. Mashaba tied his resignation to her rise: “The election of Zille as chair of the federal council is a victory for people opposed to my belief systems.” He added, “I cannot reconcile myself with people who believe that race is not important in their discussion of inequalities.” Historically, the DA has been the “white” party, and most of its electoral support has come from whites, Coloureds, and Asians. Together those racial minorities are about 20 percent of South Africa’s population, and the DA’s share of the national vote has been between 20 and 22 percent in the last two national elections. Voting continues to be largely along racial lines in South Africa, with blacks (perhaps 80 percent of the population) voting for the governing African National Congress (ANC) or the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). The DA has struggled to make itself relevant to the black majority, necessary if it is ever to become the party of government. Maimane’s selection as party leader had been part of that effort, building “one South Africa for all,” a slogan the party employed. But party leadership structures—and finances—appear to be largely white.  Some commentators attribute the fall in the DA’s performance—less than 1.5 percent—to a decline in conservative white support in the face of the DA’s leadership outreach to blacks or the incompetence of Maimane’s leadership; the Freedom Front Plus, an Afrikaaner party, arguably grew its support at the DA’s expense. However, the party had benefitted from the grotesque corruption and poor governance of the ANC’s Jacob Zuma, president from 2009 to 2018, enabling it to attract disgruntled ANC voters with its reputation for good governance. But by the 2019 elections, Zuma was gone, and Cyril Ramaphosa, with his reputation for competence, led the ANC. Hence, it is likely at least some voters who had defected to the DA returned to the ANC.  

Mob attacks on foreign-owned shops in Johannesburg have damaged relations between South Africa and Nigeria. The Nigerian government has announced that it is evacuating some four hundred Nigerians from South Africa. The violence is being characterized as “xenophobic,” which, by all accounts, it is. But the story is more complicated, and aspects of it have roots in apartheid South Africa and the dislocations resulting from too-rapid urbanization. According to the Washington Post, the mobs comprise mostly single, black men who have recently arrived in Johannesburg from the countryside looking for work. Many of them live in apartheid-era hostels, squalid shelters for workers away from home long known as breeding grounds for ethnic violence. Work in Johannesburg is hard to find. Unemployment is over 50 percent for those under thirty-five, while among the entire working-age population it is almost 30 percent. In terms of education and training, many or most of the newly-arrived are ill-equipped to enter the modern economy. Elite educational institutions have become racially integrated, but they serve a tiny proportion of the population. The quality of primary education available to the poor, especially in rural areas, has not advanced much since the days of “Bantu” education in the apartheid era. Again reflecting apartheid strictures on black self-employment, the informal sector of South Africa’s economy is smaller than, say, in Nigeria. In Lagos, a far poorer and less developed city than Johannesburg, everybody has a hustle. Begging among southern Nigerians is rare; those that beg are usually from elsewhere in Nigeria or West Africa. The popular culture is highly entrepreneurial. Hence, when Nigerians emigrate, and millions do to all over the world, the often set up small enterprises, creating wealth, but also engendering envy. The Johannesburg mobs are attacking “foreigners,” who are probably disproportionately Nigerians and Somalis—known for being similarly entrepreneurial—because they are seen as taking away jobs from local people. That appears to rarely be the case; if anything, foreigners may well be creating jobs. A final factor to consider is that, all over Africa, urbanization is proceeding rapidly—probably too rapidly. South Africa is now said to be 60 percent urban and over half of Nigerians live in cities. In Nigeria, investment in urban infrastructure, ranging from clean water to roads to schools, has not remotely reached the level needed to accommodate the urban influx. There has been more such investment in Johannesburg and South Africa in general, reflecting (among other things) that South Africa is a much richer, more developed country than Nigeria. Hence its attraction to economic immigrants. Nevertheless, the investment shortfall in Johannesburg is there for all to see. It is particularly acute in education. Unemployed male youth would appear to be drivers of Johannesburg crime and violence, in part because there is no place for them.  What to do? Reversing urbanization is not really a possibility. Infrastructure investment takes time and money. South Africans are conflicted over education reform; everybody agrees it is necessary, but there is no consensus about how to do it. So addressing the roots of mob violence will take time. For now, the Ramaphosa government appears correctly to be dealing with mob violence as a law-and-order issue.

Tyler McBrien is an associate editor for education at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. On August 21, South Africa’s Equality Court ruled that gratuitous displays of the Apartheid-era flag counted as hate speech and discrimination. Confronting history head on, Judge Phineas Mojapelo wrote in his ruling that the flag represents “a vivid symbol of white supremacy and black disenfranchisement and suppression,” and flying it, “besides being racist and discriminatory, demonstrates a clear intention to be hurtful.”  The court ruled in favor of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, who argued that the Old Flag, as some call it, has long become a global symbol of “white supremacy, exclusion, and hatred.” Ultimately, the ruling is not an outright ban, but rather expressly prohibits “gratuitous” displays. This interpretation leaves room for the use of the flag for artistic, academic, or journalistic purposes, similar to the German law banning Nazi and other hate symbols outside the context of "art or science, research or teaching.”    Many in the country welcomed the Equality Court ruling, and members of opposition political party the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) encouraged the government not to stop at the flag. EFF leader Julius Malema has urged the government to go even further in its banishment of apartheid-era symbols and to remove the Afrikaans portion, known as Die Stem, from South Africa’s national anthem. But not everyone was happy. On the opposing side, self-described Afrikaner rights group AfriForum maintained that the flag restrictions curtail free speech, even though the group applauded a similar ruling in 2011, when the court deemed the anti-apartheid struggle song “Shoot the Boer” as hate speech (the group claimed that “boer” in this case referred to white farmers, and defenders of the song asserted that “boer” represented the system of apartheid as a whole). Nonetheless, AfriForum plans to contest the judgment. In fact, just hours after the ruling, AfriForum’s deputy chief Ernst Roets tweeted an image of the now-banned apartheid flag with the question, “Did I just commit hate speech?” In response, the Nelson Mandela Foundation promised to file an urgent request to hold Roets in contempt of court.  The recent lawsuit and subsequent fallout represent just one episode in the country’s ongoing reckoning with its apartheid past, a process that has picked up steam over the past few years. Amidst the greater context of decolonization, a social movement called Rhodes Must Fall erupted at the University of Cape Town in 2015 over a statue commemorating Cecil Rhodes, whom many see as a symbol of white supremacy. More recently, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has made land reform a priority, to address inequality in land ownership, which many see as the economic legacy of apartheid.  These developments offer a stark reminder that even South Africa, a model of reconciliation to many, remains divided and deeply unequal. Twenty-five years of political freedom has not translated into economic freedom for most in the country, which the World Bank considers the most unequal in the world. Though the flag ruling represented a powerful symbolic victory over the apartheid past, material and economic victories are proving much more elusive in a country where the white minority owns almost three quarters of all farmland. For South Africa, William Faulkner’s words ring true. The apartheid past is never dead, it’s not even past.