South Africa

Ever since the days of the anti-apartheid struggle, the UN has been an important venue for South African diplomacy. In June 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa secured African Union-backing for South Africa for a two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. It is their third time holding a non-permanent “Africa” seat. At last year’s UN General Assembly (UNGA), Ramaphosa revealed a statue of Nelson Mandela prior to a peace summit in his name. But Ramaphosa announced that he will not be going to New York this year for UNGA. South Africa’s delegation will be led by the very-capable foreign minister, Naledi Pandor. This is a surprise. In a must-read piece, John Stremlau explains why Ramaphosa is not going, and why his decision is wise politically. Instead of attending UNGA, Ramaphosa says that he will focus on the crises currently facing the country. He will work on implementing measures against gender-based violence and public violence, the latter of which almost certainly refers to the xenophobic attacks on foreigners. He also said he would be taking initiatives to turn around the economy. Among Americans who follow South Africa, the xenophobia and economic woes are familiar; perhaps less so is the extraordinary amount of gender-based violence that crosses racial and class lines. Illustrating its magnitude, South Africa police report that a woman is murdered every three hours, while the World Health Organization finds that South Africa ranks fourth out of 183 countries in “femicide,” the murder of women and girls because of their gender. Stremlau calls attention to a New Yorker article by Cape-Town-based Rosa Lyster that is a detailed survey of South African gender-based violence. Lyster shows that the grisly rape and murder of a nineteen-year-old girl at a post office in Cape Town has politically ignited the issue of gender-based violence, with certain similarities to the #MeToo movement in the United States.  On September 18, Ramaphosa addressed a joint sitting of the National Assembly (lower house) and the Council of Provinces (upper house) to respond to gender-based violence. With respect to repairing relations with African countries in the aftermath of the xenophobic riots, he has sent special envoys to seven African states. As for turning the economy around, Stremlau points out that addressing violence—both xenophobic and gender-based—could give Ramaphosa more time to address poverty, unemployment, and inequality. Particularly useful is Stremlau’s positioning of Ramaphosa’s response to gender-based violence in the context of the governing African National Congress (ANC). The ANC has advocated gender equality ever since the anti-apartheid struggle. It is party policy to achieve gender parity in all party structures. Stremlau points out that Ramaphosa has been widely praised for achieving gender balance in his cabinet. Stremlau also points out that this is smart politics: some two-thirds of women vote for the ANC. According to Stremlau, Ramaphosa is right not to go to New York, and sometimes doing the right thing is also politically wise.

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.

In his June 20 state of the nation address to parliament, President Cyril Ramaphosa laid out a short-term approach to land reform, including a call for the expropriation of privately owned land without compensation for distribution. Ramaphosa said his Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture has completed a report that will shape his administration’s land reform program. The report will soon be sent to the cabinet. In the meantime, he said the state would continue to identify public land that would be suitable for distribution to urban dwellers and farmers. The Land Bank will support black commercial farmers with an allocation of R3.9 billion (272.8 million USD). Characteristically, Ramaphosa emphasized an orderly process (the report by the Advisory Panel) and addressed immediate needs (identifying public land suitable for redistribution and support for black commercial farmers who often lack access to capital). This section of his speech avoided emphasis on expropriation without compensation of privately owned land, a lethal third rail for the overseas and domestic investors Ramaphosa seeks to attract to jump-start the South African economy. Ramaphosa has also appointed the highly regarded Thoko Didiza as Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (the lead implementing agency). Didiza enjoys widespread support, including the white farming sector represented by AgricSA in addition to the NGO activists advocating for the expropriation process, such as the Institute for Poverty, Land, and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape. Especially in foreign media, the land reform issue is too often oversimplified into competing morality plays. On the one hand, some see land reform as taking land stolen from blacks by whites under apartheid and distributing the land back to the poor blacks without providing compensation. A competing narrative sees expropriation without compensation as a violation of constitutionally guaranteed property rights and making a travesty of the country’s vaunted rule of law. Media outside of South Africa often sees the current debate as somehow a rerun of Zimbabwe, where white farmers were driven off their land through violence with no pretense to the rule of law. There is a broad consensus in South Africa about the need for land reform and a recognition of the complexity of the issue. For example, tribal trust lands are controlled by chiefs and farmers and normally have no security of tenure. The increased demand for land for housing plots that has resulted in rapid urbanization is a problem more greatly experienced in urban areas rather than in the countryside. In juxtaposition to the constitutional argument against expropriation of privately owned land, publicly owned land could be redistributed without any infringement on private property rights. South Africa’s friends will be eagerly awaiting the publication of the report by the Advisory Panel on Land Reform and how it addresses these multiple issues.  

Nigeria and South Africa have been the two African countries of greatest strategic importance to the United States. They are the two largest economies on the continent, and a major venue for U.S. investment. Historically, the United States and Nigeria have cooperated on African issues of mutual concern. Nigeria is on the front lines of the jihadist insurgency Boko Haram that spills over into other countries of the region. South Africa’s is the most sophisticated and developed of Africa’s economies. Political cooperation, however, is less developed than with Nigeria. Nevertheless, South Africa’s new foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, is expected to pursue closer dialogue with the United States and other western countries than her immediate predecessors. South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa is actively seeking greater U.S. trade and investment. Reflecting their importance, the United States maintains large embassies in both countries, and in both there is a significant interagency presence reflecting the broad range of U.S. interests. In Nigeria, the Trump administration has announced its intention to appoint a career diplomat, Mary Beth Leonard, as ambassador. She will succeed current Ambassador Stuart Symington, another career diplomat, when his tour of duty ends. Mary Beth Leonard has had numerous African assignments and served as the U.S. ambassador to Mali from 2011 to 2014 during the coup d'état that overthrew then President Amadou Toumani Toure. As is the case with Ambassador Leonard, the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria nearly always comes from the career foreign service. In South Africa, the U.S. ambassador is usually a political appointee rather than a career diplomat. The most recent ambassador, Patrick Gaspard, held senior positions in the Democratic Party and the administration of President Barack Obama before being named ambassador to South Africa in 2013. His mission ended in December 2016 (Ambassadorial assignments are normally for three years). Since then, there has been no U.S. ambassador to South Africa; the U.S. mission has been headed by a charge d’affaires. In November 2018, the Trump administration announced its intention to nominate Lana Marks as ambassador to South Africa. She is South African-born, a highly successful designer and manufacturer of high-end handbags. She is a member of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. As of now, Lana Marks has yet to have her Senate hearing. Speculation as to why the confirmation process is taking so long ranges from the complexity of her business affairs to the Trump administration’s focus on judicial appointments. Such speculation is just that—speculation. Nevertheless, the fact remains that for nearly three years, there has been no U.S. ambassador in South Africa. South Africa will occupy one of the non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council this coming January. It can be anticipated that South Africa will be more active diplomatically than in the immediate past. Under those circumstances, having a U.S. ambassador in Pretoria would appear to be a matter of urgency.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering May 30 to June 6, was compiled by Mallory Matheson and Rebecca Turkington.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment of Naledi Pandor as minister of international relations may be a positive step toward improving South Africa’s relations with the United States. Pandor is part of a Ramaphosa’s trimmed-down cabinet whose positions are split equally between men and women.  The bilateral relationship between the United States and South Africa has been correct but hardly special and even at times frosty. It soured under former President Jacob Zuma, who was hostile to the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya and had been drawn in Russia’s orbit with a now-defunct nuclear deal. South Africa’s foreign policy is fiercely independent, but has tended to avoid confronting authoritarian regimes in its neighborhood, particularly those of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Joseph Kabila in Democratic Republic of Congo, much to the chagrin of the United States.  Naledi Pandor comes from the “struggle establishment.” Her grandfather, Z.K. Matthews, and father, Joe Matthews, were icons of the anti-apartheid movement. In her early years, Pandor was educated in Botswana. While there, she met her future husband, a Muslim, and converted to Islam. After receiving a bachelor’s in history and English from the University of Botswana, she received a master’s from the University of London and from Stellenbosch University. She has also lectured at the University of Botswana and the University of Cape Town. In April 2019, she received her doctorate in higher education from the University of Pretoria.  For the past decade she has been in the cabinet. As a minister she developed a reputation for competence with demanding portfolios: higher education (2009–2012, 2018–2019); home affairs (2012–2014); and science and technology (2014–2018). Pandor is a close ally of Ramaphosa in the internecine struggles within the governing African National Congress. She was Ramaphosa’s choice to be deputy president, but she did not win sufficient party support. With her multi-cultural background, strong academic credentials, and extensive ministerial experience, it can be anticipated that she will engage with other governments more productively than her predecessors. Embassies in Pretoria have welcomed her appointment. She is the fourth woman in a row to hold the position. She is likely to return to the Mandela tradition of emphasizing human rights in South Africa’s foreign policy. Her immediate predecessor, Lindiwe Sisulu, held the position for only a year, perhaps as a place-holder before the 2019 elections; Sisulu is now the minister for human settlements, water, and sanitation. But, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane was in the office for a decade (2009-2018), as was her immediate predecessor, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, (1999–2009). Mashabane’s tenure as foreign minister coincided with the now-discredited administration of Jacob Zuma, while Dlamini-Zuma’s with that of Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, for which she was criticized for her inaction during land invasions and farm murders in Zimbabwe. Many western diplomats found Mashabane a difficult interlocutor, while Pandor has a much more positive reputation.  The next two years will be significant for South African foreign policy. It occupies an Africa seat on the UN Security Council for the 2019–2020 term and it will take over the chair of the African Union from Egypt in 2020. Pandor has the experience and talent to turn the relationship around, but the Trump administration will need to reciprocate if she reaches out.

This is a guest blog post by Anthony Carroll. Anthony is founding director of Acorus Capital, a private equity fund investing in Africa, and a vice president of Manchester Trade Limited, an international business advisory firm. He has over forty years of experience working with Africa and is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on national television the selection of South Africa’s new cabinet. This announcement quickly followed his inauguration to become president after Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC) secured 57.5 percent of the vote in the national elections of May 8, the fifth since the end of Apartheid in 1994. Since the elections there had been much speculation as to the size and content of President Ramaphosa’s cabinet. During his predecessor Jacob Zuma’s presidency, cabinet members were often chosen on the basis of their closeness to Zuma and were his praise singers within the ANC. Also, with thirty-six departments, each with a minister and deputy ministers, there was jurisdictional overlap which detracted attention from substantive tasks and the departments often served as their own magnets for corruption. In order to create more coherence, President Ramaphosa reduced the number of cabinet ministers to twenty-eight. The selection process was a delicate one involving ANC party leadership and Ramaphosa’s executive team, with certain concessions having to be made to the ANC’s old guard, including some Zuma acolytes. However, Ramaphosa’s choices were largely merit-based, broadly representative (50 percent are women) and in harmony with his “New Dawn” initiative of expanding economic opportunity for all South Africans through economic growth rather than redistribution. This is a cabinet in his own likeness and being! It should be noted that the cabinet of President Mbeki also was filled with competent executives who were able to achieve the highest economic growth rates and job creation in the past twenty-five years. The Zuma presidency was a costly detour. Although there was no surprise to see the names of such competent officials as Pravin Gordhan, Ephraim Patel, Naledi Pandor, Lindiwe Sisulu, and Tito Mboweni, Ramaphosa’s selection of Patricia de Lille as minister of public works and enterprises really “put the cat among the pigeons.” De Lille won high marks as an anti-apartheid activist in the Western Cape as a leader of the strident Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). She later departed the PAC and formed the Independent Democrats and eventually merged that into the Democratic Alliance. She was elected mayor of Cape Town in 2011 where she gained high marks for her courage and executive leadership. She was a tireless critic of President Mbeki’s HIV/AIDS denialism and the massive corruption of the Zuma presidency. Despite being the most popular politician in the Western Cape, she was pummeled by DA leadership over allegations of favoritism and inflexibility. After a long but successful battle to clear her name, last year she resigned as mayor, quit the DA party and formed GOOD, a new political party that received 3 percent of the Western Cape provincial vote in the May elections.  De Lille’s selection has many promising aspects. First, she is fearless and has little tolerance for incompetence or corruption. Second, she has executive experience that she will bring to bear in addressing the acute needs for infrastructure development in South Africa. These needs include modernizing ports, airports, roads, and rails to improve South Africa’s ability to grow its economy and in so doing deftly navigate the pitfalls inherent in the country’s federal system. She can also address the woeful status of local and provincial governments to provide the most basic of infrastructure for its citizenry. For example, she could tackle the problem of housing shortages in South Africa’s burgeoning cities and in so doing ameliorate some of the polemics around land redistribution, the “Third Rail” of South African politics.  Last, her appointment provides an opportunity for the U.S. to pivot and develop a more coherent and fulsome political and economic relationship with South Africa. The passage of the BUILD Act will see the creation of a new development finance agency by the US government with $60 billion to finance projects that benefit both the U.S. and South African private sectors. Indeed, South Africa’s sophisticated banking and financial services institutions could provide a solid basis to explore opportunities for financial leveraging that could create mutual benefits. Let’s get the ball rolling.

At a rugby stadium in Pretoria on May 25, Cyril Ramaphosa was sworn in as South Africa’s fourth democratically elected president since 1994. Citing government austerity measures and perhaps as a sign of the administration’s new dispensation, Ramaphosa’s inauguration will cost about half as much as the 2014 ceremony to swear in Jacob Zuma.  The U.S. presidential delegation to the inauguration was headed by Kimberly A. Reed, the president of the Export-Import Bank. The other members of the delegation included Bonnie Glick, deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Andrew Olmem, deputy assistant to the president for economic policy, Jessica Lapenn, the charge d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Pretoria, and Cyril Sartor, the senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council.  More than two years into the Trump administration, there is still no U.S. ambassador to South Africa. Hence, the embassy is headed by a charge. According to the White House statement, no member of Congress was included in the delegation, nor were any business people. In the past, the presidential delegation to South African inaugurations have included prominent figures, such as First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1994 and Attorney General Janet Reno in 1999, though no delegation was sent to the discredited Jacob Zuma’s inauguration in 2014.  But this year’s presidential delegation was workman-like. All of its members would be directly involved in building the U.S.-South Africa bilateral relationship. There also may have been a trade and investment tilt to the delegation. If so, that would be appropriate. Attracting foreign investments had been one of Ramaphosa’s principal goals since he became president in early 2018. Even if the political and security dimensions of the bilateral relationship over the past decade have been frosty, the economic relationship has continued to develop. 

Under the leadership of Cyril Ramaphosa, the African National Congress (ANC) improved its performance in the 2019 national elections. The ANC won about 58 percent of the vote, up from 54 percent in the local government elections of 2016, though still a decline from the 62 percent in won in 2014 national elections. It lost seats, but it seems to have, for now, arrested the Zuma-era decline.  By the beginning of 2018, the ANC had removed from office the scandal-plagued Jacob Zuma as ANC party leader and president. The party then elected Ramaphosa, who had orchestrated Zuma’s departure, as its leader and as South Africa’s president. He launched a reform program, “New Dawn,” that promised the renewal of the party, an emphasis on party unity, an end to corruption, and national economic policy designed to address the poverty of the black majority through accelerated economic growth. “New Dawn” was the ANC’s campaign theme in the national elections, though Ramaphosa faced push-back from the still powerful party forces aligned with Zuma. In democratic South Africa, elections matter, and Ramaphosa’s success has consequences. It has led to a realignment within the party in Ramaphosa’s favor. A party instrument, the Integrity Commission (IC), is charged with vetting candidates on the ANC’s electoral lists as to their moral and overall suitability for office. Frequently criticized as “toothless,” nevertheless the IC has accused Deputy President David Mabuza and others associated with Zuma as having “prejudiced the integrity of the ANC.” Accordingly, Mabuza and others so accused have declined to be sworn-in as MP’s until they are able to answer the accusations. Observers had expected that Ramaphosa would reappoint Mabuza as deputy president for the sake of party unity and also following the adage of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” He could still do so—the president may appoint up to two ministers, including the deputy president, from outside parliament—though he is more likely to take the opportunity to appoint a different personality less compromised by allegations of corruption. One possibility is Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who narrowly lost a vote for party leader after Zuma, her ex-husband, was pushed out. While she is usually counted in the Zuma camp, she is a formidable politician in her own right, and the ANC emphasizes the importance of gender equality. For Ramaphosa, as deputy president she, too, would fit the adage of “keep your enemies closer.”  The bottom line of this political maneuvering is that Ramaphosa’s hand within the party has been strengthened by the election results, granting him greater freedom to pursue his agenda. We can expect him to continue to renew the ANC and begin to address South Africa’s social and economic problems that were exacerbated by the disastrous nine-year tenure of Jacob Zuma. The Zuma faction is still formidable, but for friends of South Africa, this is good news.

This is a guest post by Benjamin Silliman, research associate for Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council on Foreign Relations and Payce Madden, researcher in African development. South Africa’s 2019 elections are over and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) kept its majority, but by its smallest margins yet. Political graft and mismanagement of state-owned enterprises like Eskom, the indebted utility which supplies over 90 percent of South Africa’s power, is likely behind some voters’ disillusionment with the ANC. In the months before the elections, major blackouts were rolling across the country leading to an estimated loss of 1.1 percent of economic growth for the year. Although Eskom was eventually able to stem the blackouts before Election Day, underlying technical, financial, and management problems will continue to plague the governing ANC party as it struggles to show South Africans that it can sustain economic growth. At the root of Eskom’s recent service problems are technical faults in South Africa’s Kusile and Medupi power stations, which led to the loss of nearly 17,000 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity. At the same time, electricity imports from Mozambique were stopped by Cyclone Idai, creating another loss of 1,100 MW of electricity that Eskom relies on to power its grid. These faults forced Eskom to begin load-shedding — the deliberate interruption of electricity supply — to prevent putting more demand on the grid than it could supply. At the height of the crisis, South Africans had their power interrupted twelve times in a four-day period for two hours at a time affecting commercial, industrial, and residential entities. To manage blackouts, many South African businesses and individuals have backup diesel generators. However, due to Cyclone Idai’s disruption to diesel imports, the cost of using diesel generation rose as a result of the fuel shortage and higher demand. Even without disruptions, diesel generators are rarely an efficient solution to supply electricity: in many African countries where backup generators are used to supplement or support unreliable electricity grids, the cost of electricity can be up to three times higher than it would be if the grid were reliable due to individual fuel and maintenance costs for the generator. A severe lack of financing options for Eskom has many worried that the Kusile and Medupi power plants could be offline for more than a year. The government, looking for quick options to resolve the crisis, has suggested it will restructure the utility by breaking it into three separate entities. However, this solution would do little to manage Eskom’s massive debt of nearly thirty billion dollars, which is continuing to increase as the utility undertakes repairs on the down power plants. Restructuring also does little to address some of the most basic issues facing the county’s electric system: severe lack of financing, poor planning, and negligent maintenance of central generating units. For a growing nation, access to a reliable power supply is essential. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), South Africa’s electricity generation grew by 51 percent between 1990 and 2016. 82 percent of this growth came from centralized coal power plants, while nuclear power accounted for 8 percent of the growth, wind energy 4 percent, and solar photovoltaic energy only 3 percent. In total, wind and solar power only account for 2.5 percent of South Africa’s electricity sources. Increasing electricity generation will be vital for South Africa’s continued economic growth and development. Already, South Africa has the highest electricity consumption per capita of any African country, and demand is likely to increase: although population growth is only slightly above the world average, South Africa, like much of the continent, is rapidly urbanizing. Johannesburg alone is projected to host more than ten million inhabitants by 2030. South Africa’s reliance on coal power to fuel its electricity capacity growth is problematic since the country faces poor financing options for large capital to build centralized power plants. Investment from development banks, including the African Development Bank’s New Deal on Energy in Africa, remains insufficient to meet energy financing needs. While financing for electric power has risen globally, investment in sub-Saharan Africa’s electrification decreased from 2013-2014 to 2015-2016. About a quarter of global investment in 2015 and 2016, or eight billion dollars per year, was for grid-connected fossil fuel plants, with China providing a fifth of this fossil fuel expansion financing. In South Africa, China has previously provided loans to Eskom to finish construction of the Kusile power plant. The exact terms of these loans have been kept secret, but the additional debt burden could have major implications for South Africa, which is already at risk of reaching a threshold level of debt-to-GDP. Despite these risks, Chinese lending remains an attractive — and, in some cases, the only — option to fill the financing gaps left by development banks and other major lenders. Distributed energy sources could offer South Africa a distinct advantage when building up their generation capacity, as they do not require single large loans, but rather an aggregation of smaller sources of capital, many of which may already exist around the country. Eskom currently supports interconnection, with energy export credits for high-voltage industrial power consumers. By owning their own generation capacity, industrial consumers would not only not only reduce the risk of loss of production due to power failure, but may also reduce their normal energy expenses by providing power to the grid when the plant is not operating at full capacity in exchange for credits. Bringing micro-grids to these power-heavy industries should be top priority for South African policymakers who are looking to better balance the demand for electricity and expand current renewable energy programs. Eskom currently does not support net metering for lower-voltage residential and commercial markets, reducing the incentive for residences and small businesses to provide their own power. Despite this, rooftop solar has gained some traction in South Africa with the Mall of Africa unveiling its new solar roof, the tenth largest in the world. A primary motivation for the installation was to reduce power demand on South Africa’s central grid system. This move mirrors a trend in developed countries around the world where policymakers are analyzing the potential for buildings to provide some of their own power, and at times even act as power plants. In the United States, power produced from buildings has already been relied upon during hot days when abnormal consumption put excessive demand on the grid. Both California and New York have begun implementing plans for energy-producing buildings, while the EU and Japan have issued goals to promote zero — or close to zero — energy buildings. Large residential and commercial buildings have one thing in common: they are often well-financed and have the incentive to pursue distributed energy options, especially given the long-term unreliability of South Africa’s energy infrastructure. To motivate more widespread development, South African policymakers should consider pushing Eskom to develop a policy on lower voltage net metering. Reducing demand or even supplying power to the grid could vastly ease the country’s growing pains. South Africa already has a robust policy model for renewable energy integration for dedicated power producers that it can use as a model for future development. South Africa maintains a target of 17,800 MW of low carbon capacity by 2030. In 2011, South Africa started its major policy initiative to promote low carbon sources, the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP.) The REIPPPP holds competitive auctions for renewable energy sources, capped at certain capacities depending on the source type. Winners of the auction are given a twenty-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with the utility and a feed-in tariff to improve economic competitiveness. According to the World Bank, as of 2014, fourteen billion dollars were already committed to the program. Prices for renewable energy have dropped significantly since the beginning of this program, with solar falling 68 percent and wind falling 42 percent. In the midst of an energy crisis, the government should consider expanding upon this central program to not only offer PPAs to dedicated power producers but also shorter-term contracts with large commercial or industrial entities or real estate developers. To reduce the utility’s massive infrastructure costs, an interconnection fee could be negotiated as part of the PPA. Capacity ceilings for the REIPPPP should also be expanded to more rapidly grow energy capacity and to encourage more companies to become involved. This solution is not technically easy to implement. Integrating distributed energy systems is a challenge for even robust electric utilities, but software and hardware solutions have become available to ease integration of intermittent, distributed energy sources into the grid. For example, better forecasting systems have allowed utilities to model demand with much more granularity, allowing the utility to better plan around consumer power production, and smart meters can accurately provide detailed two-way electric exchanges between a building and the grid. Battery storage technology to reduce the strain of intermittence has also become much more available, with prices continuing to decline. Given the immense challenge of securing financing to build and repair large central power generation, money spent on grid modernization efforts may be more fruitful. The greatest challenge, however, may be managing Eskom’s finances. The utility will not benefit from the departure of some of its largest customers as they reduce their dependence on the grid. This could potentially create two dangers: that Eskom could develop revenue problems limiting the growth needed to repay debts, and that many infrastructure, operating, and financing costs could be passed off to those who cannot afford alternate energy sources in the form of higher electricity prices. The process of promoting distributed energy must be well managed by the government to ensure that the electricity system does not break down as heavy consumers reduce their reliance on the grid. South Africa could explore more options for state financial support, with, for example, tiered electricity prices based on consumption to keep electricity costs low for less affluent consumers. They could also explore interconnection service fees where a percentage of energy savings for those off the grid are paid back to the utility for infrastructure costs, as is being tried in the state of New York. While South Africa will not be able to build sufficient distributed capacity fast enough to avoid the repairs needed for the two offline power plants, it may reduce the need for Eskom to invest in future centralized power plants. Avoiding the construction of more costly central power plants could provide Eskom some relief in the future given the limitations of current financing from development banks and other major lenders and the risks of accruing debt from lenders such as China. Already a leader in renewable energy policy in the continent, South Africa could prove to be an important model for how to integrate distributed energy resources in countries around the world. However, until significant changes are made, many South Africans may continue to stay in the dark.

The African National Congress, which has governed since the end of apartheid, won again in May’s national election. But a growing opposition will watch to see whether it can revive the economy and curb corruption.

The governing African National Congress (ANC) won its smallest percentage of votes for national office ever in the 2019 elections, which took place on May 8. It won 57.51 percent over the vote, while the Democratic Alliance won 20.76 percent and the Economic Freedom Fighters won 10.79 percent; the remaining forty-five parties together won 10.94 percent, though most of them did not win enough to earn a seat.   The ANC’s vote share peaked in the 2004 national elections, when it received 69.69 percent of the vote, but it dropped to 65.9 percent in 2009 and to 62.15 percent in 2014. While the trajectory would appear to maintain its negative course through the 2019 national elections, the ANC’s showing in the most recent elections, the municipal elections in 2016, was just 53.9 percent. In those elections, the ANC lost Johannesburg and Pretoria for the first time since the end of apartheid. The 2016 ANC losses have been largely attributed to the failed leadership of Jacob Zuma, then leader of the ANC and president of South Africa, whose administration was mired in corruption and scandal. The elections of 2019 therefore represent an improvement for the ANC. Municipal elections still follow South Africa’s system of proportional representation, where voters vote for a party, not a candidate, hence they are still referenda on the parties. Further, the ANC won a slight majority in Gauteng (Johannesburg and Pretoria), South Africa’s largest and richest province, despite predictions that it would fall below 50 percent. The improvement in the ANC’s results over 2016 strengthens the hand of Cyril Ramaphosa, party leader and South African president, as he seeks to reform the ANC internally and address corruption, especially within state owned enterprises. Reflecting party anxiety over the erosion of its support at the polls, at the end of 2017, the ANC removed Zuma from the party leadership and, in 2018, from the presidency, a move orchestrated by Cyril Ramaphosa, then Zuma’s deputy president. However, bolstered by his populism and his patronage network, Zuma and his allies remain a powerful element within the ANC. Since Zuma’s removal, they have been actively engaged in seeking to block Ramaphosa’s reforms. Though Ramaphosa has moved to restore the integrity of government institutions undermined by Zuma and his allies, nobody has yet to go to jail for corruption. The improvement in the ANC election results under Ramaphosa’s leadership should strengthen his hand in the intra-party fight with Zuma. And perhaps those guilty of corruption will start to go to jail.

Today, South Africans will vote for national and provincial assemblies, who in turn will form national and provincial governments. Polls open at 7:00 a.m., and close at 9:00 p.m., though those in line at the closing will be able to vote. South Africans will choose between parties, not candidates, under South Africa’s system of proportional representation. Counting begins immediately, and final results are likely to be released by Saturday, May 11.  The media is focused on the elections as a referendum on the governing African National Congress (ANC) and its reformer leader Cyril Ramaphosa. At the beginning of 2018, he orchestrated the ouster of the scandal-ridden ANC leader and state president, Jacob Zuma. There is particular interest in how the ANC will do in Gauteng. It is the most populous and richest of South Africa’s nine provinces and includes Johannesburg and Pretoria. The media is also focused on the black middle class as the key to the fortunes of the ANC in Gauteng and perhaps the country in general. The official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA) is also seeking black middle class support, while the third major party, the left-wing radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), is pitching to the urban poor. ANC support in Gauteng has been declining over the past decade. This time, the ANC could be frozen out of the provincial government, or forced to enter into a coalition to form a provincial government. The ANC has long since lost to the DA in the Western Cape—the second wealthiest and most developed province—including in the city of Cape Town. Loss of Gauteng risks the ANC becoming a party with an overwhelmingly rural base. At election time in South Africa, the media frequently “discovers” a voter demographic and exaggerates its political importance. In the local government elections of 2016 it was the “born frees,” blacks born after the end of apartheid in 1994, whose political behavior was anticipated to be “different.” However, that demographic, like others of that age in most western democracies, failed to vote in large numbers and by and large had little impact on the outcome of the elections. This year it is the “black middle class,” which is “growing.” A story in the New York Times states that blacks are 90 percent of South Africa’s population. However, that number would include Coloureds, identified by outsiders as of mixed race, by some others as “black,” but often by themselves as a separate race. In any event, their electoral behavior is very different from black Africans; Coloureds usually support the opposition DA, while blacks have overwhelmingly supported the ANC. Further, the black middle class is unlikely to be monolithic in its voting preferences.  The Unilever Institute for Strategic Marketing at the University of Cape Town estimates that the size of the black middle class is 5.6 million out of 58 million South Africans, or just under 10 percent of the population. Other estimates are substantially lower, but all such estimates involve definitional issues—what is “middle class” and who is “black,” for example. But, taking the Unilever figure at face value, the “black middle class” is small compared to the black Africans that live in townships and rural areas. It may be large enough to be significant in Johannesburg, though even that can be questioned, but it is unlikely to be so elsewhere in the country.  

On May 8, South Africans will vote in national elections for the sixth time since the end of apartheid and the transition to “non-racial” elections in 1994. Most observers judge the quality of South African elections as on par with those in Japan and the United States. Hence, issues about the conduct of elections are not about the possibility of rigging or voter fraud. Rather they are similar to those in the United States, such as transparency around campaign finance and concerns about declining voter turnout. Proportional Representation The constitution mandates a proportional system of parliamentary representation. Voters will cast ballots for parties at the national and provincial levels, not individual candidates. There are four hundred seats in the National Assembly. Each party’s leadership draws up a list of candidates and then rank orders them by name. If, say, a party wins 25 percent of the vote, it wins one hundred seats in the National Assembly, and the first hundred names on the list of candidates take seats in the National Assembly. If a minor party wins 1 percent of the vote, it would still get four seats in parliament, and several did so in 2014 and are likely to do so again on May 8. This system is designed to promote party unity and concentrate power in the party leadership, who rank-orders the party’s candidates. Moving up the rank order list requires a candidate to be in good graces with the party leadership. If a MP breaks with their party, they must resign their seat; voters did not vote for them, but for the party to which they belonged.  While voters vote for a party, not an individual, the party leader is the “face” of the party. Ballots in fact have a small photograph of the party leader as well as the party symbol by each box that a voter would check. Once new members of the National Assembly are in place, they elect the president. If one party has a majority of seats, it will elect as president the first person on its electoral list.  While there are forty-eight political parties contesting, only three have a reasonable chance of forming a government. They are the African National Congress (ANC), the Democratic Alliance (DA), and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). But proportional representation provides for representation of very small parties, so an additional seven might win up to three or four seats each.  South Africa is a constitutional democracy, not a parliamentary democracy. Therefore, while the ANC has had a large majority in the National Assembly since 1994, and each president has been the party leader, South Africa’s constitution limits what the National Assembly and the state executive can do.  The African National Congress The ANC is the party of Nelson Mandela and is seen as the leader of the anti-apartheid struggle. It is an umbrella coalition, comprising the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). They field parliamentary candidates that run on the ANC electoral list. The SACP is a clandestine organization, so it does not publish the names of its candidates. However, many of them are widely known. Where their candidates are placed on the ANC electoral list is the result of horse-trading.  In theory, the ANC is a non-racial party, and its leadership includes a few whites (mostly from the SACP) and a few more Asians. But its electoral support is overwhelmingly black. It is centrist on economic policy, despite the SACP and COSATU component. Much of its senior leadership is suspicious of the United States, seeing it as a fundamentally racist society. Race is the greatest predictor of how a South African will vote. About 80 percent of South Africans self-identify as black—hence the ANC’s substantial margin of victory in every national election. However, by no means all blacks vote for the ANC. In the last elections it won 249 seats with 62.15 percent of the vote. The party leader and state president is Cyril Ramaphosa, a close colleague of Nelson Mandela. Within the ANC he is opposed by the supporters of the former party leader, Jacob Zuma, who presided over a semi-criminal government until he was removed by the ANC from office in 2018 in a move orchestrated by Cyril Ramaphosa. The Zuma wing is populist in rhetoric and makes successful use of patronage to retain power even after Zuma’s departure. Ramaphosa is trying to reform the party and state-owned enterprises (SOE), such as South African Airways and the electricity utility Eskom, but faces serious pushback from Zuma’s allies dependent on SOEs for patronage. According to polls, Ramaphosa is the most popular of the party leaders, and because he is the “face” of the ANC, that will benefit the governing party. Nevertheless, because memories of the Zuma administration’s poor governance are fresh, most observers think the ANC’s percentage of the vote will decline, perhaps to the mid-50s. The Democratic Alliance The official opposition is the DA. Formerly a party of whites, its electoral support comes from the racial minorities: whites, Coloureds (not a pejorative label in South Africa), and Asians. It is seeking to shed its predominantly white image and appeal to blacks, especially those that are urban and middle class. Its party leader is Mmusi Maimane, a black African and former member of the Johannesburg City Council. However, thus far, the DA does not appear to be successful in its racial rebranding. That effort has been set-back by episodes of blatant white racism from individuals who identified with the DA. The party is center-right in economic policy and strongly emphasizes the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and good government. It governs the Western Cape (including Cape Town), generally regarded as the best governed province in the country. The DA is viscerally pro-American. In 2014, it won 22.23 percent of the vote, or 89 seats. Most observers—including this one—think it will get about the same number of votes on May 8, while others predict a DA electoral collapse if the EFF surges.  The Economic Freedom Fighters The EFF is headed by Julius Malema, who left the ANC when he split with Zuma in 2012, largely the result of personal rivalries. He formed the EFF shortly after to contest the 2014 elections, in which it won 6.35 percent of the vote. The party bills itself as radical and left wing. It advocates expropriation of white wealth without compensation and its distribution to blacks and Coloureds. It calls for a greatly expanded role of the state in almost everything. It views itself as the advocate for the very poor, especially in the townships and urban areas. The party has used anti-democratic tactics on the floor of the National Assembly, and its stock-in-trade is anti-white rhetoric. Some observers characterize it as Afro-populist. The irony is that despite the feud between Malema and Zuma, their policies and approaches to governance have similarities. Malema, however, does like to say that he “loves white people.” Other than Malema’s support for Zimbabwe’s former dictator, Robert Mugabe, it does not seem interested in foreign affairs. Most observers think the EFF will increase its parliamentary representation—the question is by how much. The EFF tried to make land expropriation without compensation a central issue of the campaign, but despite domestic and foreign media hype, the effort has apparently largely failed. Instead, the issues appear to be corruption, jobs, and crime. Election Outcomes Opinion polling in South Africa is not strong, and moreover polling results are not consistent. For example, polls from different organizations predict outcomes in some cases ten percentage points apart. Nevertheless, a plausible hypothesis is that the ANC will win 56 percent of the vote, the DA about 23 percent, the EFF about 11 percent, with the remainder divided among the minority parties. That outcome would mean that the ANC could govern without coalition partners. Most observers think that about 70 percent of eligible voters will go to the polls. This may be overly sanguine. In the recent Nigerian elections, only 35 percent of registered voters went to the polls. Nigeria is of course different from South Africa, but in both countries a substantial part of the electorate, especially the youth, are disaffected from the political system and, as in Nigeria, many South African youth may stay away.  Despite media hype that these elections are potentially “transformative,” they are unlikely to change dramatically the South African political landscape. Nevertheless, if the EFF gets more than 10 percent of the vote, if the DA gets 20 percent or less, and if the ANC percentage falls to near 50 percent, there will be apocalyptic headlines, even though the ANC will continue to govern. It is expected that new EFF votes will likely be at the expense of the ANC. If the EFF “does well,” receiving between 12 and 15 percent, Ramaphosa’s critics within the ANC will be emboldened to move against him, and his reform program will likely be set back.  Twenty-five years after the end of apartheid, poverty in South Africa is still mostly black and Coloured—who together make up almost 90 percent of the population—and they are the electoral target of the EFF. Yet in the townships and rural areas, there appears to be skepticism about the EFF’s ability to govern, and the ANC is given credit for the system of welfare payments that have greatly reduced extreme poverty. There has been no erosion of the economic privilege of whites, who are about 9 percent of the population. Nevertheless, the country does not appear to be close to a revolution, even at the ballot box. Racial minorities will continue to vote for the DA, while blacks will continue to make up the bulk of the ANC’s support, and virtually all of the EFF’s.