Crime, flight mark post-apartheid South Africa Post-apartheid era marred by crime, bleak view of future

Children survey the smoldering remains of a squatters camp populated by foreigners after xenophobic riots on the outskirts of Johannesburg in this April 22, 2008 file photo. Fourteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa -- the global pariah that became a global inspiration -- has lapsed into gloom and anxiety about its future.**FILE PHOTO** (NYT9) JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-- Oct. 5, 2008 -- SAFRICA-MALAISE-3 -- Children survey the smoldering remains of a squatters camp populated by foreigners after xenophobic riots on the outskirts of Johannesburg in this April 22, 2008 file photo. Fourteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa -- the global pariah that became a global inspiration -- has lapsed into gloom and anxiety about its future. (Joao Silva/The New York Times) less Children survey the smoldering remains of a squatters camp populated by foreigners after xenophobic riots on the outskirts of Johannesburg in this April 22, 2008 file photo. Fourteen years after the end of ... more Photo: Joao Silva, New York Times Photo: Joao Silva, New York Times Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Crime, flight mark post-apartheid South Africa 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A dusty maze of concrete, sheet metal and scrap wood, Diepsloot is like so many of the enormous settlements around Johannesburg, mile after mile of feebly assembled shacks, the impromptu patchwork of the poor, the extremely poor and the hopelessly poor.

Monica Xangathi, 40, lives here in a shanty she shares with her brother's family. "This is not the way I thought my life would turn out," she said.

Her disappointment is not only with herself; she is heartsick about her country. Fourteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa - the global pariah that became a global inspiration - has lapsed into gloom and anxiety about its future, surely not the harmonious "rainbow nation" so celebrated by Nelson Mandela on his inauguration day.

"If only I could make Nelson Mandela come back," Xangathi said. "If only I could feed him a potion and make him young again."

This longing to propel the past into the present is rooted in more than fond reminiscence. Two weeks ago, a vicious power struggle culminated in the governing African National Congress deposing one of its own, President Thabo Mbeki, and replacing him with a stand-in for Mbeki's archrival, Jacob Zuma.

The past year has been more than acidic politics that have soured the national mood. Economic growth slowed; prices shot up. Xenophobic riots broke out in several cities, with mobs killing dozens of impoverished foreigners.

The country's power company unfathomably ran out of electricity and rationed supply. Gone was the conceit that South Africa was the one place on the continent immune to such incompetence. The rich purchased generators; the poor muddled through with kerosene and paraffin.

Appalling violence

Other grievances were ruefully familiar. While there is no dispute that South Africa has a high crime rate, the cruelty of the lawbreaking is more alarming than the number of incidents. Robberies are often accompanied by appalling violence.

The poor apply padlocks in defense. The rich surround their homes with concrete and barbed wire - and there are suggestions that more are simply fleeing the country.

In great measure, the tough realities of South Africa's long haul after apartheid have simply replaced the halo of liberation's first days. Likewise, while Mandela seemed a saintly figure to many, his successors seem all too human.

"We are not the world's greatest fairy tale, but rather a young, messy and not-always-predictable democracy," said Mark Gevisser, a journalist and the author of "Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred."

Messy and unpredictable, yes. Scandalous, too.

Mbeki was president for nine years, and his image slowly warped from someone aloof but well intentioned to someone secretive and conniving.

Mbeki's political nemesis is Zuma, whom he once fired as deputy president and who has image problems of his own. In 2006, he was tried on rape charges and acquitted.

More may be emigrating

The onslaught of unsettling news has proven too much for some with the means to flee. No reliable numbers are kept on emigration, but it is believed to be on the increase.

Since 1996, the black population has risen to a projected 38.5 million from 31.8 million. The white population has dropped to a projected 4.5 million from 4.8 million.

John Loos, an economist at First National Bank of South Africa, who tracks the reasons given by people who sell homes in white suburban markets, said 9 percent cited emigration in the last quarter of 2007. In the first quarter of 2008, the number rose to 12 percent and in the second quarter to 18 percent.

Minority groups, which include whites, Asians and people of mixed race, "are prone to overreacting about anything," Loos said. "We have people with the mind-set that this country is just another Zimbabwe in the making."

It is easy to tap into such naysaying. But there is a case to be made that pessimistic South Africans are looking at a glass that is actually more than half full yet describing it as near-empty. Not so long ago, people feared that the end of apartheid would set off civil war and a bloodbath.

More jobs, higher incomes

Adam Habib, a political analyst, finds it understandable that the marginalized complain, and he invokes the term "relative deprivation." The gap between the rich and the poor may be widening, but the lot of the poor is improving, he said: The unemployment rate, however horrendous, is in decline; the incomes of the poor, however meager, are on the rise.

While some critics have likened Mbeki's exit to a Stalinist purge, Habib, a deputy vice chancellor at the University of Johannesburg, pointed out that the transition was smooth and nonviolent.

"Our democracy is only 14 years old," he said. "Rather than calling this a crisis, people ought to ask how our institutions came together so well in so short a time."