[Peace-discuss] Identity politics in South Africa

[C. G. Estabrook]

...With democratic elections in 1994, racial apartheid was ended, and economic apartheid had a new face ... A new black bourgeoisie emerged quickly, along with a rampant  cronyism. ANC chieftains moved into mansions in “golf and country estates”. As disparities between white and black narrowed, they widened between black and black.

The familiar refrain that the new wealth would “trickle down” and “create jobs” was lost in dodgy merger deals and “restructuring” that cost jobs ... In 2001, George Soros told the Davos Economic Forum, “South Africa is in the hands of international capital.”

...The post-apartheid achievements in de-segregating daily life in South Africa, including schools, were undercut by the extremes and corruption of a “neoliberalism” to which the ANC devoted itself. This led directly to state crimes such as the massacre of 34 miners at Marikana in 2012, which evoked the infamous Sharpeville massacre more than half a century earlier. Both had been protests about injustice...

From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa
Mandela’s Tarnished Legacy
by JOHN PILGER

<http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/11/mandelas-tarnished-legacy/>
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