In the past few weeks, South Africa has experienced its most violent unrest in decades, with shopping malls and warehouses looted, supply trucks attacked, shops destroyed and at least 337 people killed.
At first glance, these disturbances seemed to be a spontaneous expression of popular discontent in a country whose conditions provide many reasons for anger, where unemployment exceeds 30%, hunger is rampant, and inequality is exacerbated. However, it turned out that it was not a spontaneous social revolution, but rather riots driven by political hands.
This is what the South African journalist writer William Shawky sees in an article in the American New York Times, in which he sheds light on the turmoil in his country and its relationship to the ruling against former President Jacob Zuma and tries to anticipate its consequences.
The writer notes that after Zuma was arrested on July 7 to serve a 15-month prison sentence for contempt of court, his supporters and allies vowed to make the country impunity, and they succeeded in doing so through a campaign of sabotage the economy they coordinated through social networks.
Shawky says that the rainbow nation, which is supposed to be a beacon of reconciliation, is now collapsing, and that what happened in the past weeks revealed a bleak truth about South Africa, where it showed the deep rot that nests in the country’s social and political system, coupled with racial tension and mistrust between the sects of society and injustice. The corruption that has surfaced with recent events.
The roots of the conflict
The writer explains that the ruling African National Congress is at the heart of the current political conflict in the country. The party that led South Africa to democracy for 27 years, and carried the hopes of millions of citizens, has now become a source of great division as a devastating battle is taking place over its leadership, and the whole country has become an arena for those battle.
He believes that the forces loyal to former President Zuma are leading a struggle for control of the party, which enjoys strong popular support and electoral immunity that gave it its reputation as a liberation party.
The forces that seek to control the party, write the writer, consist of politicians seeking to return to the privileged positions they once enjoyed under Zuma.
The writer said that Zuma changed the equation that governed the politics of the party, which had long pursued a policy of encouraging the rise of the black elite, but during Zuma's presidency, starting in 2009, that equation changed and state positions became the main avenue for opportunity and enrichment rather than the market.
William Shawky concluded his article that there is an uncomfortable calm in the country now, and no one knows how long it will last, but what is certain is that the past few weeks have definitively dispelled many illusions about South Africa, including the prevailing delusion that it is more peaceful and developed than its African neighbors And that its future inevitably tends towards good and victory, but the reality, while we are waiting for the next outbreak of violence, seems uglier than that.