Ebrahim Harvey
Johannesburg - ‘African’ people, as they were classified under apartheid, the vast majority of the total population, are still right at the bottom of South African society, in every respect. Whether it is about jobs, housing, health, basic services and education that is still the defining social reality 26 years after the 1994 democratic breakthrough.
Study the situation in the US after various democratic and civil rights were extended to black people and enshrined in legislation in the 1960s and 70s and you will find that there too it is black people who are materially and socially the worse off in the growing social socio-economic crisis.
The same set of realities of unemployment, poverty and related social miseries confronting black people especially can also be found in every European country.
The only big difference is that whereas African people are the overwhelming majority in South Africa they are demographically in the minority in all those countries. And though population statistics are important, what made the struggles of black people (especially African and coloured communities) in this country more militant and combustible, especially over the past decade, is that the stark lack of social justice in every conceivable respect occurred among the vast majority of the population.
Today, especially in the wake of social consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, the public face of growing unemployment, poverty and related social miseries is still overwhelmingly African. All statistical indications in purportedly "post-apartheid" South Africa bears eloquent and irrefutable testimony to that fact and when we dig further we will find that it is particularly African women who bear the brunt of crushing poverty and unemployment, especially in rural areas.
But the picture of these women in townships in the cities, such as Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, is not very different these days, especially after the devastating impact of Covid-19. These sociological facts has ruptured and destroyed any decent and progressive notion of "a better life for all", the mantra the ANC government concocted in earlier years during election time.
However, in the face of the subsequent perpetuated and in many respects deepened and worsened black poverty and unemployment, it is of interest to see how that election mantra of the ANC declined from the 2009 elections. In other words, the palpable failures by the ANC to deliver on the electoral promises made is the source of the unstoppable and increasingly fierce protests over the past decade in black townships.
However, it is the depressing and worsening lot of African women particularly which stands out as the biggest indictment of ANC rule since 1994. They still bear the brunt, as they did under apartheid, of mass unemployment and poverty in this country, a fact which is not ventilated enough in our discourses and debates, especially when it is arguably our biggest failure and embarrassment over this period. However, it is not only the scandalously neglected interests and needs of particularly poor African women which is most conspicuous in our politics. No, what is the greatest political tragedy about the conditions of these women is the indisputable fact that the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) has miserably failed them.
An organisation which was meant to cater for and dedicated to the interests and needs of particularly African women has in fact been a scandalous failure in post-apartheid South Africa. Instead the leadership of the ANCWL is little more than a pliant appendage of elitist ANC rule since 1994, sucked instead into its vortex of business and related interests and as a result very distant from the masses of impoverished and unhappy African women in townships.
The fact, however, is that there has been no political organisation which has truly represented the interests and needs of these women since 1994. Arguably, every opposition party in Parliament has to a greater or lesser degree neglected the interests of these women, especially since they represent the biggest single demographic category, alongside the youth, and as a result wield enormous potential power in our electoral politics.
While the ANC and its opposition parties spend much time during election rallies to mobilise these women to vote for them, none of them aim at and spend much time organising these women in their own interests.
One example should suffice for now: the sorely negative impacts prepaid water meters have had on the lives of black working-class women in townships since they were first introduced in the early 2000s.
While there have been many huge and combustible protests by these women against these meters, not once did the ANCWL come out in open and active solidarity with them. I argue that no other group in our society, for various reasons, needs and uses water as much as these women do. But wherever these meters have been installed or rather imposed against the wishes of residents by local authorities, there is no water today unless you are registered as an indigent, which qualifies you for a limited amount of "free" water.
Access to adequate amounts of water is arguably the most important human right in our Constitution, even more than electricity. But in the early 2000s ANC-controlled municipalities were duped into not only accepting the "advice" of officials and consultants of the World Bank and multinational water companies, seeking new markets, but also into actively marketing and promoting them in our media.
Unfortunately, the struggles by social movements against these meters in the 2000s were defeated by the combined might of local authorities and suppressive police action in many black townships. In Phiri, Soweto, community opposition was so fierce that they had to call in the army at one stage to enable Johannesburg Water to forcefully complete the installation of these meters.
* Ebrahim Harvey is a political writer, analyst and author. His PhD is a study of the impacts which prepaid water meters had on poor households in Phiri, Soweto.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.