JOHANNESBURG — During the apartheid era, the whites who governed South Africa justified their grip on power by claiming black majority rule would plunge the country into chaos and tribal bloodshed and open the door to communism.
So far, history has confounded them. Fifteen years after Nelson Mandela became president, the country is heading into its fourth parliamentary election Wednesday, and next month it will get its fourth post-apartheid president.
The rhetoric sometimes gets overheated and the allegations of fraud and corruption fly freely, but what’s extraordinary in this democracy of nearly 50 million people is that politics have become ordinary.
The ruling African National Congress, in power since the first multiracial election in 1994, is assured of a sweeping victory Wednesday but is no longer the monolith it was. The emergence of a faction called the Congress of the People has placed the ANC’s two-thirds majority in parliament on a knife edge, according to opinion polls. Without it, the ANC won’t be able to enact major budgetary and other legislation unchallenged.
The math takes on added weight this time because next month South Africa will get a new president, probably Jacob Zuma, who is backed by ANC leftists, communists and trade unions. A two-thirds majority would be a big help to these groups, which would like to water down the market-oriented policies of Mandela and his successor, Thabo Mbeki.
“The emergence of COPE has reinvigorated South African politics,” says Anton Harber, a journalism professor and columnist. The ANC “fears the extent of their majority could be severely dented.”
Although often accused of failing to deliver as much as it promised when it came to power, the ANC has much to be proud of. Since 1994, more than 3 million houses have been built for 14 million people. The economy has grown at an unprecedented 5 percent in the past three years, and next year comes a crowning act of international respect when South Africa hosts the soccer World Cup.
