OP-ED: Writing the 2019 Elections: Apartheid is dead, long live capitalism By Ismail Lagardien
For the best part of the past 25 years, South African politics, at least as framed by electoral politicking, has been about addressing the legacies of apartheid, with rewarding the legatees of that iniquitous system with a better material life, and restoring their dignity. These processes have, for the most part, been successful, though they remain by no means complete.
Stark inequalities remain, and very many of them are consistent with the racial divide of past politics. But there’s a new game in town. It goes something like this: apartheid is dead, and depending on where you sit or stand, capitalism is either the solution to all the country’s woes, or the problem. This seems like a veritable attempt at recovering ideological traditions lost in the carnage of 20century ideological conflicts.
The South African Capitalist Party , sat on the far right of a simple political spectrum, has introduced a distinctly ultra-conservative capitalism into South African politics. According to the ZACP, increased vertical and horizontal expansion of capitalism – more capitalism in more places – would solve all the country’s problems. Way across, on the left, there is the Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party , and they, too, have invoked the spectre of capitalism.
The capitalists and the communists want the country to make a decision on 8 May based on the 20th century’s normality where both claim to have the answer to all society’s problems, never mind the specificities of apartheid’s iniquities. While the SRWP is fairly predictable – nationalise everything, overthrow capitalism, establish a dictatorship of the proletariat – one may be forgiven for thinking that the ZACP has somehow shaken off the cruel hangover of a Reaganite bacchanalia.
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