The double-edged symbolism of Mbeki on the shoulders of white rugby victors
LUCY BERESFORD IN JOHANNESBURG South Africa is buzzing — and not just in the afterglow of victory in the Rugby World Cup. Johannesburg, built in the 1880s on the back of mineral excavation, is experiencing a contemporary form of gold rush. At the gleaming international airport, yuppies of every hue shape deals on their laptops. A ride into town takes you past shopping malls almost as large as the gold dumps on the outskirts, into a city of building sites. Another sports fixture, the 2010 soccer World Cup which South Africa will host, is often touted as the trigger for this construction boom, but much of it would clearly have happened anyway.
Parts of the smart northern suburbs are gridlocked by road-closures related to the building of Gautrain — a 25 billion rand (£1.8 billion) rapid rail network connecting Pretoria and Johannesburg with the airport and the upmarket shopping district of Sandton. Target passengers for this system are not the many thousands who daily criss-cross the city in packed `combi' taxis: price-wise, Gautrain is aimed at the affluent and 'commercially active', and tourists. The project's co-ordinators are at pains to point out that, while they hope to have everything operational in time for the soccer tournament, the project does not revolve around one sporting event — a comment sports-mad South Africans might find utterly incomprehensible.
But there is Trouble in Paradise. Dinnerparty talk in the leafy suburbs is of condoms as well as rugby. Twenty million condoms, to be precise, which had to be recalled for being potentially defective. Men prodding the boerewors around the braai joke about the story. But this being South Africa, the bawdiness masks unease. The country has one of the world's highest HIV infection rates, with up to 1,000 Aids-related deaths per day. Free condom distribution should be a welcome, visible sign that the government understands the condition. But the messages emanating from the Health Department are, to say the least, mixed. The health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, is under siege from the media — and not just for allegations of alcoholism, a criminal record in Botswana, and queue-jumping for a new liver. Her unorthodox suggestions for treating Aids, such as drinking beetroot juice, have also caused controversy — although a recent announcement of clinical trials on the efficacy of the Sutherlandia plant in preventing HIV from developing into full-blown Aids has been cautiously welcomed by the medical profession.
So the government can be applauded for recalling the condoms, as well as seeking to prosecute the manufacturer and arrest the standards official accused of waving them through in return for bribes. But 'Condomgate' is also seen as a reflection of the culture of government. President Thabo Mbeki has long astonished the world by his refusal to acknowledge the causes of Aids, and his endorsement of Tshabalala-Msimang came as her popular deputy was fired for speaking out against the party line. 'Dr Beetroot' is one of Mbeki's closest political allies at a time when a power struggle over the choice of his successor as party leader in December is revealing deep divisions within the ANC.
If it's not condoms, it's crime which preoccupies hearts and minds. Whether you speak to the salesgirls at Woolworths, the white advocate, or the black businessman travelling to Nelspruit to pitch for a mobile phone contract, fear is a common theme. Recent research has shown that only one in five South Africans trust other race groups. According to Interpol, South Africa has the highest murder rate in the world: 19,202 people in the year to March 2007. The latest scare has been the targeting of mothers on the school run, who are followed in their cars and held up at gunpoint. Most mothers — if they talk of this at all — speak in code, for fear of distressing their children. But now they find their children chatting about it in the playground. The age of innocence is disappearing.
Part of the problem is the residual anger felt by many blacks. On the positive side, jobs are being created, and one in six people is now self-employed; enlightened companies such as South African Breweries and non-profit organisations such as TechnoServe have promoted successful development programmes for black entrepreneurs. But the latest figures still put black unemployment at between 25 and 40 per cent. The government's 'black economic empowerment' policy is seen as too passive, and on the recent 30th anniversary of the murder of the 'black consciousness' activist Steve Biko, today's leaders face accusations of neglecting the very people Biko championed. Blacks across the country cheered on the predominantly white rugby team, but the government is keen for this to be the last 'non-representative team' at any World Cup.
Wearing my psychotherapist's hat, I diagnose a certain bipolarity to the rainbow nation's mood: mania illustrated by inflation above 6 per cent, a crop of stylish delis across town selling meringues the size of footballs, and the odd Porsche on the road; but also depression at the violent crime rate, the emergence of road-rage, the stories of teachers being stabbed by pupils.
Johannesburg is still, in some sense, a frontier city. Its people want to remain upbeat and look to the future. Soweto, township home to the 1976 riots that mobilised the anti-apartheid movement, now hosts an annual wine festival. Over 4,200 people came recently to the third such event, where visitors like me sampled 800 wines from over 100 estates across South Africa. But as with many bipolar sufferers, there is evidence of selfsabotage. For many the pace of change is too slow, too parochial, too reminiscent of a sanctions-based economy. Johannesburg has retained its pioneering spirit, but it lacks global competitiveness: muddled government strategy in, for example, international bandwidth provision is hampering involvement in new industries such as call centres.
South Africa is a sophisticated nation grappling with complex issues centred on more than just race — problems that won't be resolved by the double-edged symbolism of Thabo Mbeki being carried high on the shoulders of white rugby players, holding aloft the Webb Ellis trophy. Johannesburg's original gold rush ended a century ago: the city needs to wake up to the multicoloured riches still waiting to be mined.
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