With apartheid fading, South Africa now struggles with greed

By LEON MARSHALL
KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Money, or rather the lust for it, is rapidly developing into the new bugbear of South African public life now that apartheid is starting to fade.
The country is only 10 years into all-race democracy, but there is hardly anything left of the white political bastion that for ages propped up minority rule and racial segregation. The successors in title of the old apartheid regime have completed the political chapter of the saga by slipping meekly into the fold of the now ruling African National Congress, which they once detested as the epitome of evil.
What still stands firmly, and rather dangerously so, is the economic differentiation that developed during the years of white domination. All of it may not be the proceeds of apartheid, even indirectly, but it is widely understood, not least by whites themselves, that there has to be a redistribution of wealth if the country is to move forward safely.
Elitist vultures
Unfortunately a new kind of elitism has entered the equation. Instead of ownership of the economy getting spread downward, to the broad mass of black people, a relatively small circle of individuals are making the pickings.
It does not look nice, especially when contrasted with political talk about a new patriotism and a unity that have come to replace the selfishness and divisions of apartheid.
Already citizens are being treated daily to evidence in a high-court corruption case where embarrassing details keep coming up about the financial affairs of the country's deputy president, Jacob Zuma.
The case is about alleged corrupt dealings regarding a multi-billion arms deal, the charge being that money went Zuma's way in return for using his influence to facilitate the deal.
The evidence is showing up the deputy president as a man with expensive tastes who habitually lives beyond his means. And he is supposed to be in charge of South Africa's moral regeneration campaign, instituted as a way of reducing rampant crime and instilling a new social ethic after the disruptions of the anti-apartheid struggle.
But more insidious has been the process whereby a small group of struggle leaders have been turning into multi-millionaires from deals supposed to contribute to racial equity in business.
Criticism
As the main way in which much of big (formerly white) business has been transforming itself, it has been drawing criticism even from the ruling ANC's alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party.
But it is nothing compared to the reaction drawn by a share transaction involving the former telecommunications parastatal (company or agency owned or controlled wholly or partly by the government known) as Telkom.
Bidders for the stake being sold by a foreign-owned company of which U.S.-based SBC Communications is a part owner, include a former senior official in the state communications ministry. The facilitator of the deal is head of the presidency in the ANC and a senior adviser of President Thabo Mbeki.
This, said Congress of South African Trade Unions, was the worst example of empowerment. Some described it as a bad case of cronyism.
Not so, said Smuts Ngonyama, the presidential adviser. "We are doing this for the good of the country. It was an open bid and a black broad-based group bought back assets which should be in the hands of South Africans."
But when asked about the millions he stands to make as a facilitator of the deal, he said: "I did not struggle to be poor."
The question is what this new elitism must look like in the eyes of the all too many for whom the struggle continues.
X Leon Marshall is a veteran journalist in Johannesburg, South Africa. Knight Ridder/Tribune.