I’m Canadian and grew up in a non-racist society. As a university student in Montreal during the mid-to-late 1960s, I had a left-leaning South African lecturer who explained the crimes against nonwhite people by apartheid and opened my eyes to the 1960 Sharpsville Massacre. However, the US’s Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War protests and upheavals were distracting, and they were so close and top-of-mind. So, events in South Africa were a long way away.
Then, I lived and worked for many years in the UK and Europe, which were largely non-racial, despite some disquiet over refugee immigration, for example, the Caribbean arrivals in the UK evoking Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech or the “temporary” Turkish “Gastarbeiters” (guest workers) in West Germany, many of whom stayed. I knew little about apartheid until I moved to South Africa for a three-year assignment in 1983, well before the demise of the apartheid laws. However, on a short business visit in 1978, I learned about the tragic 1976 Soweto Uprising. I also learned that the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress were supported financially and trained militarily by the Soviet Union.

I lived and worked in South Africa from 1983 until 2023 as a staunch anti-apartheid foreign visitor to the country who experienced the worst of the anti-apartheid struggle news first-hand while managing technology businesses. My family and I were bombarded daily with news of the horrific terrorist events throughout the Struggle period: street and restaurant bombings, executions, etc. And then the transition finally began. On 2 February 1990, the State President of South Africa, F. W. de Klerk, delivered a speech at the opening of the 1990 session of the Parliament of South Africa in Cape Town. In this speech, he announced sweeping reforms that began the negotiated transition from apartheid to constitutional democracy. These reforms included lifting the ban on outlawed political parties, suspending the death sentence, releasing political prisoners, and partially lifting restrictions on the media and detainees. The government released Nelson Mandela from prison on 11 February 1990.

However, the violence didn’t stop in 1990; it got worse. The anti-apartheid struggle was long and painful for all, combatants and private citizens alike. Through the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we learned that 7,000 people died from 1912 to 1989, and 14,000 died between 1990 and 1994. In 1993, my wife could no longer endure life in the country, so she returned to Canada.
The violence continued right up until the 1994 elections. For example, while living just outside the city centre, my daughter and I heard the “Shell House massacre” from our house 2-3 km away from the city centre one month before the 1994 elections. On 28 March 1994, about 20,000 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) supporters marched to the Shell House headquarters of the African National Congress (ANC) in protest against the 1994 elections that the IFP intended to boycott. The ANC guards opened fire, killing nineteen people. That shock was enough for us to whisk our daughter off to further her education in Canada.
I wasn’t directly involved in the struggle. Still, for a while, I was involved with a group of private citizens in an engineering-backed NGO that supported black high school students from the townships before guiding, encouraging and supporting them toward technical and engineering careers. I met Nelson and Winnie Mandela shortly after his release from prison. I shook their hands at a reception sponsored by the NGO.
I experienced the joy of the first democratic elections that brought the ANC and Nelson Mandela to power in 1994. The apartheid system in South Africa was ended through bilateral and multi-party negotiations between 1990 and 1993, for which the last apartheid, President F.W. de Klerk and his successor, Nelson Mandela, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 in recognition for facilitating South Africa’s transition. The negotiations culminated in an interim Constitution in 1993, the new Constitution of 1996, and South Africa’s non-racial South African democratic elections in 1994. Almost 20 million people voted in that first democratic election won by the ANC.

Despite not being a citizen, I developed respect and a strong link with the country and was overjoyed with the process and results of the peaceful and emotive elections. Then, President Nelson Mandela took that joy one step further with his magic. He emerged at the 1995 Rugby World Cup dressed in a South African rugby shirt to award the World Cup to the captain of the South African team – that act was meant to unite the rugby-loving whites and soccer-mad blacks. It worked and was an electrifying moment of unity.
Despite my fearful experiences with the struggle, I loved that beautiful, long-abused, tortured country, which I explored from end to end. I have, therefore, been deeply disappointed with what happened when unscrupulous leaders and managers took over and led the country to what is now a desperate shadow of what they inherited.

After the honeymoon
The post-apartheid South Africa had a new constitution, flag, and black President. Blacks had complete freedom of movement, including in public places like beaches and in urban areas outlawed under apartheid. There were new land ownership rights, voting amendments and freedom of speech. In other words, all South Africans, regardless of race, gender or creed, could finally enjoy normalcy, at least theoretically. Things were looking up for all members of South African society, but the unemployment rate in 1994 was 20%.
Nelson Mandela was President from 1994 to 1999, followed by Thabo Mbeki. They both had progressive and stable governments. The ANC won the 1994 election with 62.6%, the 1999 election with 66.4% and hit its highmark in 2004 at 69.7%. In 2008, ANC internal politics kicked in, and they called on Mbeki to resign to allow his rival and the party’s favoured successor, Jacob Zuma, to follow him as party leader. Zuma was to be voted in as President despite the allegations of corruption against him. Through Mbeki’s autocratic management style and ruthlessness in dealing with his opponents, he outmaneuvered a more popular rival, Cyril Ramaphosa, to assume the Presidency after Nelson Mandela left office in 1999; however, he had angered many within the ANC.
Following Mbeki’s defeat at the 2008 ANC Elective Conference, the ANC deployed Kgalema Motlanthe as South Africa’s third interim President on 25 September 2008. However, he was beaten by Jacob Zuma in 2009. With that change of presidency, South Africa entered a new phase: State Capture.

State Capture
Corruption became a widespread issue across various sectors in South Africa, manifesting in forms such as favouritism, cronyism, nepotism, maladministration, fraud, employment irregularities, bribery, extortion, and procurement irregularities. State Capture is defined by the World Bank as systemic political corruption in which private interests significantly influence a state’s decision-making to its advantage. State capture is the exercise of power by private actors—through control over resources, threat of violence, or other forms of influence—to shape policies or implementation in service of their narrow interest. As most democracies have laws to ensure this does not happen, state capture also involves weakening those laws and neutralizing any enforcing agencies.
A corrupt arms deal finalized by South Africa in 1999, for which Mr Zuma still faces more than 700 criminal charges, is only the most high-profile case of dirty business from that era. However, during Mr. Zuma’s tenure as President, “state capture” arose as a serious crime.
Three brothers of Indian descent, the Guptas, are alleged to be at the centre of this state capture. The business family is accused of cultivating close relations with President Zuma with their own self-enrichment in mind. Both sides deny wrongdoing.
Nearly two presidential terms later, a report in 2016 by former government ombudsman Thuli Madonsela, entitled The State of Capture, detailed alleged manoeuvres by the Guptas to bring the state to heel. Her report, a publication President Zuma tried to stop, alleges that the Guptas sought to influence the appointment of two ministers.

Former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas testified that, with Mr Zuma’s son, Duduzane, present, Ajay Gupta offered him the post of finance minister, along with a bag containing R600,000, about $45,000, an accusation rejected by the other parties. The alleged offer was made in the Guptas’ compound in a glamorous Johannesburg suburb.

Ms Thuli Madonsela’s 355-page report raises several other possible connections between Gupta businesses and potentially beneficial regulatory changes, for example, in the mining sector where the Guptas held state supply contracts. “It appears crimes have been committed,” she concluded. It has been calculated that South Africa’s State Capture episode cost the country R1.5 trillion (US$84 billion) from 2015 to 2019.
State-Owned Enterprises

The next blow to New South Africa was corruption and mismanagement in many of the 108 state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The key ones losing significant amounts of money and providing poor delivery are the utility, Eskom, rail, port and pipeline company Transnet, aerospace and military technology manufacturer Denel, the flag carrier South African Airways, South African Express Airways, the Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and the Nuclear Energy Corporation (NECSA).
Eskom is one of the most extensive power utilities in the world, while South Africa is the most industrialized country in Africa. Demand soared in post-apartheid South Africa, a positive phenomenon driven by rapid economic growth and the extension of coverage to millions of deprived black townships. However, its expansion was not followed up with paced governance. Corruption and mismanagement exacerbated Eskom’s energy crisis, notably during the Jacob Zuma administration and State Capture. Neglect by Eskom staff, sabotage and the activity of criminal syndicates within Eskom with alleged political connections also contributed to ongoing power supply problems, as has corruption within the ruling party itself. For example, ANC investment firm Chancellor House used its political connections and friends inside Eskom at the urging of Hitachi executives to influence the outcome of a R38 billion boiler tender for the new Medupi and Kusile power generation plants in 2007.

Only with power shortages looming in the mid-2000s did the government announce a costly overhaul, including plans for two substantial new power plants aiming to start generating by 2015. However, their construction was beset by spiralling costs, delays and corruption scandals, leading to an energy crisis and load shedding. An ongoing period of widespread national blackouts of electricity supply began in the later months of 2007, towards the end of Thabo Mbeki’s second term as president, and continues to the present. This crisis led to reduced industrial output, severely impacting the economy.
Another victim of mismanagement, corruption, and state capture was Transnet SOC Ltd, the South African rail, port, and pipeline company vital for the nation’s logistics. Mismanagement, underinvestment, and corruption have crippled the operator, causing
traffic chaos and pushing up costs for exporters. Drowning in debt, the company is in constant need of massive bailouts. Rail inefficiencies cost the economy billions, and a turnaround plan involving private partnerships and improved governance is underway, but the road to recovery for Transnet appears long and challenging. Catastrophic’ problems at the freight company mirror those of the stricken Eskom power monopoly. As of August 2024, Transnet has an accumulated debt of R121 billion (US$6.8 billion).

Within a few months ending February 2024, five beleaguered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have recorded financial losses of nearly R10bn. Meanwhile, they received taxpayer-funded bailouts of R280bn in just three years.
At a Financial Times Africa Summit in London on 14 October 2019, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that more than R500 billion ($34 billion) may have been stolen during Zuma’s nine-year tenure, and ‘some people’ say the figure could exceed R1 trillion. Ramaphosa pledged that those responsible for plundering taxpayer funds during his predecessor Jacob Zuma’s nine-year rule would face prosecution. Investors and the public at large will still need convincing.
However, AllAfrica claimed in 2015 that South Africa had lost R700 billion (US$58) from corruption since 1994.
As it has been said, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money.”
The 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) shows that corruption thrives worldwide. It ranks 180 countries and territories around the globe by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, scoring on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). Over two-thirds of countries score below 50 out of 100, which strongly indicates that they have serious corruption problems. The global average is only 43, while most countries have not progressed or declined in the last decade. What is more, 23 countries fell to their lowest scores this year. South Africa scored 41/100 and is ranked 83/180, a change of -2 since 2022. For comparison, Denmark is ranked first, Canada is twelfth, the UK is tied twentieth with France and Austria, and the US is tied twenty-fourth with Barbados.
2024 South African General Election

However, all these financial losses cost the ANC governing party heavily at the polls. The ANC under Nelson Mandela won the 1994 election with 62.6%, the 1999 election with 66.4% and hit its peak in 2004 under Thabo Mbeko at 69.7%. After two elections under Jacob Zuma, it dipped to 57.5% for Cyril Ramphosa’s 2019 election and hit a rock bottom of 40.2% in the 2024 general elections, also under Ramaphosa.
In that last election, the centrist Democratic Alliance (DA) remained in second place with a slight increase to 21.8%. Zuma’s breakaway uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a left-wing populist Zulu party founded 6 months before the election and led by former president Jacob Zuma, came in third place at 14.6%.
Ramaphosa’s ANC was then forced into the Government of National Unity (GNU) coalition with the second-largest DA, the Zulu IFP, the Patriotic Alliance, and several other smaller parties.

The country now has an ANC President (Cyril Ramaphosa), an ANC Deputy President (Paul Mashatile), 32 ministers, and 32 deputy ministers selected from the ample palate of coalition partners, many of whom have no governing experience.
President Ramaphosa has admitted that corruption has wounded South Africa’s democracy and shaken people’s faith in its institutions. “As we consider the outstanding achievements of our democracy, we must be forthright about one of our most significant failings: corruption.” Since Ramaphosa replaced Zuma in 2019, corruption has decreased somewhat. Can Ramaphosa and the Government of National Unity reduce corruption even further and save the country from bankruptcy, financially and morally? Can Ramaohosa and this new government also introduce good governance and alleviate mismanagement, another cause of massive financial and service losses from all dysfunctional government departments?

These are only some of the questions South Africans must persistently drive home to their new coalition government to solve the many issues the country and its citizens bear due to 20 years of mismanagement and corruption. Unemployment has increased from 20% in 1994 to over 32%. Real GDP per Capita has stagnated since 2007. It is all most regrettable. After such a tragic history, the New South Africa deserves to succeed. They have suffered for so long.
I conclude with a recent article by Ismail Lagardien, a South African writer who does an excellent job of conveying the chaos of post-apartheid politics, albeit with some colloquial words and idioms – A shattering ANC – the party’s disintegration started with Zuma and will be finished by Zuma. Hint: “ngonyawo lonwabu” means slowly in Xhosa, and “skollies” are hoodlums in Afrikaans.