In S. Africa, a new struggle

The Baltimore Sun

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa --Five years ago, Stanford Makashule Gana quit the African National Congress, the storied anti-apartheid movement of Nelson Mandela that has come to dominate politics and government in South Africa.

It was a brave move. But then the 18-year-old college student did something even bolder for a poor, black villager: He joined the Democratic Alliance, the small but vociferous opposition often dismissed as the "white party."

"Coconut," he vividly recalls party comrades calling him. "Sellout." His family feared that the decision could affect his future, since friends of the ANC run every public agency and many companies. They were also hurt. Gana's family, after all, had expected him to carry forward the ANC torch his parents' generation held in the 1980s-era struggle against white minority rule.

But Gana hasn't wavered. "The apartheid war is won," he said recently. "Now it's another struggle."

New generation

Gana is part of a new generation questioning the dominance of the ANC. They are "Mandela's Children," the post-apartheid youth who have come of age since Mandela's 1994 election as president ushered in an era of freedom. Without their parents' emotional ties to the ANC or bitter apartheid memories, these young adults seem more likely to vote on issues rather than an unquestioned loyalty to the ANC. And that could favor other parties, especially as the black middle class expands.

Over time, their votes could help turn South Africa into a true multiparty democracy by reshaping an electoral landscape that has seen the ANC claim a whopping 70 percent of the national vote.

So Gana is working hard to recruit young people to get behind the DA, which advocates individual rights and transparent government. He feels that the ANC has lost its way because of corruption and misguided priorities. And policies aside, he does not believe in the viability of a one-party democracy.

Political experts see Gana's quest - and therefore the DA's - as an uphill climb in a country that is defined by race-based politics and which has an 80 percent black majority. Steven Friedman of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa suspects that the DA has reached its peak popularity with 12.4 percent of the vote in 2004 and doubts that young blacks will join in large numbers.

Instead, he predicts, the ANC and its unwieldy alliance with the Communists and labor unions will split to form a more viable opposition.

But Aubrey Matshiqi, an analyst with the Center for Policy Studies in Johannesburg, says for many young blacks, apartheid is "a distant memory, or not even a memory at all." The Democratic Alliance could benefit, he said, if it bolsters talk of equal opportunity with support for policies such as affirmative action to level the playing field.

Divining the politics of Mandela's Children is not easy, given the scant polling here. Gana puts little stock in pundits and polls. For him, the mission must be tackled one person at a time, face to face. On weekends, when he is off duty from his job as a software tester, he often goes recruiting. That is what he did one recent Saturday at the University of Johannesburg.

'It's up to me'

The first thing you notice about Stanford Gana is the toothy smile that seems to stretch wider than his face. Next are the quarterback-size hands. And then, once he turns off the hip-hop and steps out of his shiny white Volkswagen Polo, his lanky 6-foot-2 frame.

Pulling up to an all-male dormitory, he employed all those qualities to complement his forceful arguments. Even with exams around the corner, students paused to discuss politics with him.

"It's up to me to shape the country," he told one group in his deep voice. "If I don't speak up for what I believe in, I won't be doing justice to myself or the country."

For over two hours, Gana held court along with two other black DA members. He insisted that the ANC's power had fostered corruption and a lack of accountability in delivering basic public services. Affirmative action might be fine, he said, but to him that merely means favoring a black candidate over an equally qualified white person, not putting race ahead of qualifications.

He argued that the ruling party had ignored the seriousness of crime, discouraged public debate on issues and enriched cronies in "black empowerment" business deals.

The DA, he assured the students, would do better.

Some were openly dismissive. Management student Moiloa Makwetla, 23, said the ANC was not as corrupt or out of touch as Gana suggested. He said the party's officeholders had made progress in areas like housing and crime, but that it takes time.

"My support is not emotional," Makwetla, a member of the ANC Youth League, said later. "I think the ANC will perform for a hundred years to come."

Back in his car, hip-hop blaring once again from the speakers, Gana assessed the outing.

"I've done something," he said. "We know who to call next time we go there. The foundation is laid. We must just build it up."

When he went off to college, at the age of 16, Gana expected to build on the massive foundation laid by the African National Congress.

He grew up in a pro-ANC village surrounded by party stalwarts, none more so than his uncle, Clifford Gana. During the 1980s, Clifford was involved in underground units of the ANC, then banned by the white government. In an interview at his family's home, he says he even took part in a sabotage operation carried out by the party's armed wing.

It was Clifford who got 8-year-old Stanford hooked on the party in 1991, a heady time after Mandela's release from prison after 27 years. Precocious Stanford read all the ANC newsletters his uncle brought back from college, with their predictions of a better life for the black majority.

His transformation

In 2000, when Gana reached the University of Limpopo on a government student loan, he jumped into campus politics. At the time, he gave the ANC good marks for its first half-dozen years in power, as it shed its socialist roots and embraced capitalism. "I thought they'd done fairly well under the circumstances," he recalled.

But over the next two years he underwent a transformation. He thought valuable resources went to waste under a multibillion-dollar arms deal put through by President Thabo Mbeki's administration. He felt that corruption had grown worse than under Mandela. He opposed the government's support of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance began to appeal. A budding politics wonk, he would watch Parliament live on television and liked what DA members had to say. That in turn got him interested in European-style liberalism, with its focus on individual rights and equal opportunities. He came to embrace the idea that the state could make the biggest impact by providing quality schools and a vibrant economy.

In early 2002, he signed on with the DA. Today he chairs the DA Youth branch in inner-city Johannesburg, an area that is home to many low-income blacks.

Most DA voters may be white, but a majority of the party's youth activists are now black, says Thomas Walters, a Johannesburg city councilor. He called that a good sign.

But Walters, 31, grew cautious when asked how much of a boon the young post-apartheid generation represents for his party. "In New York, what is the average Republican's chances of getting elected in Harlem? Very bad."

The National Party conditioned South Africans to think in racial terms, he said. Elected by the white minority in 1948, the Nats began systematically implementing oppressive apartheid laws that spanned 40 years. That legacy makes it harder for the DA to connect with the electorate on issues and philosophy. For instance, he said, many black small-business owners should be a natural fit with the party because they dislike red tape.

"It's not that we don't have a natural support base," Walters said, "but it's a matter of changing the emotional identification."

The party's challenge was illustrated by the sparse turnout at a low-cost fundraiser held one Saturday morning in a rough section of Johannesburg. From the spotlit stage, Gana looked out at 40 mostly young faces and a sea of empty seats as he delivered a brief talk on crime and education.

Meanwhile, the ANC Youth League, where Mandela and other party luminaries started over 50 years ago, sees itself as a powerful force. It is energetically pushing the party's No. 2, Jacob Zuma, as the next president of the ANC, and by extension, of South Africa.

Family legacy

The cows were still on the loose when Gana arrived at his rural village, Lefara. Spooked by their new corral, the three animals ran around his family's dusty front yard as he and a half-dozen relatives gave chase.

The occasion for the five-hour drive north from Johannesburg was his brother's 21st birthday, and the party was in full swing as the sun set. A clutch of young men sipped beer and shouted over the thump of the stereo, not far from the barrels where the family stores water hauled from a distant source.

Asked about politics, one reveler, 18-year-old Formant Mashele, lamented the ruling party's track record, including a failure to provide piped water and electricity to villages like this one.

"I do like the ANC, but it is not functioning well," he said. "Before we vote, they promise they will bring us everything, but now they are not bringing it to us."

A highlight of every trip home for Gana is seeing his 37-year-old Uncle Clifford, rounder and shorter but with a high-watt smile of his own. From his childhood, Gana's father had little to do with him, and his mother died of tuberculosis two years ago at 43. His uncle, a teacher with a master's degree in public administration, is a kind of father figure.

Clifford Gana remains a steadfast ANC supporter, and his nephew's defection still pains him five years later. "There was this family kind of thing that this boy was going to take the torch forward," he said. "He was quite promising."

Despite his loyalty to the party, he agrees that the country needs a strong opposition "to push the ANC to deliver, to do the right thing." He just does not think the Democratic Alliance can play that role, not now. For one thing, he points to the DA's new leader, Helen Zille, who is white.

"Until the DA has got a credible person at the top, somebody who will be seen to be credible in terms of the struggle, we are not going to have very strong opposition in this country. Really, that will be the bottom line.

"The majority of our people who happen to be black are still working-class, poor, uneducated illiterate, living in the slums and villages like where we are now," he said. "They are beneficiaries of government grants, houses, child grants and all that. All these people benefit from the system, and all these things weren't there before."

The post-apartheid generation, he agreed, will weaken those bonds with the ANC as it comes to be seen more as a political party than a liberation movement. "It will have an effect, definitely. When you talk to young people, they no longer relate to what happened. When you tell them what you went through, they look at you like you're daydreaming."

Gana, for his part, predicts slow but steady gains for the DA. In 12 years, "I'm more than certain we'll have a black leader," he said. He says he hopes to lead the party's nationwide youth operation in a few years.

The night now having grown late, the good-natured political joust came to an end. Instead of exhaustion, Clifford Gana felt energized. His nephew's sharp mind pushes him and freshens his mind. Still, he would never consider joining the DA unless given "a hundred reasons - a hundred valid reasons."

His nephew, a broad grin creasing his face, didn't miss a beat. "I've given you a thousand and one reasons."

scott.calvert@baltsun.com

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