00:00 1994. Nelson Mandela becomes South Africa's first black president and the African National
00:06 Congress comes to power. It's the beginning of hope for reconciliation between communities
00:11 and a chance to address inequality. During the election, the ANC published a manifesto
00:17 setting out its objectives for South Africa. Among the ambitions outlined, the party aimed
00:22 for a democratic society based on equality, non-racialism and non-sexism, an economy which
00:27 grows through providing jobs, housing and education, and a peaceful and secure environment
00:32 in which people can live without fear. After 30 years in power, what's the party's record?
00:38 According to a report published by the World Bank in 2022, South Africa has one of the
00:42 highest and most persistent levels of inequality in the world.
00:46 "Policies such as affirmative action, black economic empowerment, affirmative procurement
00:53 had a modicum of success. They also had a weakness. And that weakness was that the empowerment
01:00 policies appeared to have benefited only a particular portion of society, a small coterie
01:07 of people." Another divisive issue in South Africa is land
01:11 redistribution. Under President Jacob Zuma, the government launched an agrarian reform
01:15 aimed at redistributing a portion of arable land to black farmers and the descendants
01:20 of those dispossessed of their land under the colonial and apartheid regimes. But according
01:25 to experts, this promise has not been kept. South Africa's economy is also in trouble.
01:31 "You have a private sector which is not terribly well regulated. It's regulated in a way in
01:37 which it makes it difficult to do business on the one hand. On the other hand, progressive
01:44 as some of this regulatory infrastructure is, it is very hard to police. And because
01:49 it is not being policed, people are taking the gap and using the opportunity to exploit
01:53 the holes in the system." The unemployment rate in the Rainbow Nation
01:57 is over 30 percent, the highest in the world. Another major problem is corruption. The ANC
02:03 has been plagued by corruption scandals over the years. Jacob Zuma led South Africa from
02:07 2009 to 2018 and has been accused of overseeing a period of endemic corruption crystallized
02:14 by the Gupta affair. For the first time since 1994, the ANC leadership
02:18 is being challenged and may fall below 50 percent, forcing the party to form a coalition
02:24 to stay in government.
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