The Zuma administration ran South Africa’s economy into the ground. His successor faces a huge task in fixing it
evening in Soweto there are few better places than Chaf Pozi. Beers are flowing, meat is grilling and patrons are dancing with a sense of rhythm and abandon that is alien to a journalist from. It is an exhilarating spectacle. It is also a revealing one, for it hints at progress made by South Africa in the 25 years since the end of apartheid, the brutal system of white rule formally established in 1948.
That is the good news. The bad news is that most of the progress made since 1994 came before 2009. It was then that Jacob Zuma began his nine-year reign as president, during which time the thuggish kleptocrat and his cronies ransacked state-owned enterprises , plundered local and provincial governments, and ravaged the law-enforcement institutions set up to curb such looting.
Nearly half of South Africans were born after the end of apartheid—the so-called “born free” generation—and frustration with democracy is often sharpest among the young. At Chaf Pozi restaurant, plenty of that group have gripes. “There were all these promises made to us, but not enough has been done for black people,” says Lesedi Kgasago. “In 1993 you and I would not be having a beer and discussing politics—that’s a huge change,” says Sechaba Nkitseng.
, Cyril Ramaphosa succeeded his rival. The 66-year-old had long sought the top job. As a teenager in Soweto he told his flabbergasted father that he would one day be president. And there is probably no one with as much experience in the main arenas of South African life.
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