It produced one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century. It fought a violent race-based dictatorship and replaced it with the most liberal constitution the world has ever known. Its song, a poignant Christian hymn, became South Africa’s national anthem. Since it came to power in 1994, about two thirds of South Africans vote for it. Yet now, as it lavishly celebrates its 100th birthday this week, it has a reputation for corruption and incompetence. So whatever happened to South Africa’s African National Congress?
The ANC was formed as the Native National Congress by urban middle-class Africans and chiefs to protect and promote African interests after the Boer War, when peace between Boers and the British came at the price of African rights to own property and vote. At this stage ANC leaders were more concerned with protecting their own rights than representing the masses.
Quite soon the ANC had to face the dilemma: was it to fight for black representation within the existing political system or for a more just political and economic system for all? After forging an alliance with the South African Communist party in 1953, it chose the latter course, and became a protégé of Russia and the Communist bloc, its language borrowed from Moscow. The ANC began to talk about smashing the apartheid state and capitalism. Banned in 1960, its leadership was imprisoned or fled abroad, though it subsisted in the minds of black South Africans as a symbol of hope and resistance.
The fall of the Berlin Wall came as a shock to the ANC. Many saw it as a victory for apartheid’s allies. In fact it was the opposite. Britain and the US, freed from the Communist threat, could end their protection of apartheid South Africa.
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