South Africa: The New South Africa

Despite obstacles and delays, an interim constitution was completed in 1993, ending nearly three centuries of white rule in South Africa and marking the end of white-minority rule on the African continent. A 32-member multiparty transitional government council was formed with blacks in the majority. In Apr., 1994, days after the Inkatha Freedom party ended an electoral boycott, the republic's first multiracial election was held. The ANC won an overwhelming victory, and Nelson Mandela became president. South Africa rejoined the Commonwealth in 1994 and also relinquished its last hold in Namibia, ceding the exclave of Walvis Bay.

In 1994 and 1995 the last vestiges of apartheid were dismantled, and a new national constitution was approved and adopted in May, 1996. It provided for a strong presidency and eliminated provisions guaranteeing white-led and other minority parties representation in the government. De Klerk and the National party supported the new charter, despite disagreement over some provisions; Inkatha followers had walked out of constitutional talks and did not participate in voting on the new constitution. Shortly afterward, de Klerk and the National party quit the national unity government to become part of the opposition, after 1998 as the New National party. The new government faced the daunting task of trying to address the inequities produced by decades of apartheid while promoting privatization and a favorable investment climate.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996–2003), headed by Archbishop Tutu, sought to establish the truth about atrocities committed during the country's apartheid era, while avoiding the expense and divisiveness of trials. The commission's final report said the apartheid government had institutionalized violence in its fight against racial equality but was also critical of most of the groups involved in the liberation struggle, including the ANC. By the end of the 1990s, many blacks had entered the middle class, often through government jobs. Unemployment remained critically high, however, and crime and labor unrest were on the rise. In the 1999 elections Thabo Mbeki, who had succeeded Mandela as head of the ANC, led the party to a landslide victory and became South Africa's new president. The liberal Democratic party became the leading opposition party, and in 2000 it joined with the New National party to form the Democratic Alliance (DA). That coalition, however, survived only until late 2001, when the New National party left it to form a coalition with the ANC.

The end of apartheid led as well to a reemergence of South Africa on the international stage, particularly in Africa. The country has become active in the African Union (the successor of the Organization of African Unity) and the nonaligned movement, and has helped broker peace agreements in strife-torn Burundi (2001) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2002). In Apr., 2002, the small Federal Alliance party joined the Democratic party in the Democratic Alliance; and in Nov., 2003, the Alliance agreed to form a coalition with Inkatha against the ANC in the 2004 elections. AIDS has become a significant health problem in South Africa, and in late 2003 the government finally agreed to provide a comprehension anti-AIDS prevention and treatment program through the public health system.

Parliamentary elections in Apr., 2004, resulted in a resounding victory for the ANC, which won nearly 70% of the vote; the DA remained the largest opposition party and increased its share of the vote. The new parliament subsequently reelected President Mbeki. As a result of its poor showing, the New National party merged with the ANC, and voted to disband in Apr., 2005. In June, Mbeki dismissed Deputy President Jacob Zuma after Zuma's financial adviser was convicted of paying the deputy president bribes. The ANC, however, refused to remove Zuma from his deputy party leadership post, even after he was arraigned on corruption charges later in the month; he was formally indicted in November. In Dec., 2005, Zuma was also charged with rape in an unrelated case, and suspended his participation in the ANC leadership for the duration of that case. After his acquittal on the rape charge in May, 2006, he resumed his ANC duties; the corruption case was dismissed in Sept., 2006, for procedural reasons. Zuma was elected head of the ANC in Dec., 2007, defeating Mbeki; the result reflected widespread unhappiness with South Africa's president within the ANC. In May, 2008, there were a series of attacks on foreigners in various South African cities and towns, apparently sparked by frustrationss over economic issues; thousands of immigrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Nigeria were displaced and many fled South Africa.

In Sept., 2008, a judge again dismissed (for procedural reasons) the renewed corruption case against Zuma, but the trial judge also stated that it appeared that Mbeki's government had interfered with the prosecution of Zuma for political reasons. Although Mbeki strongly denied that accusation, the ANC called for him to resign as president and he did. Kgalema Motlanthe, the ANC's deputy leader and a Zuma ally, was elected as South Africa's interim president. The decision in the Zuma case was overturned on appeal in Jan., 2009, and the charges were dropped three months later, but in 2017 the country's appeals court ruled, in a case brought by the opposition, the Zuma should stand trial. He was convicted on contempt charges related to the text in July 2021, and ordered to serve 15 months in prison; Zuma was released on medical parole in September, but in mid-December a judge ordered that he must return to prison to serve out his term.

In the Apr., 2009, National Assembly elections the ANC again won by a landslide, but it narrowly failed to secure a two-thirds majority, which would have enabled it to amend the constitution without support from another party. The DA, which again increased its share of the vote, remained the largest opposition party, and the Congress of the People (COPE), formed by ANC members who left the party after Mbeki resigned the presidency, placed a distant third. The victory assured Zuma's election as president by the legislature, which occurred the following month. In July, as South Africa suffered through its worst recession in some two decades, township protests against poor living conditions and inadequate services turned violent in a number of provinces. The murder of Eugene Terreblanche, a white supremist leader, by two black farmhands in Apr., 2010, raised fears that the incident would spark racial violence.

The important mining industry was affected by strikes and violence in the second half of 2012 that began in part as a conflict between two competing labor unions; the labor unrest in the mining industry continued into 2014. A Mar., 2014, anticorruption report that ordered Zuma to repay the government for opulent property improvements that were not an appropriate part of the security upgrade of his private home did not significantly affect the results of the May, 2014, national elections in which the ANC run 62% of the vote. The DA again increased its share of the vote and remained the largest opposition party, and Julius Malema's leftist Economic Freedom Fighters placed third.

Zuma subsequently failed to make restitution as ordered in the anticorruption report, and in Mar., 2016, the constitutional court ruled he had violated the constitution and ordered him to repay the government. A move to impeach Zuma was defeated by ANC lawmakers, but in Dec., 2017, the court ruled the the parliament had failed to properly investigate Zuma. In the country's local elections in August, the ANC for the first time failed to win a majority in a number of large metropolitan municipalities outside Western Cape prov., and its share of the vote fell below 60% (to 56%). Zuma's removal in Mar., 2017, of Pravin Gordhan, regarded as an advocate of fiscal responsibility, as finance minister sparked criticism from many aligned with the ANC and in the opposition.

In August, Zuma survived his sixth no-confidence vote in parliament, but by a much narrower margin than before. Following the election in Dec., 2018, of Cyril Ramaphosa, the country's deputy president, to succeed Zuma as ANC leader, Zuma lost support from ANC leaders, and in Feb., 2018, he resigned as president under pressure from the ANC. Ramaphosa was then elected president of South Africa. In the parliamentary elections of May, 2019, the ANC again won (with 57.5%), and Ramaphosa was subsequently reelected president. In Ramaphosa's second term, his government increased its focus on fighting political corruption. In 2020 the country was the worst hit nation in Africa by COVID-19, accounting for two fifths of the continent's cases. In fall 2021, the Omicron variant of COVID was first identified in the country and rapidly spread around the world.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• The New South Africa
• A Regime Unravels
• The Republic of South Africa and Racial Strife
• National Party Ascendancy and Apartheid
• The Union of South Africa
• Natural Riches and British Victory
• The British and the Boers
• Colonialism and African-European Relations
• Early History
• Government
• Economy
• People
• Political Geography
• Physical Geography
• Bibliography

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