The Atlantic

Can a New President Really Solve South Africa's Corruption Problem?

Cyril Ramaphosa has vowed to clean up the country. His early appointments send an ambiguous message about whether he can.
Source: Gianluigi Guercia / Reuters

“South Africa’s Lost Decade,” the Economist called it. Before being shoved from power last month, President Jacob Zuma enriched himself and his patrons while presiding over economic disaster for his citizens. The burden of public debt nearly doubled over the Zuma years. More than one in three working-age South Africans is jobless. Unemployed men turn to crime, tainting South Africa as one of the most unsafe countries on earth, worse than El Salvador, Honduras, or Pakistan.

No wonder the elevation of a new president has excited so much hope among international well-wishers. That new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was described thus by a former British Cabinet secretary: “By far the most impressive South African I ever met in a decade of working with the black independent trade unions that grew into the force that effectively destroyed apartheid from within.” Ramaphosa is widely reputed to have been Nelson Mandela’s preferred successor back when Mandela retired from office in 1999.

Zuma by contrast is a rustic, clownish figure. His , while permitted under South African law, offends urban sensibilities. For by courts—not to welcome into the office of the presidency of a country constitutionally committed to gender equality. Zuma in public funds upon his personal compound near his birth village. Zuma polled poorly among the urban middle class of all races, who inflicted upon his African National Congress a stinging series of defeats in local elections in metropolitan areas. Zuma returned the disdain, most famously in a 2012 speech in which he complained about middle-class blacks who “become too clever.” , “They become the most eloquent in criticizing themselves about their own traditions and everything.”

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic4 min read
When Private Equity Comes for a Public Good
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. In some states, public funds are being poured into t
The Atlantic4 min readAmerican Government
How Democrats Could Disqualify Trump If the Supreme Court Doesn’t
Near the end of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments about whether Colorado could exclude former President Donald Trump from its ballot as an insurrectionist, the attorney representing voters from the state offered a warning to the justices—one evoking

Related