Against All Odds

...Our best bet is to encourage the emergence of a few regional hegemons to spread liberal values...

...Mbeki made only one passing mention of AIDS in his State of the Nation address in early February, and his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, continues to suggest that beetroot, ginger, and other folk remedies are as important as cutting-edge drugs...

...The only monetary blemish is that interest rates remain high— about 11 percent—which economists here attribute to an unwarranted "risk premium" being demanded for South African bonds in leery foreign markets...

...In the township of Imizamo Yethu, south of Cape Town, we met a community leader named Kenny Thokwe, who, as an ANC activist, was in and out of jail during the 1980s...

...If I had, I would no doubt have parroted the prevailing wisdom of sophisticated circles: There goes another one...

...It's time to acknowledge how wrong the naysayers were...

...So do many newspapers...

...A flourishing democracy has taken root in South Africa's rocky soil...

...The most inspiring thing about South Africa is that there seems to be so little rancor...

...A lower court ruled against black squatters who had illegally occupied white-owned farmland, Zimbabwe-style...

...And opponents of the government have no fear of winding up in jail or the morgue...

...We learn to forget yesterday," Thokwe says...

...Instead of redistribution, the government focused on economic growth...

...This prejudice, once limited to the political right, is increasingly prevalent on the left...

...For the foreseeable future South Africa seems destined to be a one-party democracy like India prior to the 1990s or Japan today...

...But it is also the case that Mugabe is popular with ANC militants who like the way he's socked it to whites...

...There was too much history, too much pain and anger...

...The bad news is that the gap between haves and have-nots is the size of the Kalahari Desert...

...Those problems are very real, but so is South Africa's progress...

...They are all selected by the party central office and run in nationwide elections...

...Mbeki, who has governed since 1999, was dismayingly slow to address this epidemic...

...The Constitutional Court has ruled against the government in many cases, including one in which it required the use of ARVs to treat pregnant women with HIV...

...Corporate and capital gains tax rates are lower than in the United States...

...instead, some who emigrated in the past decade are trickling back...

...Public debate is free-wheeling and often vitriolic...

...a few categories, like murder, have seen small reductions...

...Whites have taken refuge behind walled compounds plastered with security company stickers promising "armed response...

...Even as hundreds of thousands died, he publicly mused about whether HIV really caused AIDS and whether anti-retroviral (ARV) medications were really effective...

...He has also launched NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development) to help other states establish freedom and prosperity...

...ANC leaders who had spent decades in exile across Africa had learned much from the mistakes of other postcolonial governments...

...This is the kind of place where wild dogs and little children roam the dusty lanes, men sit around drinking beer at midday, and the mamas do the laundry by hand...

...How often do you hear talk like that in the developing world...

...Just a few miles outside Cape Town, with its gleaming office towers and luxury hotels, are shanty towns of almost unimaginable squalor...

...The one thing the government has not been able to deliver is enough jobs...

...they were forced to vacate...

...Many South African firms are doing business across the continent, and South African soldiers have been dispatched as peacekeepers to Burundi and Congo...

...The African National Congress was stacked with card-carrying Communists, many of them trained in the Soviet Union...

...What's it like now...

...There are also plenty of nongovernmental organizations...

...Our enemies are our friends now...

...Even as repression and famine sweep over Zimbabwe, Mbeki refuses to condemn Mugabe's assaults on private property, the judiciary, and the free press...

...Cape Town, the country's second-largest city and one of two capitals (Pretoria is the other), is a bit like San Francisco: full of trendy cafes, secondhand clothing stores, young people with pierced eyebrows, and world-class restaurants...

...Instead of Nuremberg-style tribunals, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up whose goal was to document the crimes of apartheid, not to punish the guilty...

...some even say they have had their phones tapped by the intelligence service...

...This is far from ideal, but freedom can be maintained by vibrant civil institutions, which, fortunately, exist in abundance in South Africa...

...As a white South African, I was fully expecting war as right-wing Boers and Bantustan chiefs conspired to annihilate Nelson Mandela's people...

...That is pretty much my impression, too, having just spent a week in South Africa, along with some other American policy wonks, as a guest of its government...

...He argues that his soft approach, seeking negotiations to ease Mugabe out of office, will be more effective than the confrontational style of Britain and the United States...

...In a local newspaper, Rian Malan, a prominent Afrikaner writer, recently issued a giant mea culpa: "On this day, 10 years ago, I was hiding gold coins under floorboards and trying to get my hands on a gun before the balloon went up...

...This is a question I've been dreading, but if you must know, it's amazing: peaceful, stable, one of the fastest-growing tourist destinations on the planet...

...The ANC has shown commendable restraint in not pursuing the redistributionist schemes urged by its left-wing coalition partners, the Communist party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions...

...The ANC controls 66 percent of parliamentary seats and seven of nine provinces (the last two it rules in coalition with other parties...

...The AIDS crisis has also been a story of disaster followed by a conscientious if belated response...

...He is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times...

...The government is now relaxing exchange controls...

...A number of opposition parties, led by the Democratic Assembly, which appeals mainly to whites, sit in Parliament and fiercely criticize the ANC...

...It would have been easy enough to organize giant public works and welfare schemes but, as Zola Skweyiya, the minister in charge of social development, puts it, "We do not want to create a syndrome of dependency on the government...

...In South Africa, the president's displeasure can end the career of an ANC MP, and so the MPs are afraid of crossing him, even when, as during the AIDS crisis, he has displayed terrible judgment...

...more than 30 percent of the population is unemployed...

...And, driving around Khayelitsha, one can see utilities going up, small stores opening, and some stucco homes replacing the tin shacks...

...Another African country descending into the heart of darkness...

...Granted, South Africa was much better prepared for the transition than Iraq, but it's sobering to recall how many people were equally pessimistic about its prospects a mere decade ago...

...During a private meeting with our group, the nattily dressed president said that a number of other African leaders, from Congo to Nigeria, have been calling him for advice...

...It doesn't need World Bank or International Monetary Fund handouts, or the bossy foreign bureaucrats who come with them...

...Helped by the lifting of sanctions, South Africa has been growing at 2 to 3 percent in recent years...

...South Africa has more people with HIV than any other country: some 5 million of its 45 million people, of whom about 500,000 have full-blown AIDS...

...In season, buses park on the road above our house, disgorging foreigners who gape at the view, dumbfounded, then turn their binoculars on us, clearly wondering what it's like to live in this paradise...

...The government's dilatory response to this public-health disaster underlines some of the weaknesses of South African democracy...

...That's the good news...

...the rest are as poor as any Third Worlders...

...This spirit has helped make South Africa an example to many of its neighbors...

...Similar shanty towns surround all of the major cities...

...A number of state-owned enterprises were wholly or partially privatized...

...President Mbeki has emerged as the leader of the new African Union, which he organized to replace the ineffectual Organization of African States...

...With a per capita GDP of $9,409 (adjusted for the cost of living), South Africa is richer than Russia, China, Mexico, Turkey, or Poland, to say nothing of the rest of Africa...

...The rand has appreciated against other currencies including the dollar...

...Africa's problems have taken on added urgency since 9/11, as outsiders realize its most disordered states are breeding grounds for international terrorism...

...No one from President Mbeki on down is spared criticism...

...Unlike almost every other African country, South Africa has low foreign debt...

...Farm subsidies were eliminated...

...South Africa's income inequalities are exceeded only by Brazil's...

...But if he fails to negotiate a peaceful end to the crisis in Zimbabwe, Mbeki will pay a heavy price—not only in chaos spilling across his northern border, but also in lost credibility as the leading statesman of Africa...

...Attacks on whites receive a disproportionate share of media attention, but most crime is black on black...

...Based on its track record so far, South Africa appears to be the best candidate for the job...

...As a consequence, only about 30,000 South Africans are now getting ARVs, almost all of them from private health plans...

...There was every reason to believe this would be the case...

...In one giant township, Khayelitsha, most of the 500,000 blacks live in handmade shacks of tin and sheet metal...

...There's nothing especially wrong with this, but the impoverished masses have been left behind...

...The placidity of Cape Town comes as a bit of a surprise to anyone who has followed the country only through the news media...

...Nothing of the kind happened...

...And Mbeki has to stay on the good side of those ANC militants...

...The question is whether the ANC will continue resisting calls for Zimbabwe-style land grabs even if the majority remains desperately poor...

...The government finances itself with a tax burden that consumes 28 percent of GDP—lower than in Europe, about the same as the United States...

...But even now the government is showing little urgency...

...But there is no sign of the kind of repression evident in other struggling democracies such as Russia...

...He beat out Muammar Qaddafi for the AU presidency...

...Whenever you read about South Africa, the news tends to be negative—mainly AIDS and crime...

...In my view, peace would never come...

...It is very much in America's interest for Mbeki— who is said to have a good relationship with George W. Bush—to emerge stronger than ever...

...The manufacturing sector, led by foreign auto companies like DaimlerChrysler, BMW, and Toyota, has been growing fast, and so has the service industry...

...The government has been pushing a Black Economic Empowerment program, whose goal is to transfer 25 percent of land and businesses to blacks over the next 10 years...

...Well, that was 10 years and two general elections ago, with a third due on April 14...

...On the fiscal side, the government has reduced the budget deficit from 10 percent of GDP in 1994 to 2.4 percent in 2004—lower than in the United States...

...Sadly, Mbeki has not used his influence to counter the brutal policies of his neighbor, Robert Mugabe...

...The press coverage of the 1994 handover called to mind the cliche, "one man, one vote, one time...

...And then there is the independent judiciary...

...Since 1994, South Africa's crime rate has spiked to among the highest in the world...

...In all probability it will, so long as President Thabo Mbeki and his close associates remain in charge, but the continued existence of mass poverty casts a shadow on the country's future...

...Max Boot is Olin senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations...

...From Yugoslavia to Rwanda, ethnic groups have exacted a brutal revenge on those who once victimized them—but not in South Africa...

...Whites haven't been hounded out of the country...

...One of his closest friends was shot to death by an apartheid policeman, he says, yet when he visits his hometown, he shares a beer with the very same man, his former oppressor, his friend's killer...

...Nearby are green vineyards, brown hills, and beaches with sand as white as the old ruling establishment...

...The South African Reserve Bank has pursued a tight monetary policy Is that has reduced inflation from J| almost 10 percent in 1994 to 4 percent today...

...When apartheid fell in 1994, there was a widespread expectation that the ANC would turn the country upside down—punish the whites, take their wealth, and redistribute it to the oppressed masses...

...Opposition politicians may gripe that the government is highhanded and arrogant...

...The "South African miracle," as some are calling it, upsets the smug assumption that democracy is fit only for a small club of mainly Western countries...

...Like most affirmative action schemes, this has mainly benefited the middle and upper classes, making tycoons of many well-connected former ANC big shots...

...they are not elected by local constituencies, as in Britain, where backbenchers can challenge and even overthrow their leaders...

...There is no chance of the ANC losing the next election or the one after that...

...And yet there is little willingness in the United States to commit the money and manpower to straighten out Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, and Somalia...

...Finally, late last year, under pressure of public protests endorsed by Nelson Mandela, Mbeki unveiled a comprehensive AIDS prevention and treatment program that includes handing out free ARVs...

...We forgive them...

...Mbeki has actually described Zimbabwe's rigged 2002 elections as "free and fair...

...Progressive" reactionaries screech that Iraqis, for one, aren't ready for self-government...

...About 15 to 20 percent of the people (mainly whites) are as rich as any First Worlders...

...Like so many other "liberation" fighters, once they grabbed power, they would surely be as oppressive as their colonial predecessors...

...Only a handful of the worst apartheid thugs have been jailed...

...Another place where the economy will get trashed, ethnic violence will break out, and the middle class will flee...

...Such extreme deprivation, existing in close proximity with great wealth, is a proven incubator of various social pathologies...

...The vast majority lack electricity, and they're lucky to have an outhouse...

...Its members of Parliament have little independence...

...They decided to chart a different path, and in Nelson Mandela they had a leader with sufficient stature—the kind that comes from spending 27 years in prison—to ignore the demands of the militants...

...The economy is no longer entirely dependent on exports of diamonds and precious metals...

...one of the most effective is the Treatment Action Campaign which led the fight against AIDS...

...BY MAX BOOT Cape Town, South Africa Happily, I do not recall writing anything about South Africa in 1994 when the country adopted majority rule...

...In the last few years, it has at least stopped rising and stabilized, though at very high levels...

...The government, which had initially focused on revamping the security services, is now fighting crime by increasing police funding and manpower...

...The government's focus since 1994 has been on improving basic services in these townships...

...A typical hut is less than 40 square feet—the size of a walk-in closet in one of the seaside mansions located a few miles away...

...A government of former Communists and trade unionists is pursuing fiscal and monetary policies that could have been designed by Goldman Sachs...

...Tariffs and taxes were reduced...