Apartheid Pariah, 10 Years Later

I recently visited South Africa, along with some other American policy wonks, as a guest of its government. One of the most moving experiences I had was visiting Imizamo Yethu, a dirt-poor shantytown south of Cape Town where we met a community leader named Kenny Thokwe. He had been in and out of jail in the 1980s for resisting apartheid. He had even seen one of his friends shot by a policeman. You might expect this would make him a bitter man with a sense of entitlement. Far from it. Thokwe is the soul of equanimity as he describes the need for township residents to work hard and not rely on handouts. As for his former tormentors, he says that when he visits his hometown he shares a beer with one of the officers who shot his friend. "Our enemies are our friends now," Thokwe said.

That attitude is not, of course, universal. There are black militants who nurse a grudge, and whites who are not reconciled to the post-apartheid order. But the spirit of reconciliation conveyed by Thokwe animates the leadership of the African National Congress, which won the last two general elections and expects to win the next one, on April 14. Instead of bashing the white minority and stealing their property, the ANC, led first by Nelson Mandela and now by President Thabo Mbeki, has tried hard to win the confidence of the largely white business community. No Zimbabwe-style land grabs here.

The government has increased social spending to provide services for the black majority. But it has been careful to keep spending in line with revenue. South Africa's budget deficit has fallen from 10% of GDP in 1994 to 2.4% today -- lower than in the United States. Farm subsidies have been eliminated. Taxes and tariffs have been cut. The central bank has pursued a tight monetary policy that has cut inflation from almost 10% in 1994 to about 4% today. The business climate is favorable enough to lure big foreign companies like DaimlerChrysler and Toyota to open new plants.