Thirty-five years of being the golden child was nice, but it’s over. South Africa is now just another normal country that must fight for its own interests, wealth and prosperity, writes News24 editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson in the Weekend Essay.
Source: Adriaan Basson – editor News24
I recently learnt that there is a psychological condition called “golden child syndrome”. We all know or are them, those children who could do no wrong in their parents’ eyes. They are constantly praised, put on a pedestal and overprotected.
At the beginning, the child may feel special. They are favoured over their siblings or peers. But later in life, this becomes an emotional burden. Jealousy, rivalry and resentment set in. They become entitled, selfish and even develop narcissistic tendencies.
The golden child suffers and wants to escape the constant responsibility, pressure and spotlight. They crave normality.
The Golden Child
For 35 years, from 2 February 1990 until 7 February 2025, South Africa was, in many ways, the world’s golden child. The last apartheid president, FW de Klerk, unbanned the ANC and other “terrorist” organisations 35 years ago and announced the release of Nelson Mandela from prison.
De Klerk, who received the Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela in 1993, voluntarily gave up white minority rule and announced democratic elections in 1994, during which the majority black population of South Africa could vote for the first time after 300 years of colonial oppression.
It is worth quoting from the speech of the Norwegian Nobel Committee when they awarded this feat to Mandela and De Klerk:
“The two Prize-Winners, from their highly disparate points of departure, the one from the side of the oppressors and the other from the side of the oppressed, have taken initiatives to break the vicious circle that their country was caught up in. These are initiatives the world has taken note of, initiatives which reflect personal integrity and great political courage on the part of both men. They have both chosen not to dwell on the deep wounds of the past. In so doing, they are different from leaders in many other conflict areas, even though the wounds in South Africa were deeper than perhaps anywhere else. Mandela and de Klerk have chosen reconciliation rather than the alternative, which would inevitably have been an ever more bitter and bloodier conflict.”
The rest, as they say, is history. South Africa was a shining light for the world. We avoided a bloody civil war and lived through a relatively peaceful transition.
Mandela became the first black, democratically elected president of South Africa on 10 May 1994. He invited De Klerk and his National Party into a government of national unity that lasted for just under three years.
The Springboks’ Rugby World Cup victory of 1995 and Bafana Bafana’s triumph in the African Cup of Nations in 1996 were the crowning moments of the great Rainbow Nation project. Framed pictures of Francois Pienaar and Neil Tovey flanked by the great Madiba lined boardrooms and bars.
Mandela became a global icon for peace. Many international companies invested in democratic South Africa, and our economy grew. Mandela, famously, could call any CEO he wanted to fund upliftment projects.
Between 1994 and 2004, the ANC-led government built hundreds of thousands of RDP houses, connected thousands of black households to Eskom’s grid and installed piped water to townships and rural areas.
The apartheid homelands were abolished and became part of the country’s nine provinces. The school curriculum was modernised and overhauled to reflect the country’s real history (that didn’t start in 1652).
Our first reality check was the HIV/Aids pandemic that ravaged the country in the early 2000s. Aids-related deaths peaked between 2004 and 2006, with an estimated 250 000 deaths per year. The ANC leadership, under Thabo Mbeki, was in denial about the effectiveness of anti-retroviral drugs and was forced by the Constitutional Court in 2002 to make them freely available.
Yet, the world stood with South Africa, and Mandela spearheaded the 46664 concerts to raise awareness about HIV/Aids. Artists like Annie Lennox, Peter Gabriel, Will Smith and U2 frequented our shores between 2003 and 2008.
Despite South Africa’s cultural proximity to the West, Mandela and Mbeki maintained a “non-aligned” foreign policy, often visiting countries like Russia, China and even Libya, which supported the ANC in the struggle against apartheid.
This didn’t bother the West. The likes of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Barack Obama understood that South Africa had a bigger role to play as Mandela’s torchbearer of human rights and peace. Most of our trade was (and remains) with the US and Europe, alongside China.
Even the notorious R70-billion arms deal, which marks the beginning of the ANC’s slide into greed and patronage networks, favoured mostly European arms dealers.
Then, Polokwane happened in December 2007. Mbeki was unceremoniously dumped by the ANC and replaced with a populist leader in Jacob Zuma, who had no strategy besides enriching himself and his family and staying out of prison.
Up to this point, South Africa’s economy was managed prudently by a very capable National Treasury under Trevor Manuel’s watchful eye. Economic growth in the Mbeki era touched 6%. Johann Rupert, South Africa’s richest man, admitted years later that business didn’t quite realise how good they had it under Mbeki and Manuel.
The fading rainbow nation
The Rainbow started to fade under Zuma, who was embroiled in corruption scandals for the entire duration of his two terms as president. He is still on trial.
South Africa was no longer the darling of the world. We refused the Dalai Lama entry, supposedly to impress our buddies in China, and we declined to arrest Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir on an international arrest warrant despite being a signatory of the Geneva Conventions.
In the meantime, Zuma cosied up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who supposedly saved his life with medical treatment in Moscow. Coincidentally, at the same time as Zuma’s mysterious illness, we almost sold our country for a Russian nuclear power station.
South Africa joined BRICS – a new bloc of countries led by China, Russia and India, to counter the West. This raised eyebrows in Washington and London.
It was only through an active civil society, a robust media and an independent judiciary that South Africa remained standing under Zuma. His house of cards finally came tumbling down in January 2018.
Cyril Ramaphosa may have been Mandela’s protégé, but when he took office, the world and South Africa were very different from 1994. After he was beaten by Mbeki, Ramaphosa went into business and became a billionaire.
Ramaphosa ascended on a “make South Africa great” ticket after the Zuma years. He promised good things – clean government, economic growth, better education and less crime. Covid-19 and his blind party loyalty thwarted most of this.
Despite attempts to reinvigorate institutions like the NPA, Hawks, Transnet and Eskom, the rot remained deep, and Ramaphosa wasn’t prepared to sacrifice comradely support to effect real change.
Ministers implicated in state capture and corruption remained in Cabinet, crime continued to surge, unemployment remained over 30%, and the economy drifted along.
A costly past, a possible way forward
Ramaphosa’s weakest moment was his inability to criticise Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The ANC’s loyalty to the old USSR, which ironically included Ukraine, trumped our moral standing.
After this, South Africa could no longer lecture the world on peace and reconciliation. The golden child started to fade.
We attempted to regain some of that moral authority when Ramaphosa and his Cabinet accused Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice. We felt like the Rainbow Nation of Mandela and Tutu again for a moment. We stood up to the bully and didn’t fear retribution from Israel’s ally across the Atlantic.
Because we are South Africa. We are special, and nobody would dare sanction us.
Until 7 February 2025, when the wrecking ball US President Donald Trump pushed us from our pedestal with an executive order alleging all kinds of atrocities committed by the Ramaphosa administration.
Whatever we think of Trump and the validity of his claims, he and the Republican Party are in the White House for at least the next four years. For Ramaphosa and his government of national unity, an era of realpolitik has begun. From now on, they must make decisions based only on South Africa’s best interest.
It is not clear at all that Trump’s retribution against South Africa has stopped on 7 February. Tariff hikes and even sanctions are still very much on the cards.
South Africa is in no position to tell the US where to get off and think China and the EU will save us from lost exports and trade. Let there be no doubt: it will be devastating for thousands of farmers, companies and millions of South Africans if the US were to sanction us from doing business with them.
Ramaphosa simply has to find ways to deal with the transactional Trump and give him something to stop the bleeding. Many believe the Israel/ICJ matter is at the heart of his executive order, issued a few days after Trump met with Bibi Netanyahu.
It’s time to switch off the microphone on Israel and send a junior diplomat to Tel Aviv. We have made our point at the ICJ. Our relationship with Iran seems to bother Trump. Ramaphosa must clarify that we have no secret defence or nuclear deals with Tehran. It is not in our national interest to let this issue linger.
On the Expropriation Act, Ramaphosa should have sent a delegation to Washington by now that included organised agriculture and the GNU partners to challenge AfriForum and Solidarity’s misinformation about land grabs factually. His failure to do so will only strengthen their anti-South Africa campaign.
We need to get off the Financial Action Task Force’s grey list and show the world what we are doing to stop money laundering and terrorism. And maybe it’s time for loudmouth government officials to get off Twitter/X and get to Washington to meet real Republicans rather than fighting with podcast bros on social media.
Thirty-five years of being the golden child was nice, but it’s over. South Africa is now just another normal country that must fight for its own interests, wealth and prosperity. In the real world, actions have consequences. And maybe this is a lesson we had to learn.
* Basson is editor-in-chief of News24
Martin Plaut 