Disillusioned blacks yearn for white times

For decades the fervour of the anti-apartheid struggle burnt in these streets. People sang and danced for joy in this impoverished black township when apartheid finally ended in 1994.

But eight years after South Africa elected its first black government, a small but growing number of blacks are saying what once seemed unimaginable - that life was better under white rule.

In a recent survey 20 per cent of blacks polled said they approved of how South Africa was governed during the apartheid years - up from 8 per cent in 1995. Political analysts says this suggests worrisome levels of disillusionment among the people who elected Nelson Mandela the country's first black president with such hope in 1994.

Most blacks do not want to turn back the clock. And in the survey, conducted by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, the Centre for Democracy and Development in Ghana and Michigan State University, about 60 per cent favoured the current political system, which gave blacks the right to vote and improved access to housing, water and electricity.

The benefits of the post-apartheid era seem plain: there are black faces in Parliament and in businesses, integrated schools and neighbourhoods and a rapidly growing black elite. But among the poor, the working class and the under-educated, there is disappointment.

Western officials have praised the black government for its conservative fiscal policies, but the nation has lost thousands of jobs as the previously sheltered economy has been liberalised.

Unemployment is nearly 30 per cent, up from 17 per cent in 1995. It is not unusual to hear some blacks talk wistfully about the apartheid era when jobs were plenty and lay-offs few. Though no one is suggesting that blacks want a return to racial oppression and political disfranchisement.

"Things were better before," said Kala Kgamedi, 33, who lost his job as a salesman two years ago. He was unemployed for nearly two years before he found another job.

"In the years of apartheid things were running smoothly," said Mr Kgamedi, who works at a car licensing office. "We never had such retrenchments. Now, most people here are jobless. When you get a job it's not permanent; it's part time. Me, I would be happy to go back to the apartheid era."

Natale Koanaite, a 27-year-old driver, says the high hopes of poor people when they voted for the black government are fading. "Voting is supposed to change the lives of people who are disadvantaged," he said. "But after voting, what did people get? In Soweto not much is changing."

The governing African National Congress party membership has declined in four of the country's nine provinces over the past five years. This month the party's Secretary-General, Kgalema Motlanthe, warned that it was in danger of losing young supporters.

Less than half the electorate between 18 and 25 voted in the 1999 presidential election. ANC officials fear that disaffected jobless young people, who often have memories of apartheid, may be wooed by other political parties, black or white.

The New York Times