John Rapley

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa:

In his 1956 play, Look Back in Anger, the playwright John Osborne had the heroine - married to the working-class Jimmy - tell her upper-crust father, "You're hurt because everything's changed; Jimmy's hurt because everything's stayed the same."

The line spoke to a bleak post-war Britain, shaken by the loss of empire economic decay, but still seemingly unwilling to change its ways. The line has been coming back to me time and again here in Johannesburg.

The climate is near to perfect, the hospitality legendary, the food and wine abundant. Yet, the easy-living surface of Joburg does not long mask the city's ubiquitous anger. A crime wave that makes Kingston look civilised has stricken fear into the hearts of a white population that looks back fondly on the order of the apartheid era. Even liberal Joburgers, who never want to return to the days of institutionalised racism, complain that their country is more corrupt, more lawless and more rundown.

A recent wave of power outages, due to years of underinvestment in infrastructure, has reinforced the sense of gloom. There is talk of a wave of emigration.

However, if the white population feels that everything has changed, the majority of South Africans could be forgiven for concluding that everything has stayed much the same.

True, a small number of black South Africans have grown fabulously wealthy off the requirement that corporate boards begin adding darker faces. And a black middle class, its ranks swelled by affirmative action in the public sector, is growing in both numbers and prosperity.

Unemployment

Yet, for poor South Africans, the promise of 1994 seems a long way off. Unemployment has scarcely budged, and conditions in the Soweto or the Cape Flats have not changed a great deal. Squatter-clearances, a hallmark of apartheid, continue under black leaders much as they did under white ones.

The hunger for change boiled up late last year at the ANC Party conference in Polokwane. President Thabo Mbeki, who represents the centrist wing of the ANC, had his ambitions trampled upon when a left-wing faction, led by Jacob Zuma, took effective control of the party.

The development was welcomed by poor South Africans, excited by Mr Zuma's pledges to deliver more of the country's economic gains to poor people. Wealthier South Africans, including much of the white community, reacted nervously for two reasons.

First is the spectre of a takeover of government by communists or their sympathisers, the bugbear of apartheid. Second is the fact that Mr Zuma betrays some of the less pleasant attributes of the populist, including penchants for authoritarianism and corruption. Facing criminal probes for corruption and tax evasion, Mr Zuma has been trying to pull all the levers of power he can in order to frustrate the legal process.

No leaders for life

However, while many South Africans worry that Mr Zuma might pull a Mugabe, lost in the discussion is a significant indication of why he probably won't (aside from the obvious one: that he is a staunch critic of Mr Mugabe's authoritarianism). Thabo Mbeki, an aloof and increasingly unpopular leader, wanted to use Polokwane to cement his own hold on power. The fact that the party booted him and his faction out indicates that the ANC will not tolerate leaders-for-life. South Africa's institutions remain strong.

That means Mr Zuma will probably govern more from the centre - if he governs at all, because the legal process is still moving forward. Yet, the voice of poor South Africans will likely be heard more. The outcome has to be a victory for democracy and for the country.

South Africans may still have reason to look forward with hope.