But it’s wrong to assume that if things are quiet in South Africa everything must be fine. The real game now is economic, and there the outlook is more clouded. During his campaign, Mandela also promised some things that are harder to deliver-a million new houses within five years, 10 years of free education for every child, electrification for 2.5 million homes and big, job-creating public-works programs. It’s dear that all these goals won’t be met; fewer than 10,000 low-cost homes have been built. So now Mandela must backpedal. “I went around the country telling people we would ensure a better life for everyone,” he told squatters outside Johannesburg late last year. “Today I have brought you none of those things, and I might not be able to bring you good news for [1995].”
Apologizing to blacks doesn’t hurt Mandela much in the short term, because he can bank on their affection. But the disappointment of rising expectations, a classic formula for rebellion, will be a problem for his less-exalted successors. (Mandela, 76, has said he won’t run for a second term.) The government faces the same demographic time bomb that helped persuade the apartheid regime to give up. South Africa needs rapid growth to cut rampant blackunemployment and accommodate nearly 400,000 new job-seekers annually. To achieve that, Mandela can’t afford to alienate those with most of the wealth. The result is that the black masses are still waiting for their lives to change, while whites are breathing easier.
To the vast relief of those who most feared democracy, Mandela’s African National Congress managed a clean break with its socialist past. South African society has never been so open. “People are acting, talking, thinking and lobbying more freely than they did two years ago,” says John Kane-Berman of the South Africa Institute Of Race Relations. The white-led army and police quickly fell into line with the new order. “Even the rightists talk with great reverence and respect about ‘our president’ when they talk about Mandela,” says the novelist Andre Brink. And because the government kept a lid on spending and promised to cut the deficit, South African business also was won over. Growth could hit 3 percent this year, a lure to foreign investors-but still well short of the 8 to 10 percent government officials say is needed.
Blacks still have good reason to feel cheated. Though South Africa is the richest country in Africa, more than 2 million of its 40 million people are hungry, and nearly a third are illiterate. The new government sometimes evicts squatters and demolishes their shacks, just as the old one did. While four of every five white children make it through high school, only one in five black children does. “To me the success of this country’s incredible experiment rests on serving justice to the poor, rather than political power being largely in the hands of blacks,” says writer Mark Mathabane. “The most important power blacks have to have is economic power . . . What will happen when people upon whom this government has to depend for its survival begin to turn against it?”
The government has made a start on the mammoth job ahead. State-run schools are being peacefully integrated, and 4.5 million poor pupils get a free sandwich daily. But radical critics, like Mandela’s estranged wife, Winnie, and others, say the hero of the antiapartheid struggle has sold out to whites. Mandela’s stature–and collective concern for the country’s short-term health–may allow him to push aside such attacks for now, But it’s an open question whether that determination will outlast his presidency.
