“Nineteen years on and prospects for democratic consolidation in South Africa has never looked more bleak”, says Hussein Solomon in a column for News24 Voices.

Solomon, author of Against All Odds, mentions the ANC’s efforts to obtain more control, both internally and externally, as well as commenting on the Protection of Information Bill, which he says is “taking place at a time when the gulf between government and civil society has never been wider.”

He also looks at the government’s involvement in other African countries, saying that, “Far from serving as a beacon for hope, South Africa is leading the continent backwards”.

In April 1994, I joined millions of other South Africans to cast my ballot for the very first time in the country’s first democratic elections following the end of apartheid. The fervent hope of all South Africans that day was to not only turn our backs on our repressive and divisive past but to also provide a beacon of hope for the rest of the continent’s struggling democracies.

This was not to be realized.

• Complete article: News24 Voices

Book details

• Against All Odds: Opposition Political Parties in Southern Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe edited by Hussein Solomon
  EAN: 9780620476003
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