ships with other African countries hasrncome an influx of immigrants fromrnneighboring states hke Mozambique,rnLesotho, and the Democratic RepubHcrnof the Congo, which are among the poorestrnon the planet. Most of the immigrantsrnare destitute. Not surprisingly, there isrnrising xenophobia. All of South Africa’srnmajor cities, and most towns of any size,rnare now ringed by shanty towns wherernlaw enforcement is impossible. Theyrnare, in point of fact, truly ungovernable.rnThanks to corruption and incompetence,rnmost provincial and municipalrngovernments are bankrupt and inoperative.rnMuch of Cape Town is terrorizedrnby rival drug-peddling gangs fighting overrnturf Downtown Johannesburg is rapidlyrnbecoming a wasteland. Residents of itsrnonce salubrious northern suburbs live onrnbarricaded streets with armed patrols.rnFormer guerrilla bands prey on banksrnand armored trucks, killing policemenrnand security personnel mercilessly in invariablyrnsuccessful raids.rnAll manner of individuals and factionsrnpillage the commonweal. Yesterday’s liberationrnheroes steal from their NGOs.rnCEOs raid the coffers, while employeesrnsteal what they can. Particularly worryingrnis the high number of policemenrnmurdered —three per day. In 1999,rnmore than 180 farmers were killed.rnRape has overtaken apartheid as thernnational curse. In his 1999 BrookerrnPrize-winning novel Disgrace, J.M. Coctzeernleaves the reader to decide whetherrnthe rapists are culpable individuals or thernproduct of history. This is no mere abstraction,rnbut a burning issue in a countryrnin which it is estimated that a woman isrnraped every 26 seconds. And rape has becomernthe more heinous because 22 percentrnof the population of South Africa, byrnthe reckoning of the government, is HIVposihve.rnIn a six-hour valedictory speech to thernANC in December 1997, Mandela accusedrnthe media, “racist bureaucrats,”rnand white political parties of impairingrnthe transformation. Repudiating the notionrnof a multiracial, multiparty democracy,rnhe appealed to all black parties tornjoin the Alliance. Mandela identified therninherited order of apartheid as the causernof the rising disorder, corruption, and violence.rnAs Patrick Bulger of the JohannesburgrnStar pointed out:rnMandela projected a view of societyrnwhich holds that the ANC’srnproject of transformation is the onlyrnshow in town; all else is counterrevolutionary.rnFather one is withrnthe ANC, or one is against it; therernis no middle ground.rnMandela’s embrace of a one-partyrnAfrieanist state shocked outside observers.rnHe was not steering the transitionrnbut merely moving with the tide.rnTragically, the ideologues of the Alliancernare exercising the power of their one-partyrnstate by extending the reach of collectivization.rnThe dynamics are now clear. An exclusivernpolity and economy are propellingrnSouth Africa to an end state characterizedrnby an homogenous premodernrnAfrican society and a premodern economy.rnIt remains to be seen whether thernapartheid past will spur black SouthrnAfricans to assume ultimate responsibilityrnfor their circumstances or be used as anrnexcuse to shun them.rnAnd what of Mandela? He deployedrnwhite communists to negotiate a dispensationrnthat transferred power from thernAfrikaners to the Africans and then “sold”rnthis deal by behaving in an impartialrnmanner for which he earned iconic status.rnHe was, and is, an Afrieanist. Thernseeming contradictions in his behaviorrnriiat have puzzled so many are a reflectionrnnot of the man but of Western projections.rnThese have been invariably inappropriaternbecause, for over a century.rnWesterners have been ruled not by theirrnintellect but by their sentiments.rnThe liberal pro-Boers were right aboutrnthe British Empire: It had no moral foundation.rnBut they were wrong to idolizernthe Boers. Unlike the British, they formulatedrnnot a civic but a cultural and biologicalrnsense of nation. Loyalty was notrnto a set of evolved institutions but to arnmystically conceived race, an emotivernbond of blood. A seemingly unlikely alliancernof Afrikaner farmers and whiterntrade unionists, led by the communists,rntamed capitalism’s driving forces andrnchanneled tiiem in the interest of theirrnalliance. An order of ascriptive stratification,rncoercively imposed and sanctifiedrnby a racist interpretation of sacred texts,rnsecured tiie domination of the whites inrngeneral and the Afrikaners in particular.rnThe apartheid state was a collectivist,rnanti-modern project. The constituent elementsrnin the victorious liberation movementrnalso exhibited deep-seated revulsionrnagainst the modern world. Sharingrnriiese values, the ANC-SACP alliance offeredrnSouth Africa a version of redistributivernjustice.rnBy rationalizing misappropriation andrngraft as retribution, .socialism’s redistributivernjustice has destroyed honest endeavor.rnBy conceiving group justice to meanrnsimply the ascendancy of Africans overrntheir white colonizers, any semblance ofrnmoral authority has been surrendered,rnwhile at the same time the merit principlernhas been destroyed. The one-part)-rnstate precludes the operation of a multipartyrndemocracy. Diminishing politicalrnand economic freedoms reinforce thernmovement toward social unrest and economicrnstagnation.rnSocialism has not been built corrcctiyrnfor the first time, as Slovo predicted itrnwould. The communists have failed tornconflate class with race, for race hasrnproved to be a stronger bond than class orrnnotions of nation. Freedom does not residernat the end of this particular struggle.rnGerald Kaufman described Coetzec’srnnovel Disgrace as a millennium book,rn”because it takes us through the ZOtii centuryrninto a new century in which thernsource of power is shifting away fromrnWestern Europe.” South Africa’s 20tiirncentim’ started with a war between Europeanrnpeoples over mineral wealth; it isrnending with their emigration. The tradingrnarrangements of the European empires,rnwith their resident colonics, havernlong since given way to what is nowrntermed “globalization.” Those who arernable are taking their chance with tiiis newrnorder by emigrating. This is not thernheadlong rush of two million pied noirsrnout of Algeria in the sunnncr of 1962.rnRather, it is a steady strengthening and irreversiblernexodus that constitutes the lastrngreat trek of people of European heritagernout of Africa.rnAnthony P. EUison hved in South Africarnfrom 1990 to 1998.rnWh en in Rockford,rnEat atrnLee’s Chinese Restaurantrn3443 N. Main Streetrn42/CHRONICLESrnrnrn