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South Africa President Jacob
Zuma takes a walk
on January 6, 2012 in
Botshabelo, some 40 kms
outside Bloemfontein, before
addressing a crowd.
South Africa's ruling
African National Congress on
January 6 began celebrations
for its centenary, still
firmly at the helm of Nelson
Mandela's all-race
democracy despite losing some
of its shine. Photo/AFP
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South Africa's mighty African National
Congress on Friday began celebrations for its centenary, still firmly at the
helm of Nelson Mandela's all-race democracy despite losing some of its shine.
Africa's oldest liberation movement
expects 46 heads of state for the bash marking its 100th anniversary Sunday,
with 100,000 supporters set to flood into the normally placid central city of
Bloemfontein.
"We are the oldest organisation
in the continent," President Jacob Zuma told a cheering crowd after a
walk-about Friday in Botshabelo around 40 kilometres (25 miles) from
Bloemfontein.
"Many organisations have been
created, born, established along the way and many have perished, have died,
have collapsed. Not the ANC."
A golf tournament kicked off the
three-day programme catering to the ANC's diverse members of billionaires and
paupers, with events ranging from an animal sacrifice and cleansing ceremony to
a church service and concerts.
On Sunday, Zuma will address a mass
rally at the start of a challenging year when he is bidding for re-election as
party boss amid increasing internal threats to his leadership.
Supporters and international guests
will be greeted by a city secured by police and the army and festooned with
party colours and banners that also pay tribute the ANC's foreign supporters.
Mandela, who at 93 has not made a
public appearance since July 2010, will be notably absent.
"He is not coming and we are not
expecting him to come," party secretary general Gwede Mantashe told public
radio SABC. "He is in good spirits but very, very old."
After inspiring a global
anti-apartheid backlash, the ANC led South Africa peacefully into a
"rainbow nation" in 1994 despite fears of civil war but has more
recently faced criticism of abandoning its struggle roots.
"This is perhaps the most
remarkable liberation movement of the last century," said Andrew
Feinstein, a former ANC parliamentarian who resigned over a muzzled probe into
a multi-billion-rand arms deal.
"The disappointment is how
quickly the ANC moved from that politics of the impossible to practise politics
as normal, as they're practised throughout the world."
The party was founded in Bloemfontein
on January 8, 1912, as the South African Native National Congress, and met
crushing brutality from apartheid rulers who slapped it with a ban in 1960 and
jailed its top leaders four years later.
Nearly 30 years on, the crumbling and
isolated regime released icon Mandela to lead the country into its first
all-race polls where the party has enjoyed huge wins ever since in regular
polls.
In doing so, it has avoided the
pitfalls of fellow African liberation movements which once rallied with the
party, such as Mugabe's ZANU-PF in power in neighbouring Zimbabwe for 30 years.
But the ANC government has faced a rocky ride
since the Mandela years. While the Nobel peace laureate is idealised into
near-sainthood, critics bemoan the party as the shadow of a once-noble movement
which has lost its moral compass.
The smears reach to the highest level
with graft charges dropped against Zuma on the eve of his taking power in 2009,
while abuse of taxpayers' money and reports of flashy lifestyles for the new
elite make frequent headlines.
Economically, the party has drawn
praise for steering Africa's biggest economy into safe waters, rolling out new
electricity and water supplies, as well as houses. and inspiring a new black
middle class.
But it has failed to direct the
post-apartheid boom into the hands of the poor who bear the brunt of shoddy
public hospitals and schools, a dangerously high joblessness rate of 25
percent, violent crime and life in grim shantytowns.
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