NATIONAL INTEREST
MICHAEL MORRIS: South Africans are losing out as the ANC becomes more self-serving
There is nothing in the works by way of policy reform that will improve the lot of relatively poor through the medium term
Seventy years ago this month the very first — tentative, vaguely quixotic — application of apartheid policy was a limited measure of segregation on Cape Town’s suburban trains. The departure was reported in August 1948 in a tone almost of surprise — as if the central plan of DF Malan’s winning election manifesto of just two-and-a-half months earlier really was just a little too farfetched to credit. And perhaps there was a sense that it couldn’t last. After all, the National Party had gained only a slender majority of parliamentary seats on the strength of a minority of votes — the uneven delimitation of constituencies having given it victory. There is even a sense of administrative tentativeness in that early report on transport minister Paul Sauer’s policy move, as it consisted "merely of reserving certain first-class accommodation for Europeans only", the newspaper presuming that "this will be as far as the railways can at present go".There was even some doubt about railway offic...
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