Blue State Blues: South Africa Is a Tale of Two Cities

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Cape Town is beautiful, and has long attracted visitors to Table Mountain, its spectacular beaches, and the wine country nearby. Johannesburg, South Africa’s mining and industrial hub, has gritty charm, but has rarely been on a short list of tourist attractions.

But recent years have seen these two cities diverge even more in their fortunes. Cape Town is getting even better; Johannesburg is becoming far worse.

In the years since I lived in Cape Town, the city has added new residential skyscrapers, and a municipal bus service that is widely used even by professionals who can afford to drive to work. The Sea Point promenade, once crumbling, now bustles with early-morning joggers, including women exercising alone — the ultimate indicator of public safety. The roads are in decent shape; cleanup crews are everywhere, sweeping the streets.

Johannesburg, on the other hand, is a mess. A year ago, I noticed that one or two traffic lights downtown did not work; now, it seems that almost all of the lights are out for at least part of the day.

The growing differences between Johannesburg and Cape Town are the unmistakable results of a unique fateful experiment that began 17 years ago.

That was the year Cape Town voters ousted the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s ruling party, from local power, in favor of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), setting the city on a different political course than the rest of the country, which is still largely run by the ANC.

The DA is a liberal party that favors the free market and opposes collective racial guilt for apartheid. It has, at times, moved leftwards, as it has added more black members, some of whom are simply frustrated with the ANC’s failures rather than attracted to the DA’s policies.

Regardless, wherever it has held power, the DA has maintained a focus on fiscal transparency and has disrupted the ANC’s corrupt networks of racial patronage.

To the extent that the ANC still stands for anything beyond the self-enrichment of its leaders, it emphasizes state-centered economic development. That has been a disaster, especially as the party’s affirmative action policies have stripped state-owned companies of skilled employees.

The DA is the party of the private sector, and has — ironically — created more opportunities for black people while restricting the role of race in policy.

Both cities are bedeviled by  “load shedding,” a recent phenomenon resulting from ANC mismanagement at the state-owned power company, Eskom. The lights go out for several hours a day, except for those who can afford diesel generators, solar power, and batteries.

But while Johannesburg seems resigned to this fate, Cape Town is already developing alternative energy sources and paying households who can produce solar power to feed grid.

There are wonderful people in both places. Jo’burg residents are particularly inspiring, given the fact that they persevere in the face of so many challenges. But many are deciding to move to the Cape — just like Americans who leave New York and California for Texas and Florida.

South Africans haven’t yet voted out the ANC in a national election, and may not do so in 2024, either. But they are voting with their feet, and the winner is clear.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.