South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), which has been in power since the end of apartheid in 1994, has come under increasing pressure in the past few years. Criticism has become especially loud since police killed 34 striking miners in mid-August in an incident that shocked South Africans. For many, the shootings at Marikana laid bare the deep social and economic inequalities that still exist in their country.
Pravin Gordhan, South Africa’s finance minister, argues that while Marikana was a tragedy the government must learn from, its detractors ignore just how recently the country became a universal democracy. “We have to remember where we came from, which is often something people forget,” he says. “We have come from 300 years of marginalisation of the majority of the people and over a century of active economic marginalisation. To turn that around in 18 years is difficult.”
