JOHANNESBURG — On the fringes of the bright lights and skyscrapers of South Africa’s “city of gold,” tin shacks scattered among dusty mine dumps testify to the crumbling hopes of millions for a better life after apartheid’s end.
Ten years after all-race elections sealed the end of a regime that brutally enforced segregation, the country remains divided into two nations.
Most of the 10 percent white minority still inhabit a world of California-like suburbs and shopping malls. Most blacks remain trapped in cluttered townships and isolated villages, many without running water or electricity.
“They say you get all the money in Johannesburg, the place of gold,” Grace Obose, 45, said as she filled two jerrycans at a communal faucet and hauled them home in a wheelbarrow. “But there is no gold, only tears.”
Full of hope, Mrs. Obose moved to Johannesburg with her two sons shortly before the historic election in 1994, when white housewives stood with their black maids and gardeners in long, snaking lines to elect Nelson Mandela as the country’s first black president.
She worked as a maid, but lost her job when she developed arthritis. She now lives in a leaky shack at the foot of a towering mine dump in a squatter camp optimistically called Jerusalem.
The miseries of poverty and joblessness are compounded by an AIDS epidemic that is killing at least 600 people a day. An estimated 5.3 million of South Africa’s 45 million people — more than in any other country — are infected, and President Thabo Mbeki has been criticized internationally for his slow response to the crisis.
There was little doubt that Mr. Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC) would retain its sweeping majority in yesterday’s elections.
Robert Maluleke, jobless and living in the Jerusalem shantytown, still remembers the excitement of casting his ballot for the first time. This year, he wasn’t sure whether he would bother to vote.
“You see Mbeki,” he said, holding up a smiling picture on an election leaflet. “He is laughing at us.”
Mr. Mbeki, 61, an economist by training who spent decades in exile, was Mr. Mandela’s designated successor as president. But he lacks Mr. Mandela’s charisma and common touch and is seen as an intellectual who is detached from ordinary people’s problems.
He asks his people to be patient and accentuates the positive.
“We have always known that our country’s blemishes, produced by more than three centuries of colonialism and apartheid, could not be removed in one decade,” Mr. Mbeki recently told South Africans.
Nevertheless, he said, “We have made great advances.”
The achievements are striking. A new constitution, one of the world’s most progressive, has been enacted. The hundreds of racist laws have been scrapped, and three successful national and local elections have been held.
The government has built 1.6 million houses, brought clean water to 9 million more people and delivered electricity to 70 percent of homes. Public schools have been desegregated, and free health care is provided to millions of children.
The ANC, formerly socialist, has revived an ailing economy by controlling spending, reducing debt and lifting trade barriers. The country, formerly an international pariah, now takes a leading role in African affairs.
But South Africa’s biggest achievement often is forgotten.
Until the end of apartheid, this was a nation wracked by fear and racial violence. Thousands disappeared into detention, and some never were seen again. Shadowy security forces stirred bloody clashes among black political groups. Whites stocked up on food and fuel in expectation of a blood bath once blacks were in power.
Today, South Africa has slipped from world headlines and become a “stable, boring democracy,” in the words of government spokesman Joel Netshitenzhe.
“I really don’t think anyone thought it would be going as well as it is now,” said Nicola Boustred, 34, a white woman walking her dog along the polo field at Johannesburg’s exclusive Inanda club. “Ten years ago, a lot of people were leaving, and you felt you were irresponsible if you weren’t considering it. Now, I don’t feel that way at all.”
The club, like the moneyed elite it serves, has changed considerably over the years. Black business leaders now join their white counterparts sipping drinks on the terrace overlooking tidy lawns and a sparkling pool.
Across town, in the dusty townships and squatter camps, it is hard to be so optimistic. Unemployment of more than 30 percent has hit the poorly educated black majority especially hard.
Every day, Mr. Maluleke, 33, and his brother Selby, 25, get up early to hunt for factory work. But on every gate, a sign says: “No work.”
The two are among hundreds of thousands of job seekers who have flooded the cities since the lifting of apartheid laws that confined blacks to poor townships and tribal “homelands.”
Like Mrs. Obose, they have made a home in Jerusalem, one of the camps on the outskirts of Johannesburg built of scraps of wood, salvaged cardboard and corrugated iron. But there is little of the promised land here.
“Now we should change that name Jerusalem to Babylon,” grumbled Selby Maluleke.
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