The Delusion of Apartheid and the African National Congress: Sizwe’s Mythmaking and South African Politics

The book under review entitled The New Apartheid by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh is another contribution to the debate and critique of the so-called post-Apartheid dispensation. The ANC-led post-1994 non-racial constitutional dispensation isevidently falling apart. The African majority faces the frustration of not being able to reconcile the idealistic liberal rights embedded in the final constitution and their daily existence of squalor, misery, and survival due to terrifying socio-economic conditions. In this book Mpofu-Walsh to account for the dehumanising circumstances of the African majority argues that Apartheid did not die but was merely privatised. The book foregrounds the role of Neoliberalism in the worsening socio-economic conditions of the African majority. The vector of race in determining one’s socio-economic condition as a member of the African majority is now overtaken by the market logic. Readers of this book can expect to be treated to a number of salient themes such as law, space, wealth, technology, and punishment. The book is written in a succinct manner thus ordinary readers can easily get the gist of the argument. The fundamental argument that Apartheid was not dismantled completely but was transformed through a market logic of neoliberalism is proffered in a manner which suggests that Mpofu-Walsh is aligned to the Congress Tradition of the ANC. The detection of this ideological bias requires one to be a knowledgeable reader and student of South African history and politics.