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Ten years ago this year, as much of the media has been reminding us, the ANC came to power in South Africa. It inherited a hugely divided country.

The top 5 percent of the population - all white - consumed more than the bottom 85 percent, and income inequality in the country was up there with Brazil and Nigeria as the worst in the world.

A rich, white elite controlled most of the land, the capital and the economy. More than half of the country's black citizens lived in dire poverty, and less than a third of them had access to basic services.

The ANC’s white flag The ANC promised to right these wrongs. But a decade on, many in South Africa are accusing it of replacing the divisions of apartheid with the divisions of globalisation – and many of its former supporters are turning against it.

From now on, the markets would decide the fate of South Africa's people

In 1994, the ANC came to power with an ambitious plan of national reconstruction - the Reconstruction and Development Program, or RDP. Its "first priority [was] to begin to meet the basic needs of people - jobs, land, housing, water, electricity, telecommunications, transport".

This was to be achieved through state programmes to redistribute land to the landless, build a million new homes and provide free basic services to all.

It was unequivocal stuff. It was also short-lived.

By 1996, the RDP was dead, most of its targets unmet, the ministry set up to oversee it closed down. In its place came a new economic plan - the Growth Employment and Redistribution program - or GEAR.

GEAR was drawn up by 15 economists, two of them from the World Bank. Only one economist had any footing in the South African Democratic movement, and only one was black. GEAR was the ANC's white flag: from now on, the markets would decide the fate of South Africa's people.

Jobs lost ... absolute poverty Where the RDP had promised basic services for all, GEAR promised “public-private sector partnerships” based on “cost recovery”. Translated, this meant the privatisation of utilities and increased water, electricity and rent bills for some of the poorest South Africans.

Where the RDP set targets for reducing unemployment, GEAR called for “greater labour market flexibility”. And where the RDP made a great show of highlighting the systematically enforced racial divisions in the economy, and the system's structural inequalities, GEAR talked about “economic stability”, “sound fiscal policy”, “foreign direct investment” and “strong export performance”.

The results on the ground are now making themselves clear.

According to Johannesburg academic Patrick Bond, almost a million jobs have been lost to GEAR. South Africa's unemployment rate is now conservatively estimated at 25 percent - and may be as high as 40 percent.

Twenty-two million South Africans, out of a population of 42 million, still live in absolute poverty, according to widely reported estimates.

Services are cut. Sowetans reconnect them

Independent academic research has suggested that GEAR has led to 10 million South Africans having their water cut off, 10 million having their electricity cut off, and 2 million being evicted from their homes - all for non-payment of bills which, in a country in which half the population gets by on around $2 a day, they simply cannot pay.

Desperate measure But the struggle that South Africans employed so effectively against the evil of apartheid is now being rallied against the neoliberal policies of the ANC. In the former townships, resistance to what is increasingly being called the ANC's “sell-out” is gathering pace.

Privatisation of basic services is the key to this new battle. It is the key to corporate control and corporate profits, and is a major plank of ANC policy.

The World Bank says that the South African government should “recover its costs” for services such as water and electricity. This means that bills go up, and in places like Soweto - which has 70 percent unemployment - people simply cannot pay.

The result: services are cut. The Sowetans' response: they reconnect them.

This, says Dudu Mphenyeke, is the latest form of resistance in Soweto. Mphenyeke is one of the founders of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, a group of 5,000 Soweto residents who rebelled against the electricity company, Eskom, and its move to cut off supplies to the poorest people in the name of the free market.

They have trained a group of illegal “reconnectors” who have been roaming Soweto reconnecting the electricity of people who have been cut off. It is a desperate measure, says Dudu, but a necessary one.

Mphenyeke said that life in Soweto has not improved in the post-apartheid era.

“The government is making things easier for business people and making it more difficult for workers. We don't have freedom yet in South Africa, and we feel deceived.”

Marches, rallies and protests This is a feeling that is growing all over the country. Anti-Privatisation Forums and groups of illegal reconnectors are spreading to every township in the nation. Marches, rallies and protests against everything from the World Trade Organisation to retrenchment are now almost a weekly occurrence.

All this worries the ANC. But they believe they have no choice: globalisation, they say, is a reality that must be engaged with, even if it brings pain.

Whatever the rationale, the once-radical ANC is now toeing the free-market line dictated to it by the West. What this means for the future of the country is not yet clear.

Paul Kingsnorth is the author of One No, Many Yeses and was deputy editor of the Ecologist magazine in the UK.

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