ANC grapples with Biko legacy as discontent simmers

CAPE TOWN, Sept 12 (Reuters) - South Africa on Wednesday marked the 30th anniversary of Steve Biko's murder as the country's current leaders face accusations they have neglected the poor masses that the black consciousness leader championed.

Biko is often mentioned with leaders such as Nelson Mandela, jailed for 27 years for his anti-apartheid activism.

Biko was not a member of the now ruling African National Congress (ANC), which led the battle against white minority rule, but his message of black pride reignited the fight against apartheid in the 1970s when Mandela and others were jailed, exiled or banned.

His legacy is a rallying cry for some of the discontented, who believe the ANC leadership, including President Thabo Mbeki, have placed the interests of the business community and rich elite above those of the country as a whole.

Thousands of blacks, the constituency Biko inspired until his death at the hands of apartheid security agents on Sept. 12, 1977, have taken to the streets in recent months to protest against the government's failure to provide water, electricity and other basic services.

Most still live in impoverished black townships, one of the most blatant reminders of apartheid housing policies that were used to keep blacks away from prosperous white areas.

Demonstrations over recent weeks have often turned violent, with residents throwing rocks and setting fires and police responding with rubber bullets. In some cases, local ANC officials have been murdered by angry crowds.

"I don't think the current government is adhering to some of the principles Steve Biko stood for," said Solomon Cedile, an activist from the sprawling Khayelitsha shantytown outside Cape Town.

PRIORITIES

"Most people don't have access to adequate education, to potable drinking water," he said, offering the government's multi-billion-dollar spending on infrastructure for the 2010 soccer World Cup as an example of its misplaced priorities.

The government has pledged not to cut social programmes to fund the effort.

The ANC, which has ruled South Africa since the first all-race elections in 1994, has vowed to speed up service delivery to millions who live on the sidelines of a booming economy and hinted it may tilt policy to the left.

"To say that the ANC has betrayed the people is rather extravagant," Defence Minister Mosioua Lekota told Reuters, putting the government's mistakes down to a lack of capacity.

But the party's reputation as a friend of the poor has been dealt a blow by a string of corruption scandals and by internal divisions that have arisen in a succession battle.

ANC activists are split over the prospect of Mbeki running for a third term as party leader in December, sidelining his archrival Jacob Zuma, a charismatic politician whom he fired during a corruption scandal in 2005.

He is barred from standing for a third term as president in 2009, but there is no such limit on the party leadership.

As more and more protests flare up, Biko's legacy as a man of the people will haunt Mbeki and his colleagues, whose critics portray them as cold elitists.

"There are many who believe that Biko would one day have led this country," said Langa Simelane, a 29-year-old credit analyst in Sandton, a wealthy north Johannesburg suburb.

"I think sometimes our leaders lose focus of some of the things that he stood for." - Reuters