The ANC has left South Africa a land of broken dreams. Its time seems over | Simon Tisdall

At this month's elections, the party of Mandela should be judged on its dismal record over the past 30 years

Who will save South Africa from itself? Not the ruling African National Congress (ANC), whose 30 unbroken years of under-achievement have brought the country to its present sorry pass. Not reformist" president Cyril Ramaphosa, widely considered a disappointment. And not Russia or China, either, to which Pretoria's flailing regime, increasingly at odds with the west, looks for succour.

Three decades after Nelson Mandela's historic poll victory formally vanquished apartheid, and less than three weeks before another watershed election, it's all going wrong for the Rainbow Nation. Africa's most developed country is now its most unequal, the World Bank says. Crime is rampant, corruption endemic, growth is tanking. More than 60% live in poverty. Unemployment among black people is 40%.