South Africa

A number of stories caught my attention this weekend. Here are a few of them, with brief commentary as appropriate:

The Makana Football Association, which operated surreptitiously on Robben Island among the political prisoners has achieved recognition from FIFA, the sport’s governing body. A feature film, More Than Just a Game, starring Tsotsi’s Presley Chweneyagae, is to be released in South Africa in the next few weeks.

Thabo Mbeki recently has been stepping up his advocacy of a trilateral free trade area between South Africa, India, and Brazil. Mbeki believes that this trade bloc will give these leading nations in the developing world a stronger hand in trades with the World Trade Organization and will focus on addressing poverty and underdevelopment in the three countries and within the regional spheres that they dominate.

The Mail & Guardian’s “ZA @ Play” has an interview with Mark Gevisser, the respected observer of South African politics whose forthcoming book Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred is highly anticipated. The interview is fairly anodyne, truth be told, but the book should stand as a definitive early treatment of Thabo Mbeki’s life if it can avoid the pitfalls of polemicism and advocacy to which virtually all of the books on Mbeki up to now have succumbed. 

Finally, a bit of a controversy has enveloped one of my old stomping grounds, Rhodes University. Last year Anne Warmenhoven submitted a doctoral thesis to Rhodes’ psychology department, which approved the dissertation and granted Warmenhoven the PhD. Her topic is the late disgraced former Proteas captain Hansie Cronje. But the dissertation apparently is nowhere to be found, apparently because members of Cronje’s family only agreed to speak with Warmwnhoven under conditions of secrecy. Obviously this goes against every principle of academic freedom and openness, not to mention ideals of transparency that are supposed to be a hallmark of the New South Africa.

Jacob Zuma twists in the wind, wondering whether the National Prosecuting Authority is going to reinstate corruption charges against him before the ANC’s December conference. If the NPA does recharge the embattled but still tremendously popular (in some circles, at least) Zuma, it will almost assuredly scuttle any hopes that he would be able to succeed Thabo Mbeki as ANC, and thus South Africa’s, President.

(Jacob Zuma)

Meanwhile, what of Mbeki’s wishes as to who will follow him in the party’s and state’s seat of power? Well, one possibility is that he will remain the party’s president, thus giving him the leverage effectively to appoint his own successor. If that situation comes to pass (and I, at least, wish Mbeki would remove himself from consideration for even the party Presidency, lest Big Man Syndrome By Proxy set in) who might Mbeki’s choices to lead the country be? According to a report in The Mail & Guardian:

If President Thabo Mbeki remains ANC president and therefore has the power to appoint his own successor, South Africa after 2009 will be run by his two most-trusted lieutenants, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and government’s head of policy-making, Joel Netshitenzhe.

The strategy emerged in the Mbeki camp after deliberations with Netshitenzhe, who has insisted previously that he is not interested in holding any of the top positions in the party. But now he has been persuaded that the ANC needs him to step up to the plate and help wrest control from presidential hopeful Jacob Zuma.

(Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma)

That Dlamini-Zuma might succeed Mbeki, who has indicated that he would like to be succeeded by a woman, has aroused more than a little bit of excitement. But the fact that Mbeki seems to be willing to use the Zuma situation as a pretense to perpetuate his own power within the party is disquieting, even if his doing so is better than the rumors that he might want to change the Constitution to be able to serve as South Africa’s president for another term. Nonetheless, these machinations are also telling as to how deep the Mbeki-Zuma divide has become in the last few years.

(Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki arrive at Adalaide Tambo’s memorial service in February 2007)

The ANC succession battle continues to emit heat if not light. Zwelinzima Vavi, general-secretary of Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), recently remarked that “Many of the millions who are unemployed, or whose jobs have been casualised, are even worse off than under apartheid: about 20 million of our people are still mired in poverty, we still face many challenges, and the task of transformation is far from complete,” which drew a lot of attention recently and seems to augur well for Jacob Zuma. Zuma, for all of his recent troubles, enjoys the support of the country’s unions.  Vavi’s overstatement (and it is a serious overstatement that seems blindly amnesiac about the country’s apartheid history) nonetheless reveals the frustration of masses of South Africans who perceive the African National Congress as having abandoned their interests.

The more traditional wing of the ANC, meanwhile, has its own dream candidate. Unfortunately, that candidate has not actually indicated that he plans to run. Nonetheless, Cyril Ramaphosa’s candidacy has excited large numbers of South Africans who see the former liberation hero-turned master negotiator-turned successful businessman as the party’s best hope to escape its divisions and seeming stalemate. The question remains, however, whether Ramaphosa can be pulled into the campaign despite his reluctance. The Gaby Shapiro Branch of the ANC in Rondebosch is banking that Ramaphosa can be convinced to run and have nominated him as one of its preferred candidates to lead the party. The smart money says not to count Ramaphosa out.

The ANC race has hardly yet come down to just two candidates, and we will almost assuredly see the floating of many other names (including a woman, perhaps?) as possibilities. The next six weeks will represent one of the most crucial periods in South African political history.

I’ve been out of town for several days, which explains the light posting. I plan to write a great deal, especially about South African politics, next week when I return. In the meantime, Desmond Tutu recently visited the editorial offices of The Boston Globe, and he argued that the recent successes of the Springboks also point the way toward a reason to be optimistic about the general direction of South Africa.