South Africa

Jacob Zuma desperately wants to avoid the corruption charges that he faces. The talk when I was in South Africa was that the charges would be thrown out, less on the merits than out of a sense of expediency. At the same time, Zuma needs the charges either to go away or to be weakened to the point where he can reasonably argue that he faces a political witch hunt. Conviction on charges that have sent some of his alleged co-conspirators to prison would presumably sound the death knell for his presidential ambitions.

For all of these reasons, today’s decision by South Africa’s Constitutional Court that the search and seizure of Zuma’s property was proper looms as a particularly grim defeat, especially coming as it does just days before Zuma’s lawyers are going to try to have the corruption charges against him dismissed. The court also dismissed Zuma’s appeal to stop the National Prosecution Authority (NPA) from utilizing documents that had been part of the case against Zuma’s convicted former financial advisor Schabir Sheik on charges of fraud and corruption similar to those the ANC leader now faces.

Even more ominous for Zuma, the first decision came with only one dissent. The second was unanimous. Thus the country’s highest court, which has for some time been presumed to be pretty evenly split along, for lack of a better conceptual framework, Zuma-Mbeki lines now appears to be fairly united in terms of its attempts to focus on the matters of law in the Zuma case. The Constituional crisis that many observers thought might come to pass as the result of the supposed divisions on the court appear to have been dramatically overstated or else have been ameliorated for the greater good. Either way, Jacob Zuma is having a bad day.

Two headlines about South African emigration from Independent On-Line appeared within the same week. The first: “Whites Leaving SA in Droves.” The second:  ”Whites Return to South Africa.” Is this schizophrenia at work? Shoddy journalism? Or, as I believe, an example of South Africans perceiving a problem and generally believing the worst even when there is contravailing evidence to the doomsaying?

Emigration is one of the big fears that many South Africans have. It fits a nice narrative for the nattering nabobs of negativism: South Africa is getting worse! Rather than stay ina  country they love, people are willing to seek their opportunities elsewhere! A third of the country thinks about leaving! It’s the ANC’s fault! Look, even blacks are increasingly thinking of emigrating! 

And yet for generations whites have left South Africa. A sliver left because of moral revulsion to apartheid. A far larger proportion left because the prospect of a black-led South Africa fueled their vision of swart gevaar. Still others left because people leave their home countries all the time for myriad reasons, some for good, some for short-term opportunities, and still others for indeterminate lengths of time. I am not convinced yet that emigration is an actual concern and I am convinced that some of the polling methodology being relied upon in these examples is, if not shoddy, at least misleading. In other words: Calm down. All of the “good South Africans” are not going to leave, and those that do leave are not going to resign South Africa to a bleak, talentless, equity-free future. Among some sectors of South Africa the sky is always going to be falling.  

There is a reason why economics is known as the “dismal science.” For all of the accoutrements of precision and exactitude, the reality is that much of economics is at least as much alchemy as science, and the supposed “laws” of economics are more like guidelines than immutable realities.

It is thus not surprising that Thabo Mbeki and some of his critics have such wildly varying views of his economic policies. Mbeki defends his record by pointing out the consistent, steady rates of growth of the South African economy under his watch and argues that his policies have prevented some of the econolic calamities experienced elsewhere. His critics, the SACP and COSATU chief among them, believe that he is not doing enough to address poverty and accuse him of being delusional about the direction of the economy.

Both arguments have merit, but when it comes to economic policies, I tend not to buy into what the SACP wants to sell. Mbeki has not done enough to embrace anti-poverty programs, and the gap  between the haves and have nots, which continues to grow, is appalling. Nonetheless, the anti-liberalism pablum that the leftists on the Tri-Partite Alliance want to spew also leaves me cold. In an ideal world the government would continue on its course while expanding enough to embrace more ardent programs to address inequality, poverty, unemployment and the like.

A key rule in understanding politics is to take with a grain of salt when one party tries to define, contextualize, predict, or provide historical context for another. Another key rule is to make sure that other parties are not in a position to define yours.

I thought of (read: made up) these iron-clad rules when I read two articles in which Democratic Alliance leader and Cape Town mayor Helen Zille made two pronouncements about the African National Congress. the first of these was that the ANC is going the way of the National Party, with its divisions between verligte and verkrampte, or enlightened and reactionary members. Beyond the offensiveness of comparing the ANC to the party against which it fought for so long, the analogy seems shallow, forced, and ahistorical, a silly and patronizing attempt to provide analysis and prescription for a party that it is in Helen Zille’s very real interest to see not succeed in the first place.

Zille’s second assertion is no less self-serving than the first, though it may be somewhat more accurate. In the DA’s online newsletter Zille argued in a piece putatively honoring Nelson Mandela that Mandela’s “legacy is being undermined by powerful elements in the ruling party.” Zille’s tribute to Mandela was undoubtedly sincere — the DA has been a vocal advocate of erecting a statue in honor of Mandela at parliament and plans to reopen debate about doing so again. But it also takes a certain level of hubris for the opposition leader to presume to speak in the name of a man who is still alive, who is still a member of the ANC, and who led that organization through its years in the wilderness.

Zille is not alone in her belief that the current ANC has forsaken some of the high ground it possessed a decade ago. But inapt historical analogies and purporting to speak for Mandela’s legacy strikes me as the sort of “consider the source” argumentation that somewhat invalidates much of what she has to say. Nonetheless the ANC has enough of an image problem in the country that her words probably resonate with a sizable minority within the country. For if there is a third rule of politics that I would like to make up here, it is that a party that is unable to define itself will be defined by others. The solons in the ANC’s various factions would be wise to pay heed to this rule more than any other.

Tired of rising electricity and food prices, 25,000 members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) marched on Eskom’s Johannesburg offices today. The march sounds as if it was almost festive, with a holiday mood prevailing among the marchers. But beneath the surface there is real anger. I heard it when I spoke with South Africans over the last month, and the anger manifests itself all over the pages of the country’s newspapers, the pictures on its television screens, and in the words and actions of its people.

As usual, the political ramifications linger just beneath the surface. protests these days are all aimed directly or indirectly at a government that appears not only not to be able to provide basic services and to fill basic needs, but that, worse, appears not to care. This seeming lack of apathy largely explains much of the mobilization behind Jacob Zuma, who has yet to reveal how his government would differ from Thabo Mbeki’s on issues of delivery and poverty alleviation. One of the benefits of opposition to an unpopular leader is that one can be vague about solutions. In this sense, Jacob Zuma is a cipher capitalizing on the country’s discontented mood, meaning all things to all people.

I should be back to regular posting soon. My travels did not end with the return to the US, but I plan to be back at full posting volume in the next day or so. In the meantime, over at the FPA Africa Blog I have a long piece on the Zimbabwe crisis, the talks about talks, and the apparent progress that has been made over the past few days. Suffice it to say that I continue to be skeptical, but hopeful.

Today marks Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s 90th birthday. The great man is slowed but still robust, with his characteristic grace and wit still intact. As South Africa muddles through, the country’s leaders would do well to dwell on Mandela and his meaning, not merely his undeniable symbolic power, and not even the mythology that surrounds him — in some cases rightfully — but rather on his approach to leadership and governing.

Mandela’s greatness stems not from his perfection – he was not perfect and would be the first to recognize as much — but rather from the humility of his approach, on his willingness to compromise, on his loyalty, and on his unparallelled integrity. As just one example of a shortcoming leading to positive action, Mandela recognized even before he had left office that he had fallen short on what would prove to be one of the country’s, the region’s, biggest challenges, the threat of HIV-AIDS. And so his foundation has tackled that issue head-on and in so doing has done much good on that scourge that so haunts the country.

Mandela emerged from 27 years on imprisonment by a regime that deserved no quarter. But Mandela knew that in order to accomplish his goals of a non-racial, or multi-racial South Africa with one-person, one-vote democracy, he would have to negotiate with his enemies. And so he went about establishing the conditions for negotiation, cajoling some of his more skeptical comrades while at the same time making clear to the National Party the parameters within which negotiations would happen. Mandela was not the sole, perhaps was not even the most important, negotiator for the African National Congress, but he was the most important figure in the negotiation process, and knowing this, Mandela leveraged his identity and his leadership to bring about the end result that he desired.

Nelson Mandela will not live forever, yet he will live on. the question is how he will live on: As the father of a new South Africa forged in the consensus of the Freedom Charter or as the lamented apogee of an ANC gone awry. It is too facile to speak of historical crossroads, and yet South Africa certainly seems to be dealing roughly with the post-Mandela era. Thabo Mbeki will likely leave office scorned, his absence not long lamented despite his own well-earned status as an ANC exile leader. Jacob Zuma is hardly off to a promising start as the president of the ANC, and though it appears that he and his supporters may well find a way to cause the corruption charges against him to evaporate, as the country’s president Zuma seems detined to be a divider rather than a uniter. South Africa does not need another Mandela — there can be no such thing and we’ve been lucky to have the one — but what it needs is leaders who look beyond Mandela’s symbolism, beyond the birthday praise, however insufficient in relation to what the man accomplished and has meant to so many, and who can capture the essence of what Mandela wanted for his country and his world.

Grown men are not supposed to have heroes, or in any case are not supposed to worship them publicly. But Mandela is my hero. And he is the hero of millions. Long may he live in the minds and hearts and actions of South Africans and people the world over. More important, long may he live.

[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog and at dcat.] 

40+ hours, one lost piece of luggage, three movies, several television shows, two read books, several newspapers, and virtually no sleep later, I arrived back home last night. I am catching up on life and will resume posting soon.

[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog and at dcat.]

After three weeks here in South Africa, this evening I will board a South African Airways plane bound for Washington, DC’s Dulles International Airport via Dakar, Senegal. If all goes well I will land at 6:00 am eastern time tomorrow, Tuesday, at which point I’ll hope that I can get to BWI in time to catch my onward flight that will eventually take me back to Texas.

Leaving South Africa is always bittersweet for me. I love this country, its people, its culture and politics and sport and even, in odd ways, its history. And every time I leave I have no real idea when I will next be back. Next year? 2010? As of right now, I am simply not sure. South Africa is a part of my life, a vital part, and when I leave I will miss it even as I am excited to be home again, to see my wife and friends, to sleep in my own bed, and not to live out of a bag.

Over the course of the next few days I will continue my assessments about what i have seen and done in the hopes that it will continue to shed light on how I see South Africa right now, in the middle of 2008. Between now and then I have much traveling to do with a very cranky back. in the airport I am set to see a Zimbabwean friend who has fallen on difficult times here in South Africa. And then I’ll leave South Africa again, knowing full well that I will return, soon if not soon enough, to this place I have so come to love over the last decade-plus.

[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog and at dcat.] 

I’ll be the first one to admit that I tend to see most social phenomena through a political lens. Those of us who work on politics are akin to the guy with the hammer who looks at most problems and sees nothing but nails. That said, South Africans tend to be a politicized lot. Everything is political. Even those things that are not.

These are fascinating times to be an observer of South African life. There is a divide within the African National Congress that can only vaguely be attributed to policy differences or even to ideology, at least in the broadest sense. That divide has manifested itself in two personalities: That of President Thabo Mbeki and that of ANC president and presumptive successor to Mbeki, Jacob Zuma. Of late the rhetoric from Zuma’s most ardent supporters – most notably the leadership of the ANC Youth League – has been heated, indeed dangerous. When future generations of leaders begin talking about killing and dying for their leadership you either have inordinate loyalty or a dangerously volatile political climate. Most South Africans fear the latter.

Furthermore, the country’s legal culture reflects the Mbeki-Zuma divide, with high-level judges falling on one side or the other and thus making the judiciary a potential political flashpoint, if it is not at that stage already. With Jacob Zuma still very much caught up in corruption charges that could derail not only his political aspirations but also his freedom, and with the possibility that such an event would cause
South Africa to convulse.

And then there is the litany of issues that the country faces, and that no leader is going to have an easy time addressing: Inter alia, Crime (the new fad among South Africa’s bad guys is blowing up ATM machines and looting the contents), corruption (among the political class but also other elites – think the recent arms sales scandal), poverty and the entire economic apparatus tied up with it, and foreign affairs (Zimbabwe now, Darfur, the role of China on the continent, and then the usual putting out of fires that is the role of a regional superpower). 

The reality is that the Mbeki-Zuma divide has little to do with differences on how to approach any of these issues and everything to do with internal divisions in the party that for now is the only viable source of political power and patronage in the country. Theoretically Zuma’s support comes from the left, from the COSATU-SACP wings of the tripartite alliance, where Mbeki’s comes from the center (there really is no right-wing of the ANC, no matter what the left would have us believe), the party’s putative mainstream, though the fact that Zuma benefits from significantly more support than does Mbeki throws the idea of what exactly the ANC’s mainstream is right now.  

I have long argued that the only way there will ever be a serious challenge to the ANC will come if COSATU and SACP break away and form their own leftist party, at which point the ANC would probably garner a plurality of the country’s votes, but not a pure majority, which would bring with it the interesting spectacle of a party such as the Democratic Alliance becoming kingmakers in what would become a coalition government along the lines of those in many parliamentary systems. But with Zuma’s status as a longstanding ANC stalwart, that break has been tabled for the foreseeable future.

[Crossposted at the FPA’s Africa Blog.]