South Africa

The breakaway faction of the African National Congress will not succumb to name calling or fear as it prepares for the final steps that will lead to the establishment of a new party in South African politics. The leaders of the dissidents along with their supporters will meet this weekend in what will likely result in a new organization formalizing the recent separation as a political divorce barring some unforeseen detente and reconciliation in the days to come. Mark this down as the weekend that will embody the biggest change in South African politics since the CODESA era that led to the 1994 elections.

It appears that South Africa’s parliament is set to dissolve the Scorpions, the high-profile independent police organization that has been the source of so much controversy since its inception. The Scorpions have been behind many of the investigations into Jacob Zuma’s various alleged indiscretions, so the timing of the decision should come as a surprise to no one.

At The Mail & Guardian Ferial Haffajee pulls no punches in  condemning “the infantilization of politics” in South Africa. A taste:

If there’s one thing driving me into the arms of the ANC –Mark2, it’s Youth League president Julius Malema and his ilk. And I’m not alone.

As he announced UDI last week, former ANC chairperson Terror Lekota was applauded only when he verbally klapped Malema, asking why we should be harangued and frightened by children.

He’s so right.

In the post-Polokwane universe it is the rantings of Malema, which have scarred the body politic. From his injunction to kill for [ANC president Jacob] Zuma to his loose invocation of the phrase “We are willing to lay down our lives for …” and his lax approach to the independence of the judiciary, the young man with the dead eyes has, for too many months, been allowed to bully this nation. His understanding of power is not that it is a stewardship granted by citizens to leaders, but that it is a force to be unleashed across the land like a disciplining whip. 

Commentary such as this makes one wonder just how much support a new party will have (and by extension the ANC will lose) when everything finally settles. Undoubtedly the ANC will continue to maintain a majority. But that majority party makes a mistake in taking a sanguine approach to the challenge it faces.

Is it me, or are Jacob Zuma’s warnings to ANC dissidents planning their own party both vaguely ominous and toothless?

They strike me as ominous because of their threatening nature that will almost certainly stifle not only true threats to the party from within, but also legitimate dissent on important issues. Party discipline is one thing. Forced unanimity is quite another.

But the threats also ring as ultimately empty, because by definition those who are entertaining notions of splitting from the ANC will no longer be beholden to the party if they do move on to a new organization. Barring the ANC fomenting an even more serious political crisis by trying to punish those who leave the party, it is unclear what Zuma and party leaders could do to those who stray for what they perceive as greener pastures.

The sun will rise. The sun will set. South African rugby will be fraught with controversy. Some assertions are truisms.

The latest kerfuffle over the transformation of South African rugby is a revival of the question of whether to remove the Springbok as the national program’s emblem. For its critics, the Springbok is a symbol of white, and especially Afrikaner, supremacy and thus of Apartheid. For others, keeping the Springbok represents transformation at its best, an appropriation of a once racist symbol to represent the New South Africa.

The latest salvo comes from the legendary political activist and rugby star Cheeky Watson, whose son Luke’s placement on the Springbok team was controversial and appears to be over. Watson has asserted publicly that the Springbok has to go. Of course Watson also represents a father scorned, and he is also considering legal action on behalf of his son, who also is alleged to have spoken harshly about the Springbok symbol, so the personal and political intersect in this case.

Symbols are vitally important in South Africa. And transformation is still in its early stages. SA rugby reveals the nature of resistance to change even as it slowly lurches toward change on the pitch. Nelson Mandela was able to embrace the Springbok mascot. So too could millions of South Africans (indeed, the ANC has thrown its weight behind maintaining the mascot) if only those who want to maintain the mascot would yield in those areas that truly matter.  

The ANC dissidents, led by Mosiuoa Lekota and former Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa, have continued apace with their plans to form a separate party. They claim that the ANC had become too beholden to the far left, particularly the South African Communist Party (SACP), or at least that the SACP increasingly felt entitled to have a greater say in the direction of the ANC. The new party will reflect social democratic values and will be freed from the constraints of holding together an increasingly untenable alliance while at the same time moving away from elements of that alliance’s ideological impetus.

The ANC, meanwhile, largely whistles past the graveyard. Jacob Zuma acknowledges that he is “concerned” but effectively denies that his party is divided down the middle. In the most literal sense he may be right. But a flood from the ANC to a new party would significantly change the dynamic of South African politics, and the ANC would no longer wield undisputed control. The Democratic Alliance is already jumping on the party breach to demand equal time on the SABC. It’s absurd on its face that a minority party with such relatively small support (12% give or take) might be able to legitimately claim that it deserves equal time with a party that garners more than 60% in national elections, but the demand is slightly less absurd than it might have been a couple of months ago.

The ANC also denies that it might be seeking to hold an early election in order to try to capture support before a full-fledged breakaway party can form. In all honesty an early election might represent Zuma’s best hope to grasp the presidency before either the dissidents can concolidate their support or ANC members can come to the conclusion that Kgalama Mothlante might represent a viable option to the soap opera drama that is Jacob Zuma. This would particularly be true if, as expected, the global economic crisis continues to affect South Africa.

Stay tuned. Like Eastern Cape weather, the conditions are likely to change soon. For better or worse, we have no idea.

The African National Congress has acted swiftly against the breakaway factions, led by Mosiuoa Lekota, by suspending Lekota and Lekota’s former deputy, Mluleki George and threatening further disciplinary action. Lekota is purporting to be shocked and wronged, but that seems disingenuous. He effectively walked away from the party and promised that he was going to establish a rival to the ANC and has acted accordingly. What response could he possibly have expected?

Yet at the same time it seems untoward and even dangerous for the leaders of the ANC to be talking about “open warfare,” to be making what sound a lot like threats, and to try to assert that ANC dissidents have no right to split and form their own party. At times in the last few days the ANC’s hierarchy has sounded chillingly Mugabe-esque in its hubris and some worry that the party is undermining its own hard-fought and hard-earned values and thus ignoring its responsibility to the country.

The formation of a breakaway party of erstwhile African National Congress members comes ever closer to fruition. Former Defense Minister Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota, who resigned from his post after Mbeki’s forced resignation, has “dropped a bombshell” and “served his divorce papers” to the ANC. Lekota seems determined not only to sever his ties with the ANC but also to move forward with plans to establish a competing political force. 

A meeting of more than 300 ANC dissidents in Cape Town this past has merely fueled the speculation, with their denials that they discussed forming a new party and assertions that they only met to help put the party’s house in order convincing few observers. Plans for future meetings (”consultative conferences”) of prominent former members (it still seems odd to attach “former” to these long-time ANC stalwarts) on the outs solidifies the impending tectonic shifts. 

The formation of a new party will also require the emergence of party leadership. Assuming Thabo Mbeki does not want to assume a position of power – it seems obvious that the post would be available for him and that he would demur — Lekota’s gambit surely must be geared toward placing himself in position to take on the party’s mantel. In case there is not enough drama for the casual observer of South African politics, the emergence of a new party should help quench their thirst. 

Given that little surprises in South African politics, perhaps a reconciliation of the ANC will be possible. Key players within the ANC are playing their roles. President Kgalema Mothlante exudes optimism. How he handles this break will be central to his own political future, after all, so he needs to come across as a unifying force. Jacob Zuma, meanwhile, is predictably combative, asserting that any new party is “doomed to fail.” But for now it seems evident that the party has split and that the divisions, both personal and political, are irreconcilable.

Even as talk of forming a breakaway party from the remnants of the ANC that have fallen out of favor accelerates, Allan Boesak has begun talk of also forming a new United Democratic Front (UDF). The timing of Boesak’s proposal is perhaps telling.

While the UDF, which Boesak helped form, is often seen as having embodied the public manifestation of the banned ANC during the 1980s, the organization, which emerged in response to the attempt of the National Party to engage in pseudo-reform by establishing a Tri-Cameral parliament in 1983-1984, was in fact much more than simply the old ANC wine in new skins. Deeply devoted to local community politics, the UDF in many ways brought the struggle to the people in a way that even the ANC had not been able to do for much of its existence. Boesak’s call, then represents in a very real way an attempt to revive people power and a recognition of the failures, or at least shortcomings, of electoral politics.

The UDF once hoped to “make South Africa ungovernable.” One wonders if a viable new slogan might be to “make South Africa governable again.”

If you want an indication of the widely diverging opinions that Thabo Mbeki inspires, take a look at Ronald Suresh Roberts’ (utterly unsurprising) apologia and John Pilger’s (no less shocking) indictment of Mbeki in The Mail & Guardian. Neither the hero nor villain narrative is compelling, as Pilger acknowledges before then villainizing Mbeki, but these poles fairly accurately reflect the dualistic ways by which many think about South African politics.