South Africa

South Africa’s political foundation continues to rattle as the result of the ANC National Executive Council’s decision to request Thabo Mbeki’s resignation.  Numerous cabinet members have resigned, including, as promised, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and unexpectedly, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. Manuel has kept open the possibility that he would return under a new dispensation, but that has not reassured the economic community within or outside of South Africa, for whom the latest chaos has shaken confidence, leading financial markets to plummet.

Meanwhile, even as Jacob Zuma perfunctorily tries to make nice and the Democratic Alliance’s Helen Zille praises Mbeki for the dignity with which he has handled recent events, Mbeki plans to go ahead and challenge the court pronouncement that got him into this mess to begin with (or, to be more precise, that provided the excuse for his foes to go after him at this time). There is irony in Mbeki’s challenge in that Mbeki is using some of the exact same language Zuma had used in going after Mbeki to defend himself from those same charges.  A number of MP’s are supporting Mbeki’s challenge, yet again revealing the depths of the fissures within the ruling party.

Adding yet another bizarre twist, Thabo Mbeki’s mother, Epainette, has talked about formalizing the split within the ANC by forming a breakaway party. Expect such talk to manifest itself as more than idle chatter in the next few days and weeks.

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.

There can be little doubt that the past year has been the most trying in Thabo Mbeki’s oft-tumultuous presidency. Tonight he gave his State of the Union address before parliament. He certainly had plenty of fodder from which to work: The electricity crisis, crime, poverty, the daunting prospect of hosting the 2010 World Cup, and simply a general sense of malaise.

Mbeki provided a positive spin, called for the nation to pull together to confront the issues facing South Africa, and praised his countrymen for their resilience in the face of recent difficulties, especially the power delivery nightmare.

The response to Mbeki’s optimism has been skepticism in many, but far from all, circles. Helen Zille,  leader of the Democratic Alliance, whose job it is to be critical, took her job seriously, criticizing the president for “business as usual.” The editors of The Mail & Guardian approached Mbeki’s address fatalistically as did other observers. One imagines that those critics were likely not placated by Mbeki’s address and that Mbeki’s supporters found much with which to be pleased. In other words, status quo ante is likely to prevail.

If’s a busy news cycle right now in Southern Africa. here are a number of stories that caught my eye in today’s chock-full Mail & Guardian and elsewhere:

As the thirteith anniversary of the murder of Steven Bantu Biko at the hands of the security forces approaches different South Africans remember Biko’s life and death differently.

the Zimbabwe crisis continues unabated. The economic calamity has opened the door for corruption. Some maintain hopes  that South African-brokered talked will lead to a resolution of the political elements of the country’s conflicts, but it seems that  this may not be the time for whistling past the graveyard.

Meanwhile, transformation isn’t always easy. Members of the Democratic Alliance (DA) are up in arms over the Tshwane metropolitan council’s reported ban on white businesses. If the allegations are accurate, the DA would certainly seem to have a case that they will bring before the Constitutional Court. Meanwhile in a  pronouncement that is likely to be equally tendentious, the Black Management Forum  (BMF)  has argued that white women should be removed from the list of groups previously disadvantaged ”in terms of . . . employment equity legislation.” It is a bit hard for white women who benefitted in every imaginable way from apartheid suddenly stepping forward to claim their lots alongside the black South Africans on whose backs the Apartheid system built white privilege.

Finally, the M&G’s longtime rugby columnist Andrew Capostagno has a nifty piece on how this Rugby World Cup represents a “big chance” for the Springboks. He concludes his historically astute article by arguing that if the Boks achieve their considerable promise and “Win this one” South Africans “can forget, for a long, glorious moment, about politics.”

Cape Town mayor Helen Zille has easily dispatched of two rivals and will take the helm of the Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa’s biggest opposition party. The DA emerged after the disintegration of the National Party and its various and tepid successors. As a consequence the DA drew some of its membership from Nats who found themselves homeless and white liberals who hoped to have a voice after the end of apartheid but did not want to join the ANC.

The hope that DA members have is that the party will grow and draw increased support from the black population. With the ANC facing a number of simultaneous challenges the DA sees itself in position to take advantage of the discontent with the ruling party. And perhaps the DA will in fact draw some support from the margins. But the reality continues to be that the ANC received a higher percentage of the vote in 2004 than it did in 1999 or 1994 despite the fact that much of the current displeasure with the ANC had already become part of the oppositional trope by the last election.

The ANC’s main divisions will be internal. The main threat the party will face will come not from the right, not from white liberals, reformed (gereformeerd?) Nats, and a smattering of black allies. A true challenge to the ANC will come from the left, and thus will come from within the tripartite coalition with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). No matter how long South Africans look for a great white hope that can draw black allies to sweep the ANC out of power, the reality is that Helen Zille is not going to lead the most significant challenge to the ANC even if she heads the country’s largest opposition party, a status more grandiloquent than meaningful in the context of South African politics. Thabo Mbeki has much about which to be concerned. The DA ranks relatively low on that list.

Cape Town mayor Hellen Zille has announced that she will be running for the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) national leadership title, which will then put her in place to be the DA’s candidate for the presidency. Zille hopes to replace Tony Leon, who announced last year that he would not seek another term as party leader. Zille will continue to fulfill her mayoral duties.

Zille also commented on the role of the ANC, and on her hopes that the DA can help to forge the country’s future alongside the moderate forces of the ANC. She sees such an alliance as forestalling the ascendence of the country’s “far left,” especially if the ANC splits.

This strikes me as a wise strategy. The DA depicts itself as a party “vir all die mense” (”for all the people”), and yet the reality is that a predominantly white political party is not going to provide a viable alternative to the ANC. But if the DA can promote an alliance with the ANC if and when the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) split from the ANC, it might just have a future as something more than an asterisk in national politics.