South Africa

This analysis in The Mail & Guardian seems to capture pretty well the ways in which recent events — most obviously, but not solely, the explosion of violence against foreign Africans — seem to have shaken the ruling party from its complacency. The responses from Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have been especially telling.

Even as Zuma has shown a fairly deft political touch on many of the issues facing the country, especially compared to Thabo Mbeki’s tin ear, it is still disquieting to hear talk from Mbeki’s anointed successor of the ANC being the inevitable outcome of divinely sanctioned rule destined to endure forever. This is not the sort of talk that seems likely to convince outsiders and the ANC’s internal critics that the country is moving in the right direction. Such perceptions are not vitally important. Nor are they meaningless.

Mbeki, meanwhile, continues to oscillate between shrill and defensive posturing and seeming fecklessness. One wonders who will be happier when the 2009 transition rolls around, the masses of South Africans who have soured on Mbeki and his leadership or Mbeki himself, who will likely find a golden parachute into the private sector.

This just in: Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi is mostly concerned with the interests of Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Buthelezi is threatening to file suit to prevent the passage of a law that will make the position of chairperson of the KwaZulu-Natal House of Traditional Leaders permanent, thus forcing him to choose between his position as part-time chair of the house and his job as a national Member of Parliament. But wait — there is not just self interest, but also hypocrisy at work: Buthelezi initially championed the legislation when he thought it would allow him to consolidate his power without consequence. If there is a politician with the capacity to become a Big Man in South Africa, it is Buthelezi. Thankfully he does not have a broad enough power base to use as a springboard to national leadership.

Anyone who has traveled in South Africa and talked politics with people has heard something along this lines: This country is just like Rhodesia, and under black rule we’re going to turn into Zimbabwe. This sort of “When We” alarmism, equal parts racist tripe and romanticized fatuousness is also common among expats around the world and among former colonialists of a certain age. It was thus refreshing to see that Jeremy Cronin, in his Chris Hani Memorial Lecture, addressed this question directly. One need not ardently support the South African Communist Party (I do not) to find a great deal of merit in Cronin’s cogent argument that whatever South Africa’s problems, it is not likely to follow the path of Zimbabwe.

[Cross-posted at the FPA Africa Blog.]

Times are certainly strange in South African politics in a post-Polokwane world. After all, where else could a non-violent, indeed, from a constitutional vantage point rather smooth, inter-party leadership transition lead to what is effectively a lame-duck political status for many of those in power across the country at the national, provincial, and local levels? Indicative of this strange set of curcumstances, Thabo Mbeki, whose handling of the Zimbabwe crisis only served to damage further an already crumbling reputation, caved in his support for the controversial Scorpions crime-fighting unit largely because of pressure from Jacob Zuma and Zuma’s supporters and that organization will soon disband unceremoniously.

Clearly Mbeki is aware of this status, as is Zuma, and to their credit, neither man is pushing too hard in the face of realities: Thabo Mbeki is still the president of South Africa; he will not be a year or so from now. Zuma knows that this gives him leverage, but so far he has been loathe to use it too obviously. It remains to be seen whether this tenuous situation can hold. And the standard caveat applies: If Zuma goes down on corruption charges, the whole dynamic of the game changes overnight. Zuma knows this. So too does Thabo Mbeki.

Jacob Zuma’s reputation appears to be enjoying a fairly significant renaissance. He has even made Time magazine’s list of the “100 Most Influential People,” an irredeemably silly exercise that nonetheless is an indicator of Zuma’s rise as a potentially serious player not only in South African politics, but perhaps continent-wide and globally. Now if only those corruption charges would disappear (along with the nasty aftertaste from those rape charges) Zuma might be in great shape.

Current crime and fears of crime, coupled with the contentiousness of the apartheid past (and the opposition to it) seem to be encouraging a debate over the role of guns in South African society. Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya explores the questions involved in this column at the Mail & Guardian.

Stop me if this sounds familiar: Recently prominent South African political leaders met away from the country’s major metropolitan areas in order to determine future leadership. The divisions were stark and clear and the leadership campaign tightly contested between two men, both of whom have their supporters and their detractors.

Welcome not to Polokwane 2007, but rather to the ANC Youth League’s (ANCYL) annual national conference at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein. Some of the dynamics from the meetings in Bloem took on different characteristics from the internecine fighting of their parent organization. For example, in Bloemfontein both of the major factions had supported Zuma, as did the ANCYL constituency generally. But much else was up for debate in the leadership contest pitting Julius Malema (who received 1 883 votes) against Saki Mofokeng (who received 1 696). Malema’s allies swept the top five leadership spots, despite the fact that the voting results were similarly close in the winner-take-all contests.

Is this the future that the ANC can look forward to over the next generation? Constant infighting and bitterly divisive conflict? Perhaps, but quite likely not. The current divisions in South Africa are not permanent, do not have to be etched in stone. Still, the proceedings in Bloemfontein were intense enough to rouse Kgalema Motlanthe, deputy president of the African National Congress, to criticize the “state of disorder” that characterized the ANCYL meetings.

So, how does one assess Jacob Zuma’s first 100 days as ANC President? As with so much in politics in South Africa and elsewhere, where one sits determines where one stands on this question. While the general assessment seems to be that he has experienced a stormy first few months, survey data indicates that support seems to be shifting in his favor and that he still enjoys tremendous popularity among the poor. It seems increasingly clear that Zuma’s future rests entirely with the courts. If he escapes the corruption charges before him unscathed (or at least unconvicted) he will succeed Thabo Mbeki as the next president of South Africa. But if he loses in court, all bets are off and one can be sure there will be a contentious return to the succession battle that many hopes Polokwane had settled in December.

Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma are bound to be inextricably linked for the foreseeable future — through the resolution of Zuma’s corruption trial or the 2009 election at least — and yet increasingly they seem to represent opposite sides of the same coin. Or to be more precise, they seem to absorb the characteristics of their beholders, who project upon them images that reflect less who the two power brokers are but rather what people want them to be. At times this leaves little room for ambivalence or for reasoned analysis about how one feels about the candidates, but this nonetheless seems to be the plight of today’s ANC, which, if not as hopelessly fractured as some believe, is nonetheless characterized by some fairly important internal divisions.

Despite their vaunted status within the country neither Zuma nor Mbeki are in the most comfortable positions. Zuma has, in the words of the Mail & Guardian, engaged in a recent, and not especially successful, “charm offensive without charm,” and, oh yeah, he is looking at a fairly serious criminal conviction. Mbeki, meanwhile, is in what seems to have become his default position as a beleaguered lame duck head of state criticized on all sides. (When some of your most vocal  support comes from Robert Mugabe’s Ambassador to South Africa, who recently chided MDC leaders for criticizing Mbeki as not being an honest broker in the Zim situation, things are not good better to be damned outright than to be praised by Mugabe’s mouthpieces.) It is at times like these that the private sector must look awfully appealing to both men.

Is Tokyo Sexwale laying the foundation for a run at the Presidency if Jacob Zuma’s path to power is cut off by his corruption case?

That was the first question that came to mind when I saw that Sexwale has started pressing Thabo Mbeki to come clean about his role in the arms deal that increasingly is taking on a life of its own in South African politics. After all, Sexwale might assume, Zuma’s case will play out on its own, so there is no need right now to take on the ANC president. But by going after Mbeki, and by doing so on an issue that will allow Sexwale to show his moral probity, he has also engaged in a cunning act of political triangulation.

If Sexwale throws his hat in the ring (or if he plays it so that he is summoned by his party and his people to service after a Zuma implosion) we may look back on this as the crucial moment of origin.