South Africa

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.

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.] 

In an extensive interview with the Mail & Guardian ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe last week effectively told COSATU to back off, to stop trying to run the party’s and the country’s internal affairs, and effectively debunked the idea that Jacob Zuma might be more receptive to giving COSATU and the SACP greater power within the tripartite alliance. Assuming that Mantashe spoke with Zuma’s blessing and articulated the ANC president’s will, this is huge news that might cause splintering of the tripartite alliance (which I have long predicted). But even if Mantashe spoke of his own volition and did not represent Zuma’s will, his words still are portentous for COSATU’s goals of greater power within the ANC coalition. The ANC-COSATU-SACP alliance has long been asymmetrical, and once the imbalance outweighs the putative access to power, COSATU and the SACP will forge their own alliance and go their own way. The divide will not happen in 2008 and may not happen as the result of the 2009 elections, but it will take place. And when it does, the effect on South African politics will be monumental.

If it’s a new day in South Africa it inevitably means that the tension level has been ratcheted up another notch. The biggest story may be the rumors that if Jacob Zuma wins the ANC presidency he will get to work trying to find a way to force Mbeki out of office. One cannot help but wonder where such a move would fall on the business-personal divide.

Speaking of merging the personal and the political, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has officially thrown her support behind Thabo Mbeki, accepting a nomination for ANC Deputy President rather than take the chairmanship on her ex-husband’s campaign.

Naturally, many wonder what the overall effect of the Polokwane meetings and concomitant division, which has seeped down to (or risen up from?) the provincial level, will have on the ANC.  I’ve long argued that the ANC-COSATU-SACP coalition may not last forever and that the most viable opposition to the ANC would come from an internal splintering and not an external challenge. Are we seeing the first stages of that break today?

As COSATU and the SACP seem on the verge of seeing their plans achieve fruition through the rise to ANC party presidency of Jacob Zuma, which many are beginning to see as inevitable, it might be worth asking a few questions, as Muzibuko Jara does in the Mail & Guardian:

This is an opportune time for the left to confront some hard questions — and they should start with interrogating the allegedly progressive, democratic and transformative policy credentials of a Jacob Zuma-led ANC.

Without a doubt the succession battle has created conditions for a more democratic ANC. But how deep is this process, how long will it last and just how progressive is it? Is political space being sought only for a new elite of alliance leaders, or for people at the grassroots?

Jara seems skeptical as to whether the Zuma elixir represents the panacea so many seem to yearn for in a post-Mbeki dispensation. I know that I am. It remains to be seen what a Zuma presidency might mean, but there are no simple solutions and Zuma is not a messiah. 

It looks as if COSATU has begun to forge its independent path in what is certain to be a rollicking succession battle within the ANC. I have long argued that the ANC will eventually find its greatest challenges from within, and that a viable opposition is most likely to emerge from a division within the tripartite alliance of COSATU, SACP and the ANC qua ANC. The reality is that there is no viable party from the left or right that is going to challenge the ANC’s dominance any time soon, and that a particularly fruitless place to look is from center-right parties led primarily or even substantially from white South Africans, however well intentioned. Demographics and history mean that such a challenge simply has no shot at gaining traction.

COSATU has made their first move a strong one by quite clearly indicating that Jacob Zuma, he of the multiple criminal charges, including rape and various fraud accusations– the results of which are far from certain or complete – is their man. Indeed, in the sort of zealous absurdity that seems most common from political classes worldwide, Cosatu’s general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi recently compared Zuma to Nelson Mandela. Hyperbolic analogies aside, however, there is no doubting that Zuma enjoys tremendous support among many among the masses of the working classes. Similar to Winnie Madikazela Mandela, Zuma seems almost immune to criticism among the COSATU/SACP elements of the ANC alliance who believe that the government attacks them because they speak truth to power that power has no interest in hearing. The ANC, meanwhile, is not thrilled with what the party’s leaders see as COSATU’s presumptuousness.

Almost assuredly Zuma’s very public roller coaster ride will continue, as will the ANC’s in what is shaping up to be the most acrimonious, and maybe the most significant, year in South African politics since the CODESA negotiations. Strap in. It is going to be an exciting but very bumpy ride.

In an otherwise perceptive article in The New York Times, Michael Wines seems somewhat nonplussed by the possibility that Thabo Mbeki appears to be entering a lame duck phase as the South African President.

With that status comes more vocal complaints from within the ANC coalition ranks than we may have seen before, especially from the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). And yet COSATU and the SACP should be decidedly unsurprising sources of criticism for anyone with even a modicum of understanding of South African politics.

Your faithful scribe is almost but not quite back home and thus to something resembling normalcy. Full-scale blogging should resume next week. In the meantime, here are some Africa-related links:

In Zimbabwe the Interception of Communications Bill only awaits Robert Mugabe’s signature. My guess is he’s thrilled to do so, helping seal Zimbabwe’s totalitarian status. Meanwhile MacDonald Dzirutwe avers in the Mail & Guardian that Mugabe’s newest get-tough economic policies are likely to represent only a short-term palliative with deleterious long-range effects.

It is now Congo-Brazzaville’s opportunity to hold elections that raise all sorts of questions about probity, organizational skills, effectiveness, and the like.

In the category of “this comes as news to whom, exactly?” we must place a refugees International report that asserts that Sudan’s rape laws are making the human rights catastrophe in Darfur worse. I do not aim my sarcasm at Refugees International, but rather at a crisis that is so far gone that such obvious accounts still qualify as being significantly newsworthy.

In Accra we might soon find out if we are closer to seeing the emergence of a United States of Africa. Just five years after its inception as a new and better organization of African states, the African Union (AU) debates tightening their confederation even more.  

 In South Africa:

Petrol prices continue to pose problems, with recent price drops in some areas accompanied by price hikes in others. 

As the ANC meets to debate future directions, the party’s succession battle accelerates, with a question that has been a subtext for some time now rising to the fore – does the party leader of necessity have to be the political standard bearer? Meanwhile, Thabo Mbeki has not so subtly hinted to the South African Communist Party (SACP) that it might be time for the comrades to steer their own separate course. I have argued for years that the only serious challenge to the ANC will come from the left, not the right, from black politicians, not disenchanted whites. Apparently Mbeki is willing to accelerate the process.

The mass action strikes are finally over. A South African cabinet minister and a prominent labour leader weigh in on their meaning.

Finally, the Springboks have had their luggage pilfered.  Is this another angle for the South African crime epidemic? Not exactly. The thefts appear to have occurred in Australia, where the South African ruggers are preparing for the next part of their Tri-Nations away leg.  

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.

Given it’s role as the largest anti-apartheid liberation organization, its central role in the transition to democracy, and its virtually insuperable status in the country’s politics today it should come as no suprise that the African National Congress is far and away the most scrutinized (and criticized) political party in South Africa. From issues of politics and policy that some fault Thabo Mbeki’s party for not addressing satisfactorily (crime, AIDS, poverty, continuing inequality) to internal strife (the myriad crises surrounding Jacob Zuma) to the natural backlash against the party in power, it is not always easy to sit in power, even if in each national election from 1994th ANC has actually consolodated its hold. Even as the party garners greater criticism, it seems to draw more support. At least in large part this can be explained by the lack of a viable opposition party.

This past week some of the ANC’s brightest lights met n Durban to try to smooth out some ruffles that have emerged between the national party leadership and the party’s hierarchy and rank-and-file in KwaZulu-Natal, where Zuma’s sacking hits closest to home. The leadership emerged proclaiming unity, but some observers, (see, for example, this analysis) take a more cynical approach, believing that the Durban meeting reveals fissures within the party and an ANC that is “troubled,” and perhaps in a state of crisis. Naturally, at least some observers, notably from the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) want to use the opportunity that the times provide to push the ANC to move its politics leftward.

I have long argued that if a viable challenge to the ANC ever emerges in South Africa it will not come from the old recidivist challenges from the white right, but rather will come from a splintering of the ANC-SACP-COSATU alliance. Perhaps South Africa approaches a time when the ANC will either swing to the left or else it will fracture, with SACP-COSATU forming a new party.

But as a new boook by Padraig O’Malley, Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa, indicates, the ANC has always dealt with internal division. The party’s leadership has always shown itself to be imaginative and clever when responding to crises. My guess is that Mbeki and company will be able to convince dissidents in SACP-COSATU and in KwaZulu-Natal that their interests are best served within the party, not operating from outside of it.