Post-Polokwane: a perspective on a Jacob Zuma Presidency
These past few days the headlines and newspaper messages and TV pictures coming out of South Africa have depicted a violence that is unnerving and uniformly negative. The Gauteng township violence against foreigners is reminiscent of the worst days of the struggle against apartheid. It reminds us, and our friends abroad, that the unaddressed problems of our young democracy - the crisis in Zimbabwe, the problems of unemployment, the uneven growth trajectory and the contagion of crime - which have simmered now for over seven years require urgent resolution before they explode further and wider. Most particularly, they also need a bold governmental leadership which is almost entirely absent from South African politics at the moment.
It now seems possible that the next democratically elected president of our country will be a criminal accused - charged but not convicted - who, Houdini-like, might escape the chains of the looming trial and continue his gravity-defying political resurrection right into the Presidency of South Africa.
There is little doubt and significant evidence that the rule of law and the independence of constitutional institutions have taken a beating under the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. But the prospect of the next President - possibly Jacob Zuma - appearing in the criminal dock during his term of office could deal South Africa's fledgling democracy a crippling blow.
It is hard to see how the courts of law will process the trial of the country's head of state, and it is a damning indictment on the ANC that they would oblige them to do so. The best option, already rejected by the ruling party, would be not to foist such a situation on the country and its constitutional order. Our attachment to the hard-fought democratic gains of South Africa, and our admired exceptionality to the Afro-pessimistic view of Africa as a basket case of corruption and misgovernance, will be put to the ultimate test soon enough if Jacob Zuma ascends to the nation's Presidency.
One reaction to the extraordinary, even exceptional moment when Jacob Zuma was elected to the presidency of the ruling party at Polokwane five months ago has been to celebrate the reanimation of democratic vigour within the ruling party. South Africa's history has militated, in the short term, against the country going for the democratic gold of changing governments as a consequence of Mbeki's serial failures.
I have often been amazed that those who obviously knew better willingly suspended their disbelief as Mbeki visited upon South Africa a range of sometimes cranky policies and undemocratic practices. A party which prided itself so much on the richness of its democratic traditions had apparently happily permitted one man to centralise vast powers in his office and person.
I was one of many who bought into the myth that Mbeki was an Africanised version of Machiavelli - a master of the dark arts of political survival, and a ruthless but successful backroom manipulator. The endgame at Polokwane proved that I (and the bulk of the media and the political classes generally) had believed in a false analogy. Mbeki, in the end, resembled the Wizard of Oz: he had intimidated people with the giant shadow he cast from behind the screen of power. When this was ripped away he proved in some ways the local equivalent of the old man from Topeka, Kansas, who when revealed in his weakness responded to the charge, ‘You are a bad man' with the meek rejoinder: ‘No, I am just a bad wizard.' One of the positive outcomes of the ANC succession struggle was thus perhaps unintended: a limit on the scope of the Presidency.
Should Zuma prevail, most South Africans have no clear idea where he will lead the country. For some, the words ‘President Zuma' are an unnerving prospect. But he was recently rushed around investment centres in South Africa, London and the US, assuring nervous financiers that he will not change our reasonably successful, if job-crushing, economic policies. However, his union and communist allies chafe at the restraints imposed by the current economic orthodoxies implemented by Mbeki. They want both looser monetary and fiscal policies with less inflation targeting - and are deeply opposed to any further trade liberalisation.
On such crucial issues as AIDS and Zimbabwe, Zuma and his allies in COSATU and the South African Communist Party ranks are more democratically mainstream than Mbeki's essentially denialist, narrowly Africanist and politically tone-deaf approach. On crime, for example, Zuma had been far more frank than Mbeki, who routinely rounded on critics, and even victims, of the country's crime wave as being actuated by either racial malice or ignorance. Zuma by contrast, correctly identified violent crime as ‘a threat to our democratic order'.
In such matters Zuma appears plugged into the real concerns of his country's people. This would be a welcome departure from Mbeki.
The fear remains that because of his dubious personal associates and past moral choices, under a Zuma presidency South Africa could revert to a stereotype of ‘Big Man', African-style kleptocracy replete with redistributive and populist economics with lashings of demagoguery. Of course, corruption and crony capitalism billowed under Mbeki. But that is no inoculation against its deepening.
Accordingly, the crucial moral mission - not least for a world that requires South Africa's democracy to succeed - is to place less reliance on the country's leaders - singular or collective. We need to invest more effort in building and defending our democratic institutions. These can outlive the best and the worst of presidents. That is where the opposition, alongside a reinvigorated media and civil society has a continued and crucial role to play.
Whatever shape South Africa's new leadership takes, immense challenges have to be met. Do we want to be nostalgically remembered as a fading footnote in world history, commemorated for the one big thing we got right in 1994 - but with a sense of aching possibility about opportunities lost, dreams deferred and goals missed since then? Or will we become - perhaps against expectation - a success story of renewal, taking our place in the front row of winning nations, applying thoughtful policies and best practices, with equal measures of good governance and self-restraint, transcending the divisions and iniquities of our history?
This is an extract from the prepared text of a speech by Tony Leon, Democratic Alliance spokesperson on foreign affairs, to the International Policy Network, London, May 21 2008
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