The leadership question

2012 will see an ANC leadership contest that the country has already been long anticipating. Business Day, whose editor does not hide his despairing view of Jacob Zuma's unsuitability for the job, has argued that surely the ANC will not re-elect Zuma as President for that would be almost suicidal.

Within the ANC there is endless discussion about having a "leadership debate", though before anyone gets too excited and imagines that we might actually see proper presidential debates US-style, it should quickly be said that such a democratic and transparent prospect would be deeply alarming to the ANC. What is meant is just a discussion about the possible candidates without any participation by them.

Imagine if there was a proper debate and the wrong candidate won! Quel horreur! Moreover, even the discussion of candidates, such as it is, has to be conducted behind closed doors not only with no public participation but with the public not even allowed to hear it. It is a very peculiar way of choosing a leader and, not for the only time, one realises that the way the ANC does it approximates to the way the such things were done by both the Soviet Politburo and by the elders of the tribe choosing a new chief.

This is just how a would-be vanguard party behaves - an anomaly in a democratic polity. In 1991 I was still teaching at Oxford and took back with me a pamphlet from the ANC's July conference of that year which advertised a big post-conference rally. It read: "7 July. Come to King's Park stadium to meet your leaders".

My students were struck by two things. First, the sheer bare-facedness of it: no nonsense about being asked to choose one's leaders. Don't worry, we'll pick 'em for you, your job is just to come along and meet them. Secondly, of course, the lack of any mention of the time - no indication was given for when the meeting would start or stop, it would just meander on through the day.

My own memory of the event was that a hearty welcome was given to the representative of Sweden, that this was eclipsed by Cuba, and that in turn was overwhelmed by the applause for Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The fact that two dictators were top of the pops - both of them trying to entrench their families in power along monarchical lines - told some unhappy truths about the ANC attitude to leadership.

So this is not a leadership contest in the sense that democratic cultures understand the notion. So the question is, who are the contenders and how do we understand the "contest"? The first thing to grasp is that the heroic era of ANC leadership is over, that is to say the era when the leadership could plausibly claim to be about some set of principles.

When the movement was in exile or prison the self-evident purpose of leadership (Tambo, Mandela) was to keep the organization alive and to represent the goal of majority rule. Next came the "era of independence" when Thabo Mbeki tried hard to emulate Nkrumah, Sekou Toure and other first-generation African leaders of the 1950s-60s. There was the same emphasis on African pride, on anti-imperialism, pan-Africanism and so forth. This strange anachronism ended in complete collapse and ignominy.

But one must make a distinction here. The main body of ANC ideology is a construct from the 1950s-1960s and is frozen in that era. This antique ideology goes on quite unchanged because it is the only political language and the only set of ideas that the ANC has and it is in that language that it has long communicated with its activists and its wider body of supporters.

It is essentially a closed system of thought. From time to time some new figure - Paul Krugman, Hugo Chavez or Amartya Sen - will say something which rings a bell and they are hurriedly and rather pathetically appropriated to prop up this old Cold War set of ideas. Mbeki, however, attempted to add new touches such as Nepad, the African Renaissance and a concern for such exotic Third World struggles as that of Toussaint l'Ouverture in Haiti. Of this nothing at all is left. What is left even of the African Renaissance ? Only the anomalous figure of Shadrack Gutto, a Kenyan immigrant, who inhabits the African Renaissance Centre at Unisa.

These rhetorical and ideological flourishes did not disguise the fact that long before the end Mbeki found himself playing the politics of patronage and ethnicity as the ANC's factionalism grew and his paranoia simply undid him. How else to explain the cack-handedness which ended up with him opposing a coalition of the ANC's three strongest factions (Cosatu, SACP and ANCYL) plus the largest ethnic group?

The anomaly of Thabo Mbeki

The fact that Mbeki continues to intervene from time to time in current politics - usually beating the anti-imperialist drum - is itself peculiar. There is an outstanding case for Mbeki to be on trial at the Hague or at least at home. The advocate of genocidaires abroad (Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sudan), he himself was directly responsible (according to the Harvard study) for 365,000 unnecessary Aids deaths through his refusal to allow HIV+ mothers access to the necessary drugs.

The overwhelming majority of these victims were African and if apartheid was a crime against humanity, Mbeki committed a far deadlier crime. The problem, of course, is that Mbeki's cabinets went along with his actions and Mbeki was aided and abetted by key helpers such as Essop Pahad. The fact that South African newspapers continue to print Mbeki's speeches in respectful manner is utterly remarkable. It is as if, in Die Welt of, say, 1950, there were respectful references to Goering or Himmler - but it is unimaginable. Only a most bizarre deference to the leadership principle and, above all, the collective guilt of that entire generation of leaders, can explain why Mbeki and his associates have not been held to account.

After the heroic age

Be that as it may, with Zuma's reign we are into the realm of what one might term African-nationalist-politics-as-usual, which is to say much the same mixture of patronage and ethnic politics that one can find in Kenya, the DRC or Nigeria. Definitionally, such politics are corrupt to the very core and the main aim of national leadership ceases to have much to do with questions of policy or principle and becomes mainly about maintaining the factional balance in favour of the existing leadership.

Both the presidents of Nigeria and the DRC complain that they have no control over their cabinet (who are often billionaires or at least multi-millionaires) and little idea of what these cabinet ministers are doing. This is, so to speak, the fully developed African model. True, South Africa is not yet all the way there. Tokyo Sexwale is a billionaire and so is Jeff Radebe, via his wife, Bridgette, one of the richest women in Africa. None of the other ministers are paupers. Most are more than well off, are becoming richer at great speed, and already live the life of the ultra-rich on state expense accounts. Their aspiration is obvious.

The rise of ANC factionalism

At Polokwane Mbeki was visibly disorientated by the way in which his leadership could not prevail. This was, not, he said, the ANC he knew. In the ANC he was accustomed to there was a general deference to sitting leaders. They were not booed and nor was the chairmanship disputed. Mbeki's attitude had, indeed, been clear even at the ANC's National General Council of 2005 where large majorities wanted to re-instate the sacked Zuma and warned Mbeki that they would not stand for his attempt to prolong himself into a third term either as national or ANC president. Had he listened to these voices Mbeki would have spared himself the humiliation of Polokwane.

Instead he rushed down the hall towards the TV cameras to make his pitch to them, clearly believing that if he could thereby sustain his national leadership image, all would be well. He was simply not reckoning on the strength of the factions.

The ANC in exile had certainly had factions; tribalism was well and kicking - Xhosas tended to get the scholarships and Zulus didn't; and there was certainly corruption. But the key point was that the ANC lived off aid from the Soviet bloc, Scandinavia and sundry others and that, in all instances, this aid was channelled via the leadership.

This gave the leadership an absolute supremacy so that even corrupt leaders (e.g. Joe Modise, Tom Nkobi, Joe Matthews) existed only on the margin of tolerance allowed by the leadership. But everything else - per diem allowances, salaries, pensions, scholarships, grants etc - flowed through the leadership. True, there were allegedly independent front organizations like the Anti-Apartheid Movement, Defence and Aid and SACTU (the South African Congress of Trade Unions) but in practice these were all centrally controlled via the ANC/SACP network.

To the amazement of real trade unionists visiting London from South Africa, SACTU (the ANC's trade union arm, the South African Congress of Trade Unions) consisted of one or two people sitting in an office in London proclaiming that "we represent the South African working class".

All of which changed once the ANC returned home and assumed power. Now Cosatu (into which SACTU dissolved itself) represented millions of real workers and there were a plethora of independent trade unions which were not necessarily biddable by any centralised leadership. Moreover, ANC cadres found multitudinous sources of income and patronage.

Some, starting with Mandela, found wealthy donors and sugar daddies. Others turned this or that parastatal or college or university into a fiefdom while others did the same in a plethora of provincial departments, hospitals, universities, water boards, municipalities and so on.

Everywhere there were little fiefdoms and gate-keepers and everywhere there was the same hand-in-till drive for self-enrichment. What this meant was an explosion of factionalism for there were now hundreds, even thousands of little or big bosses, all with virtually independent resources which the ANC leadership could seldom control.

Hence the huge sea-change from the old ANC of (more or less) disciplined militants to the new ANC which is a vast federation of warlords, gate-keepers, fiefdom managers and a large bureaucratic bourgeoisie, much of which is frantically trying to turn their administrative jobs to commercial account via family-led tenders, the illicit sale of goods (e.g. drugs from hospitals, computers from schools etc) and simple theft of funds.

This ANC is enormously more difficult to manage because the tenderpreneurs often feel they have such secure local bases that they can thumb their nose at the leadership (e.g. the way that Julius Malema, secure in his Limpopo fiefdom, could give cheek to Zuma), because deals typically have to be negotiated with a variety of regional bosses and warlords, and also because the sight of so much self-enrichment in progress encourages a near-desperation among those still to benefit from it, making them difficult to control. Interest groups - teachers, taxi-drivers, students, public sector workers of every stripe - are very quick to sense any threat to their situation and whatever rackets they have contrived.

Moreover, virtually unnoticed, the great innovation of ANC rule from 1994 on was the complete loss of centralised control or even of minimal cabinet co-ordination. This was lost as soon as Mandela came to power and although Mbeki made various attempts to re-instate compulsory co-ordination, he never fully achieved it. Under Zuma no such attempts were made. In effect ministers are now so many feudal lords each making up his or her own mind about their satrapies, an arrangement which, hardly coincidentally, also maximises the possibility of corruption.

This assemblage of feudal lords is headed, unsurprisingly, by a reincarnation of the Zulu king. For Zuma now lives in his own palace with multiple wives and far more extravagant fitments (e.g. a helicopter pad) than even the Zulu King enjoys. Beneath him his various sons and nephews enjoy princely privileges including, apparently, immunity from the common law. It is nothing less than comical that this set of arrangements has the support and blessing of the SACP and the pretence is maintained that this is all part of something called the National Democratic Revolution, at the end of which we will have effectively made the transition to socialism.

In fact, of course, quite the opposite is happening. The transition is - as in many other parts of Africa - to ever-greater inequality via the prodigious enrichment of the political elite and its associates.  Without doubt the original models for the new bourgeoisie were wealthy whites whom the elite now want to supplant and surpass in their riches and, above all, in their conspicuous consumption, just as in Kenya and Zimbabwe the political elites acquired farms on a scale which first emulated and then dwarfed the white farmers of old.

The problem, of course, is that many of those wealthy whites in South Africa built major industrial empires - Oppenheimer, Gordon and Ackerman built Anglo's, De Beers, Liberty Life and Pick 'n Pay - institutions which form a major part of our economy, employ large numbers of people and provide important services. If one looks at the new plutocracy it is impossible to identify anything that it has built.

Sometimes, like Ramaphosa and Sexwale, this plutocracy got rich via sweetheart BEE deals and sometimes - Mzi Khumalo, Enoch Godongwana and many others - it got rich by inspired opportunism and looting. In almost every case the new plutocrats got rich by riding on companies already established by whites, by stealing pension funds, by getting assets at knock-down BEE prices and then flogging them off, or by using their political position to be gifted with Telkom shares or to earn enormous salaries and bonuses at the head of state corporations. The wealth would be forgivable if this new class was productive, but it isn't. It is almost wholly parasitic.

Zuma: South Africa's Falstaff

This is the context in which a Zuma presidency must be judged. In the ironic situation that so many African post-independence leaders found themselves, Zuma's job is to hold his party together, to balance off the factions to keep himself on top, and as part of this to emphasize the anti-imperialist and socialist principles which bound his party together in the past. And all this while acting as a front man behind which an enormous process of pillage, theft and despoliation goes on. Naturally - like Kenyatta, like Mugabe - he makes sure that his own family share fully in that process. It must be realised that this would be much the same political role whichever ANC leader filled it at present.

Because Zuma doesn't bother reading government papers, doesn't understand many issues and makes poor speeches, there is, astonishingly, a nostalgia in some quarters for Mbeki. Yet if Mbeki were to return he could never behave as he was once wont to do. He would be condemned to play the same fronting role as Zuma does, for that is what the dominant new black bourgeoisie demands. It is true enough that the older white bourgeoisie still holds greater wealth but politically there is no doubt that it is this new bourgeoisie that is in the driving seat.

In effect what this new bourgeoisie wishes to do is to conduct a ruthless process of primary accumulation at the cost of all other classes, and particularly at the expense of the African poor. It is quite unbothered that this process is increasing inequality and poverty all the time but it is concerned that there should be a competent enough front man to handle the inevitable political consequences of that redistribution towards the new haves.

In that sense Zuma attracts a great deal of criticism which stems from revulsion at what the ANC has become rather than anything personal. His merits are not negligible. He has saved an enormous number of lives by adopting a rational policy on Aids. He has tried far harder than Mbeki to argue the cause of reform in Zimbabwe. He supported the Libyan no-fly zone resolution, even if he regretted it later. He has trodden on Malema.

Above all, he is not Mbeki, so he has no paranoia nor any wish to dominate the nation intellectually. He is genial, cheerful and something of a Falstaff, a man usually with a smile on his face, much given to singing and laughter and also inspiring much mirth. He puts one in mind of the famous words of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:

"Let me have men about me that are fat;

Sleek-headed men who are fat and such as sleep o'night.

- adding, ominously, "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look", Cassius being, in this connection, a good stand-in for Mbeki. For the truth about Zuma's presidency is not only that we could do worse, but that we already have done.

However, we only got Zuma by accident, because Mbeki believed so strongly in his personal indispensability that he foolishly alienated the three most important ANC factions - the SACP, ANCYL and Cosatu - and, by sacking Zuma, he also alienated the largest ethnic group. To counter this overwhelming coalition that he had created against himself he used the resources of patronage, of the intelligence and prosecution services, of SABC radio and TV, and of proteges he had encouraged within the print media. When all else failed the computer charged with counting the votes at the ANC's Polokwane conference was instructed to start Zuma's total at minus 800 - but word leaked out, the Zuma forces demanded a manual count and Mbeki was overthrown. Mbeki was by far the greatest threat to South Africa's new freedoms that we have seen and his defeat at the hands of Zuma was a victory for democracy.

This is the first in a two part series of articles. The second can be found here.

This article was published with the assistance of the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNF). The views presented in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FNF.

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter