The UCT academic, Anthony Butler, has recently raised concerns that a split in the African National Congress could well have negative consequences for inter-racial and inter-ethnic accommodation in South Africa. In his column for Business Day last week he wrote, "We may have severely underestimated the moderating and stabilising influence the ANC has exercised in recent years over potential ethnic and racial conflicts. As Zola Skweyiya observed last week, the ANC has not fully succeeded in this project. ‘We have not solved the national question - not just between whites and blacks, but among ourselves as Africans'."

Butler's warnings of looming conflict could prove prescient - but perhaps not for the reasons he presents. In successfully uniting into one party all classes and ethnic groups of the ‘oppressed nation' the ANC was little different to other nationalist movements which came to power after the end of colonial or white rule in Africa. In maintaining a period of ethnic peace, albeit at the expense (and high levels of emigration) of non-black minorities, its successes have not been dissimilar either.

The real question is whether the policies it pursued over the past decade are all that different to those which ultimately led to the nightmare of ethnic conflict from which so much of Africa is still trying to awake.

Here it is necessary to understand the chain of causation. This was well described by the Canadian writer Michael Ignatieff. Commenting on the collapse of the old Yugoslavia into ethnic warfare he noted that the conflict had been preceded first by the collapse of the overarching state and then the institution of ethnic justice. It was only then that nationalist paranoia set in.  Nationalist sentiment on the ground," Ignatieff observed, "among common people, is a secondary consequence of political disintegration, a response to the collapse of state order and the interethnic accommodation that it made possible."

South Africa is hopefully a long distance away from the kind of inter ethnic warfare that marked the bloody breakup of the old Yugoslavia. But what is key is Ignatieff's point that it is the decay and collapse of the state - and the end of the neutral application of justice - which leads to an upsurge of ethnic sentiment (rather than the other way round).

The ANC has made a number of the same mistakes other nationalist movements did elsewhere on the continent. One of these was to aggressively politicise the state through cadre deployment, another has been to allow the professionalism of particularly the lower courts of the judiciary to slowly decompose. As Judge Carole Lewis of the Supreme Court of Appeal noted recently a string of weak appointments have resulted in a decline in the quality of justice being meted out in many of the high courts. "There have, in criminal matters, been horrifying convictions and equally horrifying acquittals where judges have simply not understood the fundamental rules of evidence or of criminal law."

The most obvious short term threat to stability in South Africa is the efforts by ANC supporters to disrupt COPE campaigning in the townships and rural areas. In a statement on Tuesday (see here) the ANC's National Working Committee said it strongly condemned "all forms of political intolerance, intimidation or violence. It will act against any ANC members who are found to be engaging in such activity." But it remains to be seen whether it will give effect to this promise. If it does, it may find it has a lot of work on its hands. When asked by Markdata earlier this year what opposition to the present government they would like to see, 22% of ANC supporters said "no opposition at all" (see here).

Any potential for conflict is probably manageable for as long as the courts and the police remain above politics. It is for this reason that the decision by the police to withdraw Terror Lekota's protection officers, despite the vocal threats against his safety, is such a cause for concern. This can only be a political decision as numerous other high profile politicians not in government - including Jacob Zuma and Blade Nzimande - continue to enjoy police protection.

One thing the ANC of Mbeki did differently to its African nationalist predecessors was to pursue free market policies and to grudgingly respect property rights (up to a point, and until the introduction of the Expropriation Bill.)

The new ANC leadership is planning a far more interventionist approach to the economy after 2009. If these aims are realised - to one degree or another (nationalisation is one possible outcome) - there are likely to be negative repercussions not just for economic growth, but ethnic accommodation and stability as well. The inverse relationship between the use of coercive power to engineer economic equality and political stability was identified by the British economist P.T. Bauer. He observed in 1981 that once economic life is politicised, "economic activity comes to depend on a great degree on political decisions. People's incomes and their economic modus vivendi come largely under the control of politicians and civil servants."

This in turn, "enhances the prizes of political power and thus the stakes in the fight for it. This outcome in turn intensifies political tension, at least until opposition is effectively demoralised or forcibly suppressed. And because people's economic fortunes come to depend so much on political and administrative decisions, their talents and energies are diverted from economic activity to political life, sometimes from choice and often from necessity. These consequences are manifest in many societies especially in multiracial societies." "The ferocity of the political struggle in many Third World countries cannot be understood," Bauer concluded, "without an awareness of the politicisation of life there."

If one wants evidence of how politicising economic life raises the stakes of political struggle one can look at the experience of the rest of Africa (see here). Or, one can just observe the way in which the fight for positions and tenders has torn the ANC apart at local government level.

As the then ANC Secretary General, Kgalema Motlanthe, told the Financial Mail in early 2007 "Almost every project [at municipal level] is conceived because it offers opportunities for certain people to make money. A great deal of the ANC's problems are occasioned by this. There are people who want to take it over so they can arrange for the appointment of those who will allow them possibilities for future accumulation."

If control over the allocation of municipal tenders causes this level of conflict - one does not need much imagination to see what giving politicians the power to, for instance, appropriate private property will do to political stability in this country.

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