The African National Congress, having exchanged the monastic Thabo Mbeki for the celebrity Jacob Zuma, will romp home to victory in Wednesday's general elections, although the edge will be taken off the triumph by expected reduced ANC majorities (except in KwaZulu-Natal where Jacob Zuma has diverted the Zulus from the Inkatha Freedom Party into the ANC). However, whatever the outcome, Zuma's spin doctors will claim an "overwhelming" victory, which is what the lavishly funded ANC campaigned for (donations by courtesy of Libya, China, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and numerous businessmen).
Seeing that the ANC already has 296 (74%) of the 400 National Assembly seats (this includes the 2005 and 2007 floor-crossers), an "overwhelming" victory means bringing the parliamentary opposition as close to extinction as possible.
Still, the ANC's pursuit of a two-thirds majority is a bit odd. Already, it has a two-thirds majority and can change the constitution when it likes. Why does it wait? And why does it want a change? This makes one think that Wednesday's elections are not particularly important- that the tectonic plates moved at Polokwane in last December and that what is left now is certification of the shift - and confirmation that black politics have reduced themselves to an in-house brawl in which power and greed provide the momentum. Policies will come later.
In Business Day (16 April), Professor Susan Booysen of Witwatersrand University, in an otherwise acutely perceptive article, suggests "a post-election ceasefire while troops regroup for the 2012 ANC succession battle." This is when the ANC re-elects a new leader. The idea of a ceasefire is attractive to a warring nation, but the scramble for top jobs clearly will intensify after the elections, not subside. As Professor Booysen points out the state institutions in South Africa are "the trenches of the ANC's raging civil war of 2005-09". She mentions in particular the extension of "state subjugation" among "the judiciary, the Cabinet, premiers and mayors, directors-general, ministerial advisers and lower-ranking public servants, parastatals, parliament, provincial legislatures and municipalities, the security apparatus, the state bureaucracy and the Presidency". The whole tutti-frutti.
The scramble for power in the ANC will be even more bruising than those that started in the 1994 elections. Thabo Mbeki "deployed" his cronies widely and in key positions. This was resented and caused him to be ousted from office. The scramble that is taking place now could last for months and maybe even for much of the new five-year term of office, and it will be brutal. ANC "loyalists" have been embedded in their comfortable jobs for such a long time that they will be spitting venom when they are turfed out. Booysen says that in a decade-plus of cadre deployment (jobs for cronies) Mbeki created an almost impenetrable institutional fortress. Zuma's gang intends to demonstrate just how penetrable this fortress is.
Booysens touches on another point: the centralisation of power under the presidency. In Mbeki's case, he was the feared and undisputed puppeteer. Zuma is not within reach of this power. The present ANC leadership are a floppy lot. They appear to lack coherence; analysts are not sure in which direction they will pull once they take cabinet office. For example, only last week one of the more respected leaders, Mathews Phosa, said he had rushed to ask Zuma what he meant by his remark that the Constitutional Court judges are not "gods." Zuma gave the usual vague denial. Contemptuous remarks, too, have been made of Zuma by the secretary general of his most important backer, Cosatu. One wonders how long Zuma (and his promises) will last.
The ANC leadership is a hotchpotch: The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) wants to reverse Mbeki's market-driven macro-economics and replace them with a leftward shift; the SA Communist Party sees an early leftward shift as an interim move towards communism; the ANC Youth League, is a loose cannon if ever there was one; and the Young Communist League suggested the SACP should team up with Cosatu and seize the ANC leadership from those who see themselves as plain ANC.
Mondli Makhanya, editor of the Johannesburg Sunday Times, has no illusions about the "vengeful noises" coming from the Zuma camp. He writes (April 11) about "baying for blood" and "frothing at the mouth." Over the next few years, he says, "we may see the victors chase the vanquished into the caves and forests and hunt them until there is not one left standing. They will seek to destroy their careers, squeeze their businesses and generally make life miserable for them." Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni is said to be for the chop, and Finance minister Trevor Manuel is playing funny games with the ANC which may or may not save his job. The Zuma camp regard both men as being too orthodox in the Mbeki style. There is not much opportunity here for a ceasefire.
Then there is Cope - the Congress of the People - a breakaway from the ANC after Mbeki's ousting. Cope is not quite such a witches' brew as the ANC itself, but like the ANC it does not have a core idea - e.g. the "liberation" struggle - to give the party the cohesion it lacks. Thus, like the ANC, it is experiencing factionalism. From 1912 to 2005, the ANC pulsated on "liberation," the "struggle," etc. Both the ANC and Cope continue to invoke these familiar terms, but they cancel each other out: rivals cannot have the same slogans. Also, "liberation" from what? And "struggle" against whom? The ANC is the government, so complaints should be addressed to it, not to unspecified enemies. So far, neither the ANC nor Cope have been able to find a peg on which to hang the election. Blaming the local white population is pretty feeble. So Wednesday's election is a power struggle within the black community - with consequences for everyone.
For years the ANC, playing the "liberation" card to its limit, has shut out non-African voters who are no more than "minorities" now, trawling at the fringes of the 96-year-old liberation movement. In the process, the ANC has boxed itself in, in a new formalised way, so that the only plausible enemies left are those within the box, which means internal factionalism against each other. The conflict reached a peak when Cope broke away from the ANC. For a government which has been in power since 1994 to blame "colonialism" for South Africa's multiple problems is pretty pathetic. The solutions are within the box, and until that box cracks open black politics will not be able to make the transition from self-destruction to a wider, diverse society. Then there could be real "liberation."
Cope is not a happy outfit. Mbhazima Shilowa (Mbeki's man) is at loggerheads with Cope's joint leader, Mosiuoa (Terror) Lekota. What holds them together is their fury at Mbeki being kicked out of office by the ANC and the question of how to keep their own show on the road. But as a political force this kind of emotionalism is pallid. The best Cope can hope for is to cut down the ANC's majority. After all, at Polokwane, 40% of 4,000 voting delegates backed Mbeki. Yet where are they now? Many it seems have run for cover since Cope's formation, leaving only the bravest to vote silently and secretly for Mbeki.
Cope's problem is that it does not have a solid base of black voters. The Markinor poll said 78.7% of "likely voters" are black and that the ANC enjoyed the support of 78.8% of black respondents. The poll for Cope was 6.8 percent. As James Myburgh notes in his comments on the Markinor poll, "It is striking that Cope enjoys a higher stated support among the minority groups polled than it does in the black majority". Cope makes little sense: its top layer are doomed men and women and many of the lower ranks are likely soon to be jobless too (the global financial crunch anyway is helping to create a "jobless bloodbath" in the country). The poll by the way gives the ANC only 4.4 of white respondents.
Everyone knows Cope cannot protect the patronage they enjoyed under Mbeki. Zuma can get rid of a lot of Mbeki appointees (even if he retains the skills of some of them). As president, his patronage will be limited anyway - Mbeki used up most of it. How much is left in the kitty? And waiting on the station platform for their gravy grain are the ANC Youth League, Cosatu, the SACP, the Young Communist League, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Mbeki's "cadre deployment" severely damaged South Africa's governance, and now the question is how much more damage can be inflicted by replacing "deployed" Mbeki men by "deployed" Zuma men?
The situation is depressing for the Democratic Alliance, the official opposition in the National Assembly, with 47 of the 400 seats. Its strength is in the Western Cape Province (where Coloured voters, many deserting the ANC, can swing results), and it hopes not only to make further gains on Wednesday, but also possibly to capture the provincial premiership (its leader, Helen Zille, is already mayor of Cape Town), and to leave its footprints in at least half of the eight other provinces. The DA has the support of 31.59% of likely Coloured voters, 29.6 of Indian voters and 59.8% of white voters - but only 0.8 percent of black respondents. To attract national support, the DA has to break through the box - the blockage that prevents blacks from voting for "white" parties. At its formation, Cope attracted the interest of quite a few white voters - to which the DA makes the observation that these are wasted votes, because Cope is going nowhere. Similarly, Coloureds and Indians who vote for Cope are wasting their vote.
Inevitably, after the elections, as small parties scramble for a foothold on the political scene, coalitions will be the name of a very tricky game. Depending on how this game is played, South African politics can be lifted on to higher levels; however, the lesson of the past decade is that small parties which enter into coalitions with the ANC with the personal ambitions of leaders in mind can come to a sorry end.
At present, the NA has 16 opposition parties, with only the DA, and to a diminishing extent the Inkatha Freedom Party, carrying any real weight. Wednesday's elections may weaken the IFP even further, while strengthening the DA. This would leave the DA as the only significant player in the opposition field. Hence the DA slogan: don't waste your vote. Zille remarks: "When the opposition is divided the ANC wins....In the 2008 parliamentary session, five of the small opposition parties in the NA did not ask a single written or oral question, introduce a single Private Members' Bill or propose a single motion." The DA was responsible for 86% of the 1,757 written questions...In 2008 (it) introduced 76.6% of the 47 motions in the NA. Zille described the (one-time pro-apartheid) Freedom Front Plus's record as "disgraceful" - in eight months it attended only 35 of 755 committee meetings." A vote for a small opposition party is a wasted vote. Only the DA can "stand up to the ANC's power abuse... the ANC has brought us to the brink of a constitutional crisis."
Conclusion
Deep down, the political war in South Africa is about Mbeki's market-oriented macro-economics: will they be shifted leftwards or not? Will the pace of "transformation" spelt out in Cosatu and SACP discussion documents be slowed down or speeded up? Will the radicals begin their long-promised march towards socialism, or will they be far too busy buying their Mercs and BMWs to get around to implementing anything?
It is pointless looking to the business world for guidance because, as the media report, "Investor confidence in a Jacob Zuma presidency is high despite the many question marks over his leadership." Black politics are in turmoil in South Africa, and the more far-seeing analysts think it may take five or even ten years before politics take on a shape that even remotely merits a "democratic" label.
Yet, business leaders persist in declaring they are content with Zuma's assurance that "nothing will change", that Mbekism is safe, even if Mbeki himself has been disarmed and sent to sulk in his Johannesburg garden. Almost daily warnings from the ANC that everything will change leave them unmoved.
There it is. The people on whose success the country's prosperity depends are relaxed (although dare they say anything else?) Through the ANC though happily they are making new friends, such as the Chinese. They really should have a joint Facebook account - for which Confucius has already written the frontispiece: Those whose courses are different cannot lay plans for one another.
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