Zuma’s brittle grip tightens

Early on Monday mornings I send my clients a review of the previous week’s political news which might be of relevance to financial markets.

This morning I thought the issues were of more general interest.

Thus …

Summary:

It is difficult not to see the main items in this review as connected:

• The ANC yesterday disbanded its Youth League’s executive and the executive of its Limpopo provincial structure – both epicentres of the unsuccessful campaign against Zuma in the lead up to Mangaung;
• An investigation into Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi’s affairs and political loyalties deepens and widens – although, just because it is a stitch-up doesn’t mean there is no fire within the smoke;
• Zuma’s approval rating among city dwellers drops to an all-time low and disapproval ratings rises to an all-time high.

Main body text:

ANC disbands its Youth League executive soon after axing its Limpopo Provincial Executive Committee

Yesterday, it was reported that at its 4 day legotla [1], the ANC National Executive Committee disbanded, as expected, the Provincial Executive Committee of the party in Limpopo. More surprisingly the NEC of the ANC then went on to axe the NEC of the ANC Youth League – which most observers had thought abased itself adequately to Jacob Zuma after failing to unseat him at the Mangaung national conference. (Note I am reliant on news reports for this … the ANC NEC is due to hold a press conference at 12h00 today where it will give a fuller report.)

So what

The Limpopo ANC and the ANC Youth League were the launching pads of the challenge against Jacob Zuma that had been led by Julius Malema. Disguising itself behind the ‘nationalisation of mines’ call and funding itself through tender abuse in Limpopo the challenge peaked in mid-to-late 2011, just before Julius Malema was suspended. While the leaders of the ANC Youth League were clearly surprised by their axing yesterday, they can probably count themselves lucky that they are not being taken down the same path as their erstwhile leader Julius Malema, which might well end in prison for corruption charges.

While the Limpopo ANC, and to a lesser degree the ANC Youth League NEC, were riddled with corruption, it would be a very generous interpretation of what happened yesterday to see it as a “clean-up” of the ruling party. The  more appropriate prism would be to understand this as an attempt to get rid of centres of resistance to the leadership of Jacob Zuma and the faction he represents. In a less jaundiced view, it is also an attempt to establish a basic degree of coherence in the party before the national elections which will be held midyear 2014.

Cosatu – 3 commissions to investigate Vavi

Zwelinzima Vavi is facing 3 simultaneous commissions into aspects of the criticism that members of Cosatu’s national executive committee made against him two weeks ago – including that he has been involved in corrupt activity and that he is disloyal to the ANC. This comes against the backdrop of ANC secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, attacking Cosatu for failing to defend the ANC against “a neoliberal agenda” and he has warned that anarchy is taking root in Cosatu: “my conclusion is that Cosatu is on a dangerous downward slope” – (Mail & Guardian March 15). (This added after publication – Carol Paton, in her excellent article in Business Day about this matter a few hours ago said: “One of the most distasteful dimensions of Cosatu’s internal fight has been the partial role played by several journalists, who have published information from parties to the conflict designed to smear Vavi. For example, allegations have appeared in the press to the effect that Vavi sold Cosatu’s former headquarters for R10m less than the market price. But such a direct allegation has not been made in a Cosatu meeting.

So what?

The answer is best provided by a quote from “a senior Cosatu leader” in the same article: “All this is a smoke screen. The main cause of divisions in Cosatu is ANC and SACP politics. The two organisations are trying hard to capture Cosatu, but Vavi is the obstacle. He is the only one prepared to defend the interest of workers. Dealing with him will ensure that they capture the federation.”

Not unlike the decision by the ANC NEC to close down internal opposition in Limpopo and in the Youth League, at least part of what is happening in Cosatu is an attempt to close down criticism of Zuma (especially after Vavi called for an investigation into the R230 million state spending on Zuma’s home in Nkandla) and criticism of the ANC more generally. This is the Nkandla faction crushing the last vestiges of the attempts to unseat Zuma at Mangaung – as well as an attempt to establish coherency in the ruling alliance in the lead-up to national elections next year.

(The allegations against Vavi – aside from ‘collusion with opposition’ parties – includes that he sold Cosatu’s old head-office for R10 million less than its market value and that he awarded a tender to a company at which his stepdaughter was employed. Just because there are other agendas at play, says nothing of the veracity or otherwise of these charges. Vavi himself has welcomed the commissions, stating that he believes they will clear him of all charges – although, interestingly, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to have ANC stalwart Pallo Jordan and Minister of Economic Development, Ebrahim Patel as commission leaders.)

(This added after publication: Carol Paton writing in Business Day argued a few hours ago as follows: “One of the most distasteful dimensions of Cosatu’s internal fight has been the partial role played by several journalists, who have published information from parties to the conflict designed to smear Vavi. For example, allegations have appeared in the press to the effect that Vavi sold Cosatu’s former headquarters for R10m less than the market price. But such a direct allegation has not been made in a Cosatu meeting.” I wish I had put that  in earlier.)

 

Zuma approval rating among city dwellers drops to all time low

The Sunday Times reports that President Jacob Zuma’s approval rating among urban dwellers is lower than ever and his disapproval ratings are at their highest – and, in general, views are firming up on this matter.

%	Apr ‘09	Jun ‘09	Sep ‘09	Nov ‘09	Feb ‘10	May ‘10	Sep ‘10	Nov ‘10	Feb ‘11	Mar ‘11	Sep ‘11	O/N ‘11	Feb ‘12	Apr ‘12	Aug ‘12	Feb ‘13
Approve	52	57	53	58	43	51	42	49	49	48	45	55	55	46	48	41
Disapprove	29	13	19	23	41	33	44	34	35	38	41	38	35	46	44	51
Don’t know	19	31	28	12	17	16	15	17	16	14	14	14	10	8	8	9
Net positives	+23	+24	+34	+35	+2	+18	+2	+18	+2	+15	+14	+1	+20	0	+4	-10

Zuma’s approval ratings amongst city dwellers over time (TNS Research)

TNS conducted home interviews with “1290 blacks, 385 whites, 240 coloureds and 115 Indians and Asians.”[2]  54% of black people were still happy with Zuma’s performance, but only 13% of whites. The president still has 64% of the vote from “younger Zulu-speaking adults, of whom 64% – down from 71% in August last year – were happy with his work” (Sunday Times).

An important indicator comes near the end of the story: “Zuma’s biggest drop in approval was recorded in Soweto, where the figure of 42% was the lowest since he assumed office. The Port Elizabeth figure of 22% was also an all-time low.”

So what?

National general elections must be held some time between April and July in 2014. For the first time “born frees” (young people born after 1994) will be eligible to vote. This first wave of born frees will consist of approximately 6 million people, “using the 76% turnout of the 2009 elections, these new voters could make up more than 20% of the vote by 2014 … for context, the Democratic Alliance won 17% of the vote in 2009. From 2014 onward, the born-frees will come in waves of just over 5-million each national election until they make up nearly half of the voting population by 2029” -  (Osiame Molefe in the online news source Daily Maverick).

There is growing excitement that, perhaps, this category of voter, and urban African voters more generally, might be open to political choices unthinkable only a few years ago. Much of the growing expectation in the Democratic Alliance and the energy behind Agang comes from this source. Could younger and urban voters (especially Africans) vote for a party other than the ANC in 2014?

Jacob Zuma has established a rigid hold on the ANC, but the TNS and other market research could indicate that it is precisely this victory that makes the ANC a less appetising choice for younger and urban voters. If Jacob Zuma leads the ANC in an election in which the ruling party gets much less than 60 % of the vote, his hard but brittle hold on the party could shatter.

ANC strategists are seriously worried about both the Eastern Cape (especially, but by no means exclusively, the Nelson Mandela Bay metropolitan area) and the Northern Cape. The idea of whole of the Cape (Western Cape is already in Democratic Alliance hands) in opposition hands and a party the equivalent to the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe giving the ANC a run for its money in urban areas throughout the country is a nightmare scenario.

Analysts have consistently been surprised at how well the ANC has performed in national elections (62.65% in April 1994, 66.35% in June 1999, 69.69% in April 2004 and 65.90% in April 2009) so treat any wild predictions with a degree of scepticism. However, the TNS survey of Jacob Zuma’s ratings is an indicator that shifts are in progress .

Bits and pieces

• Business Times quotes a succinct put-down by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan of the ratings agencies: “[You must] understand that we in South Africa did not create this crisis …when … the financial sector began to create … derivatives, based on sub-prime mortgages … [they] had an AAA rating given to them by the same agencies.” Last week S&P affirmed South Africa’s foreign currency sovereign credit rating at BBB and kept the outlook negative, arguing that external imbalances and underlying social problems remain.
• All the major weeklies expressed deep levels of concern about what they see as out-of-control police violence in the country – most obviously evinced in the killing of Mozambican taxi driver Emidio Macia in Daveyton, but also brought into public focus by police commissioner Riah Phiyega’s spoon-fed testimony to the Markikana commission on Thursday last week. Police minister Nathi Mthethwa is one of Zuma’s closest allies and his department is, truly, in a parlous and dangerous state.

---

[1] A word in South African English borrowed from Sesotho, usually meaning a consultation or community meeting with government and the community or within a political party

[2] Categories and language routinely used in South Africa where the racial categorisation of the past is correctly understood to have a significant influence in the present and is routinely used in the media and academic analysis.

Mangaung – takes, outtakes and takeouts

Various commentators, politicians and analysts have attempted to characterise Mangaung, to define the moment’s essential nature. Below are two takes I found interesting with some words from me on why I found them thus. After that I include a more general summary of what happened with the voting results for the Top Six and the National Executive Committee.

M&G:  will the scandal prone authoritarian traditionalist and the constitutionalist businessman lick the platter clean together?

Nic Dawes – editor of the doughty Mail & Guardian suggested (on December 21 2012) that Zuma has moved the ANC “dangerously away” from the urban and middle classes and is starting to overtly exhibit rural, patriarchal and authoritarian values inimical to the middle classes. He suggests that Cyril Ramaphosa’s election at Mangaung is (ultimately) an attempt to woo urban and middle class voters back to the ANC – with Zuma having secured traditional and rural support. But, asks Dawes, “can the constitutionalist businessperson avoid contamination by association with a scandal prone, authoritarian traditionalist?”

Good question … except that I am starting to realise that Zuma would never have appointed Ramaphosa if he posed a potential threat in any way at any stage no matter how far they (the Zuma camp) are looking into the future. Ramaphosa is in the house … the Nkandla house … it’s too late for decontamination.

Dawes also makes the useful formulation that Motlanthe’s challenge was a principled attempt to “confront the ANC with the enormity of its Jacob Zuma problem”. I think Dawes is right – or at least that the Motlanthe strategists he spoke to had this conception of what they were up to. However the whole Motlanthe endeavour feels much more like the foolish (but strangely attractive) arrogance of Don Quixote tilting at windmills, or, more tragically, this stupid and noble rush onto heavily defended enemy positions:

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Read the brilliant, awful, manipulative (in my admittedly limited estimation) Tennyson poem and its glorification of cruel and stupid military and administrative incompetence here – ok, glorification of those acting as a result of such incompetence . (You will see from voting patterns at the end of this post that it was closer to 1000 than 600, but aside from that I thought the Tennyson metaphor held up rather well?)

The nationalists, anti-nonracial, populist versus the … who?

If I was on one of those TV or radio programmes that specialise in asking stupid questions right at the end, and I was asked: which South African political analyst do you rate highest? Then “Steven Friedman” is the answer that would most likely trip off my tongue.

With that disclaimer, I am forced to take issue with an aspect of his characterisation of what happened at Mangaung (published in the Business Day – 27/12/12 – here for that link).

Friedman characterises the Anyone But Zuma or Forces For Change (that is the defeated faction at Mangaung) as “the nationalist group, which wants a bigger black share of business … and whose members use radical-sounding language to pursue that goal.” No quibble from me there.

But then Friedman goes on to characterise the group that opposed ‘the nationalists’, that is the group that was victorious at Mangaung, as “a loose alliance stretching from the left to centrist business people who believe the nationalists threaten the ANC’s commitment to nonracialism and are corrupting the movement because they are too close to the wealthy.”

The implicit injunction, one I believe we should resist, is: choose a better devil.

Break it down (and I paraphrase what I imagine the argument would have to entail – and I am taking this much further than is implicit in Friedman’s article, but his argument leads inevitably to this point):

We support both Jacob Zuma (the patriarchal and authoritarian traditionalist with rigid and ruthless control of the security establishment and the ANC – and we support him despite his family and friends having become fabulously wealthy since his winning to high office) and Cyril Ramaphosa (the billionaire ex-unionist who has effectively used the black economic empowerment imperative to accumulate his wealth and will occupy his office with zero power and purely at the beck and call of the Nkandla Crew).

… because …

… they are a whole lot better than the nationalist, anti-nonracial Julius Malema, Tokyo Sexwale, Mathews Phosa, Fikile Mbalula and ANC Youth League?

I think not.

Extract from my summary as of last week

The expected

1. The leadership and policy results of the African National Congress National Conference was a strongly status quo outcome and a victory for the incumbents (the Zuma camp) and their political and economic policies
2. The leadership challenge to Zuma (with Kgalema Motlanthe the unwilling champion of that challenge) was routed, as was the policy platform most closely associated with the challengers (the nationalisation of mines). The extent of the victory is clearly and accurately revealed in the leadership election results detailed in Addendum 1.
3. Cyril Ramaphosa’s election as deputy president has been heralded in much of the financial and popular press as a market-friendly outcome and, in some versions, a salvation of the ANC. It should be pointed out, however, that whatever qualities Ramaphosa possesses (and in my experience he possesses many excellent qualities) these will be exercised as the deputy to an extremely confident and powerful (in party and state terms) president, a president at whose behest Ramaphosa will serve and as a result of whose political influence Ramaphosa was elected. To further dampen any untoward enthusiasm it should be pointed out that Ramaphosa has no base in any constituency within the ANC or within the ruling alliance.
4. Because the National Conference of the ANC is not the kind of forum in which decisive interventions or radical new directions can be formulated (it takes place over 5 days, has a long and complex agenda, entails many rounds of voting by 4000-plus branch delegates who are often unskilled in policy matters and who are generally organised into large voting blocks by contending factions for leadership) there were no such interventions and (no unexpectedly) new policy directions.
5. However, the full policy platform of the incumbents, which does entail significant new state intervention in the economy (described and assessed by me in interminable detail elsewhere) was accepted in full (but in a very broad, vague, poorly attended and poorly discussed commission process at the conference.) The ANC is yet to publish the full policy resolution of the conference and I expect it to be a carefully phrased call for more state intervention, but in a language unlikely to alarm financial markets. The details here are important  but I will have to postpone further analysis until the ANC decides it has crafted the resolution carefully enough.

The less expected

1. Mangaung did only confirm policy and political trends that were already extant – and widely known. However the extent of the dominance of the Zuma camp and the weakness of the challengers took some commentators by surprise – see Addendum 1 for the details of the election results.
2. The total failure of the political factions aligned to the ANC Youth League to make any impact on the conference policy-making process did come as a surprise to me – I would have thought there would be a rear-guard action around the ‘nationalisation of mines’ call, but none appeared (to me, anyway).
3. It would have been politic for the Zuma camp to allow some of those who challenged for the top six positions (and their allies) to be represented on the 80 person National Executive Committee. It seems that either the desire to demonstrate total dominance won the day, or the Zuma strategists lost control of the popular mobilisation against the challengers. Either way it leaves a huge internal constituency of the ANC (roughly 25%) without representation at any leadership level within the party – an obviously destabilising outcome. However the Zuma camp is likely to invite some of the excluded individuals back into leadership positions, on terms satisfactory to the victors.

(Post Scrip reminder:  outstanding is the ANC National Conference resolution on policy. The resolution that emerged out of the June Policy Conference took several months to formulate and be published. I do not expect the Mangaung Resolution to take things much further than the resolution from the policy conference. Much of the detail will be dealt with in the New Year and largely in Cabinet and government departments, rather than in party structures.)

Addendum 1

… the results below are culled from various news sources and people who attended the conference (I found the full NEC results at Politicsweb).

A – Voting and results for the top six

(Interesting things to note: Zuma got the least votes of all contested positions and Gwede Mantashe the most – an observation I borrowed from Steven Friedman’s previously discussed Business Day article.)

• President – Jacob re-elected with 2983 votes to Kgalema Motlanthe’s 991 votes.
• Deputy President – Cyril Ramaphosa elected with 3018 votes to Mathews Phosa’s 470 and Tokyo Sexwale’s 463.
• Secretary General – Gwede Mantashe re-elected with 3058 votes to Fikile Mbalula’s 901.
• Deputy Secretary General – Jessie Duarte elected unopposed.
• Chairperson – Baleka Mbete re-elected with 3010 votes to Thandi Modise’s 939.
• Treasurer General – Zweli Mkhize elected with 2988 votes to Paul M Mashatile’s 961.

B – Voting and results for the National Executive Committee

(Note that no challenger to the Zuma camp in the top six election was elected to the National Executive Committee. Note, as well, that the only prominent member of the anti-Zuma camp, Winnie Mandela, just scraped onto the list, having topped the poll for the NEC election at Polokwane in 2007.)

Rank	Name	Sex	Votes
1	Dlamini-Zuma, Nkosazana Clarice	F	2921
2	Gigaba, Malusi	M	2669
3	Sisulu, Lindiwe	F	2658
4	Chabane, Collins	M	2585
5	Radebe, Jeff	M	2570
6	Pandor, Naledi	F	2517
7	Hanekom, Derek	M	2497
8	Gordhan, Pravin	M	2465
9	Mboweni, Tito	M	2463
10	Mthethwa, Nathi	M	2450
11	Sisulu, Max Vuyisile	M	2442
12	Dlamini, Bathabile Olive	F	2423
13	Jordan, Zweledinga Pallo	M	2407
14	Nzimande, Blade	M	2406
15	Mthembu, Jackson	M	2387
16	Ndebele, Joel Sibusiso	M	2379
17	Mapisa-Nqakula, Nosiviwe	F	2353
18	Motsoaledi, Aaron	M	2339
19	Godongwana, Enoch	M	2334
20	Kodwa, Zizi	M	2306
21	Ebrahim Ebrahim	M	2303
22	Dlodlo, Ayanda	F	2300
23	Brown, Lynne	F	2293
24	Cwele, Siyabonga C	M	2245
25	Mokonyane, Nomvula Paula	F	2240
26	Mfeketo, Nomaindia	F	2228
27	Dlamini, Sidumo Mbongeni	M	2213
28	Nxesi, Thulas	M	2202
29	Bhengu, Nozabelo Ruth	F	2195
30	Nkoana-Mashabane, Maite	M	2169
31	Bapela, Obed	M	2167
32	Masetlha, Billy Lesedi	M	2161
33	Ramatlhodi, Ngoako Abel	M	2156
34	Davies, Rob	M	2151
35	Motshekga, Angie	F	2146
36	Zulu, Lindiwe	F	2142
37	Netshitenze, Joel	M	2138
38	Nkwinti, Gugile	M	2100
39	Joemat-Petterson, Tina	F	2076
40	Mabhudafhasi, Rejoice	F	2042
41	Shabangu, Susan	F	2036
42	Oliphant, Mildred N	F	2019
43	van der Merwe, Sue	F	1992
44	Capa-Langa, Zoleka Rosemary	F	1984
45	Mthembi-Mahanyele, Sankie Dolly	F	1930
46	Phaahla, Joe	M	1916
47	Skwatsha, Mcebisi	M	1888
48	Xasa, Fikile D	M	1881
49	Majola, Fikile (Slovo)	M	1872
50	Mashamba, Joyce	F	1868
51	Tshwete, Pam	F	1849
52	Mabe, Sisi	F	1823
53	Sizani, Stone	M	1803
54	Cele, Bhekokwakhe Hamilton (Bheki)	M	1736
55	Magadzi, Dikeledi	F	1732
56	Tolashe, Sisisi	F	1715
57	Gcabashe, Lungi	F	1695
58	Mmemezi, Humphrey M Z	M	1679
59	Dlulane, Beauty N	F	1674
60	Moloi, Pinky	F	1664
61	Mokoto, Pinky	F	1644
62	Mashinini, Sam	M	1643
63	Zokwana, Senzeni	M	1600
64	Mabe, Pule	M	1586
65	Yengeni. Tony Sithembiso	M	1570
66	Mafu, Nocawe	F	1549
67	Mahlobo, David	M	1495
68	Mapulane, Philly	M	1462
69	Maphatsoe, Kebby	M	1456
70	Ntwanambi Nosipho, Dorothy	F	1450
71	Semenya, Machwene Rosinah	F	1449
72	Segabutla, Miriam	F	1403
73	Moloi- Moropa, Joyce C	F	1396
74	Molewa, Ednah	F	1361
75	Ntombela, Sefora Hixsonia (Sisi)	F	1348
76	Manganye, Jane	F	1276
77	Letsatsi-Duba, Dipuo	F	1057
78	Mtintso, Thenjiwe	F	875
79	Mandela, Nomzamo Winfred (Winnie)	F	841
80	Didiza, Thoko	F	817

A few (more) deep blue thoughts as we rush towards Mangaung – Part 2

By the way “deep blue” in the headline was not meant to be a riff on IBM’s chess playing supercomputer.

Rereading Part 1  I can see how someone might accuse me of being a little too certain about the shape of the future.  I am not running “deep blue” regressions and algorithms, modelling South Africa and the world, generating predictions x of y % accuracy with z % error margins … South … Africa … will … be … peachy … in …2021 … bidledeebidledee beep.

I have no real idea of what is going to happen in the future – and only the bare bones of an idea of the internal processes I go through to develop the views I advance here.

From time to time I investigate how we predict outcomes, and how we asses risks. I am interested in how our evolved systems (honed against sabre-toothed tigers and uncertain rainfall patterns, for example) apply in the kind of technology driven mega-societies we now inhabit – or, specifically, don’t apply i.e. that our ‘instinctive systems’ need to be suppressed or countermanded if we hope to get it right in certain situations. But that is not what I am doing in these quick pre-Mangaung notes.

The “deep blue” of the headline was actually a reference to being bleak, sad, cold and lonely.

Which leads me to:

Who are the demagogic populist, proto-fascists* now?

The ANC will (initially) combat the threat of losing support by becoming more ‘demagogic populist’, rural conservative and based in the lumpen classes – basically, by drifting to the right

In December 2010 I wrote an article in GQ Magazine under the headline: “Can you hear the drums?” with a concluding paragraph that read:

In the year 2010, anger and resentment … bubbled over  … The winners still have their stuff, but they are clutching it more tightly to their chests, and for the first time in 16 years they are straining for the hint, a sound or a smell, of what might be coming for them out of the night.

Read the whole story here.

Two ‘crises’ (or warnings) that occured this year are the equivalent of the scary sound of drums in the night for the incumbent ANC elite. The first warning is Marikana and the second, linked, warning is the traction Julius Malema’s manipulative populism was able to achieve amongst some sections of the disenfranchised youth.

I made some of these links in my coverage of Marikana here.

I think the ANC will ride out the gradually escalating social and industrial unrest by becoming the “proto-fascist” and “demogogic populist” movement that Zuma’s SACP ally accuses Malema of representing (here for the context of that). This ANC, under this president is being drawn inexorably, by the logic of its own politics, into the territory of rural patriarchy with its natural links to the fear and hatred of education and any form of gender equality. (I am not going to argue this out here … just take a glance at the saga around The Spear, the Traditional Leaders Courts Bill and various comments about women and about “clever blacks” and appeals to African ways of doing things over foreign ways of the same – see TrustLaw’s Katy Migiro’s excellent takes here  and here.)

Thus (forgive the leap) the ANC begins to lose the urban industrial working class (on the road to becoming much more like a classic middle class and deeply opposed to the looting of the state),  the professional classes (already at that destination), the productive and rule based businesses, local and global, and it eventually begins to lose the pirates looking to launder their money and ‘go straight’ (as I argued in Part 1).

This leaves the ANC with the rural poor, the marginalised unemployed, a bureaucratic elite within the state (those last three dependent on state spending through the public sector wage bill and social grants) and global resource privateers who powerfully thrive in countries like this with leaders like these.

Initially the ANC might get even higher turnout at its rallies (especially with free food and t-shirts and sexy young people dancing between the rabble-rousing and the singing of Umshini wami). But eventually the class and demographic changes of the society impact upon the party – reformat it, split it, renew it … change the political ecology in which it moves and feeds.

You will see from my next post that I do not only think the ANC is a useless bubble of foul smelling gas buffeted on the sea of history. The ANC, in my analysis, has become a most significant and material influence for and against my upbeat scenario … a sort of deranged midwife at the happy birth.

* The term “demagogic populists, proto-fascist” is from various SACP documents and was code for Julius Malema (and, I suspect, in slightly early versions, a code for Tokyo Sexwale). This is what the SACP had to say about it:

The “new tendency”

It was the SACP at the 2009 Special National Congress that first identified clearly the ideological and underlying class character of what we called the “new tendency”. We described it as a populist, bourgeois nationalist ideological tendency, with deeply worrying demagogic, proto-fascist features. It was the SACP that pointed out the connections between the public face and pseudo-militant rhetoric of this tendency and its behind-the-scenes class backing. It was a tendency funded and resourced by narrow BEE elements still involved in a rabid primitive accumulation process, based on a parasitic access to state power. It was a bourgeois nationalist tendency that sought to mobilize a populist mass base, particularly amongst a disaffected youth, to act as the shock troops to advance personal accumulation agendas.

The SACP must feel free to pat itself on the back, but the reality is that party took on the straw man of  Kebble/Malema/Sexwale and backed – to the hilt – the real demagogic, proto-fascist tendency – the one with real power … and the one with real patronage to dispense. (That last bit explaining why this SACP has backed the Nkandla Crew)

That SACP quote is from here. For my explanation of how that all fits together with the nationalisation of mines call and host of other issues here (again) .

A few deep blue thoughts as we rush towards Mangaung – Part 1

Annus horribilis

This has undoubtedly been the worst year for South Africa – at too many levels to name – since 1994. There is much I have wanted to say here but couldn’t find the time.  So I am going to rapidly fire off a series of posts, as my professional duties tail off towards the end of the year.

That probably means potential readers will soon be on holiday and lounging on a beach somewhere.

So let me be cheery to start:

I am positive about South Africa in the medium to long-term … but it’s complicated

My first-case long-term view on South Africa is somewhere between hopeful and good. I don’t think societal outcomes are primarily about the choices made by politicians and their parties – if they (societal outcomes) were (dependent on the choices made by politicians), my view would be significantly more negative.

Instead I think societies change in response to shifts of deep structural features – in themselves and in the ‘global world’ within which the society and country exists. South  Africa – its institutions, politics and economy – is being buffeted by the flood emanating from the unwinding of the distortions of the past, interacting with the ‘flooding-in’ of elements of the global society and economy previously locked out … or previously just less ‘globalised’  as was the case in the world of the 80′s and before.

The most obvious domestic feature of this is the rapid growth of a class of South Africans who have ‘emerged’, settled and accumulated assets. They have done this because they can i.e. as a result of the removal of political and legislative obstacles created by Apartheid. Alternatively they have emerged because such settled and skilled groups are a requirement of newly globally integrated labour and consumer goods’ markets. It works both ways – one as a push the other as a pull. Either way the black middle class is growing and on the move to become the prime determinant of much of what lies ahead for South Africa.

The overwhelming numeric majority of this class is a normal middle-class (public and private sector workers, teachers, artisans, skilled workers and other professionals) previously denied by law and repression the chance of improving their lot (to accumulate assets and get ahead). But along with this classic middle-class has come a slurry of individuals and groups who have more specifically seized the opportunities to extract a rent, opportunities created by the legal and political imperative to transform patterns of ownership and control.  Again, most of these are rational individuals who have seized the legal opportunities that the imperatives for transition have presented them with. However, and this is the important bit, a very large (in terms of accumulated assets and power) part of this group includes those who have successfully harnessed political power with the specific intentions of diverting public resources and/or other resources available for redistribution (the assets of private companies, for example) into their own hands.

The point of all of this is that once through the door, once securely established, that elite, its children, its family networks will attempt to re-establish the basic economic rules that allow for the formal and ordered regulation of property, the appropriate separation between the public and the private and the establishment of the rule of law – an imperative that already characterises the ‘classic middle-class’ that has emerged alongside this elite. In short, once inside the enclosure, the new elite will attempt to lock the door and secure the perimeters. It’s part of normal capitalist development and we will get through it in about 10 – 20 years. Meanwhile we are going through what Karl Marx would have called a form of “primitive accumulation” – with all the attendant threat and chaos.

Once this class has formed, emerged and assumed its central place in South African society – and Census 2012 suggests this is in process – our politics, parties, structures of governance will be forced to adapt to the imperatives of the new underlying configuration. This is the kind of tectonic force that effortlessly shuffles and cuts and pastes our politics and our parties to suit itself.

In 12 years’ time we are going to look around and remark at how surprising it is that South Africa has settled down and become such a productive and cooking hub, that corruption and nepotism has retreated so far and so quickly, that the political certainties of the past have so quickly and radically changed for the better.

Or that’s the outcome I have bet my meager resources on …. and before you follow my lead, remember; there is a reason those resources are as meager as they are.

I am positive about South Africa (or at least about reduced volatility) in the immediate post-Mangaung period

Once the political contest for the presidency is resolved and once the platinum sector strikes settle, the deep uncertainties driven by these interacting cycles will recede.

But that is enough sunshine for now  … because what has driven the intensity of those cycles is still very much present and will feature prominently in the South African investment and operating environment in the next 5 – 10 years, revealing itself in crises at least as serious and awful as the Marikana Massacre and the Mangaung contest. (Much of this will be the subject of the next few “deep blue thoughts” posts.)

Motlanthe or Ramaphosa?

At Mangaung the presidency issue is settled and the only interesting bit (as far as the electoral process is concerned) is the election of the deputy presidency and in the general balance that is achieved within the NEC.

I will leave the NEC for a later discussion.

I think the Zuma camp is entirely in control of the president/deputy choice, so when we analyse what might happen we have to ask: what is the imperative of the Zuma camp?

Well, that’s an easy one: stay out of prison after you have left office and keep your loot forever. That’s the thing and the whole of the thing.

So which deputy choice could better ensure this outcome?

Would a President Ramaphosa eventually, following the logic of the Constitution and the law, and impelled by some hope for his own legacy, end up allowing Zuma to be sent to prison?

Would Motlanthe?

I think Ramaphosa might. I would have trusted the younger version to do the right thing a lot more than I do this older one. This man has done a lot of complex dealing with “the cold realities”, he has supped with with a Dark Lord or two along the way  … and I would not feel entirely confident that the Zuma camp could not construct a deal that keeps him (Ramaphosa) beholden until long after Nkandla Incorporated has broken free of the threat of justice and been laundered till it shines like a blue chip.

And Motlanthe?  I am grinding my way through “Kgalema Motlanthe: A Political Biography” by Ebrahim Harvey (there’s more than one medicine measure of hagiography in there, but despite that I am starting to believe that KM might just be a seriously good person). However, I don’t think that means he would send Zuma to jail. He seems like a man who hates having to take decisions that “divide the house”. Taking down Nkandla is going to require something even more invasive and destructive than Polokwane. I cannot see Motlanthe as the author of such a story.

It would be a relatively easy matter for the Zuma camp to claim the imperative of unity, and decide to accept Motlanthe back into the fold – instead of Ramaphosa – and therefore as the successor president in 2017.

Enough for now.

Strikes and Malema

The among the reasons I have failed to publish here for almost six weeks is I have been on a seemingly endless roadshow (series of presentations to fund managers domestically and in Europe and the UK) that started with Marikana, morphed into Telkom and is on its way back to its origins by focusing more on the strikes cascading through our economy. Combined with this is my contractual obligations to write political commentary for my clients – with a degree of exclusivity as part of the reasons why I get paid for it. Thus I have had almost no time to write anything here.

Another, more difficult to explain  reason for my coming to a virtual publishing standltill on my  blog is that my views about the state of the nation have darkened considerably since Markina and I have been gestating the idea that the National Union of Mineworkers’ loss of support and the Marikana shooting might be an almost perfect metaphor – or even predictive model – for the state of the ANC and its relation to society more generally.

I will try to put some flesh on those bones during the course of the week. But meanwhile here is a short opinion piece I wrote last week for clients of BNP Paribas Cadiz Securities concerning the putative relationship between the strike wave and Julius Malema.

Will the wildcat strikes in the mining sector and Julius Malema’s populist campaign link up in a way that drives them both further, harder and deeper than they would have been driven separately and apart?

The South African news flow is confusing and jarring at the moment – and might well be driving sentiment against resource counters.  What follows is not a definitive answer to the question, but my first case expectation is that the strikes will be resolved through wage offers and that Malema will continue to get some traction with the strikers but that his ‘fight back’ campaign against Zuma and against his (Malema’s) expulsion has not got an endless potential to unravel South Africa.

We would be remiss if we did not keep the possibility of a generalised revolt and economic paralysis in mind but if I was forced to bet on an outcome – which I would not do unless forced, because the future is impossible to know before it arrives - I would guess we are approaching the apex of the threat in this specific confluence of events.

Here’s why:

Strikes

Strike action sometimes cascades through an economy and to some degree this is what is happening in the mining sector. However, in my opinion the press is too simply portraying the myriad strike actions in different parts of the economy as belonging to the same trend, when in fact some of the strikes are normal and predictable events is our collective bargaining system.

The ‘wild cat strikes’ (i.e. unprotected in law and outside of the collective bargaining system) starting in the platinum sector (with the Marikana incident at Lonmin giving the most impetus) are now spreading through the gold sector. In coal and in transport ‘protected’ (i.e. part of the collective bargaining process and stemming from a failure to agree upon a wage settlement) strikes are underway.

It is clear from union (Cosatu’s Satawu – the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union) statements concerning the truck drivers’ strike that at least some of the momentum and energy of the settlement at Marikana is being used to give the strikers hope and encouragement, but it is likely that this strike would have happened even if there was no “Marikana’ to help spur it on. This strike came about as a result of a deadlock in wage negotiations and began on Monday morning.

The platinum and gold strikes are a different matter entirely. Workers can be legally dismissed for partaking in these ‘unprotected’ strikes – for example Amplats CEO Chris Griffith indicated yesterday that the company would consider dismissals if workers did not return to work from today. Press reports indicate that 35 000 workers at AngloGold’s Kopanang mine have joined the action. Business Report suggests that there are approximately 75 000 workers (15 % of the workforce) on strike (or prevented from going to work because of intimidation) across South Africa’s mining sector. These numbers are significant, but not overwhelming.

Nic Dinham, head of resources at BNP Paribas Cadiz Securities in South Africa has pointed out that most workers, even the supposedly especially militant Rock Drill Operators, returned to work at Marikana for an increase of just over R2000 – and this despite the violence and anger that followed the police shootings. “This hardly seems revolutionary to me”, he said in a comment yesterday.

A wildcard variable here is if there were high levels of dismissals this might lead to the strikes being more protracted and serious than I expect; alternatively the closure of certain shaft and operations might break the transmission mechanism for the spread of the strike more quickly.

Julius Malema

Julius Malema’s on-going push to insert himself into the mining strike is going to cause worries today. He said outside his money laundering hearing yesterday: “These charges which they brought against me, they do not affect me at all. I am unshaken, I am not intimidated. I am going to continue the struggle against economic freedom (sic), they are wasting time. Tomorrow I am going to Impala mine in Rustenburg; we are going to encourage the workers to demand R12 500.”

There is no evidence that Malema caused  – directly or indirectly – the strike at Impala in January or the strike at Lonmin that culminated in the Marikana incident on August 16. It is true that he was welcomed by strikers both at Impala and at Marikana – and is likely to be welcomed at Lonmin again today (although the police might stop him as they did at his second attempt to address the Marikana strikers.) But if the strikers will, ultimately, go back to work as soon as they have achieved a satisfactory (to them) wage settlement, why would we imagine that the mine workers are a potential revolutionary base for Julius Malema?

Julius Malema is on trial for money laundering – in a case that implicates him and his close allies in serious criminal activity (money laundering carries an up to 15 year jail term). Malema argues (with  some justification, at least with regard to timing) that the case is politically motivated. This raises the compelling comparison between what is happening to Malema in the lead-up to Mangaung and what happened to Zuma in the lead up to Polokwane in 2007.

Zuma and his allies managed to turn corruption allegations into a successful campaign for the presidency of the ANC and the country – largely by portraying Zuma as a victim of Thabo Mbeki’s manipulations of the criminal justice system. It is important to note that this campaign was ultimately focussed on a vote at the ANC’s national conference and it never had a significant element of mass-mobilisation (except symbolically) and it certainly never looked like it might spill-over into some form of generalised unrest.

At this stage in the lead-up to Polokwane Zuma was already being backed by several regions of the ANC and by the ANC Youth League, the SACP, Cosatu and the ANCY Women’s League. Within the ruling alliance Malema has no official or formal support from any structure, except for a split vote in the Youth League – and, ultimately, succession will be determined by a vote at the ANC’s national conference in December and not by popular opinion. It is my view that what happened at Marikana indicates that the “formal structures” of the Ruling Alliance are not the determinant of history that they once were, but the Mangaung vote is purely an ANC affair and not necessary responsive to popular sentiment.

Unlike Zuma in 2007, Malema has been expelled from the ANC and is now free to take his campaign to the streets – but is also denied the ability to fight within ANC structures for reinstatement and/or for Kgalema Motlanthe to replace Zuma as president in December. Nominations formally open in ANC structures next week Monday (1^st of October).

A Wildcard variable here would be if Zuma and the state security apparatus gave in to the temptation to detain Malema on charges similar to sedition – this could give the crisis significant legs; alternatively it would take out of play a key element of the conflict and might lead to an early resolution of this particular contest.

Conclusion

None of this speaks directly to possible impacts on the market. The price of a number of financial instruments might be affected – perhaps quite seriously – through lost production and through negative sentiment more generally about the South African story.

My own view is that the medium term political risk environment is significantly elevated through a combination of these factors (wild cat strikes and Malema) –  along with the growing interdependency of the incumbent faction of the ANC and Cosatu (leading to greater state intervention in the economy and a more onerous labour market regime) growing violence in ANC internal election processes (largely because of intensity of competition to control patronage networks), the growing collapse of the boundaries between the public and private sector (corruption and tender-abuse) and an inability to resolve the social malaise engendered by unacceptably high levels of unemployment, inequality and poverty (leading to social instability and opportunities for populist politics).

Thus my answer to the opening question is:

I think the confluence of events makes the crisis larger than the sum of its parts, but it does not have an unlimited potential to become a more generalised and sustained revolt – thus no Arab Spring situation. However, as a backdrop to increased political risk it will have significant financial market impacts.

Marikana – ways of seeing

Background

This is a summary of my analysis of the news from of the weekend press (August  19) – and radio and TV commentary – concerning the events in which 34 striking miners were killed by police last Thursday (August 16) at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in Northwest Province. (Written Sunday night, so some new facts might have come to light that I haven’t included – especially not Julius Malema’s “breathtaking political coup yesterday” – see Carol Paton’s lead story on front page of Business Day today … here is a link.)

The police shootings came after a week (starting August 12) in which workers launched a violent wildcat strike reportedly demanding a wage increase to R12500.00 p/m – from the current average of about R4500.00 p/m for Rock Drill Operators, who were the main constituents of the approximately 3000 workers who had gone on strike (the wage demand issue was dissected here – a story that points out that the real wage differential between what the workers were demanding and what they were getting was actually much narrower.)

During the course of the strike, prior to the police decision to remove the workers from a nearby hill they had occupied, approximately 10 people had been killed, including members of the police force, security guards, and ordinary workers – perhaps strikebreakers, although this is still unclear.

Julius Malema visited the area on Saturday and addressed the strikers – and is the only political leader who has been welcomed to do so. (Since I wrote this Zuma also managed to address the strikers).

President Jacob Zuma’s office has announced that a (judicial) inquiry into what happened will be established (see terms of reference and other details here.)

Minister of Mineral Resources Susan Shabangu together with Minister of Labour Mildred Olifant announced on Saturday they will be establishing a “task force” to address the problems at Marikana and deal with wider problems in the platinum sector.

Commentary

It would be difficult to overstate the depth and variety of impacts of this event. Every news source reviewed here took the position that what had happened at Marikana was impossible to explain through any one category of cause and thus a multiplicity of causes was the approach taken across the board – although usually ending with the statement that the society and its top political leaders must, ultimately, carry the responsibility. Thus the commentary will be broken into the categories most commonly used in the Mail & Guardian, City Press, Sunday Times and Sunday Independent:

Marikana as union rivalry

All the weeklies placed the rivalry between the mainstay Cosatu union, the National Union of Mineworkers (Num) and the Association of Mining and Construction Union (Amcu) as the central explanation of what happened at Marikana. The consensus was that Num is slipping throughout the mining sector, having become too close to management (I doubt this is something with which either the union or management would agree) and increasingly representative of white-collar workers – and not RDOs and their assistants, and others who do much of the difficult physical work deep underground. “Amcu leaders and members launched ferocious attacks on Num members who were not prepared to go on strike”, said the Sunday Times lead editorial, summarising the most popular explanation for the central cause of what happened at Marikana. This ‘inter-union rivalry prism’ has much deeper implications when we consider the fact that Num is the key element of support for Jacob Zuma’s re-election at Mangaung in December this year, and Cosatu itself is three weeks away from its National Congress where its own leadership struggles – which are likely to be deeply influenced by what happened at Marikana – are being driven by those within the ANC – a matter explored under a headline below.

Marikana as Lonmin management failure

All the news sources reviewed here expresses the view that wages were unacceptably low in the platinum sector and that management was in some way culpable of feeding the conflict in the workforce by having attempted to make a separate deal with Rock Drill Operators at Marikana. These stories also tended to quote a 5 year study by the independent, “faith based”, Bench Mark Foundation – by chance (according to the foundation) released during the strike – that is sharply critical of the platinum mining companies for having failed to fulfill social obligations to workers and surrounding communities. (Sunday Times, Mail & Guardian, City Press)

Marikana as policing failure

There was unanimity throughout all the news sources reviewed here that the police had handled the situation badly – and that deaths were, in part, a result of improperly armed (with automatic rifles) and poorly led police forces on the scene. Most accounts went to some effort to explain that the police had been fired on by strikers, that (at least one) member had been hacked to death by strikers during the course of the action (City Press, Sunday Independent) and that at least one shot came from the strikers during the confrontation – although the only weapons collected by police after the action were pangas, sticks and iron bars … no guns (Philip de Wet corrects this in the comments sections below, saying police found 6 guns including the one taken from the murdered policeman … I am looking for a link to the Phiyega statement and will put it here when I find it.)

Most of the sources agree that “They were armed to the teeth and advancing on the police. This is not to justify the killing, but we must be aware that today we could just as easily have been talking about the massacre of policemen” – Mondli Makhanya, Sunday Times. However, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) has announced that it will investigate the killings and ”will seek to establish if the police action  was proportional to the threat posed by the miners” – Pierre De Vos in Constitutionally Speaking.

Marikana as societal break-down – as a result of economic inequality

As mentioned, it is difficult to overstate the degree of anxiety and hand-wringing about the state of the South African democracy that came through in all the news sources reviewed here – and in television commentary throughout the weekend. The general point of concern was that the levels of inequality (raised in this case by low wages and poor working conditions of miners) will, here-on-out, be a constant destabilising element to this society. Commentary also focused on asserting that the mechanisms by which society negotiates clashes of interest – including the labour market collective bargaining regime – are broken (evidenced by this incident and the more-widespread-than-ever, and often violent, service delivery protests). Thus political stability was raised as a matter of concern in all 4 of the weeklies.

Marikana as driving exit of foreign investment

The business sections of the three Sunday newspapers all pointed out that the price of platinum rose sharply on the back of what had happened, but that Lonmin share prices fell precipitously. “Fear clashes will spread” was the lead Business Times headline and several stories suggested that “foreign investors” would exit because of endemic labour conflict and unrest. “The police killings … ‘have taken things to a new level, spreading the fear to currency and bond market investors’”, Business Times quoted Nomura’s Peter Montalt

Marikana through the prism of Mangaung.

Two issues lay the ground for Marikana to be perceived through the prism of the pervasive leadership contest in the ANC. The first is that Num itself is the key pillar of ANC support in the trade union movement (it’s the biggest union in Cosatu) and the force that swung Cosatu support for the ANC at the formation of the trade union federation in 1985. More specifically, Num, under the leadership of Frans Baleni, is backing Jacob Zuma’s bid for re-election at Mangaung in December. The powerful – and very left-wing – National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (Numsa) under Irvin Jim – and backed by Cosatu Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi – is opposed to giving carte blanche backing to Zuma (mostly because of corruption concerns) and it is speculated that this faction might back Kgalema Motlanthe against Zuma at, and in the lead-up to, Mangaung. Several newspapers – but particularly the better informed Mail & Guardian, suggested this dynamic will lead to an attempt (by pro-Zuma forces) to unseat Zwelinzima Vavi at Cosatu’s national congress in three weeks’ time.

Secondly, Julius Malema immediately stepped into the breach at Marikana – as he did at the comparable (because it was also driven by the Amcu/Num contest) Impala strike earlier this year. Speaking to the workers on Saturday 18 – and note he was the ONLY political leader who has been allowed, by the strikers, to address them and he received a warm reception – Malema called for the resignation of Nathi Mthethwa (Minister of Police and key Zuma ally) and Jacob Zuma himself.

The faction of which Malema is a part and the factions that have a tactical alliance with him are likely to make as much as possible of the Marikana killings, and attempt to lay the blame directly at Zuma’s door (as almost all news sources reported Malema doing on Saturday.)

Initial conclusions

• There is a risk that it spreads – to other platinum operations, to the mining sector more generally and even to the society at large. The transmission mechanisms would be Num trying to win back ground it is losing from Amcu as well as via the already restive squatter camps and township neighborhoods. Municipal IQ, an organisation that monitors various aspects of municipalities, but particularly service delivery protests, points out that we had already passed, in July, the highest yearly totals of such protests since 1994. This outcome would not be my first case scenario. What drove the violence and the series of errors (of commission and omission) of the unions, management, the police and government that led to the killings are unique to that incident. If it does spread, the most likely first stop would be other platinum mines, and therefore the first impacts would be on supply of the metal.
• The feed through into conflict between unions – obviously between Num and Amcu, but also within Cosatu, between Num and Numsa -  could presage a generalised increase in levels of industrial unrest.
• Government is likely to turn its full attention to the “social” performance of the mining companies – under the Mining Charter. Expect a thicket of new regulations – and a generalised attempt to focus the blame on the companies.
• Jacob Zuma’s comfortable lead in the Mangaung contest (and this is purely my opinion) is gradually narrowing as we get closer to the December ANC National Conference. The Marikana incident is likely to weaken his position further – and this in the context of a series of defeats in the second biggest ANC province, the Eastern Cape – which until a year ago was considered safe ground for Zuma.

Malema: a stick being used to beat Zuma? Just a thought …

I am sure no-one has failed to notice the flood of South African high achievers passing through the United Kingdom over the last week or so.

A golfer was there recently, some swimmers,  a group of cricketers … and, oh yes, Julius Malema.

Julius told BBC and Sky News that he was in London working hard and meeting investors behind closed doors – to explain the ‘economic freedom campaign’ – and to give nuances on the nationalisation call.

He – charmingly – defended the racial make-up of the South African Olympic team: “we are proud of our athletes”, he said; and he came clean on his support for Kgalema Motlanthe to succeed Jacob Zuma at Mangaung in December.

This is his Mangaung prediction:

“I am coming back to the ANC in December; once we have removed president Jacob Zuma – because we are going to remove him successfully in December … and then I will walk into that conference, shake his hand and proceed to occupy my rightful seat.” (Catch that BBC clip here.)

It is difficult not to admire the audacity … and delight in the anxiety that those who conducted the Polokwane Putsch must be feeling.

But to my mind things swerve away from the comic and towards the dark when I think about this a little more.

It is a series of small things that worry me.

Surprise! (From New Zimbabwe, August 1 2012)

He pitched up at the Chingford Rugby Club and joined a group of Zimbabweans for a braai – and was apparently welcomed with open arms. He dined with Lenox Lewis

With Lenox Lewis in London – (from New Zimbabwe August 1 2012)

and spoke to a group called the Pan African Congress (not our PAC – but it has some similarities) and was covered in a spooky online journal called The Zimdiaspora  under the headline “We are inspired by Mugabe – Malema” as follows:

Turning to … Zimbabwe and its politics of land and mineral wealth redistribution, Malema had glowing praise for the president of Zimbabwe Robert Gabriel Mugabe for confiscating land from the whites and giving it to blacks. He stated they found inspiration from the actions of Mugabe as an African leader and were grateful to see him standing up against whites and their economic enslavement of blacks.

Glowing praise for president of Zimbabwe Robert Gabriel Mugabe? Sounds like a writer constrained by the diktats of belonging to a government department, something like, say … hmm … the Zimbabwe Central Intelligence Organisation?

What would covert aspects of the Zimbabwean state get from promoting the increasingly virulently, anti-Zuma Malema in London ? (I am not unaware that there is a wild leap in that last sentence … but still am going to just take it and move along.)

It’s a tenuous link but my nose is twitching: Zanu-PF’s preparation to hold off the MDC challenge is multifaceted and very sophisticated. A significant part of the pressure on Zanu-PF to meet its obligations under the Global Political Agreement and move towards democratic elections is coming from the SADC facilitation under the leadership of Jacob Zuma.

The next Zimbabwean election is going to be won or lost on the precise wording of the laws and constitution that set the conditions for elections – including how the security apparatuses will be controlled.

That wording is being finalised as I write this …. as Julius Malema takes his campaign against Zuma to the world stage, during the Olympics … no expenses spared.

I realise I have to be cautious; it is not as if the Malema ANC Youth League faction is not brilliant at self-promotion and has an almost preternatural ability to play into the current media obsessions.

Malema was quoted in the Zimbabwe Sunday Mail in June saying that Jacob Zuma was not the right person to be the SADC mediator in Zimbabwe because ‘he hates Robert Mugabe.’

I think that the possibility that Malema is acting as an asset for a (partially) hostile foreign power will play against him in the ANC’s internecine strife … or at least his enemies will try and make that case to his detriment. (Note added on 03/08/2012: I am not suggesting that there is necessarily any intention on Malema’s part … the point is rather that in effect he might be fulfilling Bob’s/Zanu-PF’s agenda as opposed to ‘the national interest’ as embodied – supposedly – by the South African president … or even more narrowly that the possibility of this being true will probably been used against Malema by the incumbents he is campaigning against.)

We must guard against paranoia and the instinct to see everything we can’t quite explain as evidence of the hidden hand of spies, aliens or the Elders of Zion – but equally we would have to be very naive to believe that the hundreds of billions of real dollars spent each years on espionage and dirty tricks just disappears into the ether, leaving no imprint on the world.

Is any one version of a post-Mangaung ANC better than another?

First off, let me admit, that I have no choice but to believe that the answer to the question in the title is: yes.

It’s an article of faith.

Who can live in a world where the bullies and thugs, the greedy and manipulative, the powerful and the arrogant have won so decisively that it is pointless to hope – and perhaps work – for an alternative?

Who would dare raise children in such a world?

Or bother to get up in the morning?

In a post titled “A church so broad belief is optional” I two years ago argued that the ANC’s huge electoral support and attempt to straddle every social divide had an upside (as well as several downsides).

Here’s a (slightly edited) quote from that post:

Our society has a number of real and urgent fault-lines along which clashing currents are difficult to manage:

• White versus black (versus Indian versus Coloured)
• poor versus rich;
• the employed versus the unemployed;
• Zulu versus Xhosa versus Pedi versus Ndebele versus Sotho versus Tswana versus Venda;
• Western versus African;
• Urban, modern and fast versus rural, traditional and conservative.

The fact of the matter is that these divisions are not adequately represented in the formal political processes of parliament and government. There is no one party on one side of any of these divisions and mostly no one party on the other.

We are a society in which the formal institutions of democracy are new and tentative – and the divisions are threatening and profound. As many groups and interests as possible need to find expression in the national political debate - and the formal institutions do not yet adequately represent them.

As a second prize, an overwhelmingly dominant ruling party that attempts to play the role of a parliament of all the people, that attempts to speak with the cacophony of the thousand arguing tongues, is not all bad.

It’s just loud, noisy, confusing and unsettling.

This argument came to mind as I picked through the weekly English language press (Mail & Guardian, City Press, Sunday Independent and the Sunday Times) this morning.

I do an exhaustive/exhausting reading of the English language weeklies every Sunday afternoon/night to produce a summary analysis for my main clients by Monday morning. It is an extremely painful task and I am always tempted to quote that famous Punch magazine cartoon from November 9 1895 by George du Maurier to describe what I really think of these newspapers. A bishop is dining, in a formal setting, with a junior curate:

Bishop: “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones”;

Curate: “Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!”  

But I never actually say that, because there are always a few articles, features and editorials in all four of these newspapers that are truly excellent: well researched, well written and insightful; and it would be untrue and unjust – and a little arrogant – for me to suggest they all stink by virtue of being surrounded, as they are,  by rotten, ill-informed and sensationalist rubbish.

So back to the title question.*

The Sunday Times has Motlanthe rejecting Zuma’s deal of the deputy presidency in exchange for him (Motlanthe) not standing in the presidential race.

It’s a particularly poorly structured story (trying to get away with suggesting a whole range of things without actually saying any of them) although it is full of tantalising tidbits.

So lets take the hints (from all four of the mentioned newspapers) as real possibilities:

• Motlanthe stands against Zuma;
• Unraveling patronage networks, especially in eThikwine, open(s?) the possibility of driving a wedge in Zuma’s Kwazulu-Natal support base;
• To strengthen his ticket against Motlanthe, Zuma offers Cyril Ramaphosa the deputy presidency;
• Gauteng suggests Joel Netshitenzhe as part of the Motlanthe challenge – essentially to stand against Gwede Mantashe (who’s a cornerstone of the SACP support for Zuma);
• Winnie Madikizela-Mandela comes out more explicitly anti-Zuma (especially of his handling of Julius Malema) and supportive of  the putative Motlanthe challenge.

So what do we have there?

A Zuma, Ramaphosa, SACP ticket versus a Motlanthe, Netshitenzhe, Winnie, Malema ticket?

Oh Lord, give me strength.

Can’t we have a Joel Neshitenzhe, Cyril Ramaphosa ticket supported by Motlanthe and opposed by the ANC Youth League, Winnie Mandela and an unholy alliance of the Kwazulu-Natal and Mpumalanga patronage networks? (I have written previously about Joel on this website here,  here and here.)

That desire is the moral and intellectual equivalent of arm-chair sports selecting. It would be nice … as would a leadership consisting of a young and vigorous Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu …

So quickly, before I go back to picking my way through the odorous wreckage of the four weeklies spread out on my table and floor (the soul-crushing banality of etv’s Sunday afternoon offering in the background and the Cape Town winter sun finally beckoning outside):

What happens at Mangaung will not decisively determine the character of the ANC.

Polokwane was billed as a major rescue attempt – saving the ANC from the dead hand of Mbeki and rolling back the power of the narrow BEE elite which was allied to the most predatory forms of global monopoly capitalism.

Polokwane was going to reinstill the movement with idealism, energy and enthusiasm and channel it into ‘a pro-poor strategy’.

Well, we know how that played out.

Mangaung, like Polokwane, was a result of a complex interplay of forces and contests that go deep into South Africa’s past.

I cannot honestly argue that Jacob Zuma is a better or worse candidate for the ANC or the South African presidency than Kgalema Motlanthe – although I accept that some people can and do (with a lot of enthusiasm).

However, politics is a matter of contingency. It really is the art of the possible … in this sense it is full of difficult compromises.

Any individual who finds him or her self in an ANC branch or region or leadership position, will be faced with choices that, when aggregated, will shape the future of the ANC and, quite possibly, the country. (The same is, of course, true for any South African, inside or outside the ANC.)

Those choices might be circumscribed – by history, by existing power structures and alliances, by the momentum invested by those who control the patronage networks and by wherever it is that the individual finds him or her self.

But if you are not going to throw up your hands in despair and retreat to your bed forever, if you are unable to cut and run, then you have an obligation to make some kind of decision and choice.

I do believe that what the ANC becomes matters – although what it becomes is not going to be determined at Mangaung or as a result of it being led by Kgalema Motlanthe or by Jacob Zuma.

* (Note added a few hours later. On reflection, I might have empasised that the cartoon is even more apt for the ANC than it is for the English language SA weeklies … it was meant to be suggested, almost by my omission … but on reflection, I think I will spell it out … which I have now done.)

What could derail Jacob Zuma at this late hour?

Well it is certainly not Julius.

Last night his expulsion from the ANC and the ANC Youth League was confirmed by the ruling party’s national disciplinary committee.

His ‘fixer’, secretary-general Sindiso Magaqa, was suspended for a year – making any attempt to ‘rule-by-wire’ difficult. The appeals committee chaired by Cyril Ramaphosa also confirmed the three-year suspension of the other key Malema ally,  Floyd Shivambu.

Malema is out of the game and I don’t expect to hear much from his traditional defenders, Tokyo Sexwale, Thandi Modise, Mathews Phosa, Fikile Mbalula, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Tony Yengeni. They are going to be exploring other strategies … more about that below.

Malema has been sunk by a combination of his own hubris and of bad luck. He might still be greeted like a rock star by striking Numsa workers, but he just doesn’t have the gravitas to coalesce a radical alternative to the ANC around himself.

I expect he is going to be busy trying to keep himself out of prison on tax evasion and corruption charges for the next several years. It’s a stitch-up, but he has made so many mistakes that it has been a relatively easy one.

The strategy of his core group is going to have to be to make as much noise in the lead-up to Mangaung as possible. They are good at this, earning their colours in the trashing of Mbeki in the lead-up to Polokwane. But that time around they were coached and backed by Zuma and his cronies and by the SACP and Cosatu … which makes the Nkandla Crew’s huffy outrage at his conduct a little difficult to swallow … this time Malema and friends are on their own and their backs are to the wall. I cannot see them achieving a momentum that could realistically effect the outcome of the Mangaung contest.

So what could threaten Zuma?

The word on the street is that with KZN and the Eastern Cape wrapped up Zuma is unassailable going into Mangaung.

But Mangaung is a long way away and the street is not always right. Our TV screens have been resplendent with the big-boned ladies cutting Zuma cakes and singing Zuma songs – but in our parochial soap opera version of Götterdämmerung the chubbier maiden hasn’t even started singing.  (Here is a discussion of  ”it aint over till the fat lady sings”.)

I have assumed that the main threat to Zuma’s relection at Mangaung is the unlikely possibility of the National Prosecuting Authority reinstituting fraud and corruption charges against him.

This remains a threat, but a more serious and immediate one seems to be emerging around what appears to have been a widespread sacking by Zuma’s security chiefs of at least one secret fund allocated for clandestine anti-crime operations.

The tip of this iceberg is the accusation that crime intelligence boss and apparent Zuma ally Richard Mdluli had his children, wife and girl-friends listed as agents to be paid out of the fund.

The next layer of the iceberg sloshing at sea level is the accusation that police minister Nathi Mthethwa used the fund to pay for aspects of the renovation of his country home.

Below the surface is a looming mass of allegations that many, perhaps most, of the ANC security commissars – the closest of Zuma’s allies –  have been using this and similar funds as automatic teller machines.

It is the fact that Richard Mdluli has been reinstated – despite these serious corruption allegations and even more serious allegations that he murdered a love rival – that rings the really big red alarm bells. I think Jeremy Gordin hinted the loudest and the most eloquently that it is definitely worth considering that the protection is coming from the very top and must be motivated by the possibility that Mdluli has the goods on Zuma  … catch that story here.

There is no successful drawing of a link from this scandal directly to Zuma, but if I look at the renovation of his house and the character of the empire he is building in Nkandla I must wonder whether the proceeds of the looting of this intelligence fund – and of a host of other stores of cash dotted about the security establishment -  have flowed upwards and if they have, how high?

If Zuma is derailed – and I have this as a “Black Swan” possibility only* –  Kgalema Motlanthe is waiting in the wings. I am under the impression that the Motlanthe alternative is being deliberately kept alive and viable because of the real risks of the main candidate drowning in his own sleaze.

Of course there have been consistent attempts to flick dirt in the general direction of Motlanthe – and some of it has stuck … and some of that for good reason. He was central to efforts to secure oil allocations from Saddam Hussein for ANC donor Sandi Majali and ‘has never fully answered questions about his role in the Iraq/UN oil-for-food scandal as well as the Pamodzi loans,  hoax emails and Bell Helicopter parts for Iran scandals/disputes’. There is a useful ‘dusting off the alternative’ article on Motlanthe in last week’s Mail and Guardian … catch that here.

(Note: I realise from the comments section below that it is possible to think that I am suggesting that the transmission mechanism by which such a corruption crisis could bring down Zuma is via a court case. That is not what I meant .. anyway that would take too long to play out to impact upon the process. Such a crisis could bring Zuma down by motivating a broad coalition of groups and individuals within the ANC – specifically those who have been backing Motlanthe, but with new anti-corruption allies … and ANC patriots desperate to save their organisation  - to choose the alternative. I think there is much militating against this outcome, but I discuss that below.)

Julius ahead?

A Motlanthe alternative would be unlikely to risk its own credibility by treating Malema any differently from how he has been treated by the ANC disciplinary process.

The final line of appeal is to the National Executive Committee of the ANC – but there Malema’s potential allies need to concentrate on battles they can win … not on hopeless causes.

Looking towards a further horizon, perhaps 10 or 20 years on, no-one should be surprised to see Julius Malema – older, wiser and more dangerous – back in the game. His instinctive feel for the tactics of political mobilisation are unparalleled – it is his grasp of strategy and principle that have let him down this time around.

But for now the game moves on and our attention needs to shift away from the activities of those who wish the President harm and onto the harm he might do/have done to himself.

* A “Black Swan Event” is a metaphor developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan and refers to events with a disproportionately high-impact which are both hard-to-predict and rare.

Housekeeping, MTN, Iran, US secret power, Zimbabwe, Malema and the Interminable Mangaung

Right.

I have got to find a way of continuing to populate this website. The reasons posts are becoming infrequent and irregular is that almost every day I produce bespoke and paid for research. I have less time every week to write specifically for nicborain.wordpress.com … except the occasional philosophical musings, which probably have a … very specific? … readership.

I am going to continue the philosophical and theoretical musings. I am finishing the last few chapters of Jared Diamond’s extraordinary “Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive” - Penguin 2005. As background reading to my professional work trying to make sense of politics and economics in the sub-continent (or anywhere in the world for that matter) it is seminal … I cannot recommend it highly enough.

So I will review it here. And I will keep raising issues associated with the epistemology of what I do – and other obscure matters of concern to me.

However, I will also start posting summaries of my recent views, interviews and perspectives … the first set of these below:

Iran, MTN and US secret power

The big issue of the week – in a lot of universes, but particularly the financial market’s – was  the $4.2-billion lawsuit launched against MTN last week by Turkcell in the United States District Court of Columbia in Washington DC. The Mail & Guardian had way the best coverage – see here  for a good backgrounder.

MTN investors took a serious bath on the news. The basic allegation of Turkcell is that MTN’s ‘Project Snooker’, driven by then CEO Phuthuma Nhleko (with some help) was a successful attempt to ‘buy’ (with cash, arms and South African diplomatic support) a preferential operating licence in Iran.

For me the link between this issue, the fact that the South African government had appeared to fold to US sanctions demands on oil imports from Iran (or at least to flip-flop confusingly) and the leaked documentation from close to Kgalema Motlanthe seeming to prove attempts to get government support for Bell Helicopter deliveries to Iran – potentially hurting his (Motlanthe’s) presidential ambitions – was a series of stories that raised the spectre of US secret power working it’s powerful and implacable will.

It looks like the Bell Helicopter with SA government support stuff was established:

 Through access to recordings and confidential documents – understood to have also been obtained and analysed by US intelligence agencies

according to the Sunday Times, but the documents that informed the Turkcell case appear to have been leaked by a disgruntled former MTN manager and South Africa’s flip-flop on oil could be based purely on the extreme nature of proposed US punishment for those who break sanctions against Iran.

So the sexy story of US spies fiddling in our politics doesn’t have a good evidential basis (although I have no doubt that US secret power is exercised every day throughout the world … perhaps not always with German-like efficiency and certainly with lots of unintended consequences.)

The MTN story … and South African oil imports … still has a way to run, so watch this space.

Malema summarily suspeded, Top Six unity press conference, Cyril for president and the interminable Mangaung contest.

I don’t know about you, but I am royally gatvol of press reports about ANC internecine struggles … during the course of the week this is what I had to say about various strands of this interminable story:

First I looked at City Press going out on a limb with contending ANC factional lists for Mangaung…  most interestingly putting Cyril Ramaphosa on both the pro-Zuma and the pro-Motlanthe lists … to become president of South Africa in 2014!

“You read right. Not ANC president, and not in 2012 … the Mangaung conference looks sewn up in favour of President Zuma, but even his supporters are starting to point to Ramaphosa as president, saying the billionaire businessman will do a better job of running the country” (from City Press).

I can’t assess the probability of a Ramaphosa presidency … but we can only hope.

I also had to comment to journalists over last weekend about a potential run by Mathews Phosa, essentially as a stalking horse and test marketing campaign for Kgalema Motlanthe. He (Phosa) has no prospects of slipping in himself, but both he and Motlanthe have been seen to be standing firm with their ANC Youth League allies over the last week and it is not inconceivable that they will have worked out a tag-team strategy between them.

Later in the week came the summary suspension of Julius Malema about which I said:

Julius Malema was yesterday suspended with immediate effect from the ANC and from participating in any way in the organisation’s activities or the activities of the Youth League. While this particular suspension is temporary, several different strands of disciplinary action against Malema make the implementation of a full suspension (lasting at least 3 years) inevitable.

In preparation for the Malema suspension the ‘Top Six’ of the ANC held a joint press conference to present a united front to condemn “bickering and negative lobbying” in the ruling party. Of particular concern was the recent incident in which Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe was invited to address and ANCYL rally where he found himself “in compromising situations of being implicated in statements where ANC leadership is denigrated and insulted” (that all comes from official ANC press statements.)

Behind the show of unity are two broad camps, with President Jacob Zuma, Secretary General Gwede Mantashe and National Chairperson Baleka Mbete broadly backing Zuma’s re-election at Mangaumg in December; and Treasurer General Mathews Phosa, Deputy Secretary General Thandi Modise and Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe having consistently been much closer to Julius Malema and long assumed to back a leadership slate that would be headed by Kgalema Motlanthe and might include Tokyo Sexwale.

I do not expect the noise generated by the internecine struggle to die down until Mangaung itself. At this stage the Zuma camp is in an extremely strong position and this is the light in which the suspension of Malema needs to be seen.

I did a whole lot more radio interviews and bits and pieces about all of this … but I am becoming unspeakably bored with the whole issue. I think the ANC Top Six press conference was an attempt to get the focus onto the policy discussion documents and away from the draining and fracturing internecine squabbles. Can’t help but feel that might be a good idea.

Zimbabwe and Eddie Cross

The most interesting story of my week came about as a result of the consulting work I do for Religare Noah Capital Markets (Pty) Ltd, which is a member of the JSE and an authorised Financial Services Provider. Religare Noah brings Eddie Cross (Zimbabwe member of parliament for Bulawayo South, economist and Movement for Democratic Change Policy Coordinator General) to speak to, especially, mining and metals investors about once a year and I had a chance to listen in on his input.

Basically Eddie Cross  reckons that by October this year Zimbabwe will have undergone a fundamental transformation and that our northern neighbour will be well on the path to recovery – politically and economically – by then.

It is a huge story, but obviously the details are bespoke to Noah Religare and its clients. From my perspective I have known Eddie Cross to err on the side of being too positive and upbeat about Zimbabwe (as I have been … consistently calling the bottom for almost ten years … embarrassing, I know) but I was convinced that a combination of SADC unanimity and strong G8 backing … and the fact that Zanu-PF is out of options and fatally riven with factions, means that change is more likely than it has been in years. An endless stalemate is still a possiblity and more catastrophic scenarios, with the continued assasination of central players (like that of General Solomon Majuru) are options … but there are grounds for cautioius optimism.

I hope you have a restful long weekend … and a really good Friday …

Notes on the relationship between Cosatu and the ANC

After last week’s Cosatu strike against labour brokers and e-tolling the question of the future of the relationship between the Cosatu and the ANC has again consumed public debate.

I have quickly jotted down some of the issues as I see them and how I think the situation might play out in the longer term (and apologies for scruffiness – I am under the whip):

It is necessary to understand what these organisations are and how they differ – before we think about what they might do

Cosatu is a federation of trade unions (trades union, actually … but that always sounds a little pompous) and therefore represents employed workers while the ANC is currently the ruling political party in this country and as such represents a much broader set of interests, especially, in this case, the unemployed and business – and is additionally obliged to balance these interests against each other.

It is obvious why Cosatu must oppose labour brokers. Cosatu has spent considerable energy in influencing the ANC to structure the labour market in a way that strengthens it’s cartel-like hold on the supply of labour. Labour brokers are a way in which the unemployed and potential employers can circumvent some of the strictures of the regulatory environment. Labour brokers have helped create a shadow duality in the market – and have thus caused Cosatu to lose some control over supply.

Another way of saying this …. If you have one set of workers that are employed with the full  protections and benefits afforded them by legal and regulatory structuring of the labour market and another set who are essentially desperate enough to work for less money and with less job security, then those who cannot find a place in the first set have the option of joining the second set – and employers who cannot afford to shop in the first set will shop in the second … meaning Cosatu loses control over supply.

Cosatu argues that if you make the existence of the ‘second set’ illegal it will force employers to shop in the ‘first set’ – thereby creating permanent ‘quality jobs’.

The eternal wrangle is that most economists and several ANC thinkers believe that what actually would happen (and is happening) is employers, at some difficult to determine point, decide that the costs and hassles of only having the ‘first set’ to shop in incentivises them to “shop elsewhere” – shift parts of the labour process to other countries where labour protections are less onerous on the employer, or they mechanise the labour process – hence the structural nature of our unemployment.

The ANC, on the other hand, is under the whip to create more employment – and that pressure comes directly from the unemployed. The youth wage subsidy scheme was correctly understood by Cosatu to be seen as a threatening – to its interests – attempt to create duality through the back door. The ANC agrees with Cosatu that many labour brokers are guilty of the worst excesses of free market exploitation, but propose to remedy the situation by regulating the labour brokers more carefully … not removing them completely from the market.

But what about the e-tolling?

Essentially the e-tolling issue was serendipitous timing for Cosatu. Completely separate disputes occurred in Nedlac over e-tolling and labour brokers so Cosatu had the right to declare protest strikes and marches under section 77 (1) (d) of the Labour Relations Act against either, neither or both issues – they did both. Essentially the melding of the actions allowed Cosatu to win a few class allies to its cause of opposing labour brokers. Not that e-tolling is not genuinely hated by Cosatu and the federation believes that its members will be worst effected … which should give you an insight into just who Cosatu’s members are and the difference between them and the marginalised and unemployed majority who would invariably use un-tolled public transport (mostly taxis) or travel on shank’s mare, which takes another kind of toll entirely.

Cosatu and Zuma

Cosatu clearly backed Zuma against Mbeki because it believed either that Zuma would be beholden to it and therefore allow it more policy access (which I think has essentially been true) … or just that Mbeki was a more dangerous enemy of Cosatu’s narrow agenda (something I also believe was true). There can be no argument that Zuma was more likely to hold ideological or policy agendas that were essentially closer to Cosatu’s. To my mind Cosatu was opportunistic and unprincipled – whichever way you spin it – in backing someone so clearly hell-bent on extending his control over patronage networks and making his family and friends fabulously wealthy.

One way to understand what is happening in Cosatu now is that one faction is trying to withdraw from the strategy because the Nkandla chickens are coming home to roosts, while the other faction is sticking to its guns.

I think, however, that both factions have realised that they have put too much energy into influencing national politics in the ANC and not enough energy into building up the federation’s grass-roots and factory-floor structures, membership and leadership. Trade unionism is on retreat globally – because of the globalisation of the labour market – and Cosatu is worried about not having stuck to its knitting (sorry for all the awful clichés here, but I am in something of a hurry.)

Cosatu has always had an ambiguous relationship with the ‘political movements’ – be those the United Democratic Front, Azapo or the ANC … perhaps even Inkatha should be included here. When Cosatu was established in 1985 out of the unions that had made up Fosatu (the Federation of South African Trade Unions) it immediately inherited the main debates and factions that had characterised trade unionism for years in South Africa.

The divisions centred around:

1. whether to register and thereby co-operate with the Apartheid state
2. whether white workers could be organised into progressive unions
3. the desirability of general unions versus industry based unions
4. ‘workerists’ versus ‘populists’ – which boiled down to a debate about whether unions should be involved in national politics and be in a formal relationship with the national political movements; whether they would be sucked into the agenda of those political movements and should therefore focus instead on ‘shop floor’ issues and maximum worker unity.

From the start the National Union of Mineworkers was a pro-ANC/SACP bastion within Cosatu and the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa, formed out of at least 6 other unions, came to represent a position more cautious and suspicious of the political movements.

Thus we have an emerging consensus in the press that Zwelinzima Vavi, Irvin Jim and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) have upped the ante against Zuma and ‘corrupt ANC leaders” while an SACP aligned faction including Cosatu president Sidumo Dlamini and the powerful National Union of Mineworkers is firmly behind Zuma.

Currently Cosatu seems – to my mind – to have finessed an internal agreement between its factions to back Zuma for re-election at Mangaung in exchange for a more vigorous opposition to corruption generally in the ANC and to campaign for a more worker friendly ANC NEC to emerge out of Mangaung.

Ahead  … (remember ‘tomorrow’ is the country from which no-one has ever returned … so take this all with the appropriate pinch of salt):

1. The struggle will continue. Cosatu has fought with the ANC since 1994 and strong suspicions existed between much of the trade union movement and the ANC before that. This is normal, natural and appropriate given the diverging interests of the people represented by each organisation. The relationship has always contained the seeds of its future breakdown.
2. Zwelinzima Vavi’s faction is most similar to a combination of European social democrats, labour parties and green parties. It is radical and anti-capitalist, but it is also modern, deeply opposed to corruption and authoritarianism, has consistently taken the right line on Zimbabwe and HIV/AIDS, is protective of the constitution and freedom of speech and is most likely to seek alliances with anti-ANC ‘civil society’ groups over single issue campaigns (right to know, freedom of speech, corruption, HIV/AIDS etc.)
3. The tension is inbuilt … the ANC will never give into Cosatu’s full set of demands – if anything it will go the other way – and Cosatu will  never stop making the demands, louder and louder.
4. At some future time – probably way down the road –  the Numsa faction will ally itself with those attempting to organise the constituency the ANC Youth League aspires to represent and break out of the ruling alliance to form a new left opposition. For the foreseeable future (and remember none of the future is actually foreseeable) the advantages of staying in the alliance with the ANC outwieghs the losses and gains that would be realised by setting off on their own.
5. The SACP will increasingly concern itself with trying to mediate the relationship between Cosatu and the ANC – which effectively means it will support the Num faction or tendency in Cosatu. This is not a basis upon which a political party can sustain itself. The SACP would have to split from the ANC and fight elections on its own – essentially capture the space that a Numsa/ANCYL type breakaway might have occupied – if it was to grow and prosper. I don’t think this will happen and therefore I think the SACP will be gradually squeezed into irrelevance.

The ANC’s surprising return to form

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis will have noticed two things.

The first is that the number of posts have tailed off. This is largely because my time has been taken up with paid work and the website has slipped down the list of priorities in the imperative to pay the bills.

I am, however, not yet ready to give up as so many of my friends who set up “free to air” websites in the last few years have done – usually because their work load became intolerable and the blog seemed to sit sulking on the edge of their consciousness and the bloggers became consumed with guilt and a sense of failure and eventually posted that final signoff: “its been fun -  so long and thanks for all the fish … and catch you in the commercial media ….” or whatever.

I set the blog up in the darkest depths of the Great Recession as a way of marketing myself … and the strategy has worked. I get a trickle of briefs to write, analyse or speak for corporations and businesses via the About and Professional Services links and this has been part of how I have scraped by after the cataclysm of 2008. If anything the global economy is looking scarier than ever … I am not going to drop the blog just as the as the world looks as if it might fall into an even more boneless heap than it did in 2008.

But the second reason I am going to hang onto this forum is that it gives me a discipline and space to work out my views on what is happening in the political realm. I can go back – as can anyone else who may be interested – through the hundreds of posts and get a record of my thinking and I use that constantly to refresh my mind as to where we are in the South African political wrangle … I just have to post more regularly again, and this I undertake to do.

So the blog remains in place for now, and I am grateful to the 150 or so people who check every day to see if I have said anything or who end up at the website through various search engines. One day you will be the CEO or running the company’s staff training programme or heading the strategic planning department (or you may already be one of those) and you will  know where to get hold of some excellently priced expertise … I look forward to your emails to nabor@telkomsa.net in this regard.

Now onto what I have missed posting here in the last 2 weeks – all of which adds up to something of a shy and tentative spring – a bright new world peeping around the corner to see if it is okay to skip happily into the garden … and whatever other cutesy optimistic metaphors I can cook up, because I am extremely tired of the dark cynicism that has taken root deep in my – and probably your – mind.

Jacob Zuma cleans up his act

This is what I said about the Cabinet reshuffle, the suspension of Bheki Cele and the institution of the judicial commission into the Arms Deal.

In one broad swipe President Jacob Zuma has addressed several of the key corruption and maladministration problems that have beset his administration. He has fired Public Works Minister Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde and Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka and suspended police commissioner General Bheki Cele and appointed a commission of inquiry into the General’s actions in fiddling leases for police buildings. In the same announcement Zuma named the members of the commission to investigate the ‘arms deal” scandal and named a senior Supreme Court of Appeals judge to head the inquiry. He has also made extensive minor changes to the cabinet – mostly through knock-on effects from the two ministerial changes.

The president has taken his good time about addressing some of these issues and we expect some of the early commentary to be less than generous – and to comb the details for evidence that Jacob Zuma has used the opportunity to marginalise enemies and reward friends – and generally restructure government in a way that favours his bid for a second term at Mangaung.

My own view is that Zuma has finally responded to a plethora of criticism and he has done so in a thoroughgoing way and in a manner that considerably strengthens the administrative capacity and probity of government. An expectation that such a significant reshuffle would not be influenced by the power struggles within the ANC would be naive, but on an initial reading I am cautiously optimistic.

Julius Malema gets his comeuppance

And this is what I said about the ANC Disciplinary hearing yesterday:

The African National Congress disciplinary committee (DC) is just finishing its announcement of findings and sentencing in relation to the ANC Youth League leadership.

Julius Malema has been found guilty (in his personal capacity) of provoking serious division in the ruling party and he has been suspended from the ANC and the Youth League for a period of five years – and several other sentences have been handed out to Youth League leaders including the 3 years suspension of Floyd Shivambu, the Youth League spokesperson.

This is obviously good for the ANC – for its image, for its internal coherence and for the reputation of its leadership. The loutish and grandiose behaviour of the ANC Youth League and the individual  leaders’  involvement in abuse of public sector finances and tendering process behind a façade of representing the interests of the poorest and most marginalised has deeply damaged the reputation and core values of the ANC.

Obviously much will depend on whether the leadership has the stomach – and spine – to follow the disciplinary process with a thoroughgoing implementation of the sentence throughout all forums of the organisation. We shouldn’t forget that important individuals and constituencies have backed Malema through this process – and as I write this Twitter is alive with ANC YL arrangements for emergency meetings to organise protests against these sentences this weekend. Will the sentence provoke a backlash, attempting to build opposition by portraying Malema as a victim? Obviously, but I think – and  hope – that the grave tones and thorough approach of the ANC Disciplinary Committee might presage a process of repair and renewal in the ruling party.

I expect the situation to be unsettled – and even threatening – for the next week, but my best call is that this sentence is likely to stabilise the debate within the ANC and in the leadership and policy discussion in the lead up to Mangaung in December 2012.

So that’s my two cents of this morning. There are reasons for optimism. Obviously Jacob Zuma has not suddenly been transformed into an epitome of probity and eloquence … but things are looking up and I think it is important to say so.

Zuma was to Polokwane what Malema hopes to be to Mangaung

Doesn’t the Julius Malema saga feel so familiar?

Remember how the Jacob Zuma campaign seemed to transform each new obstacle placed in his path into fuel for his political train that eventually steamed triumphant into Polokwane in December 2007?

The fact that he was known far and wide as hopelessly incapable of moderating his sexual behaviour and as being on the take from, at least, Shabir Shaik, seemed to make almost no difference to the eventual outcome … unless the legal and other processes to charge him actually strengthened his claim to the presidency.

He was the victim of Mbeki’s shenanigans and he was heading a column of pro-poor ANC alliance cadres that were coming to take the ANC back from the pro-monopoly capital “1996 class project” – and every deed or word against that was coming from the privileged few defending their privilege. The marching column was irresistible and Polokwane was its destiny. Or at least that was the narrative that seemed to win out.

With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that Zuma’s success was all about momentum – and its inevitability is a post hoc construction.

I remember a movie from my childhood where the hero escapes almost certain death (it was either Indiana Jones or one of the Bonds ) by running across about fifty metres of crocodile infested waters by … yes, you guessed it: stepping on the back of each starving crocodile but with such speed that he was on his way to the next one before they snapped at him or sunk.*

That is probably a better metaphor for Zuma’s perilous progress towards Polokwane than the one that has him steaming towards that conference as if it was his manifest destiny. The second post of this blog was called The Accidental President and in it I argued that Zuma’s presidency was a result of an unlikely set of circumstances and he was not a character that many could have previously imagined in the role.

On closer examination it becomes clear that Zuma, on several occasions, almost crashed and burned – and came close to going to prison. Ultimately it was only the forward momentum of his campaign that allowed him to escape the snapping crocodiles at his heals.

In fact, I would put it even more strongly: for Jacob Zuma the only way to avoid ignominy and prison was to win the presidency.

And that is where the comparison with Julius Malema becomes so compelling – especially in his weekend attempt to boost the Economic Freedom in Our Lifetime campaign into the mouths and minds of the genuinely marginalised and poverty-stricken in places like Diepsloot and Bantu Bonke.

Just as his disciplinary hearing comes to a head.

Just as his questionable personal finances start to be ‘put to the question’ by various authorities.

Just as he prepares to lead the marches on the Chamber of Mines and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

He told those audiences: “They [the whites] found us here. They did not bring any land nor did they bring any minerals.”

And: “”We are here for every one of you. We will not rest until you stop worrying about where your next meal will come from.”

Woven into every word and phrase is the argument that the incumbent leadership of the ANC has failed the poor. That Julius Malema’s fight against Jacob Zuma is actually a fight to have the needs of the poor and dispossessed met.

Can Julius Malema, engorged as he and his comrades apparently are from sucking the marrow from the bones of Limpopo’s  (amongst others) public purse skeletal public finances (some bad metaphors are impossible to fix – ed)  hope to pull off this audacious argument?

Clearly he can.

Clearly he is betting on himself to be sitting up in the cab of a triumphant train steaming into Mangaung; to have turned all obstacles aside and spun the narrative of the little guy standing up against the incumbents, standing up for the poor and dispossessed.

The parallels are not perfect. Julius Malema is not the apex of a push for the presidency of the ANC – he is too young, untested and controversial to aspire to those lofty heights this time around. He is rather part of the campaign of other powerful contenders – although he hopes to be nested near the centre of a new ruling configuration of the ANC.

Finally, Zuma had the backing of the SACP, Cosatu and a host of ANC democrats exhausted by Mbeki’s stale centralism – as well as a swathe of aspirant BEE wannabes who felt excluded from the previous gravy train.

Julius Malema (and those who hope to benefit from his campaigning) have nothing like the mighty alliance of those disaffected by Mbeki’s presidency.

After yesterday’s radical cabinet reshuffle and Zuma’s apparent ability to reinvent himself as an anti-corruption and responsive president I would have to bet on the incumbents and against the invaders at the castle gate.

This is the week, however, when Malema’s gamble will either pay off or fail.  On Wednesday his disciplinary hearing resumes. On Thursday and Friday the marches on the JSE and the Chamber of Mines will take place.

This is not an accident of timing.

This is about planning, planning by individuals and groups with large appetites for risk – especially when the prize is so rich and the price of failure so high.

*I have a terrible feeling that someone has used that metaphor for Zuma’s march to Polokwane before … so let me apologise in advance if I stole it … and while on the textual commentary – I found this in Wikipedia while trying to check if the image had, in fact, been used for Polokwane before:

“Ross Kanaga as James Bond used four crocodiles as stepping stones to reach safety on the other side. Kananga, who owned the crocodile farm seen in the film, and after whom the main villain is named, did the stunt five times wearing the same crocodile skin shoes as his character had chosen to wear. During the fourth attempt, the last crocodile bit through the shoe and into his foot.The fifth attempt is one seen on film, with the tied-down crocodiles snapping at his feet as he passed over them.”

Beat the dog till the owner comes out

Tokyo comes out to defend Julius Malema in the disciplinary hearing?

To be followed by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Tony Yengeni?

It is an almost too perfect reversal of Julius Malema’s own metaphor after his victory at the Eastern Cape provincial conference of the ANC Youth League in August 2010:

“We will never surrender to Blade. He has never been a member and has no understanding of …  the youth league … Their people have been receiving serious lashings in the youth league conferences. As we said before, we will beat the dog (SACP) until the owner (Nzimande) comes out” … (a copy of The Herald editorial I took that from here.)

The boot, at the moment, seems to be on the other foot (or ” the stick is in the other hand” might have been better – ed.)

The “dog” that is now being beaten at the disciplinary hearing is Julius Malema himself and the owners that are revealing themselves are Tokyo Sexwale, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Tony Yengeni and friends.

And who is doing the beating? Why, the South African Communist Party and Blade Nzimande (as well as Jacob Zuma, Gwede Mantashe and many – but by no means all – in the incumbent leadership of the ANC).

Last weekend, almost while the disciplinary hearing was sitting, SACP Secretary General Blade Nzimande said to  the SACP provincial congress in Esikhawini, near Richard’s Bay, in northern KwaZulu-Natal, that young people should be discouraged from participating in the ANC Youth League’s Economic Freedom in Our Lifetime marches and protests on the 27th and 28th of this month:

“Do not allow yourselves to be used by people with agendas that are not in your interest … We are not going to be supporting any march whose intention is malicious and to undermine the authority of the ANC and the government.”

Breaking ideological stereotypes and confusing the foreigners

Spare a thought for those of us whose job it is to explain to foreign investors why the communists are leading the fight against a youth movement calling for the nationalisation of mines, the expropriation of land without compensation and “Economic Freedom in Our Lifetime!”

I could, of course, have just sent them a few extracts from Fiona Forde’s An Inconvenient Youth – Julius Malema and the ‘New’ ANC (Picador Africa 2011).

Here she is, sitting outside a hotel in Caracas Venezuela chatting with a sulking Julius Malema on his way back to South Africa (from a conference of the World Federation of Democratic Youth taking place in downtown Caracas in April 2010)  to face his previous disciplinary hearing. She has been getting a lesson from Julius on the importance of matching the leather of his watch strap with his belt and his shoes.

Venezuela has never seen so many designer labels as it has these past 48 hours since the arrival of the South African young ones. They descended on the city with their expensive suitcases and travel bags, top-of-the-range baseball caps, flashy T-shirts, snazzy shoes and sneakers, sleek manbags and a string of other expensive accessories hanging out of them – and a bodyguard in tow – all dressed up for a socialist youth conference.

I have been wondering how they must appear in the eyes of the other youth who have flown in from all over the world, and who are also staying at the Avila. The three-star hotel is swarming with casually-dressed, young delegates and among them, to my mind at least, the South Africans seem to stand out a mile.

When we understand that these delegates are the very same people who have formulated the “Economic Freedom In Our Lifetime” slogan, the implacable opposition of the South African Communist Party to the campaign becomes  obvious.

The campaign is a classic attempt by a parasitic elite to manipulate those who are really poor and dispossessed so that these disenfranchised citizens become the battering ram and the lever through which that elite can capture even more resources and assets than it has already – through tender abuse and diversion of state resources into their own pockets.

So the dog is being beaten.

But we would be unwise not to think deeply and carefully about the nature and intentions of the owners that rush out to defend their animal.

Julius Malema and predicting the future you want

The déjà vu is washing over me like the phantom symptoms of a late winter bout of hypochondria.

I remember the lead-up to Polokwane.

The thuggish crowds outside Jacob Zuma’s court appearances.

The man we had known was in Shaik’s pockets since 1993, he who famously couldn’t keep it in his pants, the rape accused shower-after-baby-oil-sex to fend off HIV/AIDs who had only been doing his Zulu man duty by her, Umshini wami mshini wam …  it was entirely impossible that my ANC would ever allow this man to rise to the venerable chambers previously occupied by heroes of the stature of Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela … and kept lukewarm by Mbeki’s occasional visits.

And my paying clients insisting I make a call: will he become president?

Well, say I, Mbeki only appointed him deputy because he needed to fend off the challenge from Winnie a-fate-too-awful-to-be-contemplated-by-the-financial-markets Madikizela-Mandela. He had a certain ethnic appeal, so to speak, in the Inkatha heartlands of Kwazulu-Natal but Mbeki knew no-one would ever seriously propose him as president!

And as I knew, you don’t bet against Thabo Mbeki, the master of palace politics …

… and now here we are again.

The weekend the charges against Malema were announced, SARS, the Public Protector and the Hawks were reportedly deep into investigations of their own.

How could Malema hope to sell himself as a victim just as his lifestyle and his predation on the public purse became the subject of such intense scrutiny?

Can the man whose clothes and accoutrement cost the annual income of any twenty of the youths he hopes to represent … represent them or gain their sympathy?

Yes! I need to shout in my own ear. Yes they can … they have … they will again.

Maybe not this time.

This situation has its own dynamics and there is no point in second guessing what the ANC Disciplinary Committee might decide after it finishes meetings this week – but we mustn’t pretend to ourselves or anyone else that we can tell the future.

Will Malema’s minions brute about the streets wearing 100% Juju t-shirts and threatening to fight to the death for their … leader?

Will this sway the process?

Where is the unswayed process going anyway?

There are only two things I know for sure.

The first is that I do not know what the future holds for Julius Malema. He could be banished from the ANC. His disciplining might  provoke a backlash that conceivably could lead to Zuma’s downfall and to Mangaung being an even more corroding rerun of Polokwane. He might disappear into obscurity in the wasteland that (until very recently) has been politics outside of the ANC. He might spend a few years in the wilderness and return chastened and wiser and work his way back to becoming the coming man.

The second thing I know for sure is that my desire for particular outcomes is a serious barrier to me thinking sensibly about which outcomes are most likely.

I know this is not a great and profound insight – nor am I here on the road to Damascus or any particular destination; intellectual, metaphorical or spiritual.

I do hear the breathless clamour of the prediction and analysis industry prophesying the best and the worst of all possible worlds – depending on the emotional predisposition of their target market.

Predicting the worst is often a mistaken attempt to warn against a particular course of action … it’s a political act and an act of propaganda.

Predicting the best is often a semi-religious act, a sort of shamanistic incantation, willing a particular future into the present.

For me, I admonish myself daily:

It is okay to hope the ANC will rediscover its soul and its leaders their long-lost spines. But hoping for a thing does not make it more probable. No-one knows what is going to happen with Malema. So sit on your hands and wait like the rest of us.