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.

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[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.

Against a dark backround … an occasional beam of light

I am struggling to make up my mind whether there really is a small accumulation of good news, clearly visible against the looming night … or if I am just desperate. Today’s Business Day story by the always interesting Carol Paton looking at Manuel and Sisulu on a stern clean up the public service drive must be positive, surely?

… and several points in my take on the political news in the English language weeklies from last week are postive:

Cabinet reshuffle

The Sunday Times says Jacob Zuma is planning to axe Dina Pule, Minister of Communications and Lulu Xingwana, Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities. Pule’s tenure has “limped from one scandal to another – including the questionable millions paid to her boyfriend from sponsorship money meant for the ICT Indaba last year” – Sunday Times.

So what?

The Department of Communications has failed to unbundle the local loop, missed innumerable opportunities with Telkom, under-resourced the regulator Icasa and generally failed to appoint/settle/keep senior management … and has had three ministers in 3 years. Fixing this is a priority area in the National Development Plan and one of the key ‘bottlenecks’ or ‘obstacles to economic growth’ that need to be removed. So Pule’s removal has (if it actually happens) to be seen as a good thing.

(Interesting – to me – speculation on the side is that Zuma might move Thulas Nxesi (Public Works) to replace Angie Motshekga (Basic Education) and have Motshekga replace Xingwana. This means that Jeremy Cronin (deputy minister in Public Works) might then replace Nxesi. But, as the Sunday Times says “there are concerns in the Zuma camp about whether he (Cronin) can be relied on to protect the president from the repercussions over the controversial R206-milliion Nkandla upgrade.”

Public service

Lindiwe Sisulu (Minister of Public Service and Administration) is quoted in the Sunday times about planned amendments to the Public Service Act setting in place ways of stopping senior administrators benefiting from government contracts. She also promised a “super-director-general’ who would ensure that all heads of department adhere to performances linked reward systems.

So what?

Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi lauded Sisulu plans, saying this would stop the “looting” of public funds by government employees. “We can only say halala (congratulations) to that!” he is quoted in the Sunday Times. I have to agree with Vavi. The biggest political failure that is actually in control of government in South Africa is the poor performance and monitoring systems – and therefore delivery failure and corruption – in government and public sector institutions. Sisulu’s intentions are to be welcomed – and she probably has the steel to follow through. So another plus.

Ramphele wanted DA to be dissolved

The Sunday Times quoted several DA members essentially claiming that Mamphela Ramphele almost joined forces with the DA, but wanted the party to be dissolved first and for her to have an equal share of a new institution. “She wanted a new political party and not to join the DA … she came with nothing but wanted an equal share” said one unnamed source.

So What?

The week has been beset with rumours about the impending announcement by the respected academic and business person Mamphela Ramphele that she is to set up a new opposition party. Speculation reached a climax when it was announced that she had resigned as Chairperson of Goldfieds on Wednesday last week. Ramphele would make an excellent addition to opposition parliamentary politics in South Africa – but the idea that one person, with no party structure or obvious constituency in hand, will change the South African game is hopeful at best. However, on the balance, this is undoubtedly another positive. (That’s three in a row for those who are counting.)

Zimbabwe referendum

Several of the weeklies reported that Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe issued an official proclamation on Friday setting March 16 as the date for a referendum on a draft constitution. Most expressed concern that local activists felt that that gave very little time to explain the draft constitution (it took 3 years of bickering to cobble together) to voters and that the draconian Public Order and Security Act would need to be suspended or repealed before campaigning for a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’ vote could take place. All opposition parties have  called for a referendum ‘Yes’ vote to allow the constitution to be accepted and signed into law without any further changes.

So What?

Zimbabwe’s stability and growth prospects impact on South Africa in a myriad ways, for example in the floods of economic refugees and the shifting size of the export and investment markets in Zimbabwe. An interesting story in the Sunday Times by senior editor Mondli Makhanya argued that Zanu-PF is likely to benefit from opposition disarray and an improving economy. “With the elections just months away, Zanu-PF is smiling and looking forward to strolling to victory. After having brazenly stolen four parliamentary and presidential elections between 2000 and 2008 Zanu-PF will not have to resort to violence and skulduggery this time.” If Makhanya is correct (which he may well be) it is going to stick in a lot of craws that through a combination of looting, patronage networks, repression and the chasing of the urban poor into the arms of the South African informal economy and welfare system, Zanu-PF might remain in power.

New Iran claims hit MTN

The jailing of Iranian born US citizen Mohammad Hajian for supplying “sensitive and potentially dangerous equipment to MTN’s mobile network in Iran” (Mail & Guardian) deepens MTN’s woes in relation to its Iranian operations.

So what?                             

“The conviction is damning for the South African mobile giant, as it provides judicial corroboration that the company used sanctions-busting networks to beef up its technical infrastructure in Iran” (M&G).

State of the Nation Assessment

Most reviews pointed to the key absence of any binding theme in Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address.

City Press probably had the best coverage.

• It (CP) correctly points out that there was a specific “shift on land reform” –  with a move from “willing buyer, willing seller” to a “just and equitable” formulation.  This refers to the establishment of a “valuer-general who intervenes on behalf of the state … who then oversees land valuation …to keep the price … affordable for the state to redress” – CP quotes Gugile Nkwinti (Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform).
• It argues that the youth wage subsidy has been swept aside and that government, business and labour in negotiations through Nedlac will announce a plan soon whereby “growth industries with young workforces will attract state support to hire the young and jobless … unskilled young people will also be offered a second chance to write their matric exams”. So no across-the-board subsidy … but a directed one, only in selected industries.
• It picks away at the infrastructure programme and the various roles that will be played by Malusi Gigaba (Minister of Public Enterprises) and Ebrahim Patel (Minister of Economic Development). City Press interviewed the ‘up-and-coming’ Gigaba and asked him if Ebrahim Patel had left him much of a role to play. Gigaba replied: ““Economic Development is responsible for a broader plan. My department is responsible for three big infrastructure projects: the roll out of broadband, electricity infrastructure and logistics like rail. Other departments are responsible for roads, transport and dams.”

So What?

The State of the Nation address is always over-anticipated and usually bitterly lamented as not having been specific or visionary enough. This year, not unexpectedly, Zuma enumerated the successes of government and hyped the plans.  Much of what Zuma and his government will do and say in the next while will be focused on the national election in 2014 – and expectations likely to be disappointed.

Bits and Pieces

• City Press reports that the department of fisheries, headed by Tina Joemat Pettersson is in “total free fall” – raising serious concerns about government’s ability to conduct research required to determine quotas of ‘allowable catch’ for key species.
• Sunday Times business section reports that industrial unrest and violence at the Medupi construction site make the “chances of the R91bn power station feeding power into South Africa’s overstretched grid by the end of this year … slim”.
• Sunday Times reports Harmony Gold made history by making individual workers at its Kusasulethu mine sign a treaty with the company in order to lock individual workers into a contract with the company. “This is quite a revolutionary move … (it) means that individual workers can now be taken to task when stepping over the line” says Peter Major, Cadiz mining analyst. Major argues, according to the report, that if similar agreements had been put in place a year ago when trouble first started brewing on the mines at Impala Platinum, a “Marikana” might have been prevented.

(Added as an afterthought: I realise I haven’t made any kind of conclusion given that the opening paragraph suggests I was going to indicate either that I am more positive than negative or vice versa. Frankly, I can’t make up my mind. Which probably makes me a fairly bog standard South African.)

Fluff

Enthusiasm is a quality I value.

It’s especially endearing in children and dogs. But in human adults beyond the blush of youth it is nothing short of heroic.

However, when enthusiasm is both sentimental and irrational it is decidedly less attractive.

Which brings me to Mamphela Ramphele, Cyril Ramaphosa and the National Development Plan – severally and apart.

When Ramphele resigned yesterday as Chairperson of Goldfields an anticipatory shudder went through the local and international intelligentsia (from the well known Russian word интеллигенция, and defined in Wikipedia as “people engaged in complex mental labour aimed at disseminating culture”).

Yes Ramphele:

• is tough, principled, intelligent, successful, well organised and has experience at running large organisations;
• has a degree of “struggle credibility” having been involved in the Black Consciousness Movement 70s;
• and is unlikely to have made her move without adequate capital backing and other promises of support by significant others …

… and yes we all assume, undoubtedly correctly, that there is a significant (and growing) urban, African, middle-class electoral constituency that is increasingly unrepresented by an ANC that is tending, under Jacob Zuma,  to drift towards a  rural, chauvinist, patronage driven complacency.

The point, for the интеллигенция, is that this constituency is ripe-for-the-plucking by an opposition party lead by Ramphele … a constituency that feels unable to support the Democratic Alliance for historical, ethnic, cultural, policy reasons.

What is it with us looking for a saviour to rise from these streets?

In the recent months it has been Cyril Ramaphosa who will save the ANC from itself and us all from Zuma’s government.

And if that fails we have the National Development Plan that will fix everything.

Like Ramphele and Ramaphosa, the National Development Plan is great.

It might be my own pessimism, but in my opinion these are, all three, not (powerfully) shapers of historical outcomes … they are effects, not causes.

The NDP is just a piece of paper, an adequate diagnosis and a bundle of good intentions.

Ramaphosa is embedded in something much more powerful, and scarier, than he will ever be.

Ramphele is a single person with no established political constituency, no party machinery and a reputation for humiliating her senior managers in public (… aside from all those good things I mentioned earlier).

Sure, we can hope that she will sweep the ANC’s patronage networks aside and replace it with a meritocracy pure as the driven snow.

But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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.)

The Second Transition

Occasionally I publish slides from a current presentation series and here are a few from something I am busy with called: “The Second Transition – SA politics and policy somewhere twixt hither and yon”.

The general idea is the ANC government is determined to move beyond the ‘transitional’ arrangements that it agreed to in 1994 and strike out boldly towards some undefined, but more profoundly transformed future.

I start with a quote from Jeff Radebe at the launch of the ANC discussion documents in early March … which sets the atmosphere of the ANC proposals.

Then, taking some liberties, I summarise what the ANC is “really” (in my humble opinion) saying in motivating the documents:

I then set out on the difficult task of attempting to assess whether the ANC documents actually propose anything as thoroughgoing as the initial motivation implies.

Frankly, the answer is “no”; although the proposals are both worrying in tone and in how contradictory and “bitty” they are.

The best formulated document is the “Maximizing the Developmental Impact of the People’s Mineral Asset: State Intervention in the Minerals Sector (SIMS) – document (get a link to that here). It contains a thoroughgoing set of proposals that change the tax system for mining and propose a complicated set of upstream, downstream and sideways linkages for the industry that will create a new set of burdens and obligations (not all bad) for the mine owners. (My own feeling about mineral resources is that these are “non-renewables” and government is obliged to get the maximum developmental benefit out of them before they are lost forever – but that is just by the way.)

Almost every other document – and there are 12 in  all – meanders between

• being meaningless wish-lists,
• statist and authoritarian  blueprints to bully and control and
• well researched and argued guides to fixing key aspects of what is wrong with our society

Almost all the good stuff is lifted body and soul from the meticulously researched National Development Plan with its focus on the 9 challenges of

• widespread unemployment
• ailing infrastructure
• low standards of education
• exclusion of the poor from mainstream development
• a resource dependent economy
• a failing public health system with a large disease burden
• inept public service provision
• widespread corruption and
• societal divisions.

My presentation itself does not make strong predictions on how far the ANC will get with its deliberations … although what is clear is that policy discussion this whole year will be drowned out by the Mangaung election noise. It is is going to be difficult to ascertain any real direction through the clamour of the struggle to re-elect Jacob Zuma.

Leaving aside all the slides that deal with the actual documents, I do, however conclude by asking some questions of our key players … and I include those slides here for your interest:

As the months go by, I will hopefully have time to flesh out some of those question.

But for now I am in the final days of the road show trying to make sense of  the mess of proposals and hints in the documents, which span issues as diverse as fracking the Karoo, IDZ’s to SEZ’s, the Treasury versus EDD versus DTI, local procurement fantasies, some excellent fixes of BEE from Rob Davies,  the lonely excellence of the Gordhan and Marcus and infrastructure looking more and more like the ANC’s one-trick-pony.

The limits of politics

I think both the DA and the ANC might be on the verge of an evolutionary spurt that will change what they are and thus see them shifting into new ecological  niches in our political landscape.

I also think that the landscape itself changes much slower than we think or hope.

Voluntarism is a term for a species of political error – and I dredge this up from the gleaming days of my youthful involvement in the ‘mass democratic movement’ in South Africa. The taxonomic system we developed for naming and defining ‘mistaken beliefs’ was tiresomely thorough and self-righteous, but I have to confess that I still dip into that frame of reference and find there useful analogies and ways of understanding the world.

Voluntarism  means believing that through pure force of will, cleverness of organisation, brilliance of strategy, accuracy of tactics and shear hope, anything could be achieved no matter what the inherent conditions.

I am convinced that the Democratic Alliance foray into the townships and squatter camps is either a form of voluntarism or it will result in the DA becoming something else entirely – and ultimately something very similar to what the ANC has become.

This somewhat pessimistic view of politics is based on the assumption that politicians and political parties do not have a free hand to sell what they like to whoever (whomever?) they like.

The racial divide in South Africa and the racial solidarity of the groups which face each other across that divide is a deep structural phenomenon and not a casual consumer preference.

When Julius Malema talks about “the Madam and her tea girl” referring to DA chief Helen Zille and the DA MP and national spokesperson Lindiwe Mazibuko he finds a resonance.

This ‘resonance’ is not something created by clever marketing and it is also not something that can be got rid of like Vodacom changing its colours from blue to red.

Groups of people, their ideology, culture and attitudes can be changed – particularly in the powerfully denaturing environment of modern industrial cities. This is how an African peasantry became  the urban proletariat of South Africa’s modern capitalism. And it was this process that created the possibility of an ANC that represented all black Africans in the country and not just specific tribal groups.

But do not overestimate the power and speed of this process. Think of the ethnic boroughs in New York; think of the Xhosa/Zulu tussle in the ANC and think of the unbridgeable divide between the black and white experience in South Africa.

South Africa’s history, including colonialism and Apartheid, has a powerful momentum in our lives today. I think this means that the hope that the DA with more black faces and branches (but essentially the same ideology , structure and principles) could make a serious electoral challenge will remain just that – a hope.

A party still called the Democratic Alliance could displace the ANC, but only by becoming something very similar to its foe i.e. led by black people with a history of opposition to Apartheid and primarily about redressing the past,  directing state resources to benefit black people and  channelling wealth towards the emerging black elite.

The “rump” of the DA are good old white liberals (in the best sense of the word) who have their ideological roots in the closing years of Apartheid.

A party with such a “rump” will never (in any time frame that could be relevant to us) represent a majority of black South Africans – even urban professionals, even a significant minority. To represent those people the DA would have to be of those people, run by those people and be an instrument to further the interests of those people.

I do think urban African professionals are in the process of defecting, with disgust, from the ANC.

But I will be looking for a Movement for Democratic Change lookalike (to the ANC’s ZANU-PF) to emerge from the South African political dynamic.

That ultimately means I am still looking for an organised defection by the industrial working class and their middle class allies that will emerge from a split in the Ruling Alliance – that would probably put Cosatu on one side and the ANC on another.

On this basis the ANC could lose control of the cities to a political formation like the MDC -  although not one that could be portrayed, as the MDC has been by ZANU-PF and by the ANC (which can already sense the threat), as having been funded and set up by white farmers and other ‘enemies of national liberation’.

There is a part of me that hopes I am wrong … that we have it within ourselves to escape the awful gravity of our history; that we really are free to choose our future.

My view, however, is that the choices we do have are all within a narrow band of possibilities confined by the deep structural features of our past and present.

Thus the ecology of our society and our politics remains the same – or at least changes extremely slowly – but the creatures that inhabit the landscape are modified by natural selection and drift and displace each other in the niches that are available to them.

(My next post will deal with the question of what the ANC is becoming as it changes its niche as the party narrows and shifts – geographically, ideologically and socially.)

This added after publication:

The über-troll of South African political analysis R.W. Johnson added this gentle corrective to the version of the above article published on Politicsweb: “Am I the only person astonished by the fact that Mr Borain can’t spell voluntarism ?” He’s quite right about this – as he is about so much – although he is usually also interesting. He was, appropriately, hanging out with the racist bullies in Politicsweb’s comments section, so I shouldn’t be terribly surprised at his sneering tone.

The word is voluntarism (not volunterism, as I originally had it … I got it wrong because I mistakenly thought ‘we’  had made it up and I could therefore spell it as I pleased) and it means: “any theory that regards will as the fundamental agency or principle, in metaphysics, epistemology, or psychology”  – from Dictionary.com.

On being a useful idiot

We all get an occasional red herring dragged across the trails we follow.

For political analysts this is an occupational hazard.

Our “sources” have their own agendas and we have to be eternally suspicious of the bright little threads of information we find scattered across our paths.

Here is a paraphrase of a piece of information I have heard several times and in several slightly different versions in the last few weeks:

Word from deep inside the ANC is that the ruling party’s own polling data is hinting at a catastrophic swing in their biggest urban African constituencies towards the DA.

Now I would hesitate to imply that serious spin doctors in our political kingdom would normally spend much time and energy ensuring that Nic Borain was lead or mislead in a particular way.

But during an election the parties throw prodigious amounts of energy into the void and at times like this even your humble servant occasionally gets caught in the crossfire.

So, without having any clue as to whose interests the viral spread of this particular snippet might serve this is the breadth of my suspicion:

• The information is an exaggeration of something that is true and comes from DA strategists hoping to deepen the momentum achieved and create a sense of excitement in the electoral constituency and in the party machine.
• The information is neither true nor false (is either invented or partial) and is put about by ANC strategists to mobilise previously loyal voters who, out of disillusionment or apathy, were unlikely to vote on May 18.
• That the rumour is designed to galvanise the lethargic or disillusioned ANC party machine – a swing towards the DA by urban black professionals will be an intolerable repudiation of the current stewards of the ANC.
• That the information is being put about as part of the myriad factional battles within the Ruling Alliance – most obviously as a stick to beat Jacob Zuma with in the lead-up to 2012.

Of course it might just be the plain and unadulterated truth that the ANC’s bespoke polls are indicating a serious swing in urban professional African constituencies away from itself and towards the DA.

This seems a logical consequences of some of the failures of delivery and the endemic spread of corruption and cronyism – but not a trend I would have imagined registering on the pre-election polls.

I do not expect any swing will massively change the structure of local government, but I imagine it would be symbolically important.

The most positive outcome of any such swing is one in which ANC party reformers use it to attack the drift  towards cronyism, corruption and incompetence in their party and government.

And, of course, any such  increased representivity of the DA will continue to act, in word and deed, as a check and balance on the African National Congress.

However before I get ahead of myself, let me just state that I think it is always safer to suspect that the information is leaking for a particular purpose before I conclude that I have got hold of the thread because of superior sources or methods, or because the ANC’s strategic centre has become a leaky sieve.

My sources may be superior and the ANC’s election campaign may be collapsing in a heap … but bitter experience teaches me that the more likely explanation is that someone is attempting to play me … like an out of tune harmonica.

Defining The Enemy

What happens when we define ‘the enemy’ in terms that would justify shooting them down like mad dogs in the street?

I have often felt that the terms of our political debate are too extreme – from all sides of the political spectrum.

The idea or assertion that the government, the state and the ruling party is made up of an undifferentiated herd, squealing and grunting at the trough, might be rhetorically satisfying, but it’s wrong and not designed to foster our democracy.

But a more serious problem is emerging as the a Ruling Alliance, feeling threatened and burdened, has started characterising all forms of opposition as driven by white capitalists full of nostalgia for Apartheid.

The best example I can find is contained in Blade Nzimande’s Chris Hani Memorial Lecture.

Nzimande makes explicit something that is being articulated from every part of the Ruling Alliance – and it is important not to dismiss his words as part of a “loony left” view.

Nzimande defines two enemies of freedom, democracy, national liberation and “our revolution and its objectives”. These enemies are:

1. The new tendency including tenderpreneurship and the general danger of business interests within our broad movement overrunning and defeating the revolution
2. The anti-majoritarian liberal tendency

The first one is clearly ‘the enemy within’ – tenderpreneurs and similar – and in this he might be supported by the DA.

But in the lead-up to the municipal election, it is the second enemy and how “it” is defined that is of interest to me.

This is the essence of it pulled out as quotes and paraphrasing from the lecture:

Firstly, the Democratic Alliance and the print media are the organised representatives of the enemy.

Thus: … there is a “liberal offensive against the majoritarian character of our democracy” that with “growing arrogance and strident nature” is “pushed by the likes of the DA” but mainly conducted by its “principal ideological platform and mouthpiece … South Africa’s mainstream print media”.

Secondly, the enemy consists largely of previous beneficiaries of Apartheid:

In fact the (anti-majoritarian) liberal agenda seeks to defend, protect and advance the interests of the white capitalist class and the petty bourgeoisie, without explicitly saying so like during the era of the racist apartheid regime; and yet in a manner not different from white minority rule, but in conditions of black majority rule!

Finally, the main strategy of this enemy is to get the state to stop supporting the poor and instead make it (the state) an instrument for making capitalists richer still.

At the heart of the liberal offensive is the objective of weakening the capacity of the state to act in the interests of the overwhelming majority of the workers and the poor … In addition such state intervention in favor of the capitalist or local ruling elites … undertake(s) further measures (like repression and destruction of the trade union movement, especially its progressive components) in order to ensure that the conditions for the reproduction of capitalist relations of production are strengthened.

Believing your own propaganda

Like all effective propaganda these characterisations by the Ruling Alliance -  here expressed in the mostly pseudo-intellectual terms of Marxist Leninism – rely on packaging elements of truth with confirmations of  people’s lived experience – at the same time confirming their prejudices and fears.

In this universe a Media Appeals Tribunal or the disruption of a DA rally in Mamelodi are minor acts of resistance against an evil and dangerous invader.

The lie that the DA only represents Apartheid nostalgia equals the lie that the ANC is only a platform for pillaging the state.

Both characterisations leave the protagonists stranded on their high horses beyond the frontiers, with no roads back and no options but to push forward into the night.

Make the circle bigger Nathi – or dance alone

Occasionally our correct and coded political dialogue is enlivened by a less experienced politician whose staff were out to lunch when their boss put pen to paper – or word in mouth, as the case may be.

One such instructive episode has been a piece by Minister of Safety and Security (Police) Nathi Mthethwa in which he attacks Helen Zille for, essentially, challenging the notion that Jacob Zuma is in any way the inheritor of the mantel of Nelson Mandela.

This article (astonishingly I think you will agree) is prominently and proudly carried  in the official ANC journal, ANC Today. You can catch the full text here.

Minister Mthethwa breathlessly and breathtakingly lacerates that “disgusting madam”, … “Helen Zille and her ilk sinking in the foul waters of self-aggrandisement”.

She is the “pitiless lone voice from the gutter” with her “disgusting, shallow and shameful short memory”  she is “obsessed and blinded by her hatred of the ANC” .

She has “unveiled yet again her infamous stripes” by “urinating on the progress being made” and  “(s)he continues to suffocate in her own choking fires of hatred and unrestrained banal rank opportunism” with her “barren infantile political posturing”.

Goodness!

You might well ask what the scary and threatening leader of the Democratic Alliance said that caused the Minister of Police to wax so lyrical.

Helen Zille in her weekly missive (SA Today) took up the occasion of Nelson Mandela’s birthday to make a few sharp points about the blurring  between party and state in celebrations around the old man’s 92nd birthday.

She ends her stern, school headmistress admonition with:

The great irony is that the more the ANC diverges from Nelson Mandela’s vision, the more the ANC seeks to own it … The ANC does not own Mandela. The ANC gave up its claim to Mandela’s legacy when it diverged from the values he cherished. Instead, Mandela’s legacy belongs to all those people in South Africa, from all backgrounds, who still value selflessness, integrity, non-racialism and freedom for all under the law.

This really must have hurt to have sent Minister Mthethwa into such babbling apoplexy.

The minister and his colleagues who allowed the article to be published with such proud prominence have failed to learn the most important thing about politics. Politics is always about winning the middle ground and isolating your most dangerous enemy from his/her potential friends.

The immense value of the symbol of  Nelson Mandela to the ANC is precisely that he is a lifetime leader of the ANC and is venerated across the political spectrum. The political task of the ANC must be to give leadership to “the nation” and to the middle-ground, to be accepted as the legitimate leader of the South African state. Part of achieving this goal surely must be – for the ANC – to welcome its political opponents to venerate Mandela?

It seems obvious to me that through this defensive bullying and bombast Mthethwa achieves the very opposite – and frankly must be making DA strategists wring their hands with glee.

But I am coming to think I expect too much from a political party that advertises the death of its strategic sense by placing this kind of ignorant diatribe by one of its leading members in its leading publication.

DA success, Xenophobia and Malema – the hidden connections

Much is happening on the political front that I would love to be discussing here, but paid work is, thankfully, taking up my time this week. Thus the following is broad brush and a little rushed – the point I wanted to make is that the issues are all connected – in dark and unsettling ways.

Julius on Nationalisation

Parliament started public hearings on the establishment of  a state-owned mining company. Malema  gave the ANCYL’s views and he repeated the call for the immediate suspension of mining licences to prevent the current holders “looting” the mines. Jacob Zuma later in the General Assembly said: “If this issue causes such excitement, then debate it with Mr Malema. He is there.” See Business Report’s take here.

DA Success

The Democratic Alliance made serious gains in by-elections earlier in the week – this from The Cape Times (IOL) this morning:

IN a watershed night in South African politics, the DA trounced the ANC in two of its strongholds – Gugulethu and Caledon – gaining two wards where there was not a single white voter and the majority were blacks, not coloureds.

In Ward 44 in parts of Gugulethu and Heideveld, where the DA received 21.6 percent of the vote in the last election in 2006, the party received 60.5 last night.

And in Ward 12 in Caledon’s Theewaterskloof municipality, where the DA received only 6.6 percent in 2006, the party garnered more than 60 percent.

We are obliged to do some work on these numbers (how many people voted, demographic and other changes since 2006) but it implies a surprising level of disaffection with the ANC in areas that can only be described as ‘previously safe’ ANC wards.

Xenophobia

I have been picking up from African foreigners living in townships around Cape Town for at least the last 6 months that they were being threatened that post the Fifa World Cup and post the obsessive media focus on South Africa associated with the soccer they can expect to be driven from their homes – I discuss it here and this is the key paragraph from this March 24th 2010 post:

It has become something of a legend and commonly accepted “fact” by foreigners living in South African townships that post the World Cup and in the lead-up to the local government elections in 2011 the xenophobic violence will erupt on a scale beyond anything that has happened in the past.

The issue is breaking across the spectrum of the South African news media as I write.

The Hidden Connections

The ANC government is failing in service delivery and the evidence is everywhere that there is a degree of panic in the party’s ranks about the 2011 local government election. The ANC is under various kinds of threat, but the threat that concerns its leadership most is the possibility that they lose the support of the poor. This environment gives voice to the worst of those who have found a home in the ANC; those who understand the power of the call to take back what is “rightfully ours” – the land and the mines; and those who covertly would harness the rage and fear rife in the townships – a strategy indistinguishable from the early activity of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The older ANC members would be genuinely outraged at any suggestion that they would countenance these strategies but it is difficult not to conclude that these forces are unleashed in our society as a direct result of the failure of ANC leadership.

A church so broad belief is optional is not all bad

I have often pointed out that the ANC’s clever- clever populism allows it to be all things to all people. I have mostly meant that that is a bad thing.

It is a legitimate question to ask: what are Julius Malema and  Barbara Hogan (to name two arbitrary ANC leaders) doing at the same table? When you strip away all the noise and posturing you are left with the question: what, politically, economically, ethically, spiritually, culturally do they have in common? How can one organisation have so broad a policy that both these people can claim to find a home there?

Usually, my conclusion is that the original policies designed to transform us away from Apartheid are disappearing from the ruling alliance and being replaced by the objective of power (and wealth and influence) for its own sake.

This morning I want to temper that negative view.

Our society has a number of real and urgent contradictions or fault-lines where the clashing currents are difficult to manage. Here are some of the most important:

• White versus black (versus Indians versus Coloureds)
• 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 – with a sub-theme of modern city women versus patriarchal men or at least men carrying around chauvinist and patriarchal ideas in their heads.

The fact of the matter is that these divisions are not represented in the clash of politics in our 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.

A quick glance through the ANC’s top leadership, structures and relationships shows a very deliberate attempt to represent the full scope of South African society.

I have mentioned elsewhere how Jacob Zuma has played a crucial role in winning Zulu’s back into the ANC. Cyril Ramaphosa is in part there for Venda’s, Hogan for whites and women, Derek Hanekom for whites and farmers, Mac Maharaj for Indians; Trevor Manuel for Coloureds and business …  and global capital markets; Baleka Mbete for women … the list really could go on for ever.

One of the reasons I think Julius Malema is unlikely to face serious punishment from the ANC leadership, is the organisation values the fact that, at one level of abstraction, he  “speaks for” the 2.5 million young black South Africans between the ages of 18 and 25 who are unemployed and not in any kind of education. (I do think Malema is primarily a populist disguising his own greed, but his populism also articulates – or helps weave into the national debate – a real view and an actual constituency.)

Then the alliance relationships with Cosatu, with the SACP and broader relationships with Contralesa (Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa); the Black Management Forum and outwards all the way to polite meetings with the Afrikaaner Weerstandsbeweging are all concentric circles of the ANC attempting to straddle all divides in the Society.

I think there is a very real danger in this context of ANC politics and policy becoming meaningless and allowing people in it for personal riches and power to rise to the top.

But I think it is important to acknowlge the upside.

We are a society in which the formal insitutions 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 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.

Welcome back to the progressive trade union movement

This war won’t be won from our air-conditioned offices but in the branches and structures of the ANC, just as it happened in the build-up to Polokwane. – Zwelenzima Vavi at a press conference yesterday (30/11/2009)

It’s over; Cosatu is back where it belongs.

The trade union ally fought its way into the ruling tent and finally gained admittance at the Polokwane conference of the ANC in 2007.

Cosatu has, since its formation in Durban on December 1 1985,  played the role of the prickly and critical ally of the ANC.

The organisation has consistently been on the side of the angels (in that role, anyway), acting as the stern fraternal critic of government and the ruling party on issues as diverse as Zimbabwe, HIV/AIDS and corruption. After the end of legislative Apartheid in 1994 the glue that had bound Cosatu to the ANC was weakened and Cosatu became ever more strident in its criticisms – especially of cronyism.

The mythology that Cosatu constructed for itself and helped imprint on the 2007 Polokwane class project (hmm, can I patent that?) was that the ANC had been hijacked by an Mbeki led deviation with the promulgation of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution macro-economic policy in 1996 (the 1996 class project).

What Cosatu was doing in the lavish ruling tent, according to their own narrative, was saving the ANC from the 1996 class project.

Cosatu is a trade union movement. Of all possible trade union movements, Cosatu was NEVER meant to be the government. The organisation is the trickster, the Shakespearian fool and it has immeasurably strengthened our democracy by playing that role.

But a trade union movement is limited by its need to protect the interests of its members. I have argued time and time again here and here (for example) that the interests of employed workers ARE NOT identical to the interests of the nation as a whole.  Any attempt to place the interests of employed workers – especially the short-term interests – at the centre of national policy would be profoundly damaging to the South African economy and democracy.

This is not an abstraction. It’s about investment flows, the laws that structure the labour market and the costs of doing business here. Government must balance the creative greed of capital and the suffocating fear of organised labour – in a rough nutshell, so to speak.

The last thing we need is either business or organised labour running government.

Cosatu has stood steadfastly against the rising tide of cronyism and tender abuse within government. But as soon as it has become part of government the organisation pushes to entrench the short-term interests (labour brokers, forced lower interest rates) of the formally employed … and that’s in the interregnum before its leaders join the gravy train.

So instead of watching its own structures and leaders sucked into the familiar patterns of greed and corruption which seem to be the inescapable quagmire of governance in South Africa, Cosatu must find itself a base in the wilderness from which to ‘speak truth to power.’

(Note: There are questions that are begged:

• Is it appropriate or realistic for Cosatu to conduct its battle  “in the branches and structures of the ANC, just as it happened in the build-up to Polokwane’.

• What does this mean for the “Alliance”? Split? Drift along?

• The SACP is obviously talking to Cosatu and coordinating with them. Where does the SACP go?

• Whereas I do think Cosatu’s apparent exit from government into civil society presages a massive – and generally positive  – upsurge in civil society opposition, this is bad in the short-term for investment risk and, more importantly, civil society opposition is unlikely to divert these trajectories of cronyism, abuse of power and weakness at the centre.

I will try to address these in the next few weeks.)

Are we becoming the worst we can be?

Here is something I wrote during the April general election – with a few minor edits. It is becoming increasingly relevant, as “the left” is backed into a corner and the Malema style populists seem to hold sway.

Bread and Circuses

Opinion polls indicate that the ruling African National Congress will shrug off five years of bitter leadership struggles and a sea of bad news to emerge from the election with a close to two-thirds majority.

But what it has cost for the ANC to turn the headwinds into tailwinds will be a hard price to pay.

The view divides neatly and sharply between the shorter term and the medium-to-longer term.

SHORT TERM

For some time South African political risk has been elevated due to a number of factors associated with the rise of a political faction around current ANC president and erstwhile country president, Jacob Zuma. The concerns have included:

1. Corruption and racketeering charges against Jacob Zuma have raised questions about the probity of the candidate and his supporters as well as elevated a damaging conflict between the rule of law and the ruling party;
2. The stability and predictability of macro-economic policy has been in question because of the centrality of the support of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party.

In the short-term, Zuma’s legal travails have disappeared because his defence team has convinced the National Prosecuting Authority to drop charges. Intelligence monitoring tapes produced by Zuma’s defence team clearly showed that the timing of the investigation and formulation of charges against Zuma were significantly influenced by supporters of Thabo Mbeki to the detriment of Zuma’s candidacy for president of the ANC and the country. While questions about the probity of Zuma will remain, the overhang of an instability provoking trial is now gone, as is the conflict between the ruling party and the justice system.

Additionally, the flow of information from key decision making forums within the African National Congress and ‘The Alliance’ (forums consisting of the ANC, Cosatu and the SACP) have started to indicate that a previously resurgent left wing is now facing headwinds on both policy and representivity fronts. The proposal for a ‘super cabinet’ that would essentially be a central planning commission has been significantly downgraded as have proposals to change monetary policy (away from inflation targeting) and to massively increase the already extensive social grant system. In addition, it appears increasingly unlikely that key communists and worker leaders will occupy the most important cabinet positions in the new government.

Thus, on the face of it and in the short term, South African politics and political risk should not remain a major concern in the aftermath of this week’s election. But delving deeper, and over a longer term – and perhaps with a longer investment horizon – I am not quite as sanguine.

LONGER TERM

While my general view of South Africa is improved by these positive outcomes, I believe it is prudent to flag one aspect, a potentially central aspect,  of risk in the longer term.

Under Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela politics and leadership within the African National Congress and South Africa were exercised in a deliberately sober and cautious manner. Anti-populism and concerns to downplay any ‘cult of the personality’ were always high on the agenda.

These were hidden virtues that only become apparent now, in the moment of crescendo of the new ANC’s campaign of evangelical political razzmatazz focussed on the rural poor. Faced with opposition from the Congress of the People Party – formed in response to the purge of Mbeki from government and his supporters from the ANC leadership structures -  the ANC has thrust downwards and outwards for new areas of support.  While the ANC has not abandoned its urban, sophisticated working class support it has definitely set a ‘bread and circuses’ caravan amongst the unemployed and rural poor.

The combination of the ANC’s appeals to ethnic Zulus, various illiberal hints about the death penalty and gays, a strong push to be identified with the evangelical churches, a focus on tribal traditionalism epitomised by Zuma’s polygamy and traditional dress and the espousal – at a rhetorical level anyway – of economic populism is an all too familiar post-colonial African recipe. There has been a raft of implicitly and explicitly negative international news coverage about Jacob Zuma and the ANC’s election campaign – epitomised by this week’s “Africa’s next Big Man” cover story in The Economist. While some of the more virulent attacks on Zuma’s ethnic Zulu traditionalism are clearly racist or xenophobic a real and legitimate concern seems to permeate the coverage and market concerns: is this ethnic and economic populism newly espoused by the ANC different from that espoused thirty years ago in Congo and more recently in Zimbabwe?

The traditional logic of the ANC’s alliance with the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions is the belief that they protect each other from the worst excesses of their individual character and constitution. The undesirability of a total victory of either the communists or organised labour is perhaps more obvious than that of the African National Congress. The multi-class and  multiethnic nature of the African National Congress national liberation movement has always made it vulnerable to populism and hijack by opportunists primarily interested in their own ability to accumulate wealth. The SACP and Cosatu have claimed the Polokwane victory as the moment they took back control of the revolution from the 1996 hijack by “monopoly capital in alliance with the comprador bourgeoisie” (translation: foreign investors and emerging black business). However, it seems to me that what actually happened at Polokwane was a victory of a rickety alliance between those left wing elements and aspects of aspirant and emergent domestic business who had somehow failed under Mandela and Mbeki to accumulate adequately and conservative Africanists within the ANC.

The left has profoundly miscalculated it’s strength in this alliance. They thought they were riding the other interests to victory, but I think they, in their turn, were being ridden by something altogether more unsettling.

Young Communists froth at the mouth – hilariously and for a good cause

This statement from the Young Communist League of South Africa (YCLSA) in the province of Gauteng calls on “parents to intensify efforts in teaching their children the dangers of learning from Julius” Malema.

Its worth a read – if for nothing else but to see how crazy things are getting between the left-wing of the ruling alliance and the crony capitalists.

Here the YCLSA accuses Julius Malema of being a “tender-preneur”, which is “a parasitic petty capitalist who relies on political proximity to different spheres of government and associated tenders” for their leg up in the world.

This is the real political divide in South Africa today. I think the lefties are on a hiding-to-nothing in the long term as I argue in various places but also here. I feel ambivalent about that. I hope they continue to curb some of the excesses of our rapidly evolving system of vampire capitalism from deep within the political wilderness they are returning to.

Cope – going, going …..

Alan Boesak , the cleric and pardoned fraudster, resigned from Cope and the Western Cape provincial legislature today.

The once hopeful potential opposition to the ANC seems to be in a terminal state of decline, with several key leadership figures having resigned over the last few months.

Boesak was always going to be a problem for Cope and his action today proves the point of those who criticised Cope for appointing him in the first place.

It’s a pity, because the formation of Cope spurred the ANC  out of complacency in the lead up to the April election and can take some of the credit for the ANC attempting to “go back to its knitting” as far as its constituency is concerned.

This slide was part of a briefing I did for investor clients in the lead up to the general election on April 22 2009.