Publication: Sunday Times Issued: Date: 2006-01-08 Reporter: Brendan Boyle

Learning Lessons about Listening to the Electorate

 

Publication 

Sunday Times

Date

2006-01-08

Reporter

Brendan Boyle

Web Link

www.sundaytimes.co.za

 

Panelists sort the popular myths from the real story of what is going on in the upper reaches of the ANC ­ and on the ground

Steven Friedman
Judith February
Aubrey Matshiqi

Is there a crisis at all?

Habib: I do think that we have a political crisis. I think there are three elements to it. The first is that there is a conflict about who is to succeed as president of the ANC; the second element is that the conflict betrays division within the ANC about the future and what South Africa should look like... and the third, which I think is absolutely crucial, is that this leadership conflict, this political battle in the ANC about who succeeds, is actually dividing institutions of state. I think it reflects itself in institutions of justice.

Friedman: Quite clearly there is a section of society that insists that the criminal justice system is subject to political manipulation. But whoever is accused, if you have people saying we don’t believe that the criminal justice system works, there is a moment of crisis. If you have people suspended from the national intelligence agency because it is claimed that they are spying on important business people in support of a political faction, there is a crisis there.

Ginwala: You have now limited it to a political crisis. I wouldn’t disagree with that.

Is the crisis about Jacob Zuma?

Habib: The big question for me is: why were the SACP and Cosatu so insistent in supporting Jacob Zuma when in fact Jacob Zuma wasn’t the kind of lefty with left economic credentials? For me, the SACP and Cosatu actually saw this as an attempt to weaken Mbeki. Not Mbeki as an individual, but Mbeki as somebody who represents a particular trajectory of this economic transition.

Matshiqi: People, particularly in the ANC, have invoked this non-existent tradition. They are responding to some deviation from a non-existent ANC tradition according to which Zuma should have been the heir apparent.

If it’s not about Zuma, then what is it about?

Matshiqi: I think Frene is correct that the key issue is that of management; if there is a crisis it is a crisis of effective political leadership; that things did not have to take the direction they have taken.

Habib: If you look at 1994, we agreed to a democratic political solution, but in essence our capacity to fundamentally accept an economic change was quite limited and the essence of the deal meant that the broad parameters of the market economy would remain. What that tended to do was to create a dynamic in South Africa which centralised power in the political system.

Friedman: I would partly agree with Adam and say this thing started with an inappropriate reliance on smart technical people, rather than on citizen participation, with a sense that you needed tight control from the top otherwise things would get out of hand. It’s the major feature in South African thinking at the moment, in politics, in business, in a lot of spheres in our lives, that smart technical people can solve problems which involving citizens can’t and I think that hopefully, if that’s the victim of this dispute, then I think we have made substantial progress.

Matshiqi: If you look at Khutsong, at what has been going on with regard to services and protests and so on, in some places around the country, people have engaged with both: Lack of service delivery, but in a manner that feeds into the succession battle.

Ginwala: Remember there was a government of national unity. You had to work with the existing institutions we inherited. You could make some change, but the capacity to change was very limited. After 10 years, the need for that transformation, that pressure, was increasing.

Friedman: We all know there were compromises but the point about compromises is: did these compromises reflect the balance of power and the reality in the society at the time? Or were these constraints imposed by the nature of the constitutional bargain? I insist that the compromises were realistic responses to the balance of power at the time, which then shifted.

Does ethnicity play a role?

Habib: I’m quite struck by how media reports try to portray this as an ethnic conflict and I’m actually quite struck by how it’s not an ethnic conflict.

Madlala: That is the general perception in rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal. They narrow it down to ethnicity, unfortunately ­ especially among the IFP followers. They say, you see, we told you about these Xhosas. But I agree with you it’s not that simple.

Is it about services for the poor?

Ginwala: The failure of delivery, which again has been admitted, is not about policy, it’s about lack of capacity in the first place. I’m not saying the policies are perfect, but one can get obsessed with Gear. The reality of actual delivery on the ground is much more about the capacity of human resources ­ not financial, because the financial resources are out there.

Friedman: The succession issue is not a response or a reaction of the grassroots, it’s a reaction of the activists and, really, the grassroots has not been involved.

Habib: Service delivery is as much a problem of capacity, as it is a problem of democracy, as it is a problem of socio-economic pressures that are generated by policy. It is a combination of all of them.

Will the next South African president be the leader of the ANC?

Ginwala: Regardless of who is elected as deputy president [of the ANC] in 2007, it’s not going to affect who is the president of the country or who will be the ANC candidate.

Habib: I actually think that the ANC will come to terms with the fact that the president of the ANC must be the president of the country. I think that there is a concern in the ANC, powerful quarters of the ANC ... that competing centres of power can actually become detrimental to good governance.

Matshiqi: You may have the ANC president not being the president of the country for the simple reason that there may be a stream of authoritarianism in the party that does not allow the democratic space for anyone to block that scenario.

Friedman: The serious assessment is that it is a possible outcome. I can’t see any grounds for simply writing it off as an impossibility. It could happen.

I would hope that whoever leads the country is somebody who respects difference within their organisation and the country, somebody who ­ and this is particularly important in politics ­ who respects support bases. If somebody different from yourself has a support base, they need to be included. Also, somebody who respects different perspectives and respects local choices. If this process delivers somebody like that, I think we are going to be in fairly good shape. If it doesn’t, we have a problem.

We need a good manager and a manager not at a technical level but someone who can manage difference and diversity ­ this is something that is crucial for this country ­ and who will unify us at the same time. To manage diversity, you can only manage it if you can find unifying threads if I can put it that way ... Last and most important, we need someone who listens, right across the board.

Matshiqi: At the level of identity, the ANC has a dual dimension. It is both a liberation movement and a modern political party and you need a leader around whom the two can unite. You don’t need a leader who, in a sense, would emphasize one at the expense of the other. A modernising crusader may just be as bad as someone who emphasises too much the liberation movement aspect of the identity of the ANC. But I think you also need a wise man. You need a wise man, not just a clever person ­ that’s not enough. I think over the past few years what has been lacking is wisdom in how the ANC has engaged with its internal crisis. You need a leader who will be able to take the ANC, the Alliance, South African society with him or her in displaying this wisdom of leadership.

With acknowledgements to Brendan Boyle and the Sunday Times.