Publication: Sunday Independent Issued: Date: 2005-10-23 Reporter: Patrick Laurence Reporter:

Opportunistic Campaign to Discredit Mbeki Makes for an Uncertain Future

 

Publication 

Sunday Independent
Date

2005-10-23

Reporter

 Patrick Laurence

Web link

 

The dispute within the African National Congress between President Thabo Mbeki and his former deputy, Jacob Zuma, is no longer a divisive squabble within the governing party: it is a polarising crisis with profound implications.

South Africa, with its linguistically and racially diverse population and large disparities of wealth, is a difficult country to govern. The ANC is the only party whose support base is sufficiently widespread, geographically and culturally, to provide a viable government for the immediate future.

A dysfunctional ANC is thus a matter of national concern and not a mere intra-party political quarrel.

The pending trial of Zuma on charges of corruption - scheduled to begin in July next year - is, of course, one component of the crisis. Intertwined with it, however, is another: a succession struggle in which Mbeki and Zuma are the main dramatis personae for the moment.

Mbeki's main role appears to be that of eliminating Zuma as a leading candidate, if not the leading candidate, to succeed him, until and unless Zuma is acquitted in a court of law of the corruption charges.

Furthermore, Mbeki has declared that he might be available to serve as the ANC's president for a third term in 2007 and thereby possibly deny the ANC presidency to Zuma as a staging post for his quest to succeed Mbeki as national president in 2009.

There is no legal impediment to Mbeki seeking a third term as ANC president, though the constitution prohibits from him serving a third term as South Africa's president.

Zuma, encouraged by his vociferous followers, has not allowed his forthcoming trial to prevent him from campaigning for both presidential offices. Instead, he and his main backers have used his two court appearances as opportunities to advance stridently his candidacy for the two presidential offices.

A leitmotif in their campaign has been to present Zuma as the victim of political machinations calculated to prevent him from occupying the coveted presidential offices. The burning of t-shirts emblazoned with Mbeki's image adds an ominous undertone of revolutionary anarchism to the pro-Zuma campaign. An underlying but hardly subliminal theme of the campaign is to identify Mbeki by innuendo as the mastermind of the alleged conspiracy.

Another is to propagate the view that Zuma will not receive a fair trial and thereby to imply that the judiciary is vulnerable to political manipulation instead of serving as the custodian of justice and, in the longer run, of South Africa's constitutional democracy.

These events demand interrogation of two interrelated issues: the chances of Zuma triumphing in his quest to succeed Mbeki in 2009 and the consequences for South Africa of a triumphant Zuma occupying the presidential office.

On the first issue, a glance back at Russian history and the succession battle between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 may be useful: Few observers at the time gave Stalin, the grim-faced and fearsome man who had his hands on all the levers of power in the ruling party, much of a chance against Trotsky, whose oratorical brilliance and service as foreign minister and war commissar in the newly established communist state made him a high-profile figure.

Yet Stalin, who was elected as general secretary of the Communist Party in 1922, won hands down, notwithstanding a letter written by Lenin shortly before his death damning Stalin as "not intelligent" and an unsuitable successor.

History, of course, is never replicated exactly in the same society and still less in vastly different societies.

Nevertheless, there are interesting parallels between Stalin and Mbeki and Trotsky and Zuma - which, of course, is not to accuse Mbeki of Stalin's brutality or ruthlessness or to attribute Trotsky's indefatigable energy and enormous rhetorical ability to Zuma.

If it were six months ago, the odds would have strongly favoured Mbeki who, until the ANC general council conference in June-July, had shown himself to be a consummate politician able to concentrate power in his hands and those of his chosen lieutenants.

By the same token, the chances of Zuma, a self-taught man with little formal education, leading a successful internal revolt against Mbeki would have seemed remote.

The upsurge of support for Zuma at the ANC's general council conference in Tshwane has changed the situation by liberating Zuma from the passive role as ANC deputy president prescribed for him by the party hierarchy after he was charged with corruption.

It seems to have galvanised Zuma and to have shown that there is deep resentment at rank-and-file and intermediate leadership level over Mbeki's concentration of power at the centre to the detriment - in their view - of internal democracy in the ANC.

A Zuma triumph cannot be assumed, however. Conviction on the corruption charges would eliminate him as a presidential candidate, in part because it would probably lead to a prison sentence. His high-powered legal team raises the odds in favour of an acquittal. It does not guarantee it.

Whether Mbeki will be able to forestall a Zuma presidency in the event of Zuma's acquittal is an open question.

An acquittal will definitely make it much more difficult, but not impossible, to do so. A week is a long time in politics - to quote former British prime minister Harold Wilson - and a lot may happen in the next year.

There are, however, two provisos to a scenario envisaging a successful thwarting by Mbeki of a Zuma boosted by an acquittal: Mbeki must have successfully reasserted a substantial measure of his control over the ANC at provincial and branch level, and a credible alternative presidential candidate to Zuma must have emerged by then.

Several possible alternative candidates come to mind, including Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the deputy president; Mosiuoa Lekota, the defence minister; and the former ANC secretary-general and high-profile businessman, Cyril Ramaphosa - if he can be persuaded to re-enter the political arena.

Of the three, Ramaphosa appears to be the strongest candidate, bearing in mind that he won the most votes and second-most votes in the elections for members - as distinct from designated office-bearers - of the ANC national executive committee at the 50th and 51st ANC national conferences at Mafikeng and Stellenbosch in 1997 and 2002 respectively.

From whatever perspective that result is viewed, it is an astonishing achievement for a man who had formally forsworn political ambition for the challenges of entrepreneurship.

If the two provisos listed above are not fulfilled, and Zuma is acquitted, South Africa will live under a Zuma presidency for better or worse.

Short of occupancy of the highest office in the land inducing a major metamorphosis in Zuma, the prospects of a benign presidency are inauspicious. Even if the corruption charges are discounted, Zuma has shown himself to be a man who is unable to manage his own household budget and who is prepared to borrow large sums of money from businessmen and women who are in the market for lucrative contracts from the government.

Beyond that he has exhibited a disquieting expediency. Having maintained a discreet silence when the left was under attack from the Mbeki-controlled ANC in 2000 and 2001 for allegedly conspiring to usurp the ANC's role as the premier representative of ordinary black people - as well as when Cosatu launched its national strike against privatisation, retrenchment and unemployment - he is now suddenly a crusading populist presenting himself as the champion of the people without forfeiting his love of the lifestyle of the rich and famous.

One wonders what promises he has undertaken to deliver if or when he becomes president in return for the vociferous support he has won from his allies in the ANC Youth League, Cosatu, the South African Communist Party and the ANC itself.

• Patrick Laurence is the editor of Focus, the journal of the Helen Suzman Foundation

With acknowledgement to Patrick Laurence and the Sunday Independent.