Opinion & Analysis

I am shocked by President Thabo Mbeki’s decisions over the past couple of weeks.

Despite the appearance of decisiveness and closure, his actions will raise more questions than answers. In the short term, his actions will gain him a lot of kudos with business and international elites.

I am worried, though, by the long-term effects of his decisions on the African National Congress (ANC) and our society. He has signaled that his prerogative is more important than any attempt to make peace with the alliance partners or former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s supporters. He signaled this by the way in which he fired Zuma.

In the midst of congratulations about the president’s decisiveness, I have asked myself whether he should not have waited until Zuma had been charged before firing him. Mbeki could then have said to his deputy that his trial distracted him from his duties and asked him to temporarily recuse himself from office until the matter was settled in the courts.

I still maintain that a plea bargain is the best route in the Zuma matter, depending on what Zuma makes of his chances. If he knows he has no chance in hell, he must bargain for a political solution and abandon any aspirations to the presidency.

But then again I don’t know if the enmity in the ANC has gone so far down the road to rule out even the chance of a political solution.

If Zuma does not settle for the political solution and is found not guilty, he would become the most powerful man in this country, a seductive embodiment of injustice to the masses.

Some say that even if he were to win the case, his reputation would be so tarnished that he would not be fit for the presidency. The trouble with democracy is that even if it were unwise to elect Zuma as president on those grounds, the way our system works is that the elites must live with electoral outcomes they don’t like.

Bill Clinton remains one of the greatest presidents in the history of the US, his improprieties notwithstanding. Richard Nixon is still hailed for his Chinese policy. Ronald Reagan illegally channeled funds to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, but remains a revered figure in the pantheon of US presidents. If the media and intellectual elites had their way, John Kerry would be the president of the US. The masses ruled and we are stuck with George Bush.

While I accept the president’s rather passive formulation that we must allow the law to take its course, I would suggest that, in the remote possibility that Zuma is acquitted, the elites must be prepared to accept the decisions of the courts. No more Monday morning quarterbacking.

The president has made matters worse by appointing Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Again he will most likely get all the kudos from business elites. But Mbeki has also started a feeding frenzy for conspiracy theorists. Many will say that this is an ethnic appointment, and will use the appointment as a way of explaining Bulelani Ngcuka’s actions against Zuma, and there you have the recipe for the worst kind of tribal politics within the ANC and in our society at large.

Instead of sending a signal of compromise to the alliance partners and in a sense bringing forward succession planning within the ANC, the president has made the debate over succession wide open. Appearances of a sense of closure over the past weeks are nothing more than a mirage. This is only the beginning and intensification of infighting within the ANC. It’s a pity.

Mangcu is executive director for social cohesion at the Human Sciences Research Council and nonresident WEB du Bois fellow at Harvard. He writes in his personal capacity.

With acknowledgements to Xolela Mangcu and the Business Day.