Publication: Cape Times Issued: Date: 2006-11-01 Reporter: Allister Sparks Reporter: Reporter:

Sudden Quiet on the Zuma Front

 

Publication 

Cape Times
Date

2006-11-01

Reporter

 Allister Sparks

Web Link

www.capetimes.co.za

 

Left now cautious of backing ANC deputy president

If you listen carefully, you might just catch the sound of the steam going out of Jacob Zuma's campaign for the national presidency.

The sudden lowering of voices is no doubt partly due to calls from influential quarters on the political left to cool it. They felt some of the heated rhetorical exchanges were becoming unseemly and potentially damaging to their cause.

The powerful National Union of Mineworkers, for one, expressed its disapproval of the recent "personal mudslinging" and "open flow of vicious words".

But there is more to the sudden drop in decibels than that. The Zuma affair has certainly damaged the president, breaking open the aura of respect and even fear that once surrounded him, exposing him to public criticism and rendering him unable to impose his will on the ANC and its alliance partners as he did before.

Now there are signs that the left is stepping back a little to assess the extent to which it, too, has been damaged by its blind support of Zuma.

Cosatu and the SACP have long been admired for their principled positions on a range of issues. Some of these have now been compromised by their stand on the Zuma affair.

From the outset, the strong stand Cosatu had taken against corruption was undermined when it declared its unconditional support for Zuma when he was dismissed as deputy president after being implicated in the Schabir Shaik judgment. An "unstoppable tsunami", as secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi called it, apparently regardless of the outcome of whatever legal action might follow against Zuma.

Cosatu's commitment to the rule of law was tarnished when it initially demanded that Zuma be given "his day in court", then when that became imminent, demanded that the charges of corruption against him be withdrawn and a political solution sought instead - something that would have required interference in the judicial process.

Cosatu's highly principled positions on HIV/Aids and on the dignity of women were both compromised when their champion admitted during his rape trial to having had unprotected sex with a young HIV-positive woman, the daughter of an old struggle comrade, who regarded him as a father figure - and shamefully failed to reprimand his supporters for their abusive treatment of his accuser.

Cosatu's principled position on gay rights was also compromised when Zuma mockingly told a crowd of traditionalists in his KwaZulu-Natal power base how, in his youth, he would have "knocked out" any gay man who stood in front of him.

This is all embarrassing stuff that has caused some on the left to wonder whether someone with such retrogressive social attitudes can possibly be the progressive political candidate they want.

Zuma is, in any case, a political enigma. There is nothing in his background to suggest he is a socialist. He sounds and behaves more like an African traditionalist. He has also sown ideological confusion.

Two months, ago he delivered a speech at the South African Democratic Teachers' Union congress heavily critical of government policies and presenting himself as the champion of organised labour, only to tell an international audience in a BBC World Service interview the other day that he was basically happy with the government's economic policies and would change little if he became president.

Changeable principles, like horses for courses, it would seem.

One suspects that Cosatu and the SACP initially adopted Zuma as their man more because of an accumulated resentment of Mbeki, whom they felt had marginalised and slighted them. Zuma just happened to be there in pole position for the succession and therefore the best opportunistic bet available.

Zuma responded enthusiastically. He had his own reasons for feeling slighted by Mbeki, so he and the leftists had that in common. Moreover he is a warm and open *1 man, which led the leftists to believe he would be more accessible to them should he become president.

Since then the drawn-out saga of Zuma's dismissal as deputy president and the clumsy police investigations and bungled court cases have imbued him with the aura of a persecuted martyr and given him the opportunity to demonstrate his talents as a populist demagogue.

But the doubts accrue. As the spotlight has fallen ever more glaringly on Zuma, it has shown him to be a deeply flawed individual. Warm, friendly and open, but hardly presidential material. As this realisation sinks in, fissures are appearing not only between the ANC and its alliance partners, but within all three organisations themselves.

Cosatu and the SACP are both badly split. An attempt by the pro-Zuma camp at the recent Cosatu congress to oust chairman Willie Madisha, seen as a pro-Mbeki figure, failed by a hair's-breadth 45 votes, showing the 1.7-million-strong union federation to be split clean down the middle, with its secretary-general and chairman in opposing camps.

The left-wingers in both alliance organisations are themselves split into rival factions, dubbed the "left" and the "ultra-left."

Some want to break away and form a separate socialist workers' party to fight the next general election on their own, rather than have seats allocated to them on an ANC ticket. Others want to fight from within to capture control of the ANC at its next national conference in December 2007, then nominate Zuma for the national presidency.

Yet others, a growing number, want the left to have greater influence over the decision-making processes of government, but are unhappy about Zuma as successor.

The SACP has applied to the Independent Electoral Commission to register as a political party and is scheduled to debate the go-it-alone option at its national congress in June. It is surely inevitable that the alliance will eventually break up into its component elements to match the new class constituencies taking shape in our population, but my instinct tells me this won't happen just yet.

Meanwhile, there is still the likelihood that the National Prosecuting Authority will again bring corruption charges against Zuma, and that this will be followed by a bruising trial. Whatever the outcome, it could further damage Zuma's image.

Even some of his closest supporters are beginning to realise this. They are realising, too, that any open succession battle between Zuma and an Mbeki nominee could split, not only the tripartite alliance, but its component organisations as well, a catastrophic fragmentation of the whole liberation movement. Hence the call for calm and that faint noise of escaping steam from the Zuma campaign.

So as we approach the most critical year in the short history of our democracy, South Africa faces an extraordinary situation. We have a lame-duck president and a lame-duck challenger.

Some time next year, a new compromise candidate will emerge, someone seen as a reuniting figure. There is no shortage of excellent candidates, many of whom slipped quietly out of Mbeki's way when he became president. Come-back time is imminent.

• Sparks is a veteran journalist and political commentator.

With acknowledgements to Allister Sparks and Cape Times.


*1       Open to giving pre-agreed encoded signals accepting French money from one of the most corrupt companies on the planet.