Publication: The Star Issued: Date: 2007-04-08 Reporter: Patrick Laurence

Zimbabwe Task Might Help Mbeki Reconquer ANC

 

Publication 

The Star
Date

2007-04-08

Reporter

 Patrick Laurence

Web Link

www.thestar.co.za

 

A diplomatic success with the recalcitrant Mugabe will be a feather in Mbeki's political cap

The Southern African Development Community leaders who mandated President Thabo Mbeki to facilitate settlement talks in strife-ridden Zimbabwe might have given him an opportunity to steal on a march on Jacob Zuma in the succession struggle in South Africa.

Mbeki, who attaches great importance to resolving conflict in Africa, stands to win regional and even international kudos if he succeeds in initiating talks between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his political adversaries and if the dialogue leads to a peaceful resolution of the increasingly volatile situation.

A successful foray as a peace-maker into Zimbabwe has the potential to boost his popularity at home as well and to clinch victory for him at the December national conference of his ruling African National Congress in Limpopo, when the delegates elect a new president and national executive.

An Mbeki triumph at the conference could take one of two forms: either his re-election as ANC president or the election of an alternative candidate to Zuma.

Mbeki has previously signalled his willingness to consider seeking re-election if requested, as he is certain to be.

Zuma, aggrieved by his dismissal as national deputy president by Mbeki in June 2005, has campaigned tirelessly to turn disaster into triumph by securing the ANC presidency as a bridgehead to election as national president.

Mbeki may, of course, stumble and fall in his endeavour to end Zimbabwe's precipitous descent into intensifying strife, growing poverty and widespread hunger.

Zuma, however, has already suffered a setback in his quest to occupy the highest office in the land. It consists of a short statement by Judge Philip Levensohn of the Durban high court, in which the judge agreed to a state request to write a letter to the judicial authorities in Mauritius asking them to release documents in their care.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) describes them as pertinent to their continuing investigation into corruption allegations against Zuma. One document, judging from the trial for corruption of Zuma's former financial adviser, is of particular importance.

It relates to an entry in the diary of Alan Thetard, the former executive officer of the South African arm of the French armaments company, Thompson-CSF, which won major contracts to supply the South African National Defence Force with state-of-the-art weapons.

The diary entry is for March 11 2000, the day on which Thetard is alleged by the state to have met Zuma and Shaik to discuss the payment of R500 000 a year to Zuma in return for his agreement to protect Thompson-CSF from an impending investigation into allegations of corruption related to the awarding of contracts in the arms deal.

Possession of the original diary entry will greatly strengthen the state's case and raise the possibility of renewed charges of corruption being brought against Zuma.

Judge Herbert Msimang, of the Pietermaritzburg high court, struck the original charges off the roll because of deficiencies in the indictment.

Zuma's lawyers intend to apply for leave to appeal against Levensohn's ruling, as they are entitled - and even duty bound - to do if they think it is in Zuma's interests.

But members of the public and delegates to the ANC's national conference may ask themselves why Zuma is so fearful of the diary entry if, as he insists, he is innocent, and if, as he has said in the past, he wants an opportunity to clear his name in court.

An appeal, if granted, might just delay the transfer of the diary to the NPA. Delay, however, may not help Zuma, even if - or especially if - it defers the problem until after the ANC's December conference.

In that case Zuma may be seen at the conference as man who has not been cleared of suspicions of corruption and, in more recent months, of money-laundering.

On balance, events of the past week appear to be to Mbeki's advantage and Zuma's disadvantage, particularly in light of a more or less contemporaneous decision in the Pretoria high court granting the state permission to seek the assistance of British lawyers and banks in tracing alleged payments to Zuma's purported bank accounts in Britain.

On the direct political front, Mbeki appears to have adopted a more astute approach than Zuma in the undeclared but intense battle to secure majority support at the ANC's national conference.

Mbeki's main objective, one infers from his low profile and stoical demeanour, has been to slowly and unobtrusively regain the almost unchallenged support that he had within the ANC before the July 2005 general council conference, where many of the rank-and-file delegates, seemingly resentful of Mbeki's top-down leadership style, rallied to Zuma and insisted that he resume his former position as an active ANC deputy president.

Whether Mbeki has done enough to re-establish his previously tight grip on power within the ANC is not yet clear. The national conference will provide the answer to that question.

Zuma's campaign has been vociferous and conspicuous. It is aimed, one deduces, at boosting his image by publicly taking an HIV test; expressing sympathy with a grieving Afrikaner farming family after its patriarch was brutally murdered; and, of course, singing Lethu Umshini Wam (Fetch my machine gun) at rallies, to the raucous delight of his admirers.

While that might have enhanced Zuma's chances of victory if he were preparing for a United States-style presidential election, it is less likely to win the votes of branch delegates at the ANC's national conference, which, it bears repeating, will account for about 90 percent of the total number of delegates.

History records that Leon Trotsky the orator, who was very much in the public eye, was totally outmanoeuvred by Joseph Stalin the tactician, who concentrated on tightening his control over the party.

The Zuma-versus-Mbeki contest *1 is reminiscent of the rivalry between Trotsky and Stalin in Russia after the death of Vladimir Lenin.

To posit that the analogy may be instructive in appraising the ANC succession struggle is not to present Zuma and Mbeki as South African replicas of Trotsky and Stalin. It is merely an attempt to illuminate a contemporary event by looking at it through a historical lens.

Independent political analyst Patrick Laurence is a contributing editor to The Star

With acknowledgements to Patrick Laurence and The Star.


*1       Is mainly a myth.