Africa

Today marks the deadline for the new Congress of the People (Cope) to respond in writing to the ANC’s legal demands that the new organization change its name. The ANC’s attempts to force a name change from Core strikes me as a petty and frivolous nuisance. It would be hard for the ANC to claim that it has all proprietary political claims to the word “Congress,” given the presence of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) both historically and in its greatly diminished current manifestation.

It strikes me that right now the ANC has far more important matters to attend to, what with the very existence of the breakaway party embodying the severe schisms within the ruling party and the fact that ANC leaders, including Jacob Zuma, continue to eat their own. The latest example of this trend is the fact that Jacob Zuma quite transparently sees the presidency as rightly his, not Kgalema Mothlante’s, justifying the recent Democratic Alliance jibe that Mothlante is but a “seat-warmer” for Zuma.

The ANC dissidents, led by Mosiuoa Lekota and former Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa, have continued apace with their plans to form a separate party. They claim that the ANC had become too beholden to the far left, particularly the South African Communist Party (SACP), or at least that the SACP increasingly felt entitled to have a greater say in the direction of the ANC. The new party will reflect social democratic values and will be freed from the constraints of holding together an increasingly untenable alliance while at the same time moving away from elements of that alliance’s ideological impetus.

The ANC, meanwhile, largely whistles past the graveyard. Jacob Zuma acknowledges that he is “concerned” but effectively denies that his party is divided down the middle. In the most literal sense he may be right. But a flood from the ANC to a new party would significantly change the dynamic of South African politics, and the ANC would no longer wield undisputed control. The Democratic Alliance is already jumping on the party breach to demand equal time on the SABC. It’s absurd on its face that a minority party with such relatively small support (12% give or take) might be able to legitimately claim that it deserves equal time with a party that garners more than 60% in national elections, but the demand is slightly less absurd than it might have been a couple of months ago.

The ANC also denies that it might be seeking to hold an early election in order to try to capture support before a full-fledged breakaway party can form. In all honesty an early election might represent Zuma’s best hope to grasp the presidency before either the dissidents can concolidate their support or ANC members can come to the conclusion that Kgalama Mothlante might represent a viable option to the soap opera drama that is Jacob Zuma. This would particularly be true if, as expected, the global economic crisis continues to affect South Africa.

Stay tuned. Like Eastern Cape weather, the conditions are likely to change soon. For better or worse, we have no idea.

It appears official. South Africa’s Parliament has chosen Kgalema Motlanthe as interim president to replace President Thabo Mbeki. Motlanthe, who spent a decade on Robben Island and who has a background in labor union politics will likely have as his main responsibility the healing of divisions, though the wounds might simply be too deep. The reality is that the ANC is profoundly split and the current state of the party (the current leadership of which is, in the words of one observer, “a motley crew of know-it-alls”) is likely to have historic ramifications.

Some in the party continue to try to paper over the crisis. Jacob Zuma has argued that there is “no need to panic” and argues that there is “nothing extraordinary” about the resignations of Mbeki and a third of the country’s cabinet, which beggars the question of what Zuma would categorize as  “extraordinary” is the current circumstances do not meet his standard. But then it is in Zuma’s interest for this to pass as quickly as possible, for this transition to look like a normal turn of events, and for the ANC to be able to claim that it will persevere and prosper.

Others are not quite so sanguine. Certainly Mbeki is not without his critics despite the way that he stepped down with little fuss. ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has declared that Mbeki’s surprise announcement of the resignation of so many of his cabinet ministers was a “dangerous mistake” that fueled the economic instability that followed.

And the opposition parties, most notably the Democratic Alliance, sees mostly silver lining where so many see nothing but dark cloud cover. And from a strictly political vantage point, why not? Chaos within the ANC and a potential irreconcilable break within the party will only redound to the benefit of smaller parties, and particularly the DA.  Prominent members of the DA want an immediate election, their rationale being that Motlanthe will not have been elected by the citizenry. Surely the DA knows that an election now or an election in April will place them no closer to the presidency, but it might well gain them seats in Parliament and thus more concrete leverage.

Expect much more of this jockeying for position as the days, weeks, and months pass. It is unlikely that things are going to get less complicated with the passage of time.

South Africa’s political foundation continues to rattle as the result of the ANC National Executive Council’s decision to request Thabo Mbeki’s resignation.  Numerous cabinet members have resigned, including, as promised, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and unexpectedly, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. Manuel has kept open the possibility that he would return under a new dispensation, but that has not reassured the economic community within or outside of South Africa, for whom the latest chaos has shaken confidence, leading financial markets to plummet.

Meanwhile, even as Jacob Zuma perfunctorily tries to make nice and the Democratic Alliance’s Helen Zille praises Mbeki for the dignity with which he has handled recent events, Mbeki plans to go ahead and challenge the court pronouncement that got him into this mess to begin with (or, to be more precise, that provided the excuse for his foes to go after him at this time). There is irony in Mbeki’s challenge in that Mbeki is using some of the exact same language Zuma had used in going after Mbeki to defend himself from those same charges.  A number of MP’s are supporting Mbeki’s challenge, yet again revealing the depths of the fissures within the ruling party.

Adding yet another bizarre twist, Thabo Mbeki’s mother, Epainette, has talked about formalizing the split within the ANC by forming a breakaway party. Expect such talk to manifest itself as more than idle chatter in the next few days and weeks.

The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) is not only largely irrelevant in South African political life, it is an anachronism. Borne of the apartheid era, Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s movement (which always was, as much as anything, a tribute to the glories of Mangosuthu Buthelezi) represented an ethnically driven party committed to Zulu nationalism that did not come close to garnering the support of a majority of the country’s Zulus. It has always been a regionally-based party with national pretensions. The IFP ultimately represented a ploy, equal parts savvy and cynical, to triangulate between the National party and the African National Congress in order to maximize self interest that Buthlezi was able to convince a small group of nationalists that they shared. Perhaps in another part of Africa at another time Buthelezi’s machinations would have worked. But not in South Africa in the mid-1990s, and certainly not in South Africa today.

Although he would hardly agree with my perhaps intemperate (which is not to say inaccurate) assessment, it is clear that even Buthelezi is beginning to wonder about the project he conceived and nurtured. On Friday night in a speech before the IFP’s 33rd Congress Buthelezi wondered why South Africans would bother to vote for his party. This frank admission hardly means that Buthelezi has resigned himself to ANC rule, but rather that he realizes that his party’s own performance in recent years has given South Africans little reason to support it.

One of the answers is likely that South Africa needs fewer political parties, which would allow those opposition parties that continue to exist to have a better chance of mobilizing enough voters to be more than a mere nuisance to the ANC. The most logical step still seems to me to be a COSATU-SACP breakaway faction from the ANC followed by the dissolution of a number of the smaller parties, which might either join with that new left-leaning party with the Democratic Alliance embracing some of the parties that embrace a more center-right approach. There would still (alas?) be room for one more right wing party. But the more fractured the opposition parties are, right or left, the less likelihood they will have of ever challenging the ANC. Such a political transformation might also be good for the ruling party inasmuch as it would not longer have to hold together an increasingly fractured alliance.

A seemingly ubiquitous crime in South Africa in recent months has been the bombing and looting of ATM machines, especially, but not exclusively, in urban areas, particularly in Gauteng. The professionalization of this crime, and its recent profusion caused the Democratic Alliance to call for a probe of ATM bombings last month. Perhaps the DA’s (politically motivated — let’s not kid ourselves) demands have yielded fruit. Early on Thursday the Gauteng police busted an ATM bombing “syndicate.” It remains to be seen if this is part of a larger operation, but it indicates at least an attempt to get to grips with what has grown from a bizarre agate-type story to a real epiphenomenon.

A key rule in understanding politics is to take with a grain of salt when one party tries to define, contextualize, predict, or provide historical context for another. Another key rule is to make sure that other parties are not in a position to define yours.

I thought of (read: made up) these iron-clad rules when I read two articles in which Democratic Alliance leader and Cape Town mayor Helen Zille made two pronouncements about the African National Congress. the first of these was that the ANC is going the way of the National Party, with its divisions between verligte and verkrampte, or enlightened and reactionary members. Beyond the offensiveness of comparing the ANC to the party against which it fought for so long, the analogy seems shallow, forced, and ahistorical, a silly and patronizing attempt to provide analysis and prescription for a party that it is in Helen Zille’s very real interest to see not succeed in the first place.

Zille’s second assertion is no less self-serving than the first, though it may be somewhat more accurate. In the DA’s online newsletter Zille argued in a piece putatively honoring Nelson Mandela that Mandela’s “legacy is being undermined by powerful elements in the ruling party.” Zille’s tribute to Mandela was undoubtedly sincere — the DA has been a vocal advocate of erecting a statue in honor of Mandela at parliament and plans to reopen debate about doing so again. But it also takes a certain level of hubris for the opposition leader to presume to speak in the name of a man who is still alive, who is still a member of the ANC, and who led that organization through its years in the wilderness.

Zille is not alone in her belief that the current ANC has forsaken some of the high ground it possessed a decade ago. But inapt historical analogies and purporting to speak for Mandela’s legacy strikes me as the sort of “consider the source” argumentation that somewhat invalidates much of what she has to say. Nonetheless the ANC has enough of an image problem in the country that her words probably resonate with a sizable minority within the country. For if there is a third rule of politics that I would like to make up here, it is that a party that is unable to define itself will be defined by others. The solons in the ANC’s various factions would be wise to pay heed to this rule more than any other.

There can be little doubt that the past year has been the most trying in Thabo Mbeki’s oft-tumultuous presidency. Tonight he gave his State of the Union address before parliament. He certainly had plenty of fodder from which to work: The electricity crisis, crime, poverty, the daunting prospect of hosting the 2010 World Cup, and simply a general sense of malaise.

Mbeki provided a positive spin, called for the nation to pull together to confront the issues facing South Africa, and praised his countrymen for their resilience in the face of recent difficulties, especially the power delivery nightmare.

The response to Mbeki’s optimism has been skepticism in many, but far from all, circles. Helen Zille,  leader of the Democratic Alliance, whose job it is to be critical, took her job seriously, criticizing the president for “business as usual.” The editors of The Mail & Guardian approached Mbeki’s address fatalistically as did other observers. One imagines that those critics were likely not placated by Mbeki’s address and that Mbeki’s supporters found much with which to be pleased. In other words, status quo ante is likely to prevail.

Cape Town mayor Helen Zille has easily dispatched of two rivals and will take the helm of the Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa’s biggest opposition party. The DA emerged after the disintegration of the National Party and its various and tepid successors. As a consequence the DA drew some of its membership from Nats who found themselves homeless and white liberals who hoped to have a voice after the end of apartheid but did not want to join the ANC.

The hope that DA members have is that the party will grow and draw increased support from the black population. With the ANC facing a number of simultaneous challenges the DA sees itself in position to take advantage of the discontent with the ruling party. And perhaps the DA will in fact draw some support from the margins. But the reality continues to be that the ANC received a higher percentage of the vote in 2004 than it did in 1999 or 1994 despite the fact that much of the current displeasure with the ANC had already become part of the oppositional trope by the last election.

The ANC’s main divisions will be internal. The main threat the party will face will come not from the right, not from white liberals, reformed (gereformeerd?) Nats, and a smattering of black allies. A true challenge to the ANC will come from the left, and thus will come from within the tripartite coalition with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). No matter how long South Africans look for a great white hope that can draw black allies to sweep the ANC out of power, the reality is that Helen Zille is not going to lead the most significant challenge to the ANC even if she heads the country’s largest opposition party, a status more grandiloquent than meaningful in the context of South African politics. Thabo Mbeki has much about which to be concerned. The DA ranks relatively low on that list.

Foreign investors, tourists, and FIFA (which organizes the World Cup) are three constituencies that South Africans fear will turn their backs on their country if crime and fears of crime (not the same thing) continue to dominate stories that emanate from South Africa. Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula is aware of the very real consequences of perceptions and realities of crime, and in response he has begun a public relations campaign to convince the world that South Africa is getting crime under control. Opposition leaders want Nqakula to do the same within South Africa. Similarly, President Thabo Mbeki is out to prove that he is not a “crime denialist.” He placed crime front and center in his Freedom Day address last month.

Nqakula, Mbeki and the leaders of the Democratic Alliance and other parties want to change the perceptions the world (and other South Africans) have about the country’s safety. Nonetheless, stories with headlines like “Naked man superglued to exercise bike“are not likely to help. Amusing, sure, but also horrifying — basically intruders hijacked the victim at gunpoint, made him bring them to his home, made him strip, superglued him to his exercise bike and also glued his hands together and his mouth shut, and robbed him. His partner came home three hours later to rescue him. This is likely not the sort of story that is going to reassure the solons at FIFA.