[DEBATE] : My take on the last week in SA [one comment suggest I am 'an apologist for Mbeki'?!]
Sean Jacobs
tintinyana at gmail.com
Tue Sep 23 17:51:09 BST 2008
South Africa's negative equity
* Sean Jacobs
o Tuesday September 23 2008 15:31 BST
Responding publicly to calls from his Communist party and trade union
allies to depose Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma – speaking in the wake of the
court decision that ruled that he had been the victim of a political
plot by Mbeki – insisted that there was no need "to beat a dead
snake". Most observers had interpreted the repeated calls for Mbeki's
resignation since Zuma became party leader as mere posturing on the
part of Zuma's supporters. By the weekend, however, a humiliated Mbeki
had announced his resignation as South Africa's second democratic
president.
While Mbeki's ousting has sparked waves of political resignations, he
probably had more admirers outside South Africa than within. He was
George Bush's "point man" in Africa and was a favorite of the
international markets. But on the things that affected the majority of
people in South Africa the most – Aids and poverty – Mbeki presided
over disastrous policies.
One of the key aims of the Zuma ANC faction was to achieve state
power. They have achieved the first step in that direction now. Mbeki,
who also personified for them what was wrong with the ANC's leadership
style (secretive, vindictive, personal and distant rule), is now gone.
As they cannot install their man in the presidency as yet (for one
thing, Zuma is not a member of parliament), they'll ride out the next
seven months until elections in April 2009. Pressure will be on them
to act presidential, promote national unity and unite their own party.
They are not in danger of losing the elections. The current batch of
opposition parties are sadly irrelevant in South Africa, save in one
of the nine provinces, the Western Cape, but the ANC would want to
shore up its legitimacy among South Africa's poor (historically ANC
supporters) who increasingly associate the ANC with rapacious wealth
accumulation, corruption and power struggles and may withdraw from
electoral politics.
The party may have weathered the first round in that transition: ANC
deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe's pending inauguration as caretaker
president until general elections has been welcomed without exception.
Though he is close to the Zuma camp, he has a reputation as a mediator
and comes across as above the fray.
The longer challenge is keeping the Zuma camp together. A motley crew
of charismatic personalities with a penchant for speaking out of turn
or prone to ridiculousness is at the front of the anti-Mbeki group.
ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema has said he'd "take up arms" and
"kill for Zuma". He also accused the country's judges of being "drunk"
and "taking decisions in beer halls". Zwelinzima Vavi, the head of the
trade union federation Cosatu, has uttered some of the same sentiments.
For now, the ANC Youth League (whose leaders publicly criticised
Motlanthe when he defended the independence of the judiciary) has been
reined in, according to reports from South Africa. The ANC Youth
League was also quick to put its name to a media statement that
implored members of Mbeki's cabinet not to follow Mbeki.
Zuma's alliance with the trade unions and communists are tenuous. The
ANC president is defined more by his "anti-Mbeki" persona to these
activists, rather than for his own politics, which are hardly left
wing on a range of issues, including sexual politics, and though he
has been exonerated of any specific corruption charges, he is still
associated with corruption.
Since Mbeki's resignation, Zuma – playing to the markets – has
promised that the government's economic policies would remain
unchanged. Though Zuma's reassurances are predictable, it's not the
kind of blank cheque on policy that his allies want to hear as their
support for Zuma is largely premised, in their public rhetoric at
least, on a critique of Mbeki's economic policies. Once the raison
d'etre for the Zuma camp – their antipathy for Mbeki – runs its
course, it is unclear what the grouping's future is.
Cosatu and the SACP also have problems of their own. Blade Nzimande,
the SACP leader, purged anyone suspected as either pro-Mbeki or
critical of Zuma. So did Cosatu, whose members may be wondering what
the federation's primary business is.
Despite all the talk of "unity" from Zuma, expect the purging of
cabinet and provincial and local government and party leaders
perceived to be close to Mbeki, to continue. Since Mbeki's
resignation, at least 11 cabinet members, including deputy president
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka – who owed their jobs to Mbeki – have followed
him out of government. Others who resigned include close Mbeki allies
like Alec Erwin (public enterprises) and Mosiuoa Lekota (defence).
The Zuma camp succeeded in having the leadership of the pro-Mbeki
Western Cape provincial government leadership removed. (The nine
provincial governments are akin to state governments elsewhere.) Two
other provinces with pro-Mbeki leaderships have been targeted next:
the North-West and Eastern Cape. These struggles are often violent. In
the Western Cape, a provincial leader was stabbed in the neck. Over
the weekend, police reported three men shot (one in the head and two
in the leg) at an ANC meeting in the Eastern Cape.
And Mbeki is still not going quietly into the night. He gave notice to
the constitutional court on Monday to file an appeal – both in his
personal capacity and as head of the South African government –
against the judge's decision in Zuma's latest trial that the executive
may have interfered in Zuma's trail. Some of his supporters, largely
limited in his home province in the Eastern Cape, have threatened to
form a breakaway party (it worth remembering that he received 40% of
delegates' votes at the December 2007 ANC national conference). But
first they'd have to convince Mbeki to leave the ANC.
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Related
Sep 23 2008
Thabo Mbeki ousting sparks wave of political resignations
Sep 23 2008
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Sep 20 2008
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Sep 18 2008
Prosecutors challenge ruling that cleared Zuma
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Sean Jacobs: Jacob Zuma is in danger of being defined by his anti-
Mbeki rhetoric
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Tuesday
September 23 2008. It was last updated at 17:33 on September 23 2008.
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* South Africa ·
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Mbeki's TV resignation
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Sep 22 2008:
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Dec 20 2007: The populist Jacob Zuma achieved a sweeping victory in
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-------------------------------
Sean Jacobs
Concerned Africa Scholars
Online at http://concernedafricascholars.org/
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