Road to S. Africa elections mined with fierce tussle

Twenty-eight political parties are taking part in the election, which will fill the 400-member National Assembly and the 90-strong National Council of Provinces, the two chambers of South African parliament that then sits as an electoral college to elect the national president.

But unlike the previous elections, the 2009 General Election takes place as the country slides from the “age of hope” of the early post-apartheid years to a new “age of despair.”

In less than 15 years, Africa’s wealthiest nation has rapidly transited from the era of ‘Madiba magic’, linked to Nelson Mandela’s moral glow, to the era of “Mbeki logic’, marked by bureaucratic reforms and steady economic growth and, finally to the era of “Zuma zeal”, characterised by elite fragmentation along ethnic lines, grinding poverty heightened by the global recession, and perceptions of corruption and erosion of democratic institutions.

Although a multi-party democracy, South Africa’s politics is effectively a one-party show, dominated by the African National Congress (ANC) which won 69.69 per cent of the vote in 2004.

Convicted of fraud

But the road to the 2009 election has been mined by fierce power tussles at the top echelons of the party. President Thabo Mbeki’s decision to fire his deputy, Jacob Zuma, 67, also referred to by his initials JZ and his clan name Msholozi, after his friend and financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was convicted of fraud, triggered a debilitating struggle between camps allied to the two leaders.

Zuma won the duel, defeating and replacing Mbeki as party president during the 18 December 2007 party conference, which set the stage for Mbeki’s forced resignation later in September 2008.

The Mbeki-Zuma feud fragmented the black elite and the ANC along ethnic fault-lines. “Mbeki and Zuma have…together undermined a century of efforts to counter tribalism in the liberation movement,” laments the analyst, Anthony Butler. In a similar vein, the renowned anti-apartheid leader, Mr Allan Boesak, has accused the new ANC leadership of “ruthlessly and thoughtlessly abandoning struggle solidarity, and moving the ANC towards ethnic nationalism.”

Zuma’s supporters, mainly Zulu, are determined to end the ‘dynastic’ lineage of Xhosa political heavyweights from Oliver Thambo to Nelson Mandela and Mbeki. They viewed the corruption and rape trials as attempts by the “Xhosa cabal” to block their champion from becoming state President.

The ANC and Zuma now count on the party’s left wing, including the South African Communist Party (SACP), the Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU), women and youth leagues to win the election. But this comes at a cost of the party’s significant ideological shift to the left.

The ANC left, now chanting siyapapa! (we are hopeful!), sees in Zuma a chance to undo the market-friendly policies of the Mandela and Mbeki eras, signified by the ‘Growth, Employment and Redistribution’ (GEAR) policy, adopted in 1996 to replace the left-leaning Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP).

Their political stars

Also throwing its lot behind Zuma’s presidential bid is what Pretoria’s writer, Melvin Gumede, describes as the ‘walking wounded’, a reference to an ever-growing cadre of ANC veterans who accuses Mbeki of having dimmed their political stars.

The most influential among this is the trio of Cyril Ramaphosa, the former Secretary General of the ANC and now prominent businessman and Mandela’s choice as his successor and business moguls, Tokyo Sexwale and Mathew Phosa.

In Zuma’s quiver are also the grassroots-oriented women emboldened by the return to the podium of Winnie Mandela, now ranked fifth in the ANC’s electoral list after Zuma, Motlanthe, Deputy President of South Africa Baleka Mbete and finance minister Trevor Manuel.

A ruling by the Independent Electoral Commission on March 2009 cleared Winne, still eulogise by many as the ‘Mother of the Nation’, to run in the General Election despite having a fraud conviction. This paves the way for her political comeback, seen as a ploy by the ANC to boost its grassroots performance.

But Zuma’s fierce knights are the unemployed youths in the ANC Youth League, led by its fiery President, Julius Malema. But Malema’s careless threat to “shoot and kill” for Zuma has provoked public outcry, and censure from the South Africa Human Rights Commission. Together with the fiery Cosatu secretary general, Zwelinzima Vavi, Malema and the ANC firebrands have attacked the Judiciary, particularly the Constitutional Court, as “Counter Revolutionary” in what is perceived as a renewed assault on democratic institutions.

ANC stalwarts like Pallo Jordan mooted the idea of a “third way” to unite the ANC and heal the nation. But Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale, touted as compromise candidates, were not sufficiently neutral, and have since lined their troops behind Zuma.

Also touted as a middle-of-the-way leader is the ANC party deputy president and left-leaning intellectual, Kgalema Motlanthe, now serving as president since 25 September 2008. But with Motlanthe unlikely to stake his claim to power and Zuma unlikely to yield to him, the only chance of Motlanthe remaining in power is if the ANC does not command a two thirds majority in the National assembly, and the house rejects Zuma as a candidate, forcing the party to nominate him as president.

The odds in the 2009 election are also stuck against South Africa’s feeble opposition. Plagued by lack of clear vision, tactics and infighting, former liberation movements like Robert Sobukwe’s Pan-African Congress (PAC) or Steve Biko’s Black Conscious Movement (BCM) cannot make significant inroads into the ANC turf.

Worse still, Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement (UDM) and Patricia De Lille’s Independent Democrats remain one-person show unable to make notable dents on the ANC dominance.

And the once formidable Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) of Mongosuthu Buthelezi will now fight it out with the leading Zulu son, Zuma, for the vote in Kwa Zulu Natal and Zulu hostels in Gauteng.

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Dr Kagwanja is the President of the Africa Policy Institute and the author of the recent book: State of the Nation: South Africa 2008 (Cape Town, 2009).