Mandela’s dream realised in Zuma victory

• Freedom icon has been uncomfortable with image of ANC as a Xhosa entity

A despairing Kenyan commentator once explained the malaise of poor leadership on the continent with the quip that Africa was allotted a quota of one great leader per century and, in Mr Nelson Mandela, it had exhausted its share for several generations.

The just-ended election in South Africa could be viewed as an affirmation of the salutary differences between the great man and most other African leaders.

Mr Mandela’s vociferous support for the African National Congress (ANC) candidate Mr Jacob Zuma will not have come as surprise to many. But the subtext of the anti-Apartheid icon’s decision to lend his considerable clout to the Zuma campaign would strike a Kenyan observer as curious.

Bedrock support

Mr Mandela hails from the Xhosa community which has dominated the upper cadres of ANC for the last few decades. Mr Zuma, on the other hand, is a Zulu. His homeland has traditionally provided bedrock support for the perennial ANC rival, Mr Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).

Yet Mr Mandela, unlike many African Big Men who have sought to use the levers of power to advance the interests of their own ethnic groups, has always been uncomfortable with the image of the ANC as a Xhosa-dominated entity.

In his book Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, journalist William Gumede records how hard Mr Mandela worked to ensure that he was not succeeded by Mr Mbeki, a fellow Xhosa.

He feared such a transition would test the credentials of the ANC as an inclusive mass movement, instead favouring one of the first successful black entrepreneurs, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa (a member of the Venda community), as his successor.

Great respect

“Mandela had developed great respect for Ramaphosa’s negotiating skills and strongly favoured a non-Xhosa as his deputy. (He) made it clear during consultations that his reluctance to appoint Mbeki had nothing to do with his competence,” Gumede writes. “But he was anxious not to repeat the pattern of African liberation movements dominated by a single ethnic group, and went as far as to appoint a commission chaired by (Walter) Sisulu, to look at how the NEC (National Executive Committee) could be best restructured to represent a cross-section of South Africa’s population.”

Mr Mandela was outmanuoevred in his bid to stop a Mbeki presidency. But Mr Zuma’s decisive election victory is likely to be welcomed by the 90-year-old anti-Apartheid icon, as the long delayed but ultimately necessary succession which could guarantee the continued unity of the ANC.

University of Nairobi political scientist Adams Oloo says Kenyan politicians should take lessons from Mr Mandela’s nationalist approach as a first step to healing the ethnic rifts that dominate local politics.

“The triumph of the ANC demonstrates the value of institutions. Although it was dominated by the Xhosa, Zuma rose through the ranks to the position of deputy leader,” he says.

“Many members of the Xhosa elite broke off to form a new party (Congress of the People) but they were not able to take with them a substantial number of ANC supporters because ANC grassroots supporters believed in the party as an institution.”

Dr Oloo also points to the ANC’s record for offering the poor a social safety net as a lesson Kenyan governments can take from South Africa.

Although Mr Mbeki was criticised for following pro-market economic policies, the ANC government provides social welfare grants to a quarter of South Africa’s population. It has also given 18.7 million people access to clean water and subsidised housing for 9.9 million.

“The lesson of social democratic governments across the world is that providing support to the poor yields a more stable society. This is an important factor particularly in the debate on equity,” says Dr Oloo.

With Mr Zuma’s election sealed, attention will shift to his style of governance. Some Western observers are jittery about his feisty, populist style.

Centrist path

But Dr Knox Chitiyo, an analyst at London’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), argues Mr Zuma will largely pursue a centrist path and will not impose any changes that would dramatically alter South Africa’s status as a regional political and economic power.

“Zuma will likely want to prove that the ANC is still a responsible and constitutionalist movement,” he said in a television interview this week.

For Mr Mandela, in the sunset years of his life, his efforts to unite the party will likely be one of his most important final contributions to the ANC.

His enthusiastic backing of Mr Zuma will also place a huge responsibility on his successor’s shoulders. In an election day editorial, South Africa’s Mail and Guardian newspaper wrote:

“Many South Africans who voted this week said they were doing it for Nelson Mandela, who ushered in the dawn of a better life for all. In 2014, when Zuma’s term comes to an end, it will be 20 years since the ANC took power. He can go down as the man who betrayed Madiba’s legacy or the man who delivered his promise… Mr Zuma, you owe Mandela, you owe the exalted and the nameless dead, you owe all of us. Don’t let us down.”