Politically Kenya and SA are mirror copies of each other

Courtesy of the recent Supreme Court ruling on the presidential elections, Kenyans are expected back at the ballot on October 26.

In South Africa, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) convenes its 54th National Conference from December 16th- 20th December 2017.

In the Kenyan repeat polls, voters will decide whether President Uhuru Kenyatta’s retains power for another five years or veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga achieves a long-running ambition of leading the nation.

In South Africa, the ANC conference will decide whether former African Union Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma succeeds President Jacob Zuma or any one of the six ANC contestants take over leadership at the party.

NEXT PRESIDENT

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, is seen as a frontrunner against Dlamini-Zuma, the preferred candidate of President Zuma. Interestingly, Ramaphosa, like Odinga, has harboured apex leadership from the 1990s.  

Matters constant, the new president of  ANC stands a chance of becoming the president of the state making the December ANC conference a mini-election ahead of the General Election in 2019.

Although the ANC has been ceding ground to the opposition – mainly the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – most analysts are sceptical of the opposition summarily trouncing the ruling party in 2019.

As such, either Dlamini-Zuma or Ramaphosa will see to the waning of presidential ambitions in December, just as Kenyatta will either go down as the first one-term president or Odinga become the leader who reigned but never ruled based on the outcome of the October elections. 

Political personalities in Kenya and South Africa tell only half a story, their ambitions being manifestations of trends and patterns that show the countries as veritable mirror copies of each other.

VOTING

The coincidence of intense political jockeying in Kenya and South Africa over the last couple of weeks and going into the foreseeable future speaks to similarities in their polities. 

On the day when Kenyans went to the polls for the General Election on August 8 – the South African Parliament was voting on a fractious impeachment motion against President Zuma.

The motion of no confidence sponsored by the opposition Democratic Alliance met the same fate as a similar attempt by the Kenyan opposition on President Uhuru Kenyatta in September 2015.

Indeed, in both countries, parliaments are the theatres of dramatic contestation over power with a number of motions of no confidence having been tabled over the last three decades.

On September 12, the South African High Court in Pietermaritzburg dealt a blow to the ANC by nullifying the election of the officials of the ANC Kwa Zulu Natal branch roughly coinciding a week later with the Kenyan Supreme Court’s delivery of the detailed judgment nullifying  presidential results.

JUDICIAL REGIMES

The Kenyan Supreme Court annulling of the presidential results triggered an avalanche of court petitions by losers of county assembly, national assembly, senate and gubernatorial elections.

A similar parallel exists in South Africa where one loses count of on-going, anticipated and settled court cases that are of considerable political ramifications.

In varying degrees, both countries have judicial regimes which often deliver surprisingly independent judgments, a key distinction with other African countries.   

Monday this week, the Raila Odinga-led opposition-Nasa commenced street protests aimed at forcing reforms at the beleaguered electoral body, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

In South Africa, the umbrella Congress of South African Trade Unions, working with South Africa Communist Party and the civil society organised a national strike paralysing services in major cities. Unlike many other African countries, civil action mainly comprising of street picketing is a norm.    

SAME PATHS

These moments in the political lives of Kenya and South Africa convince observers that the two countries are in principle traveling the same paths.

Broadly speaking, Kenya and South Africa are similar given the fact that they are the strongest economies in their respective eastern and southern African regions.

There are differences though.

For, instance while Kenya is a predominantly black-African in terms of racial composition, South Africa is more diverse with a white and coloured population of nearly 10 per cent apiece, Indians at nearly 3 percent and blacks at 80 per cent.

However, even on this score, the politically-inspired racial fissures in South Africa mirror the vice of ethnic political formations in the Kenyan body politic.

POLITICS

Although ethnicity is a factor in the South African politics – for instance the Democratic Alliance as a pro-white party and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) as a Zulu party, South African politics is much more intensely split along racial lines. Kenyan politics is intensely ethnic.

Although the 105-years old ANC remains dominant in South Africa, it is currently wracked by factional rifts mainly pitting forces coalescing around President Zuma against those who want him and his allies out.

This resembles the internal strife for power in Kanu during the dramatic tail end of President Daniel arap Moi’s presidency.

The implosion of Kanu in 2002 spawned the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) comprising the National Alliance Party of Kenya (NAK), the Democratic Party, Ford Kenya and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in a short-lived coalition.

In South Africa, the Congress of the People party was established in 2008 after the 2007 ANC national conference by politicians disillusioned by the ejection from leadership of former president Thabo Mbeki (with Jacob Zuma clinching power).

SPLINTER PARTIES

Self-styled Commander-in-Chief and former ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema splintered from the ANC after fallout with President Zuma establishing the Economic Freedom Fighters in 2013.

Analysts have pointed out that should the leadership schisms go unresolved after the ANC’s December conference, we might see the formation of splinter parties depending on whom between Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa or indeed any other of the four presidential candidates wins the party poll.

Should this happen, the South African political ecology will start to look very much like the Kenyan one where breakaway parties and coalitions are now established.  

The comparability of Kenyan and South African political scene can also be seen in the form that it takes. In both countries, politics is a war of attrition regardless of the aphorism that politics is a game in which “there are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests.”

A view espoused by a number of analysts is that Odinga’s and Kenyatta’s unfolding battle for the presidency is a continuation of their fathers’ political competition.

In South Africa, there is a view that the current political competition is a continuation of Jacob Zuma’s ousting of Mbeki a decade ago.  

Perhaps the bigger question – very much academic at this point as we await the ANC December party elections – is whether the ANC will go the Kanu way.

The writer is a senior lecturer at University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, [email protected]