Stephen Chan
Zuma has big decisions ahead
As I stepped off a very uncomfortable flight from South Africa, it became clear that the African National Congress party had not won the two thirds majority it needed to make unchallenged changes to the constitution. It was also clear that no one else on that plane cared very much about the South African elections.
My fellow passengers were oblivious to the implications of the ANC’s loss of the Western Cape, the centre of the tourist industry, which fell for the first time to the Democratic Alliance. Or worse, the hugely symbolic loss of Robben Island, the former prison island where Nelson Mandela and many ANC leaders were imprisoned during the apartheid years.
But despite the ANC’s failure to hang onto a two thirds majority it was still an undeniable victory and all eyes will now be on Zuma’s financial decisions. Attention will be especially focused on Zuma’s handling of finance minister, Trevor Manuel, who resigned alongside Mbeki, but was later reinstated and has made it clear that he would serve under Zuma. Manuel is a darling of the west, a good economist and a political bruiser. Like any good transatlantic politician, he somehow benefitted from a flattering biography hitting the bookstores shortly before the elections.
Manuel, however, has signalled that he wants to run all the planning ministries. The ANC is big on “planning”‘ (read “control”), and it’s a planning culture which is often more regulative than facilitative. Much of this is still a hangover from the apartheid public administration systems but Manuel can’t control everything—and he’s not the only politician who is “owed.”
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Stephen Chan
Thabo Mbeki in happier times.
One of the most striking characteristics of the run-up to South Africa’s elections has been the indecent rush to endorse Jacob Zuma by the country’s political class. Almost as soon as the national prosecutor announced the dropping of corruption charges against Zuma, the number of people claiming to be his friend increased dramatically. No obstacle was left to stop him becoming President, and so the mob hurried to prove they had been on his side all along.
That entailed very publicly sticking the knife into Thabo Mbeki, most commonly via open letters to the press and media. These missives denounce Mbeki as man of corruption for having instigated the charges against Zuma for political reasons, and for using his high office to persecute a colleague. They do not deliberate on whether the charges against Zuma had any validity.
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Stephen Chan
Zuma will be the next president of South Africa, but his is not the only story of the forthcoming elections.
On 22nd April, Jacob Zuma will be elected the new president of South Africa. Over the next few weeks I will be reporting on the build-up to Zuma’s triumph. Is it inevitable that he will succeed? Yes. Politically and intellectually he may be a mere shadow of Nelson Mandela, and even of Thabo Mbeki, but the ANC (and South Africa) has fallen on tough times since the idealism of the post-apartheid era, and Zuma is the man of the people for very good reasons.
Not least because most South Africans are mired in dire poverty. The country is moving towards disparities of wealth akin to those in Brazil: a beautiful, affluent first world minority, and squalid poverty for the vast majority. Zuma has promised to lead the latter out of destitution and deprivation.
He can’t. The world is in recession. The South African economy just isn’t growing fast enough by itself, and is in desperate need of international investment. Zuma will have to ‘manage’ the economy just as much as Mbeki did. And while he may claim to a man of the people, in reality Zuma long ago transgressed the hardships endure by the majority of his countrymen, and no amount of his Zulu soundbites can disguise that fact.
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