There is a New Establishment for the New South Africa, underwritten by a New Network of Influence. Such networks are, by definition, amorphous. There is no list, no membership application form. Nor can one say that there is a formulaic list of characteristics; it is not a dating agency.
Most of the network are black, but not exclusively so. Most are liberal democrats, though some are social democrats, and a few are democratic socialists. Unlike, say, the British Establishment, which Anthony Sampson described in the original Anatomy of Britain, there is no unifying ideology. Most are wealthy, but some are middle-class. Some are important, yet, all are influential by virtue of their membership of the network.
I recall in mid-1999 discussing with the head of corporate affairs at the mining giant Billiton its need to jack up lobbying capacity. He delivered a telling caveat.
“You know, the thing is, if we want real access to power, then our CEO [then, Brian Gilbertson] will simply call the president. And you know what? The president always takes the call.”
This unification of political and corporate elites is what the American Marxist sociologist William Robinson has termed the “congealing of elites”.
As one prominent media and publishing house CEO explained to me, “In Mbeki’s view of the transition, it was important to unite elites, because they are the people who could oppose the transition.” And, “In mobilising particularly the black elite and a sense of African nationalism at the economic level, it was just as clear that there would be an accommodation with white business.”
His analysis is that Mbeki’s intention with the creation of a black bourgeoisie is to “[create] a foundation for an African nationalist base, and [it] fits in quite neatly with his reform agenda throughout Africa”.
The anatomy of power in South Africa is based on six core pillars: the Presidency; the Treasury; the African National Congress; the new informal networks that crisscross the business politics divide; transnational corporations and domestic big business; and civil society — the policy think tanks, to some extent, but especially Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the new, emergent social movements.
Within this complex matrix there are some key institutions and individuals. First, the president himself, and his immediate team of advisers. Of his immediate team, legal adviser Mojanku Gumbi is perhaps the single most influential, though her power is far less extensive than that of Joel Netshitenzhe, the second most powerful man in South Africa.
Essop Pahad’s influence might be waning as other advisers build up comparable service records, but remains substantial on key political choices. Pahad is a sort of de facto deputy president, though there are at least two members of the Cabinet who are more influential than he is, namely, Trevor Manuel and Alec Erwin. Manuel heads the “government within a government”, the one department whose capacity far exceeds any other, and which is capable of exerting the power it holds.
Erwin continues to hold a key portfolio in Cabinet, but his influence lies in the axis with Manuel and the fact that he has been centrally involved in every major policy decision taken by the government since 1994.
Thus, the batting order of political power is: Mbeki, Netshitenzhe, Manuel, Erwin, Gumbi and Pahad. Beyond these top six, the picture becomes more complex, with parallel lines of influence running at dissecting angles from the epicentre. One line comprises big business. The other, the new intelligentsia. A third line is civil society, headed by Cosatu leader Zwelinzima Vavi, which also consists of other skilled purveyors of political wit, such as Zackie Achmat.
And what of the ANC, the spine or the heart? In the latest edition of Anatomy of Britain, published in May last year, Sampson quotes Peter Mandelson, one of the key architects of New Labour, and Britain’s “father of spin”, who said, “I do not think the government realises the extent to which New Labour looks to many people like a huge and all-powerful establishment with its tentacles everywhere …”
If this can be said of New Labour, with its clear, but far less dominant majority in Parliament and with a decidedly more dissident backbench, what can one say of the ANC? Surely, at the very least, exactly the same?
But I suspect that this overstates the ANC’s coherence and power as a separate entity. The key distinction is between the ANC in government and the ANC as a party. Clearly, the overlap between the main decision-making forums of the ANC — especially its national working committee — and the most powerful figures in government is critical to the exercise of political power.
The first major question is this: How will the New Establishment Network begin to cohere and exert a more coordinated form of political influence, and which ideological direction, if any, will it take? In particular, will it operate as a countervailing force to balance the naked aggression of South Africa’s big capitalists? Or, as the evidence currently suggests, will it simply operate as a parallel or overlapping, complementary source of power?
Monitoring the interplay between big business and government and the ruling party will continue to be the most compelling stethoscope for listening to the heartbeat of power in the new South Africa.
The second big issue is The Succession: capital T, capital S. Despite the ANC Youth League’s huffing and puffing about how it is no one’s business but the ANC’s and that “there is no other person ready to take the position except the Deputy President Jacob Zuma”, it is not as simple as that. A new establishment, with specific interests to protect, will have a lot to say on the subject.
Set within the superstructure of a much-admired and much-vaunted new constitutional order, the most important institutions — Parliament, the National Economic Development and Labour Council and the Constitutional Court — will be the sites of a tussle for influence and power.
Some of the members of the new elite remain committed to social transformation. The most powerful capitalists — new and old — are installed within the new establishment and, although they are dominant, they are not yet hegemonic. There is a new anatomy of power in South Africa, and decisively so. Whether it is an anatomy that befits the “New South Africa” and serves the majority is equally a matter of debate.
This is an edited extract from Anatomy of Power in South Africa by Richard Calland, to be published later this year by Zebra