The theatre around who is to succeed President Thabo Mbeki in the African National Congress involves a formidable political cast, comprising not only the president and his deputy, but also almost every significant figure in South Africa’s ruling political hierarchy.
A senior ANC member, outraged by my remarks on the radio about the Mbeki-Zuma saga soon after it exploded, felt moved to send me an SMS: “When elephants battle, the political analysts must be careful not to become ants who could get trampled.” But we ants must reflect on this political drama, for it has hauntingly been defined by, and will determine, the character of our democratic transition.
What does the overwhelming support for Jacob Zuma mean? This is a man who is alleged to have engaged in fraudulent activity. Does it mean that South Africa’s citizenry are soft on corruption? How else can we understand his popularity? Is it because he is perceived as a man of the people? How do we understand the antagonism expressed towards Mbeki in the ANC’s national general council? What do all of these developments mean for our democracy?
How did these individuals come to be who they are in this political theatre? How did South Africa’s social and political transition influence the evolution of the characters of Mbeki and Zuma?
Any glance at the democratisation literature would show that the political optimism of the first decade has been replaced by a cynicism in the second.
Whereas the academic and broader popular transition literature of the 1980s and early 1990s triumphantly focused on the breakdown of authoritarian and military regimes, their intellectual successors have come to focus on trying to understand why so many of these transitions evolved in illiberal directions.
These are societies in which the political system is ostensibly democratic, with all the formal institutions and processes of democracy — elected legislatures, national and local elections, civil liberties — but without its substantive content — equality, equity, and accountability. In these societies — Brazil, Chile Malaysia, Zambia, and even South Africa — power is centralised at the apex of the political system, often in a leader, or leadership.
Authority, the decision-making that matters, is vested in the centre, while responsibility, particularly the delivery of social services, is delegated to local functionaries. This separation is not healthy.
The centralisation of authority is coupled with a decentralisation of responsibility, ostensibly to promote efficiency, but in reality designed for the protection of the system’s leader or its leadership.
Is the malfunctioning of democracy so prevalent in other recently democratising societies? In almost all these cases, democratising forces did not have the power to replace their authoritarian or military predecessors. As a result, they struck a political deal and effected a negotiated transition.
The essence of the negotiated deal was that political democratisation would be allowed, sometimes with controls like a five-year Government of National Unity as in South Africa, or a specified number of appointed delegates to the legislature as in Chile, so long as the addressing of social question was postponed.
This negotiated deal was supported by much of the academy. Whether it was from the academic right like Samuel Huntington in his The Third Wave of Democracy, or from left of centre like Guillermo O’Donnell, Phillipe Schmitter and Lawrence Whitehead, whose four-volume study Transitions to Democracy became a mantra to would-be democratisers, the advice was the same: pursue formal political democratisation and postpone the resolution of the social question.
The only section of the academy and the political movement that opposed this deal was the left, but it was quickly marginalised and easily ignored, not least because it was unable to advance a realistic alternative.
The net effect of these political choices was the degeneration of newly established democratic political dispensations into illiberal or delegative democracies. The postponement of the social question in these societies may have facilitated the democratic transition, but it began to inhibit the potential for democratic consolidation.
In fact, in all these societies, democracy itself was weakened as a dynamic of centralisation overtook these transitions. Leaders of democratising parties recognised that they could not rely on their democratic structures continually to postpone the social question, so on economic and social policies they bypassed these structures, facilitating a centralisation dynamic in the transition.
South Africa is a classic example of such a development. The ANC, which was a national liberation movement with ideological leanings towards social democracy, pursued institutional democratisation while postponing the addressing of the social question. The reconstruction and development programme, adopted as the electoral manifesto of the ANC in 1994, was soon abandoned and replaced with the growth, employment and redistribution strategy (Gear). As is well known, this neo-liberal programme stressed macroeconomic stability and reduction of inflation and, while it was very successful in achieving these goals, it came at the cost of an increase in unemployment and poverty.
But the notable feature of Gear was not its neo-liberal character. Rather, it is the fact that it was tabled in Cabinet and thereafter implemented.
Neither the structures of the party, such as the national executive committee, nor the state, such as the provincial and national legislatures, nor social-dialogue institutions such as the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac), were consulted in its development.
All of these institutions were simply presented with a fait accompli. The postponement of the social question, as the transition’s leadership correctly recognised, required the bypassing of the very democratic structures promulgated by the transition.
In any case, the passage of Gear had two consequences. First, it established a centralising dynamic, strengthened a technocratic approach, and enabled a bunch of technocrats at the centre to direct and manage this transition. Second, Gear divided the ruling party and opened a political struggle that continues to this day and which colours the succession in important ways.
Mbeki is seen as the leading figure in this technocratic wing. His support base lies mainly in the leadership of the party and at the apex of the state. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party are seen as the prime institutional players opposing the technocratic shift. They not only opposed Gear, but also continue to contest the very terms of the transition, and all from within the alliance.
For the technocrats, Cosatu and the SACP are typical populists in that they pursue resolution of the social question without taking due cognisance of international conditions or domestic constraints.
For Cosatu and the SACP, the technocrats are archetypal bureaucrats: a coterie of wily, arrogant, well-paid, urban-based individuals most comfortable in the backrooms, for whom statistics are more important than the real lives of people, and who refuse to subject their programme to critical input from, and decisions by, the democratic structures of the transition.
The struggle between these two wings has been the defining feature of South Africa’s transition. It has also coloured the succession debate and determines the form of how the Mbeki-Zuma conflict plays itself out. The support base for Zuma cannot be understood in abstraction from this context.
After all, Zuma is popular not so much because of his own political agenda, which is a contradictory mix of traditionalism and modern social democracy, but rather as a result of the popular unhappiness with Mbeki’s political agenda.
The left in the alliance (and many others as well) come to Zuma’s defence, for he represents, in their view, their last attempt to challenge the technocratic wing and advance their own social and political agenda.
When Zuma came under attack, the left in the alliance saw this as an attack on their agenda by the technocratic wing.
The only way one can understand the enmity directed at the president in the ANC’s national general council is to look though this lens. The grassroots activist base has reasserted its power and its criticism of the technocratic wing. And the medium through which this has been done is through support for Zuma and the rejection of the “Development and Underdevelopment” proposals, particularly those advancing the establishment of a “flexible” labour market (a term used to mean a labour regime that allows for harsh labour practices, including easy hiring and dismissal procedures).
How is this struggle likely to evolve? First, it is important to state that the battle is likely to continue. It may disappear for a few months as we approach local government elections, but expect it to resurface soon after, as has happened so often before.
Second, the resolution of the succession will not be left to the conference floor in 2007. All succession disputes in the ANC in the past half-century have been resolved through negotiation by the party elders. In this regard, the conference floor in 2007 will be presented with a united front advancing a consensus position.
Third, if Zuma is found not guilty as a result of the legal process, he will be catapulted into the presidency. He will be unbeatable. But if this were to happen, expect the left to be disappointed. Zuma will be confronted by the same constraining pressures that Mbeki faces.
It must be reiterated: the policy choices and direction of this transition are not simply the products of good or bad individuals. Ultimately, they are a result of the configurations of power in the international and domestic setting. So long as those are not challenged, the direction of this transition will continue as is. How to challenge and transform this configuration of power is another debate and a subject for an alternative essay. For now, it suffices to say that reflections on this issue must address strategies as diverse as electoral reform, the abandonment of corporatist institutions, the establishment of social movements, and even the break-up of the tripartite alliance.
Finally, if Zuma is found guilty or is tainted as a result of the legal process, then the succession race opens up. The big prize will be to find a candidate who would appeal to both camps. Anyone too close to one camp may be disqualified by the other. The current Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, will be a leading contender by virtue of her position in office. But she is unlikely to be supported by the Zuma camp.
Expect a hunt for a suitable candidate if Zuma is disqualified through the legal process.
Who will win? I do not know. But do not be surprised if that old African proverb were to come true: While two birds disputed about a kernel, a third swooped down and carried it off.
Adam Habib is executive director of democracy and governance at the Human Sciences Research Council. He writes in his personal capacity. This paper is a development of a presentation to the Electoral Institute for South Africa on August 2 2005