President Thabo Mbeki will reinforce the message of clean, morally unquestionable leadership, dispel concerns about a centralised Presidency and bank on his urban, middle-class support in countering damaging attacks on him in the presidential succession battle.
In the past month, Mbeki has appeared politically weaker than he has ever been. He has faced a grassroots rebellion, vitriolic onslaughts by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party, and a leadership split in the African National Congress. He has looked very much the lame duck.
But those close to him dispute the perception that Mbeki is losing his grip in the face of ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma’s comeback campaign and the groundswell of support for Zuma following his acquittal last month on rape charges.
Zuma’s supporters “are a noisy minority”, said an ANC national executive committee (NEC) member this week. “People are confusing noise and rhetoric with real political power. Mbeki is the president of the ANC and of the country for the next three years, which, in politics, is a long time.”
Mbeki’s strategists are unfazed by Zuma’s apparent popularity. They say his fightback will be a noiseless one, exploiting his strengths, specifically his support in broader South African society, mainly among business leaders and the middle classes.
A discussion document tabled at the ANC’s weekend NEC meeting, Contextual Considerations in Addressing Challenges of Leadership, makes it clear that he also aims to regain credibility among ANC branches by compelling party leaders to nip the current personality-based debate in the bud and initiate policy debates about the “characterisation” of the ANC. From this, a presidential candidate espousing certain values would emerge.
Mbeki’s strategists have attached considerable importance to a national sounding by Research Survey, commissioned by the Presidency last October. It shows that Zuma’s support is concentrated in KwaZulu-Natal. The research found Mbeki’s popularity rating to be at an all-time high of 65% nationally. Excluding KwaZulu-Natal, the survey found that 62% of black people supported Mbeki’s stance on the release of Zuma from his duties as national deputy president.
A more recent survey by Markinor, commissioned by the Sunday Times after Zuma’s rape trial, showed that 64% of South Africans were against Zuma becoming the country’s next president. The survey was conducted in 12 metropolitan areas.
Tapping into this urban, middle-class sentiment will be part of Mbeki’s drive to counter accusations by the ANC’s left wing allies that his leadership style is creeping towards “dictatorship” and that he has usurped the traditional power of the ANC’s mass base by centralising it in his office.
“Mbeki knows that Zuma is a grassroots politician, so he’ll aim to corner his own strengths. Mbeki will kickstart popular democracy by encouraging debate among all South Africans. He will work with the [business] elite and those who control the top echelons of the country,” said an Mbeki observer.
A business leader with access to Mbeki said: “Mbeki is an old dog at this game. And every time he has been written off in the past, he has re-emerged. He has never been a street fighter. He’s a backroom strategist and he’s likely to use his popularity among broader South Africans.”
Mbeki’s comments at the Gordon Institute for Business Science last month — that South Africans should decide what kind of “leadership” they wanted after his 2009 departure — were interpreted as a move to project the succession debate beyond the ANC, where Zuma’s power base is thought primarily to lie.
He has also rallied big business, which this week gave him a vote of confidence after a meeting in Cape Town on Monday. The business dele-gation rejected claims that an “imperial” presidency was threatening democracy.
An NEC member suggested that party leadership would actively seek to move the current debates in the ANC away from individuals and towards broader discussion about the future character of the ANC to reinstate a “sense of ownership” among party members. “Out of that, individuals will emerge,” said the NEC member.
When asked by Sky News last week about perceptions in developed countries that democracy could be compromised if Mbeki’s successor did not uphold the same values as he and former president Nelson Mandela, Mbeki indirectly outlined the agenda he expected his successor to pursue.
“I know you get a sense of nervousness among many people around the world. Is everything all right? Will South Africa survive? Will democracy survive? Will you sustain your programmes addressing issues of poverty, gender equality, non-racialism and all of that? I’m saying it’s a concern that one can understand. But we, as South Africans, would say the same thing, we can’t afford failure.”
Another NEC member said that within the NEC there had been a “tangible shift” of support away from Zuma. The source said the NEC had discounted the National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) anti-Mbeki statements last week. “When the former NUM general secretary [Gwede Mantashe] stood for election to the NEC, he didn’t even make the list, which demonstrates the union’s lack of influence on the ANC.”
This week, the Cabinet rallied behind Mbeki, rejecting Cosatu’s claim that South Africa was “sliding towards dictatorship”. The Cabinet also described the SACP’s 44-page discussion document on the challenges facing the tripartite alliance as “fulminations of the imagination”.
The SACP lashed back on Thursday, saying these comments “demonstrated a rather disturbing intolerance towards well-considered criticism”.
A provincial leader said this week that the Eastern Cape and Western Cape in particular were formulating strategies to find a “middle ground” succession plan for a candidate that would manage the SACP’s ideological concerns that the ANC had compromised its relationship with the working class, while enhancing South Africa’s “macroeconomic” strategy.
The provincial leader said there was a growing acceptance, even among Zuma’s core supporters, that his presidency would be as divisive as a third term for Mbeki.
The most natural candidate to occupy the middle ground, the leader said, would be business magnate and former Gauteng premier Tokyo Sexwale. Although Sexwale has expressed no presidential ambitions, it is understood that there is a growing lobby for him in the ANC.