When Jacob Zuma enters court for his corruption trial this month, more will be at stake than the reputation of South Africa’s former deputy president.
The case against Zuma, once the front-runner to succeed President Thabo Mbeki, has exposed splits in the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the party that under Nelson Mandela led South Africa from apartheid to multiracial politics.
Analysts say the ANC is facing its worst crisis in years.
Zuma is charged with taking bribes from a friend in exchange for political favours, including contracts in a multimillion-dollar government arms deal. He is due in court on July 31.
He has said the graft case is a shadowy political conspiracy against him — charges echoed by his supporters who say he is being sidelined ahead of a key ANC congress next year which will pick the party’s next leader to take it into elections in 2009.
Zuma, who was fired last year after he was linked to a corruption case involving a former aide, was acquitted last month on a separate rape charge but despite the court cases, he has remained popular and retained a senior position in the ANC.
But his legal woes have highlighted internal divisions, although the ANC has dismissed media speculation about a looming leadership vacuum and sharpening internal power struggles.
”The speculative prediction that the ANC may not ‘survive intact’, is nothing more than an expression of the vain wishes of its inventors,” Mbeki, who is due to step down in 2009, said recently.
But political analysts say that whatever the verdict for Zuma, the ANC’s internal rifts will not disappear overnight.
”Any person who says there is unity in the ANC is talking nonsense,” said political commentator Sampie Terreblanche, an emeritus economics professor at the University of Stellenbosch.
”The ANC is trying its best to put up new wallpaper to cover up the cracks in the wall,” he said, referring to repeated party statements declaring unity.
‘We need a pro-poor policy’
Some analysts say the rifts exposed by Zuma’s trial — coupled with criticism of Mbeki’s centrist policies for failing to ease poverty — could force party leaders to change the way they operate.
A charismatic leader with little formal education, Zuma is seen by many ANC rank-and-file as a more down-to-earth and approachable politician than Mbeki — an economics graduate of Sussex University in England.
Zuma is a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle and like Mandela spent time imprisoned on Robben Island.
”There are quite a lot of people that see in Zuma … someone that will bring about an alternative policy, a pro-poor policy. We need a pro-poor policy,” Terreblanche said.
Another possible contender for the leadership could be wealthy businessman Cyril Ramaphosa, said by associates to be preparing a bid for the post, to be decided in December 2007.
Ramaphosa has spotless credentials from the anti-apartheid struggle and is one of the country’s best known figures.
Whoever wins the leadership battle will likely become the next president of the continent’s biggest economy.
Despite disappointment with the slow pace of reforms, the ANC still commands the loyalty of most South African voters.
Political analysts say this is because none of the country’s opposition parties appeals to the black majority.
However, longtime allies in the labour movement and Communist Party have openly questioned the party’s direction.
In June, the South African Communist Party (SACP) threatened to break away from the alliance and contest elections on its own, a move which could challenge the ANC from the left.
And a month earlier, the influential labour group Cosatu said the country was sliding towards ”dictatorship” under Mbeki, accused by some of cultivating a centralised style of leadership that appears intolerant of divergent views.
The lightning rod
Where Mandela tended to court the media, Mbeki often lashes out at what he has called the racist agenda of the white-dominated press.
He frequently levels similar accusations at opposition parties when they take his government to task over its perceived inability to act on crime, HIV/Aids and the crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe — issues on which the ANC has repeatedly drawn criticism.
Zuma has acted as a lightning rod for some of this dissatisfaction with Mbeki. His supporters say his sacking was designed to thwart his ambitions.
Some of these supporters have burned T-shirts bearing Mbeki’s portrait and turned out in large numbers during their hero’s rape trial — shocking both political analysts and women’s rights groups with the vehemence of their anger.
Historians say such open dissent is reminiscent of the original ANC tradition of robust internal debate, something critics say has been stifled under Mbeki’s watch.
”Under Thabo Mbeki the ANC has closed down and doesn’t tolerate different view points,” said Xolela Mangcu, a research fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand.
”Some people are saying: ‘Look, we want to reclaim the ANC’ …They are being successful. It seems that there is now open rebellion against Mbeki.” – Reuters