If it can reasonably be defined as a political philosophy or rhetorical brand that sticks up for the common person against the elite, why is it that ‘populism” is so widely denigrated?
When American liberals speak of Hugo Chávez as a populist, it is not a term of endearment. Marxists are no fonder: they know that populists are just as likely to embrace nationalist, racist or religious fundamentalist precepts as progressive ones. But whether the populist in question is of the left or the right, they share one thing in common: they are ‘anti-establishment”.
Now, hard on the heels of Zuma the working-class hero, we have Zuma the populist.
Last week was a watershed for the man who would be president as he revealed, if this is not too inapposite an expression in the circumstances, even more of his true political petticoat. Not because it was the week that a lot of people started to speak about what a Zuma presidency might or might not entail, as fascinating as the responses were. But because of Zuma’s violent choice of words: They would not have stood in front of me; I would have knocked them out.
It is also a watershed moment for the Constitution: can it withstand a populist attack? The non-exclusive list of grounds for unlawful discrimination in the Bill of Rights represents a snapshot of our collective understanding of discrimination at that point in history (1996). Clearly, it was a longer list than one that could have been produced 50 or even 10 years before. Sexual orientation was a relative newcomer to the list then, but it is now firmly established alongside race and gender.
That is why the ANC Youth League was compelled to speak up so quickly after Zuma’s bigoted comments (though having made their bed, the SACP and Cosatu squirmed on it, silently).
Zuma’s clumsy apology two days later made him look weak as well as foolish. What sort of judgment does this man have — does he mean what he says, or not? A leader’s choice of adviser is revealing: what sort of men and women does he have around him? By all accounts, they are not ANC cadres but an inflammable cocktail of malcontents, misfits and maladroits.
If Thabo Mbeki has been at times too obscure and intellectually ornate for his own good, Zuma has thus far heavily masked whatever it is that passes for a political ideology beneath his famed geniality — a personality trait that is at once both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. All we really know is that he says ‘yes” too often to the wrong people, and there is little evidence to suggest that as president he would be any different.
But will it come to that? Many inside the ANC’s senior ranks say, ‘No, he will not, because he is not fit to be president, we all know that.” There are plenty of presidents around the world who are not ‘fit” for the purpose; democracy can be most unavailing of such considerations.
Moreover, the ANC behaves like a yacht that has lost both its mast and its captain. Disorientated, there appears to be neither direction nor leadership. For ANC figures in government the apparent absence of a plan to ensure that a ‘fit” president is identified and duly elected is especially worrisome; a troubled ANC is a distracted government. That is the reality.
Will the ANC national executive committee, meeting, seize the moment? Will it find a way to restore the apparently lost ethic of the collective to its leadership? Struggle veterans can be forgiven for asking: where is the next generation — the successors to Tambo, Sisulu and Mandela? Are they ready and willing to summon the courage, if not to formally discipline him, then at least to tell Zuma: ‘This has gone too far; you are dividing and damaging the ANC; you must stand aside”? Or does their absence prove Mbeki’s detractors right — that he has chased away the most talented members of his generation with his paranoia?
Notwithstanding the acute dilemma facing the NEC, the more that Zuma positions himself as an anti-establishment populist, the easier it will be for the new establishment to overcome his challenge.
Now, Zuma is forced to take his campaign on to a new terrain to sustain its momentum. Last week he lost the first battle decisively.
The political, economic and military establishment is lining up against him on a new front. As one ANC government source put it to me: ‘The generals are very clear: they are firmly against a Zuma presidency; as far as they are concerned it cannot happen — do you see what I am saying?”
I do not think the new establishment is yet ready to yield to a new populism in the form of a Zuma presidency. It is simply too great a risk and there is too much to lose.
Richard Calland’s new book, Anatomy of South Africa – Who Holds the Power? will be published by Zebra Press in the next fortnight