If Jacob Zuma wins his bid for the ANC presidency in December, here is what he is likely to do, say close aides, associates and analysts.
First, he will draw up a protocol governing how he and President Thabo Mbeki will work: one running the party, the other the Presidency.
While the protocol could iron out possible areas of conflict, the big hurdle to overcome will be the essential question of who runs the country?
Although some may advise Mbeki to step down immediately, Zuma would prefer him to stay and finish his term to assist political stability.
Special arrangements may have to be made to have Zuma attend Cabinet meetings on an ex officio basis to assist his gradual re-entry into the fold to prepare for the presidency in 2009.
There will be two centres of power and the ANC has pushed hard in the past year for power to be returned to Luthuli House from Pretoria. A widely held political view is that Mbeki has arrogated too much political power into the state rather than the party. Since Mbeki came to office in 1999 he has strengthened the ANC presidency (at grassroots level) — a practice that could work against him now.
Should he choose to stay in office and subject his decisions to party authority, Mbeki need fear no recall as Zuma will spend his first year in office winning over the incumbent’s supporters and preparing for the next national election, in 2009.
What will happen to the Cabinet? Zuma will try to win over this powerful group of leaders, though hardline Mbeki supporters may resign. The crucial portfolios to watch are the those of Deputy President PhumÂzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, whose political fortunes are closely tied to Mbeki’s, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. This week, a photograph of the foreign minister and Zuma, her ex-husband, suggest they still enjoy a cordial relationship.
Zuma and Mbeki are both likely to take a kahle-kahle approach. Operating in two centres of power is tough, as the party’s Mosiuoa Lekota can tell them. Lekota saw his political fortunes fray when he served as Free State premier in a hostile party architecture. There were constant fights about his right to appoint a provincial Cabinet and, indeed, to take any major political steps. In the end he lost his job.
In addition Zuma will have to deal with an ongoing Scorpions corruption investigation and he may well face charges early in his incumbency. Other tasks in his in-tray will include mending relationships within the Tripartite Alliance.
Economics
It is January 2008. ANC president Jacob Zuma is trying out the 10th-floor presidential suite at Luthuli House. It’s got a good view of downtown, where the second economy’s taxi ranks and hawkers’ stalls are buzzing. In the distance, the towers of Sandton blink in the mid-summer sun. How to draw these two economies together? His greatest conundrum puzzles him.
Economic change will pose significant challenges for Zuma. On the one hand, he has promised domestic and international investors that it will be business as usual. On the other, he owes his incumbency to two key interest groups: the unions within the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the SACP, which will watch him like hawks.
Right now, research by ING Bank, an international wholesale bank based in The Netherlands, suggests Zuma is slightly ahead in the leadership race, with President Thabo Mbeki expected to poll 39,7% of the votes at Polokwane and Zuma 40,4%.
Mail & Guardian research suggests Zuma’s support is more significant, but ING researchers say the support for Mbeki, Zuma and a possible third candidate in the provinces shows that Mbeki still has a good chance of taking the top job.
“For Eastern Cape, 906 seats are allocated for the ANC conference. In the province Mbeki still dominates, but a third candidate option might gain ground. I thus allocated two-thirds of the seats to Mbeki and one-third for the third candidate. For Free State this is the same ratio, except that, instead of Mbeki, it’s Zuma dominating,” says Dorothee Gasser, economist for Africa at ING.
Such a closely run race in Polokwane will limit Zuma’s hand. He will have to tread carefully to win over previous Mbeki supporters as well as investors — and grandiose announcements of policy change will not aid his inevitable mission of rebuilding unity within the ANC.
Looking out over the eastern end of the city flanks, Zuma will see the challenges of income disparities, unemployment and redistribution, which has largely benefited the middle classes. Has he tied his own hands by speaking different truths to different centres of power?
His aides in briefings to banks — including Citigroup and Merrill Lynch — have promised that he will not be a U-turn man; he is a loyal party cadre who will stick to the ANC’s policies.
These ask for macroeconomic policy that will support and sustain job creation and growth in the long term.
Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi and the SACP’s Blade Nzimande want a sharp left turn.
Few ANC members, bankers, workers and communists can quibble with the goals of halving unemployment and poverty by 2014, as dictated by the millennium development goals and included in the draft resolutions of the ANC policy conference in June. The tangles and potential economic instability will come from how to do it rather than whether to do it.
The ANC believes in a strong developmental state that manages a mixed economy. Cosatu and the SACP want 21st-century socialism: last month they put nationalisation (specifically of Mittal and Sasol) and higher taxation back on the agenda.
Cosatu, which has made its electoral support for the ANC dependent on a set of policy changes, wants monetary policy changes, including a seat on the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy committee for labour and the scrapping of inflation targeting.
Zuma will not look forward to his first meeting with Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni.
Cosatu wants the social grant system to be extended in the form of a basic income grant that covers everyÂone in the country and that means testing will have to be reviewed. Vavi might come knocking at Zuma’s door, wondering when he will call in Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya?
To watch Zuma carefully is to see that he played a wily game: during the public service strike he neatly avoided taking sides and criticised both government and unions.
But, in the hot seat, he will not be able to tread over hot coals quite so easily. ING says investment will tail off if Zuma wins the ANC presidency because he is surrounded by the left.
Investors at ING predict a drop in real GDP for South Africa in 2008 to 4,4% and to 4,3% in 2009. Foreign direct investment is expected to rise to 1% of the GDP in 2008, but drop to 0,7% of GDP in 2009. The rand will weaken, but the weak dollar environment that the global economy is in will serve as a mitigating factor.
Moody’s Investors Service, a United States-based rating agency, has decided not to review South Africa’s Baa1 mid-investment grade rating ahead of the Polokwane conference. Earlier this year the grade was raised to positive and a further upgrade was envisioned.
Moody’s says growth was set to slow to 4,7% this year from 5% last year and subside further to 4% next year, curbed by higher lending rates.