Lizzie Jandjies tucks herself tightly into the top corner of Dan Qeqe Stadium as she waits for presidential hopeful Jacob Zuma to arrive in the township of Zwide in the flat hinterlands of Port Elizabeth. Beyond the stadium are houses of breeze block and corrugated iron; homes that are an aspiration to the neatly dressed Jandjies.
Circumstances, she says, have led her from a childhood here to an informal settlement about 30 minutes’ drive away. In Moeggefukkel, pledges of mains water have been put off until 2012 and supplies must be carried from nearby houses. There is no electricity and the dark hours are terrifying.
”There is no protection,” she says. ”Criminals come in the night, kick in the door, steal everything and sometimes kill.”
So Jandjies waits, not entirely patiently, for Zuma, the imposing Zulu populist. She hopes that the hero of the struggle against apartheid, a man who in the past two years has faced rape and corruption charges and who entertains the crowd by singing Umshini Wami (Get My Machine Gun) might hurry up ”development”. But his private jet is yet to streak the blue above.
Jandjies may not share the wealth of South Africa’s English, Afrikaner, Indian and middle-class black and coloured populations, but she does share, alongside their fear of crime, a desire for change, though not everyone feels Zuma is the right man.
On December 16, delegates to the 52nd national conference of the African National Congress (ANC) will meet in Polokwane to decide if President Thabo Mbeki should have a third term as party president and, with it, power over the party’s MPs.
Polokwane is close enough to the border with Zimbabwe to offer delegates some cautionary guidance (and Zimbabwean refugee waiters will no doubt be a further reminder). For in South Africa’s fragmented society, it is common to hear citizens, as they watch the once-great liberation movement begin to tear itself apart, raise the subject of Robert Mugabe’s descent into dictatorship.
As Siphiwe Zulu, an ANC branch chairperson in Soweto, puts it: ”There is a problem of African leaders who want to stay in office too long.”
Such views will cut Mbeki deeply. He, after all, is the man who has tried to foster an African renaissance, overturning Western views of a continent predetermined to failure. His supporters point out that he does not want to remain national president after the 2009 elections — the Constitution prohibits that — but only president of the party.
Mbeki — strategic, smart, with a love of poetry — is determined, so insiders say, not to cling to power but to see off his uneducated, militant and pugilistic old comrade Zuma, because he believes him to be unsuited to power.
Front-runners
Come midday at Dan Qeqe Stadium, uplifted voices can be heard near the gate. Down the path come 100 people, holding banners that read ”Thabo Mbeki, ANC president 2007-2012”. They pack into the stand alongside the 1 500 Zuma supporters and sing ”Jacob Zuma is a criminal”. The Eastern Cape is Mbeki country. It was in Zwide’s hard-scrabble dirt that Mbeki’s father, Govan, a hero of the struggle, was buried in 2001. By turning up, Zuma is sending a signal — that it is he, JZ, who carries lifelong communist Govan Mbeki’s concern for South Africa’s poor.
Yet South Africa’s future does not rest solely on these two front-runners. Other names will be available to delegates in Polokwane: Zuma’s estranged wife, Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and former Gauteng premier Tokyo Sexwale. Most intriguing, in the shadows and as yet silent, is trade unionist turned multimillionaire Cyril Ramaphosa. ”I don’t remember a time when the leadership was openly contested,” says a senior unionist.
Such open conflict within the ANC is unknown and proving hard for some to bear. As I stand watching each side mock the other in the stand, an old man in a grey suit elbows me in the ribs. He can barely speak English, but is insistent with those words he has: ”One ANC. Must stay together.” There are tears in his eyes.
It was never going to be an easy job, replacing Nelson Mandela as president. And Mbeki is, as one South African newspaper put it, ”a hard man to love”. It wasn’t always so. In exile, Mbeki would debate South Africa’s problems over bottles of fine single malt in hotels from Lusaka to Lagos, developing his belief in an African renaissance where ”our rebirth as a continent must [begin] with the rediscovery of our own soul”.
Now, though, says his biographer Mark Gevisser, the dreams expressed in exile have had to be deferred by the realities of South Africa’s problems. Mbeki’s war against those ”determined to prove everything in the anti-African stereotype” is now focused on those who, for honourable reasons, criticise obvious cronyism and corruption.
He has opened himself to attack by expressing scepticism about the link between HIV and Aids, in part because he believes it plays to the Western view of Africans as, in his words, ”natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs … doomed to inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sins of lust”. It would take 800 South Africans dying every day of Aids before he made antiretrovirals widely available. And still he grumbles that the true cause is poverty, as Gevisser’s biography, released last week, reveals.
Meanwhile, his belief in an African renaissance has been tested against his loyalty to old friends. He, all but alone in the ANC, was close to Mugabe during the battle with the late Ian Smith’s regime. He has protected Jackie Selebi, police National Commissioner and head of Interpol, against charges of corruption, and he has failed to fire his alcoholic Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, despite suggestions she used her influence to receive a new liver and the revelation that she once stole an anaesthetised patient’s watch.
Positive change
Yet, set against this, Mbeki has presided over an economy that has grown by 5% a year, where property prices have recovered after an initial white flight, where the Springboks once more brought home the Rugby World Cup, where two million new homes have been built, and where the government’s black economic empowerment scheme has established a black middle class.
”People see a lot of change,” says Siphiwe Zulu, the ANC branch chairperson in the Soweto neighbourhood of Zola (which he describes as containing ”the poorest of the poor, old ladies and old-timers”). ”Most of the streets were without tar. There were no street lights. Now there is even a shopping mall.” Soweto also has a country club and its own chapter of the Hell’s Angels.
A black elite has formed, led by Ramaphosa. The former head of the National Union of Mineworkers stepped back from politics in the 1990s to, in the words of Richard Holbrooke, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, ”show the way to a generation of black South Africans who would gradually control the South African economy”.
Through mining, media and a variety of other interests, Ramaphosa has become one of the richest men in the country. Unsurprisingly, the organisations to which that the ANC is allied — the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the ANC Youth League — feel such wealth isn’t trickling down fast enough.
”Black economic empowerment is enriching a very few,” says Blade Nzimande, general secretary of the SACP. ”It is not even creating a black bourgeoisie; it is creating a small group of black people indebted to the capitalist class … A majority of communist members would prefer Jacob Zuma.”
Apart from the convoy of black cars that rolls on to the rugby pitch, traffic cops stationed at the intersections and the phalanx of bodyguards, Zuma strikes a modest note when he finally turns up at Dan Qeqe six hours late. He tells the crowd — once the Mbeki supporters stop singing — that the ANC needs a strong leader, and then he promises to support whoever is chosen.
Ambition
Even more than dissent, the ANC dislikes the smell of ambition. Just before Zuma pulls in, another figure appears at my side. Thylani Grootboom, an Mbeki supporter, wants something understood, reinforcing his point with a jabbing finger: ”Campaigning for yourself, it’s against the culture of the ANC.” Zuma’s weakness in the run-up to the Polokwane conference is the sense, increasingly pervasive, that he is putting himself forward too much.
Born eight days apart from Mbeki, Zuma did not come from anti-apartheid royalty. He was raised by his widowed mother, a domestic worker. He showed immense courage as head of the underground in KwaZulu-Natal and an intelligence that negated his lack of a formal education. Gevisser says that he is ”fearless, affable and loyal”.
As with all the potential candidates, it is impossible to extract a policy, because policies are supposed to be the preserve of the party itself. Instead there is character. In 1994, Zuma managed to convince Mandela that Mbeki would be a better deputy than Ramaphosa, yet as time passed Mbeki has increasingly believed that Zuma lacks the judgement for top office. He believes, according to Gevisser, that a Zuma presidency would destroy his dream of renaissance.
Certainly Zuma has had his difficulties. The charge of raping a 31-year-old family friend was dropped, but he hardly delighted doctors when he shrugged off the unprotected sex (he knew she was HIV-positive) by saying that the shower he took afterwards ”would minimise the risk of contracting the disease”. He led the National Aids Council at the time.
Charges of corruption may prove trickier yet. A multibillion-rand arms purchase of (among other weaponry) fighters, corvettes and submarines from European companies (among them BAE Systems) has poisoned the South African political pool. Zuma has been accused of taking payments. Whether this derails him remains to be seen.
Andrew Feinstein was the senior ANC MP on a parliamentary committee that looked into allegations surrounding the arms deal and he has just published a book, After the Party, that offers a rare insight into the ANC’s methods.
”Mbeki has far more to lose from a thorough investigation than Zuma,” he says. ”Zuma’s misdemeanours were relatively small, amounting to a payment of R500 000 to protect a French arms company from any investigation, while Mbeki either directly solicited, or condoned soliciting, money for the ANC in return for contracts.” In other words, Zuma can make Mbeki’s life very difficult in court.
From a new life in London, Feinstein laments what has ”become of [a] once proud organisation”. The ANC, he writes, is no longer driven by ”lofty ideals but by issues of personality, power and patronage”. Mbeki clings to power in the hope he can use patronage to deliver someone he trusts into the presidency in 2009. Zuma grasps for power through the force of his personality. Meanwhile, Ramaphosa denies wanting the job but does just enough to stay in the running, waiting to be drafted as a compromise.
Attempting to guess who will be leader of the ANC in a month’s time would be foolish. Branches are currently choosing delegates for the trip to Polokwane and telling them who to vote for, but when the moment comes, the votes are secret. ”Some people are behaving as if the world is coming to an end on December 16,” says Nzimande. ”People are being offered jobs, money is going round.”
Meanwhile, crime grows worse. Last week was, apparently, the beginning of the ”heist season”. It is now too dangerous to walk up Table Mountain. And the crime pages of South Africa’s newspapers provide the chattering classes with a deepening well of the blackest humour.
Lizzie Jandjies often chuckled as we waited for Zuma, but not at levels of crime. As the populist’s convoy sweeps away from Zwide, she prepares for the journey back to her house without electricity, water or a door to stop a determined boot. She is, she says, pleased that the rival supporters were satisfied with trading songs of disdain. ”I’m just glad it didn’t become violent.” — Guardian Unlimited Â