African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma is polishing his tarnished image in preparation for his role as future president of South Africa — while President Thabo Mbeki’s government is doing its utmost to thwart him.
Clearly on the advice of his inner circle, particularly communist leader Blade Nzimande, Zuma has adopted a far more visible domestic profile for key policy issues such as crime, Zimbabwe and education.
But he is also understood to be working with the government’s International Marketing Council (IMC) on improving his image among foreign investors — to the Presidency’s fury.
Last weekend it was reported that IMC chief executive Yvonne Johnston had been ousted by her boss, Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad, because the council included Zuma in its public events.
The Mail & Guardian understands that Pahad told the IMC that it should not facilitate contacts between Zuma and foreign leaders, as its function is to work between governments. Johnston refused to comment on the matter.
”On some levels the old Polokwane battles are still being pursued,” a government official told the M&G this week. ”[Mbeki’s people] are pursuing a scorched-earth policy. They want to leave nothing for the new government. They want to set them up to fail.”
The official said the new ANC leadership, including Zuma, had been receiving significant overseas coverage ”because they are saying something”. By contrast, Mbeki has vanished below the radar. ”Particularly in the past six months there has not been much of a lead from government. People want to meet the new guys; they’re not interested in the old guys.”
The source said that by boldly going where Mbeki had refused to go, particularly on Zimbabwe, Zuma had won friends both locally and abroad.
Foreign governments were tired of Mbeki’s insistence that quiet diplomacy was the only way to get South Africa’s perpetually crisis-ridden northern neighbour back on track.
In repackaging himself to the international community, Zuma is also travelling abroad extensively.
As part of a three-nation European trip next week he will attend his first formal talks with a ruling political party — the German Social Democratic Party — in Berlin. The talks will be attended by representatives of the ruling parties in Brazil and India — the Workers’ Party and the Indian Congress respectively.
Zuma will meet the German Vice-Chancellor, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to discuss common challenges facing the two parties.
Organisers of the meeting said German politicians would probably applaud Zuma for his stance on Zimbabwe and urge him to take an even tougher stance.
On a visit to South Africa last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Mbeki to do more to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis.
Zuma then moves to London, where he is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and finally to Paris where he will hold talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The ANC president visited the United Kingdom last week for meetings with bankers and institutional investors. ”He cuts a very good figure. He doesn’t get flustered; he’s even-handed in his answers and he knows his stuff. It was a very successful engagement,” said a source who attended one of the London meetings.
It is understood that advisers have told Zuma his image needs repolishing — in particular his tendency to take different policy stands with different audiences.
”He tends to chop and change, says one thing and then does another,” said an adviser close to the process. ”Inconsistency is not a good quality for a leader. If there is something bankers and investors can’t deal with it is unpredictability.
”It is obvious that he has a strong political will, but [he] should realise the implications of living in a rules-based society. Publishing retractions makes you start to look like a gibbering idiot. He hedges everything and does not want to be pinned down on anything.”
The adviser said that Zuma sometimes takes alarming stands on matters he wants to tackle. ”It’s a bit scary when he says the police should shoot to kill. He could also have better command of language — his sentence construction is not very good. This makes it difficult for journalists to understand him.”
It is understood that other members of the new ANC leadership are concerned about their inexperience in the communications arena and are to undergo media training.
The M&G was told that Zuma is open to training on dealing with the media and accepts that it is a learning process. ”When someone asks you, ‘Are you a crook?’, you don’t say, ‘I will look it up in the dictionary,”’ said the adviser. ”You say, ‘South Africa has an independent judiciary and I firmly believe in the rule of law.”’
On the domestic front Zuma signalled his new push for a higher policy profile in recent weeks by attacking former education minister Kader Asmal about the scrapping of teacher training colleges and meeting Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
He supported Deputy Safety and Security Minister Susan Shabangu’s ”shoot-to-kill” call, said that laws against criminals must ”bite” and complained that the law favours criminals over victims.
”Police [must] use effectively the provisions of section 49 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which governs the use of lethal force should their lives or those of the members of the public be in imminent danger,” he told the Chambers of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday. This policy shift on crime has won plaudits for both him and Shabangu.
ANC spokesperson Jessie Duarte said Zuma’s comments were based on the ANC’s decision, made at its national conference in Polokwane, to focus on health, education and crime.
”He is not trying to distance himself from government. We decided at the conference that these are the issues we would highlight because they are of concern to the people.”