So, where does one start? The “second transition” has entered its endgame phase. It may not be especially short and it certainly won’t be particularly elegant. And it may contain a bloody moment of brutal ruthlessness.
A moment that is yearned for by progressive, social-democrat members of the self-styled sensible left, as well as the social liberals and members of the capital-owning, “respectable” comprador class — an untidy ideological collection, admittedly, and those of them who remain in the ANC fold.
It is the moment when Jacob Zuma is dispensed with. When the political calculus suddenly shifts. When someone — someone close, someone with deep latent power — draws the dagger. An “Et tu, Brute” moment. But will it ever come? Or is it the wishful thinking of a politically effete establishment elite?
This column warned, a year ago, of the impending global banking crisis. It forecast, more discreetly, that Kgalema Motlanthe would succeed Thabo Mbeki — albeit not in the precise manner that he did. On the debit side, it (with every other commentator and analyst) wholly failed to predict that Cope would splinter off and break the mould.
And, with the stubbornness that was the hallmark of Mbeki’s reign, I shall stick with my horse. The odds have lengthened considerably, notwithstanding the reinstatement of the corruption charges against Zuma.
Mbeki’s biggest error was to allow politics and justice to intertwine. Indeed he started it with his reasoning, back in mid-2005, when he dismissed his then deputy president on the basis of the law — the judgement in the Schabir Shaik case — rather than politics.
Thus he linked Zuma’s political future to his legal future. Although Zuma remains innocent until proved guilty, so too he and his supporters and the influential opportunists who wish to exploit his weaknesses can claim that he is fit for the highest public office.
This is an unhelpful paradigm; it sets a poor precedent. That someone can be innocent of a criminal charge but still be entirely unmatched to the standards of probity and integrity required of a head of government has been lost sight of.
That Motlanthe himself is still in the running is evidenced not so much by what he is or is not doing, but by the nasty campaign of vilification that has been unleashed against him. In this the ANC’s epic internal power struggle is reaching for new gutters to scrape.
What are the milestones that lie ahead? How on earth can one make sense of it all? Well, try these for size.
First, there is the ANC’s list of candidates. It is hopelessly behind schedule. Usually the “list conference”, at which the horsetrading is concluded, takes place in October of the year before the election. As I write, it had still not been formally concluded, though a long draft list was recently agreed. The long list is meaningless — such as a manager announcing his squad before a World Cup tournament, but not the actual team.
With the Congress of the People (Cope) circling with lips a-licking, the delay in this process has been profoundly disorientating for the ANC. When the list is finally concluded, it will tell us a fair amount about who sits where in the pecking order, how close to conclusion the factional power struggle is and the extent to which sage heads within the national executive committee have been able to introduce some compromise into the electoral slate.
Second, there is the State of the Nation address to Parliament on Friday. Motlanthe is in an impossible situation: too bold and independent, and the Zumarites will hack his ankles; too deferential, and he will be labelled as weak and ineffective. It is a no-win, catch-22 dilemma that seems to have escaped even the usually perspicacious editor of the Sunday Times.
Hence, one will have to read very, very carefully between the lines. Expect to find very little. He will have to play it very, very safe. His impact will necessarily be well beneath the public radar. Sobriety and composure remain his most persuasive external attributes.
Yet he must show that his government is on top of its response to the global crisis, with an intelligent strategy to hand. Here the proximity of the budget — which comes a mere five days later because of the election and is the second important milestone — creates a problem. Usually the minister of finance would make a substantial contribution to the State of the Nation address. But Trevor Manuel faces his own dilemma.
On the one hand, he will want to keep his powder dry; in some respects it is his most important ever budget, given the global crisis and the growing South African recession, and the fact that it is likely to be his last budget speech. He will want to write his own epitaph, so to speak, and, unlike Motlanthe, he will neither want nor need to speak with a forked tongue.
But he will not want to deprive Motlanthe of ammunition that would help persuade people that he is worthy of being more than a “caretaker” president.
As for Manuel, he is hardly short of future career choices. He, in fact, ought to be the next president. If not, as this column has proposed before, he would make a good foreign secretary. If not, then Stephen Gelb’s suggestion — minister of international economic development — would give South Africa a credible voice in the “Bretton Woods II” discussions that are soon to ensue.
Whatever his choice — and, as the title of Pippa Green’s welcome biography of Manuel declares, it will be his “choice not fate”, or at least, spun as such — it will have an impact on the market and on investor perceptions of the new post-election administration, at a rather delicate time economically.
Mathews Phosa, who has positioned himself at Zuma’s elbow, has been telling business leaders that they understand this and will act “responsibly”, which means that they want an orderly transition from Manuel to his successor at the treasury. This will be the first big contest of the new administration, the third milestone: what will become of Manuel and who will be his successor?
Fourth, there is the election itself. The campaign could be vicious in some places, which will be profoundly unsettling. Ethnic-based violence — the elephant in the room, which few commentators have the courage to engage with publicly — is possible. Although there are some obvious if modest class and ideological dimensions to the in-fighting within the ANC and the splintering-off of Cope, there is a potential ethnic dimension too.
Julius Malema said it clearly, using “tribal”, “our turn” and “Xhosa Nostra” in the same sentence in speeches towards the fag-end of last year.
As for Cope, there are some rather extravagant forecasts available. But remember, to get 1% of the vote at the last election you needed to muster 156 000 votes. Ten percent, obviously, would require more than 1,5-million, depending on turnout. No new party has achieved that since 1994, but no new party has had the advantages of Cope. More on this another time, but the short point is that, disorientating though Cope is to the ANC now, it will have an impact on the ANC’s national election prospects only if it gets more than 20%, which is unthinkable. But, as I say, we have been wrong about Cope before.
Fifth, look carefully at the choices Motlanthe makes in the final part of his interim term, such as the appointment of a new national director of public prosecutions. By these choices he will determine whether he is to be more than a mere footnote in the history of this country.
Sixth, watch the subcommittees. It is a good rule for life in general, I have always thought. And watch one subcommittee in particular: the one that was the first to be appointed after Polokwane. The one that is headed by a member of a great ANC dynasty, Lindiwe Sisulu, and which is charged with “managing” Zuma’s court case and its surrounding consequences.
Last, watch the appointments to the new adminstration’s Cabinet and whether a new super-Cabinet or state council is created to sit between the president and the rest of the Cabinet — to control both, but especially the treasury. But by then, the die will be truly cast and the “second transition” will necessarily be wrestling with the crocodile of its denouement.