There is a “glasnost” emanating from the higher reaches of the Zuma government that is as refreshing as it is welcome.
This, at least, is the mythology. Each and every one of us “commentariat” has at least one personal anecdote that stands as testimony to this observation — the shy “Mbeki-ite” minister who responds to a request for an interview with a personal telephone call, for example.
Jacob Zuma himself not only attended the most recent meeting of the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) but stayed for supper and appeared to enjoy himself. Thabo Mbeki would have sent his attack-dog, Essop Pahad, along to growl and complain bitterly, achieving little but recrimination and rancour.
The paranoia and insecurity that were, in many ways, the primary hallmarks of the Mbeki years are, temporarily at least, vanquished. There is a self-confidence as well as a conviviality about the tone the new president is setting.
But is it real and will it last? On Friday Zuma is hosting a group of analysts and public intellectuals for lunch. Again, it is something Mbeki would not have done. Until recently, entry to the Union Buildings was permitted to the chosen few — a narrowly
drawn cast of mainly sycophants and acolytes.
Indeed, if one is searching for metaphors one could do worse than to liken the Mbeki presidency to a gated community — elite, select, insecure behind its walls, nervous and neurotic in equal measure. When presented with requests for information, the Mbeki presidency simply ignored them, clearly believing it was above the law.
Glasnost, in the original Gorbachev sense, of course, was a policy designed to circumvent the control of information by the apparatchiks who had served the old Kremlin. It would be stretching a point to say that this is what Zuma is doing, even though not all the Mbeki apparatchiks have been culled.
Influential advisers such as Joel Netshitenzhe and Alan Hirsch remain in (Zuma’s) West Wing, albeit now in the service of Trevor Manuel and the newly established National Planning Commission (NPC).
Mbeki-ism is dead, long live Mbeki-ism, and all that — though not quite.
Which brings one to the new anatomy of power that is gradually emerging. If the presidency under Mbeki was a gated community, now it resembles a castle with a moat — the policy vacuum that surrounds the new president. But the moat is dry, not wet; you don’t have to swim to get to the fortress. It is the political space that is up for grabs. It is the place where all the big ideological, policy and political contests will occur in the coming years.
The rules of the game have changed. The ANC, as an organisation, is a player. Its current secretary general enters the policy arena far, far more often than his predecessor. Where for 10 years Kgalema Motlanthe appeared to fear to tread, Gwede Mantashe marches in, boldly and defiantly, determined to ensure that the drawbridge is not pulled up.
His mission is clear: to retain the ANC’s influence over government and to ensure that Zuma remains loyal to the Polokwane policy mandate.
So, too, does Cosatu seek to enforce the Polokwane dividend. One bitten, twice shy, the trade union confederation is no less determined to ensure that, unlike in the immediate post-1994 period, it gains full value for money for its support for the ANC and its presidential candidate.
Then, within the Cabinet itself, is the crucial economic policy quadrant of Pravin Gordhan (finance), Ebrahim Patel (economic development), Rob Davies (trade and industry) and Barbara Hogan (public enterprises).
Last, from inside the presidency itself there is Manuel, a titanic figure whose presence continues to dominate the South African polity. The precise role of the NPC is not yet articulated — and we await the green paper on its national planning mandate with great interest — but the medium-term strategic framework (MTSF) that Manuel announced with some élan last week should be seen as a tactical manoeuvre in which a stake is driven into the middle of the dry moat.
In the run-up to the election the (self-styled) “sensible left” beneficiaries of Polokwane were emphasising a “change and continuity” strategy. Read it and you will see that the MTSF is more continuity than change. “Pivot around this [and me]” is Manuel’s message. It is one that the economic policy quadrant will have heard loud and clear. How it formulates its response will determine the new anatomy of power. This is its crux.
As these political dynamics unfold, so civil society should take full advantage of the organic nature of the new political environment. There are more opportunities than threats. And the relative openness and willingness of the new administration to engage provides the platform for a model of participatory democracy that was illusory under Mbeki.
The presidential councils that Mbeki set up are under review. It will seem messy, but my instinct is that there will be less form and more substance. Nedlac may even enjoy a renaissance.
Whether the glasnost is a new ethos, a new culture of government, or merely the optimism that courses through the veins of any new administration remains to be seen. Modern government is, alas, an exercise in disappointment management. This is not to cast aspersions on the good intentions of the Zuma Cabinet, or to adopt an unduly cynical attitude to contemporary politics, but rather to recognise that the challenges are so intense that it is all but impossible to do anything other than fail.
In a sense government is about how badly you fail, rather than how well you succeed. This should not be as dispiriting as it sounds. Instead, while insisting on the highest standards and the greatest ambitions from every democratically elected government, we should be more forgiving when those we put into office do not accomplish everything they set out to achieve or promise.
Cambridge don David Runciman’s most recent book, Political Hypocrisy, is an absorbing exposition of this theme, inviting us to accept a degree of failure lest we strangle good intentions with the chilling ice of cynical disregard.
The real test of the new-found glasnost will be the moment when disappointment sets in. Will the current willingness to engage meaningfully be replaced with defensiveness and the authoritarian tendencies that Zuma’s liberal critics within the ANC fear are merely suspended in the face of the criticism that will inevitably come when things do not go quite to plan?
For now, there is good reason to be encouraged. The government is making progress with the inevitably tricky job of its institutional re-engineering. So far there is, by and large, a discipline and consistency to the signals coming from government, though it requires a newly refined set of antennae to detect all the nuances. Business, for example, is re-orienting itself to the new dispensation.
These are the high politics. The charm offensive that is accompanying the pleasing openness of the new order should not obscure the fact that glasnost at the top does not yet translate into efficiency and accountability throughout the nether reaches of the government machine.
There is a massive task at hand. The growing intensity of the popular protests should serve to remind us — and the Cabinet — of this.