What kind of leadership do we want post-Zuma?
President Jacob Zuma has been in office for only six months or so, but the national chorus of ‘Where is Zuma when we need him most?†is becoming a monotonous refrain.
It is quite remarkable, given that only months ago we were all decrying the omnipresent powers of Thabo Mbeki — the all-knowing, interfering president who brooked no dissent, engaged in little consultation and drew on his own repository of wisdom when he took decisions on our behalf.
That is the kind of leadership that brought him down — and it is also what made Zuma the obvious choice for those looking to be liberated from Mbeki.
Where Mbeki marginalised opponents, Zuma was acknowledged as the man who through persuasion and negotiation had helped put an end to the bloody violence in KwaZulu-Natal.
Overall, I think that those in the ANC and the alliance who wanted a consensus-seeker do indeed have their man — one who painstakingly consults them when he makes senior appointments.
But opposition parties are correct to question whether his consultative style is important only for his colleagues in the ruling party or benefits the rest of the country as well.
This week it was announced that he would consult the ANC about a replacement for former national director of public prosecutions Vusi Pikoli. He was well within his rights to keep in touch with his party.
But does the opinion of the rest of the country not matter?
The prosecutors, judges, magistrates, law commission, legal academics, attorneys and advocates who would work with that appointee surely have views?
Mbeki was characterised as being the chief executive of SA Inc, running government as if it were a large commercial entity.
By contrast, Zuma comes across as a leader appointed by disparate forces whose only area of agreement was that they wanted Mbeki out — leaving Zuma with the massive difficulty of trying to rally them behind a single vision. His choice has been not to choose one group over the other.
He plays his hand quietly and his main decisions are often channelled through the secretary general of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe, and sometimes through the Cabinet’s spokesperson, Themba Maseko.
But one issue on which Zuma displayed bold, visible and uncompromising leadership was the position of the secretary general in 2012: he banned all jockeying and discussion in public about the matter.
This was after it became known that the knives were out for Mantashe, with some in the party earmarking Deputy Minister of Police Fikile Mbalula to replace Mantashe.
Zuma said in a national executive committee meeting that it was too early to begin the debate and added that it would distract the ANC from its core activities.
Remarkably, no one has said a word since then. But that has not meant the lobbying has stopped. As with all other bannings, it has just situated the activity behind closed doors.
I would even venture to say that the strange allegiances we saw in the fight over Eskom’s Jacob Maroga and Bobby Godsell amount to a proxy war between those in the ANC Youth League who want Mbalula and some in the SACP who want to keep Mantashe in the position.
Understanding this proxy war could also help us make sense of the paradox of SACP leaders arguing about why we should not nationalise the mines while the ‘nationalists†in the youth league are pushing for it.
This can only mean the nationalisation fight has long ceased to be about principle and ideology and is now about personalities and other unstated battles.
Youth league president Julius Malema has taken the vacuum opened up by Zuma’s quiet style of leadership to position himself as a kingmaker, even warning that those who do not support his nationalisation stance will not be voted for at the ANC’s 2012 conference.
This was until the entry of SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin, who’s got the T-shirts for similar tongue-lashings he received from Mbeki, Nelson Mandela and Dumisani Makhaye, who was the first to call him ‘a white messiahâ€.
If we feared the dictatorship of the CEO-president but are disappointed by the dithering of the unifier-president, what do we really want?
We will be nowhere near getting our own Barack Obama for as long as our opposition parties look after only narrow racial, class and ethnic interests and have no real prospect of seizing power from the ANC.
Ironically, it is only when the opposition parties get their act together that the ruling party will be forced to unleash its Obamas — who will neither think for us nor be constrained by internal party dynamics.
I swear I can see an Obama or two in the ANC.