tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/sacp-23894/articlesSACP – The Conversation2024-01-27T06:07:13Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2219002024-01-27T06:07:13Z2024-01-27T06:07:13ZJacob Zuma, the monster South Africa’s ruling ANC created, continues to haunt it<p>Former South African president Jacob Zuma is <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=23cde356c2361300JmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTI0Ng&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=uMhkonto&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2FiY25ld3MuY29tL3NhYmNuZXdzL3p1bWEtdXJnZXMtc291dGgtYWZyaWNhbnMtdG8tdm90ZS1mb3ItbmV3bHktZm9ybWVkLXVta2hvbnRvLXdlc2l6d2Uv&ntb=1">endorsing</a> the uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Party, the latest rival to the governing African National Congress (ANC) for the <a href="https://www.eisa.org/election-calendar/">upcoming national elections</a>. By doing so, he not only challenges the ANC politically, but also claims its heritage.</p>
<p>The new party – which media reports say is <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/news/politics/2024-01-07-zuma-exposed-as-brains-behind-establishment-of-mk-party/">Zuma’s brainchild</a> – uses the name of the ANC’s former military wing. The party’s launch coincided with the 62nd anniversary of the real <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK)</a>, formed on <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=04fd21d4aee3a8f1JmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTI3Mw&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=uMhkonto&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2FoaXN0b3J5Lm9yZy56YS9hcnRpY2xlL3Vta2hvbnRvLXdlc2l6d2UtbWs&ntb=1">16 December 1961</a> to fight the apartheid government. </p>
<p>Zuma could not have been more daring. Yet the ANC obfuscates, criticising him instead of acting decisively and expelling him. Meantime, he actively campaigns to unseat it. Why?</p>
<p>I have studied and written extensively about the politics of the ANC and its alliance partners – the Congress of South African Trade Unions (<a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/">Cosatu</a>) and the South African Communist Party (<a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">SACP</a>). I was also one of the editors of the <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/the-zuma-administration">book</a> The Zuma Administration: Critical Challenges. </p>
<p>In my view, the reason the ANC is cagey about taking him on, is because the party tied itself in knots <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0fc7bb4c-b027-11e3-b0d0-00144feab7de">defending Zuma’s bad behaviour</a> in the past. The ANC created the Zuma problem. The party and its <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03161.htm">alliance partners</a> abetted his kleptocracy and facilitated his <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">capture of the state</a>. They created Zuma as a <a href="https://www.rusi.org/publication/jacob-zuma-after-battle-polokwane">populist with a penchant for rabble-rousing</a>. Now they are paralysed and can’t act against him.</p>
<p>The ANC also <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=ce02ce879565061cJmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTE3NA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=support+for+zuma&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuY2l0aXplbi5jby56YS9uZXdzL3NvdXRoLWFmcmljYS9wb2xpdGljcy9hbmMtd29udC1hY3QtYWdhaW5zdC16dW1hLWZvci1ub3ctcmVwb3J0Lw&ntb=1">fears</a> that if it expelled him, he could portray himself as a victim.</p>
<p>Decisive action against him would require the party to face up to its own demons. It would be exposed as having enabled him. </p>
<p>The ANC’s reluctance to take him on or fire him is rooted in the events of 2005. Then South African president Thabo Mbeki <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/president-thabo-mbeki-sacks-deputy-president-jacob-zuma">fired Zuma as his deputy</a> after the latter was mired in corruption allegations. Zuma’s use of this to build a case that he was a victim still haunts the ANC. It fears a repeat so close to the 2024 elections. </p>
<p>Zuma’s political pursuits now depend on a new party whose electoral strength is yet to be tested. It pales in comparison with the support he got in the past. </p>
<p>My arguments is that the political cost of not expelling him – in terms of lost votes – is greater than the cost of expelling him. By not acting against him, the ANC is failing to “renew” itself as it has <a href="https://renewal.anc1912.org.za/">promised</a> to do. This makes the party look weak and may cost it electoral support.</p>
<h2>Zuma and the ANC</h2>
<p>The ANC knew Zuma was likely to turn out this way, from as early as 1997, when it elected him deputy president to Thabo Mbeki, paving his way to the highest office in the land.</p>
<p>South African author and journalist Mark Gevisser <a href="https://www.everand.com/book/641542878/Thabo-Mbeki-The-Dream-Deferred">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mbeki and those around him began to worry that Zuma possessed a dangerous combination of unhealthy ambition and poor judgment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They were right.</p>
<p>Because of this fear, he was at first not considered for the position of deputy president. Instead, Mbeki offered the position to Inkatha Freedom Party leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/mangosuthu-buthelezi-was-a-man-of-immense-political-talent-and-contradictions-181081">Mangosuthu Buthelezi</a>. However, through Zuma’s machination, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00344890902944387">this was foiled</a>. He eventually became the deputy president. But he was bitter that he had been initially overlooked for the position.</p>
<p>During <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/the-zuma-administration">Mbeki’s presidency</a>, relations between the ANC and its <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03161.htm">alliance partners</a> became frosty. </p>
<p>The contestation was around the Mbeki government’s free market economic policies, which Cosatu and the SACP <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/04d23130-a8dc-11dc-ad9e-0000779fd2ac">condemned</a> as a neo-liberal agenda that deviated from the ANC’s aim of <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02103/05lv02120/06lv02126.htm">socio-economic transformation and empowerment</a> of those previously marginalised when it came to power in 1994.</p>
<p>Zuma exploited this to position himself as the centre around which <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2010-09-03-coalition-of-the-wounded-turn-on-zuma/">those allegedly wounded by Mbeki</a> could coalesce.</p>
<h2>The rise of Zuma the populist</h2>
<p>In Zuma, the <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/the-zuma-administration">alliance</a> saw someone who could represent its ideological position in the country’s policy choices. Yet, he was part of the ANC leadership that adopted Mbeki’s economic strategy and was never known to espouse leftist politics. To their dismay, he proved not to be their <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-04-20-replacing-mbeki-with-zuma-did-not-solve-our-problems-nzimande/">ideological ally in office</a>.</p>
<p>Later the same year Zuma was <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-decade-on-a-new-book-on-zumas-rape-trial-has-finally-hit-home-85262">accused of raping</a> the daughter of a friend. He was acquitted but was tainted as immoral.</p>
<p>This alone should have disqualified him from any leadership position. But it did not matter to his allies, who ensured he became the president of the ANC <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-18-zuma-is-new-anc-president/">in 2007</a>, and that of the country <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/jacob-zuma-presidency-2009-2017-march">in 2009</a>. He was, to the alliance, an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232871908_Understanding_the_'Zuma_Tsunami'">unstoppable tsunami</a>.</p>
<p>The ANC bashed the judiciary as counter-revolutionary for unfavourable judgments against Zuma. The party claimed his prosecution was political persecution <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27756284?seq=2">at Mbeki’s behest</a>. Then ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema declared they were prepared to <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/we-will-kill-for-zuma-404646">kill and die for Zuma</a>. </p>
<h2>Leading with impunity</h2>
<p>Zuma’s eventual ascendancy to the presidency of the country in 2009 was <a href="https://www.alterinter.org/?Working-class-politics-or-populism-the-meaning-of-Zuma-for-the-left-in-SA">hailed,</a> by the alliance left – Cosatu and the SACP, as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a victory against the neo-liberal orthodoxy of Mbeki.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Zuma did not deliver on this expectation. Yet he continued to enjoy the support of the tripartite alliance. </p>
<p>He went on to <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=905b9cd41887a59aJmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTE5NQ&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=betrayal+of+the+promise+report&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9wYXJpLm9yZy56YS93cC1jb250ZW50L3VwbG9hZHMvMjAxNy8wNS9CZXRyYXlhbC1vZi10aGUtUHJvbWlzZS0yNTA1MjAxNy5wZGY&ntb=1">subvert</a> the criminal justice system to avert prosecution for his corruption charges. </p>
<p>The judiciary <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-judges-in-south-africa-under-threat-or-do-they-complain-too-much-45459">pushed back</a> but earned the wrath of the ANC and its alliance partners.</p>
<p>They always closed ranks to shield Zuma from accountability. He survived numerous motions of no confidence in parliament for, among other things, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2012-11-08-parties-to-file-motion-of-no-confidence-against-zuma/%22">“dangerously flawed judgment”</a> relating to his <a href="https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/president-zuma-appoints-new-national-director-public-prosecutions-25-nov-2009">appointment of Menzi Simelani</a> as head of the National Prosecuting Authority, despite evidence that he had lied to a presidential commission of inquiry.</p>
<p>Among the notable no-confidence votes against which the ANC-dominated parliament shielded Zuma was over his use of public money to renovate his private homestead <a href="https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2016/11.pdf">at Nkandla</a>. </p>
<p>The stage was set for Zuma to wreak havoc with impunity. The alliance left only started to move away from him when it became obvious that he had outsourced the running of the country to his friends, <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/how-gupta-brothers-from-india-landed-south-africas-ruling-party-in-its-biggest-crisis-397138">the Gupta family</a>. It was too late.</p>
<p>In 2015, he <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0UO0KO/">sacked</a> the finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, only to replace him with an obscure Gupta-sanctioned appointee, with an eye on the national treasury.</p>
<p>The market tailspinned into and the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5c0da8b2-9eb5-11e5-b45d-4812f209f861">rand plummeted</a>. Yet the ANC still defended him in parliament.</p>
<p>Towards the end of 2016, the public protector released a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/state-capture-report-public-protector-14-october-2016">damning report</a> showing how the state had been captured at Zuma’s behest. Again, the ANC foiled attempts to remove him.</p>
<p>He only resigned on <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43066443?utm_source=Media+Review+for+February+15%2C+2018&utm_campaign=Media+Review+for+February+15%2C+2018&utm_medium=email">14 February 2018</a>. This was not so much for his misdemeanours but because he was no longer the president of the ANC.</p>
<h2>What needs to happen</h2>
<p>The ANC’s indecisiveness does it no good. Its claim that he has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuu_FEGQc0A">“walked away”</a> from the party and is therefore no longer a member is wishful thinking. He has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/zuma-says-he-will-not-vote-anc-south-africas-election-2023-12-16/">made it clear</a> he will remain an ANC member.</p>
<p>The only way to terminate his membership is to expel him. This should have happened much earlier, at least before the ANC’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-marks-its-112th-year-with-an-eye-on-national-elections-but-its-record-is-patchy-and-future-uncertain-221125">112th anniversary festivities </a> earlier this month. They could have used the platform to explain the decision to cleanse the party of those who debase it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mashupye Herbert Maserumule received funding from National Research Foundation(NRF). He is affiliated with the South African Association of Public Administration and Management(SAAPAM).</span></em></p>The ANC tied itself in knots defending Zuma’s destructive bad behaviour in the past. Acting against him now would require it to own up to its sins.Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1655562021-08-05T15:01:42Z2021-08-05T15:01:42ZHow communists have shaped South Africa’s history over 100 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414331/original/file-20210803-27-8sey0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African Communist Party members have held key positions in the ANC-led governments. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Until recently, just living to a 100 was an achievement worth celebrating for itself. In England new centenarians receive a special card from their queen. Perhaps the same convention is maintained in South Africa and its <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">Communist Party’s</a> 300 000 or so members can expect a birthday message from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on their <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/analysis/centenary-of-the-sacp-50a1b8bf-9d07-4733-adad-8803ec7c0e2e">centenary</a>. Or maybe not. </p>
<p>In any case, they have more to celebrate than their party’s extreme old age, though under often tough conditions survival itself is an achievement. Next to the 109-year old governing <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/brief-history-anc">African National Congress (ANC)</a>, the South African Communist Party is the second oldest political organisation in Africa. But, South African communists did more than outlive their rivals and opponents. They can make reasonable claims to have shaped South African history, as I’ve outlined in my <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/red-road-to-freedom/">book</a>, <em>Red Road to Freedom: A History of the South African Communist Party 1921-2021</em>.</p>
<p>In which ways did they do this?</p>
<p>And is it just history, though, that the party will be celebrating? What about today?</p>
<h2>Shaping history</h2>
<p>First, they initiated political solidarities that cut across South Africa’s racial and social cleavages. They began doing this from the party’s formation in 1921 when it began recruiting black South Africans. Ten years later there were black people leading the party and joining it in thousands. This was in an era when most forms of social life were racially segregated, by custom if not by law. From 1948 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> would restrict any interracial contact still further. But, such confinements were fairly extensive well before then.</p>
<p>The party’s commitment to cross-racial politics wavered now and then but, even so, it supplied real world evidence that black and white South Africans could share political goals and work towards them together. In the early 1930s, the first white communists were convicted and served prison sentences for sedition, that is for attempting to mobilise black followers. </p>
<p>Today in South Africa communists can take a considerable portion of the credit for the extent to which the country’s politics is nonracial.</p>
<p>Secondly, modern South Africa has one of the strongest labour movements in the developing world, a movement that still shapes government policy. Its historical gestation is a complicated story. Communists were not the only labour pioneers.</p>
<p>But in the 1930s and 1940s people like recently disembarked Lithuanian immigrant, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ray-alexander-simons">Ray Alexander</a>, assembled industrial unions that would constitute enduring foundations for what was to follow. Some of today’s most powerful trade unions can trace their genealogy back to her efforts.</p>
<p>Communists in the 1940s such as the Port Elizabeth dry cleaning worker <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/raymond-mhlaba">Raymond Mhlaba</a> worked out a strategy of alliances beginning with community protests to support strike movements. This coalition between labour leaders and community activists would persist through the next five decades, helping to enable national liberation <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-general-elections-1994">in 1994</a>.</p>
<p>In fact, at a local level trade unionists often were community leaders in the 1940s, as well as belonging to the Communist party. In the places in which they were busiest, in New Brighton outside Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, for example, or in the <a href="https://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/Bond%20Townships.pdf">townships</a> – exclusively black residential areas – dispersed along the East Rand, or in Cape Town’s Langa, these leaders and their activist communist following in the 1950s after the party’s <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1071/communist-control-act-of-1954">prohibition</a> continued to organise and mobilise.</p>
<p>It was no coincidence that the ANC had the most entrenched and systematic presence in the 1950s in the localities in which communists were best organised in the 1940s. In short, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defiance-campaign-1952">“Decade of Defiance”</a>, the ten years or so of mass action against apartheid in the 1950s, was incubated in party networks.</p>
<p>There are many other ways in which the party stamped its historic imprint. If the ANC’s armed struggle against apartheid minority rule was decisive, and it was certainly important in inspiring other kinds of political action during the 1980s, then communists supplied most of the key members of its general staff and as well many field unit commanders.</p>
<p>Then from the 1920s onwards through its night-schools and other training facilities, the party educated successive echelons of South Africa’s political leadership. That the ANC today in its internal discourses still uses the jargon and phraseology employed by the party’s commissars in the Angolan training camps 40 years ago is testimony to their enduring effectiveness as educators. Indeed, the concept of “national democracy” that the ANC uses to describe the kind of social order it is trying to build, itself derives from a Communist notion of a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism developed in Eastern Europe after the Second World War.</p>
<p>A final example of the party’s pioneering role in shifting political norms: earlier than any other South African political movement, the Communist Party brought women into leadership. The pioneers whom the Party should be recalling on its birthday include key women: <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/rebecca-bunting">Rebecca Bunting </a>, <a href="https://ourconstitution.constitutionhill.org.za/josie-palmer-mpama/">Josie Mpama</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/molly-wolton">Molly Wolton</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mama-dora-tamana-posthumous">Dora Tamana</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/elizabeth-sophia-honman-posthumous">Betty du Toit</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-heloise-first">Ruth First</a>.</p>
<h2>Communist Party today</h2>
<p>The Communist Party is in a <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03161.htm">tripartite governing alliance</a> with the ANC and <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/">the Congress of South African Trade Unions</a>, the labour federation.</p>
<p>Communists have held important positions in ANC governments for nearly 30 years. For example, in Cyril Ramaphosa’s first cabinet communists were appointed to a number of ministerial portfolios, including <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/business/communist-trade-minister-wins-praise-from-imf-1.312267">Trade and Industry</a> and <a href="https://www.dhet.gov.za/SiteAssets/Minister's%20Profile/Minister's%20Profile.pdf">Higher Education</a>. Former communists have held other key positions, including the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kgalema-petrus-motlanthe">presidency</a> itself as well as the <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/jabulani-moleketi-mr-0">Finance Ministry</a>.</p>
<p>Party leaders can count their membership in hundreds of thousands. But are they still shaping history?</p>
<p>South African communists argue that their participation in government makes a real difference, reinforcing its commitment to public employment programmes, to re-industrialisation, to better foreign trade policies, and increased financial aid for students.</p>
<p>But they also concede that much of their effort is undone by political corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, and that they have failed to shift the government’s “neo-liberal” macroeconomic policies significantly. They would prefer more market regulation and more support and protection for local industry. They dislike the extent to which public services are “contracted out” to private firms. </p>
<p>They do suggest that they play a role in limiting public venality. This may be true though initially they helped to defend President Jacob Zuma against his critics as well as contributing to his victory <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=y5NYMWQ5tiwC&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=Zuma,+Polokwane+2007&source=bl&ots=PIdtyCYPjc&sig=imwB-O1Rc_2MbpxeNedOSOcCLkk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBDhGahUKEwiw6IGBqI3JAhVLVRQKHYn7Dlc#v=onepage&q=Zuma%2C%20Polokwane%202007&f=false">to become ANC president at its 2007</a> conference, and subsequently the head of state.</p>
<h2>Looking to the future</h2>
<p>With such a large signed-up following you’d think Communists would constitute a powerful grouping within the ANC and in the wider political domain. But does their membership really matter? </p>
<p>The party’s following doesn’t constitute a disciplined electoral bloc, either within the ANC’s own internal voting procedures nor in national or municipal polls. Nor is it a membership that draws solidarity from its participation in manufacturing in the classic Marxian sense. The largest social group from whom the party recruits is young unemployed people, a group that keeps growing.</p>
<p>The party’s <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/socialism-is-the-future-build-it-now--blade-nziman">present strategic purpose</a> is about “building capacity for socialism”. This includes promoting local industry and strengthening the provision of public services. </p>
<p>In following this course, it is fair to say that its present challenges are as formidable as anything it has confronted in the past. Global markets make it very difficult to rebuild declining industries anywhere, but particularly in a country in which workers have rights and as a consequence are comparatively well paid. </p>
<p>South Africa’s earlier industrialisation happened under a forced labour regime. Then, arguably, South Africa’s developmental trajectory – its history – was on the party’s side, building an increasingly skilled industrial workforce. But industrial employment has stagnated or declined. Under such conditions constructing a unified political base is so much more difficult. Under modern conditions hopes and faith have to replace old certainties.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165556/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Lodge has received funding from the Irish Research Council, Irish Aid, and the Swedish International Development Association but not for any research connected with this article.
I am a member of the Board of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa. </span></em></p>The Communist Party draws most of the members from South Africa’s mainly young, unemployed people, a group that keeps growing.Tom Lodge, Emeritus Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of LimerickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1606282021-05-11T14:39:35Z2021-05-11T14:39:35ZBook shows the folly of painting Mandela as either saint or sellout<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399734/original/file-20210510-5469-yc6x96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nelson Mandela at the commemoration of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in 1994.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Georges MERILLON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are two widely available views of <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a>, the first post-apartheid president of South Africa. The first is a reverential and uncritical celebration of his life and achievements. It resonated in the obituaries and eulogies when Mandela died <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-11-06-hundreds-remember-nelson-mandela-dying-in-the-1980s-inside-the-mandela-effect/">in December 2013</a>. </p>
<p>Madiba (his clan name) was <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=9VZmDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=tony+o%27reilly,+Mandela+sent+by+God&source=bl&ots=GEkAd8llEn&sig=ACfU3U3AIuYiJ0svquYP9wCDYyZ3lleUtw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiUtK6So8HwAhWVQhUIHZF8Aw4Q6AEwEnoECBIQAw#v=onepage&q=tony%20o'reilly%2C%20Mandela%20sent%20by%20God&f=false">“sent by God”</a>, said Irish newspaper magnate Tony O’Reilly, who’s said to have been a friend of Mandela’s. His purchase of South Africa’s then largest newspaper company, Argus Newspapers, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064229508535962">was made possible by Mandela’s support</a>. Former American president Barack Obama <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/12/05/president-obama-delivers-statement-passing-nelson-mandela">declared that</a> Mandela</p>
<blockquote>
<p>changed the arc of history, transforming his country, the continent and the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A second prevailing view is hostile and dismissive. By 2015, a reputation that had appeared invincible was being shredded in some media outlets, on the streets and especially on university campuses across South Africa. The critique centred on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-1994-miracle-whats-left-159495">1994 negotiated settlement</a> that ended apartheid. It accused Mandela of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-africa-should-undo-mandelas-economic-deals-52767">betraying</a> the black majority to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-africa-should-undo-mandelas-economic-deals-52767">appease the economically powerful white minority</a>.</p>
<p>Both narratives – Mandela as secular saint or Mandela as sellout – are poor history. The suggestion that Mandela single-handedly achieved democracy is as intellectually threadbare as its mirror image: that he was responsible for the failure to transform social and economic relations after 1994.</p>
<p>Our edited collection, <em><a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/reassessing-mandela/">Reassessing Mandela</a></em>, provides a scholarly counterweight to the two polarised positions. It attempts to begin the task of revisiting the canonical biographies, rethinking aspects of Mandela’s life and his politics, and evaluating how he is and should be remembered.</p>
<h2>Reassessing Mandela</h2>
<p>The first aspect of Mandela’s life reassessed in the book is his family and its background, his childhood and youth, and his Thembu lineage. Two chapters – by the late <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/sources/alumni-news/2017/distinguished-historian-passes-away.html">Phil Bonner</a> and by <a href="https://sociology.columbian.gwu.edu/xolela-mangcu">Xolela Mangcu</a> – complement one another in intriguing ways. Both historians remind us that Mandela’s 1994 autobiography, <em><a href="https://www.exclusivebooks.co.za/product/9780349106533">Long Walk to Freedom</a></em>, is an unreliable text. Some of its flaws are replicated in the work of others. </p>
<p>Bonner’s archivally based chapter corrects some of the shaky chronology in <em>Long Walk</em>. It identifies Mandela’s father Gadla Mandela as “a significant if little recognised historical figure” but shows that Mandela’s own account of his father defying the white magistrate cannot be read as history. </p>
<p>Mangcu’s chapter challenges Mandela’s own account of his descent. He locates him within a history of the Thembu royal house’s “pragmatic co-operation” with colonial rule. Mandela did not mention this. </p>
<p>Mangcu emphasises the history of “African political modernity” in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/transkei">Transkei</a>, a territory comprising a number of African kingdoms and chiefdoms annexed in the 19th century. He also considers Gadla’s role in the local administrative body (Bungha), where he is portrayed as resisting both missionary influence and colonial regulations.</p>
<p>Bonner and Mangcu underline the complexity of “indirect rule” in the Transkei. They correct the tendency to discuss Mandela’s early years through a lens of rural nostalgia.</p>
<h2>Mandela’s political activism</h2>
<p>A second broad area of reassessment emerges from three chapters which consider Mandela’s relationship with the South African Communist Party <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-communist-party-sacp">(SACP)</a>, his activism and especially his leadership in underground politics. <a href="https://www.ul.ie/research/prof-tom-lodge">Tom Lodge</a> produces a fine-grained account of Mandela’s “association with South Africa’s communist left”. His is a study of friendships and social networks, of left-wing readings and writings, and of political alliances and tactics.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/department-of-historical-studies/Pages/staff/Paul-Landau.aspx">Paul Landau</a>’s chapter focuses on the period between the 1960 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> of black protesters by apartheid police, and Mandela’s arrest <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324461604578191683590816070">in August 1962</a>. It traces the efforts to implement the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2020.1700663">M-Plan</a> – a template for an underground structure of the liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC). </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Mandela and a small group of like-minded colleagues sought to use the plan to transform the ANC into a militant vanguard movement willing to employ violence against the state.</p>
<p>Thula Simpson’s chapter reconsiders Mandela’s role as commander-in-chief of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">umKhonto we Sizwe</a>, (an armed wing set up by the ANC and SACP). He suggests that its campaign of urban sabotage was more effective than generally acknowledged. </p>
<p>Three other chapters cast new light on different aspects of Mandela’s life: his marriage to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela; his years in jail on Robben Island, and his role in the human rights discourse that shaped South Africa’s new <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/shireen-hassim">Shireen Hassim</a> provides a compelling rereading of</p>
<blockquote>
<p>one of the most iconic political marriages in history. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>First, she establishes Mandela’s wife Winnie’s own political career and significance. She says it offered “a form of intimate political leadership” to young activists. Secondly, she explores the complex relationship between Winnie’s political trajectory and Nelson’s, and how a widening political divide accompanied the breakdown of the marriage.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cfms.uct.ac.za/fam/staff/evans">Martha Evans</a> examines four visits by journalists to Robben Island between 1964 and 1977, their interactions with Mandela and their published accounts. She discusses Mandela’s capacity to capitalise on brief contacts from an apparent position of weakness, and shows how incarceration enhanced his iconic status.</p>
<h2>Recalibrating Mandela</h2>
<p>These chapters are book-ended by Colin Bundy’s introduction and <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/find-an-expert/professor-elleke-boehmer">Elleke Boehmer</a>’s postscript. Boehmer explores how memories of Mandela are constructed and contested, and what fresh interpretations can teach us. </p>
<p>This collection treats Mandela not as an individual miracle-maker or traitor to the cause of transformation. It shows him as one political actor, alongside a multitude of others, within complex political and social forces. </p>
<p>It suggests that scholarship on Mandela will continue to explore and explain his politics and his ability to assert leadership. It will also continue to explore the contradictions and continuities of his personal makeup, and his determination over decades to bring people together. All this, while negotiating the corrugated terrain of race and identity in South Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160628/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The suggestion that Mandela single-handedly achieved democracy is as intellectually threadbare as the charge that he was centrally responsible for the failure to transform South Africa.Colin Bundy, Honorary Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of OxfordWilliam Beinart, Professor, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1459532020-09-10T16:05:24Z2020-09-10T16:05:24ZGeorge Bizos: heroic South African human rights lawyer with a macabre duty to represent the dead<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357456/original/file-20200910-20-1k68bhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Human rights lawyer and anti-apartheid activist George Bizos at Freedom Park, Pretoria, in 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/george-bizos">Advocate George Bizos</a>, who has died at the age of 92, stands in the pantheon of South African human rights lawyers and anti-apartheid activists.</p>
<p>Throughout his lengthy lifetime, he doggedly used the courts as his chosen terrain to fight back against a police state that blatantly violated the rule of law. His lifelong commitment to human rights left a legacy in South Africa’s <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution and bill of rights</a>. He knew that democracy is not a destination but a lifelong quest: eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.</p>
<p>Bizos was among a number of young white people who arrived in South Africa as refugees from Europe, only to find themselves forced to align themselves with the oppressed black majority against apartheid. This company includes <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/joe-slovo">Joe Slovo</a>, Lithuanian by birth, and also an advocate by training, who became leader of the <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">South African Communist Party</a>.</p>
<p>Bizos was born in 1927 in the Greek seashore village of Kirani. During the Nazi occupation of World War II, when 13 years old, he and his father helped seven New Zealand soldiers try to escape to Crete (at that time still under Allied rule). Adrift at sea in a boat, they were rescued by a British destroyer, and he and his father <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/george-bizos">arrived as refugees in Johannesburg</a>.</p>
<p>George graduated in 1950 with a law degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, where he also served on the Student Representative Council. The university described him as one of its greatest alumni, <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/general-news/2020/2020-09/a-hero-has-fallen---rest-in-peace-advocate-george-bizos.html">adding that</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>We remember him as a man of courage who always sided with the truth and who spent his lifetime fighting injustice and prejudice. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bizos became aware of the racism in the country early on, and after 1948, the apartheid system. However, he focused his support for the liberation movement on serving as their lawyer in court, not himself becoming involved in political party actions.</p>
<h2>Legal practice</h2>
<p>Bizos practised as an advocate from 1954 to 1990.</p>
<p>He was soon advising <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/father-trevor-huddleston">Father Trevor Huddleston</a>, the anti-apartheid Anglican missionary, and defending the leaders of the ANC and allied organisations, among them Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, during the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/treason-trial-1956-1961">treason trial that ran from 1956 to 1961</a>. </p>
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<p>Among the charges was that they had conspired to draw up the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>, the ANC’s blueprint for a free, non-racial South Africa. All the accused were eventually acquitted after the judges agreed the state had failed to show that the charter was a communist document. It was the longest treason trial in the country’s history.</p>
<p>Bizos also defended Mandela, Sisulu and eight others who were charged with sabotage in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia trial of 1963-64</a>. He advised Mandela on the wording of his famous statement from the dock. Mandela stated that a non-racial South Africa was an ideal he hoped to live for, but if necessary was <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/i-am-prepared-to-die">prepared to die for</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/people-involved-rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Eight of the 10 accused</a> were eventually sentenced to life in prison. All but <a href="https://theconversation.com/denis-goldberg-rivonia-triallist-liberation-struggle-stalwart-outspoken-critic-137670">Denis Goldberg</a>, who was white, were sent to Robben Island. Goldberg went to Pretoria Central prison. The apartheid laws of the time prohibited “inter-racial” mixing, even in jail.</p>
<p>Bizos outlived the longest-surviving of the triallists, <a href="https://theconversation.com/denis-goldberg-rivonia-triallist-liberation-struggle-stalwart-outspoken-critic-137670">Goldberg</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/andrew-mlangeni-1925-2020-south-africa-loses-the-last-of-the-rivonia-triallists-143276">Andrew Mlangeni</a>, who passed away earlier this year. </p>
<h2>Macabre duty</h2>
<p>In a police state such as apartheid South Africa, a lawyer will all too often have the macabre duty of representing the dead. On behalf of their families, Bizos represented at inquests and at the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> several government opponents who died at the hands of the apartheid regime – either in its prisons or outside. Among them were <a href="https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/">Ahmed Timol</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-neil-hudson-aggett">Neil Aggett</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thembisile-chris-hani">Chris Hani</a>, Ruth First, <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/steve-biko-the-black-consciousness-movement-steve-biko-foundation/AQp2i2l5?hl=en">Steve Biko</a>, <a href="https://www.mgslg.co.za/content/matthew-goniwe.html">Matthew Goniwe</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/fort-calata">Fort Calata</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/sparrow-mkonto">Sparrow Mkonto</a>, and <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/sicelo-mhlauli-1949-1985">Sicelo Mhlauli</a>.</p>
<p>He also defended the 22 accused in the <a href="http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.nuun1989_04_final.pdf">Delmas treason trial</a>, which ran from 1985 to 1989. </p>
<p>Bizos was a life-long campaigner against the death penalty. He also took part in the negotiations to release Mandela. In 1990 he joined the ANC legal and constitutional team which helped draft the interim constitution. He was an advisor through the negotiations to end apartheid (<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">Codesa</a>) and helped write laws such as the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1995-034.pdf">Truth and Reconciliation Act</a>.</p>
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<h2>Life of activism</h2>
<p>He helped found the Legal Resources Centre in 1978 and joined its constitutional litigation team in 1991: he led its team at the <a href="https://www.sahrc.org.za/home/21/files/marikana-report-1.pdf">Marikana Commission of Inquiry in 2013</a>. The commission, headed by <a href="https://justice.gov.za/comm-mrk/index.html">Judge Ian Farlam</a>, investigated the tragic incidents that culminated in the killing of 44 people, and injury to 250, in August 2012.</p>
<p>Also, <a href="https://www.news24.com/News24/Chinese-qualify-for-BEE-20080618">during 2008</a>, he represented the Chinese Association of South Africa in winning a ruling that Chinese people living in South Africa before 1990 must be designated as “previously disadvantaged” in terms of affirmative action and <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/legis/consol_act/bbeea2003311.pdf">black economic empowerment</a> proceedings.</p>
<p>He helped found the National Council of <a href="https://www.lhr.org.za/">Lawyers for Human Rights in 1979</a>. He served on the <a href="https://nationalgovernment.co.za/units/view/64/judicial-service-commission-jsc">Judicial Service Commission </a> between 1994 and 2009. The commission interviews candidates for judicial positions, makes recommendations for appointment to the bench and handles complaints brought against the judges. </p>
<p>He was an acting judge of the High Court in South Africa, and a judge in the <a href="http://www.unesco.org/culture/laws/pdf/cv_bizos.pdf">Botswana Appeal Court 1985-1993</a>. He also defended Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean opposition leader, in a Zimbabwe trial <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/200211111010.html">in 2003</a>.</p>
<p>Bizos authored three books: <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/george-bizos-no-one-to-blame/nlyj-120-g220">No One to Blame? In Pursuit of Justice in South Africa</a> (1998); <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/odyssey-freedom/9781415200957">Odyssey to Freedom </a>(2011); and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36386027-65-years-of-friendship">Sixty-Five Years of Friendship</a> (2017). </p>
<h2>Post-apartheid</h2>
<p>George Bizos remained steadfast in his commitment to human rights after South Africa became a democracy in 1994. His appearance on behalf of the families of mine workers shot by the police at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry was merely the most high-profile of his efforts to seek justice for the poor and marginalised.</p>
<p>According to Nicole Fritz, CEO of <a href="https://www.freedomunderlaw.org/">Freedom Under Law</a>, Bizos represented what law can and should be: essentially humane, principled, decent, just. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The evocation of the rule of law upheld by Bizos and those like Mandela, Sisulu, Arthur Chaskalson, as expansive and merciful, a means to secure equal rights for all, ultimately defeated the law of the apartheid state: cruel, merciless, oppressive. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>While Bizos helped usher in a new constitutional democracy, he showed in the aftermath that the struggle to perfect justice continued, that it is the work of a lifetime, says Fritz:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>His commitment to justice was inexhaustible. He continued to work and serve justice even when he could, with every good reason, have sought a well-deserved and restful retirement. And that commitment to justice extended beyond South Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She recalls how, travelling with him to Harare a few years back, at both O.R. Tambo International Airport and at Harare airport, he was virtually mobbed by fellow travellers: “There’s George Bizos!”, “There’s Madiba’s lawyer!” And later in a Harare magistrate’s court, the reception was similar: and not just from the accused facing politically motivated charges and whom he had come to support and stand with in solidarity. He got the same reception from the court officials. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>That huge affection in which he was held by so many, not just in this country but across the region, is testimony to the enormous contribution he made: to his unceasing commitment to justice. His example will stand as a light – an example of the role one can play, and the difference to be made, even in the darkest of days.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Accolades</h2>
<p>His <a href="https://www.ukzn.ac.za/wp-content/noticeFiles/Advocate_George_Bizos_Invite_Final_Final.pdf">awards</a> include the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/george-bizos">Order for Meritorious Service</a> (1999); the <a href="https://www.ukzn.ac.za/wp-content/noticeFiles/Advocate_George_Bizos_Invite_Final_Final.pdf">International Trial Lawyer of the Year</a> (2001) from the International Academy of Trial Lawyers; and in 2004 the International Bar Association honoured him with the Barnard Simons Memorial Award.</p>
<p>He married Arethe Daflos in 1948; she passed away in 2017. George Bizos is survived by three sons and seven grandchildren.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145953/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the ANC, but writes this obituary in his professional capacity as a political scientist and historian.</span></em></p>His appearance on behalf of the families of mine workers shot by the police at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry was just one of his efforts to seek justice for the poor and marginalised.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1308032020-01-30T08:15:50Z2020-01-30T08:15:50ZFW de Klerk made a speech 31 years ago that ended apartheid: why he did it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312476/original/file-20200129-92992-1wb1z6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">FW de Klerk, the last president of apartheid South Africa</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On 2 February 1990, a speech was delivered by then President FW de Klerk <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02103/05lv02104/06lv02105.htm">that marked the beginning</a> of a radically new political landscape for South Africa.</p>
<p>In his opening address to parliament, De Klerk unbanned the exiled liberation movements, notably the African National Congress (ANC), Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) and South African Communist Party (SACP). All had been embroiled in a fight against white minority rule. He also announced a moratorium on the death penalty, the end of the state of emergency – which had been in place for five years – and the release of political prisoners. </p>
<p>The speech set off a series of dramatic, and, until that point, unforeseen events. Nine days later <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a> was released from prison after 27 years. Within three months the first bilateral talks between the ANC and the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/frederik-willem-de-klerk">De Klerk</a> government happened. </p>
<p>De Klerk’s speech that day has often been portrayed as having happened because of a <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=L89lCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA191&lpg=PA191&dq=de+klerk%27s+damascus+moment&source=bl&ots=jU7eKmcLFS&sig=ACfU3U38llon9Ql6Jm-ajJMim_egGjN8PA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi8ntCjx6jnAhUNE8AKHY07CTYQ6AEwBnoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=de%20klerk's%20damascus%20moment&f=false">Damascene moment on his part</a>: that is that he suddenly had a blinding insight that apartheid was bad. </p>
<p>My view is different: I believe that the speech was preceded by an array of developments that created an environment which either forced or encouraged him to make the epochal announcements. </p>
<p>Thirty years later, it is an opportune time to take stock of the historical significance of the 1990 speech. What insights can we gain from that single event, and what does it tell us about how history is made? </p>
<p>Apartheid was regarded as one of the most intractable international issues of the time. Hence its demise, to which De Klerk’s speech helped provide the impetus, shows that even the most seemingly intractable political problems
can be resolved peacefully. </p>
<h2>Impetus for change</h2>
<p>The demise of De Klerk’s predecessor PW Botha, after <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/president-pw-botha-suffers-stroke">suffering a stroke</a>, on 18 January 1989, was a critical change in the dynamics. On 2 February 1989, De Klerk succeeded him as leader of the National Party (NP), which governed apartheid South Africa.</p>
<p>De Klerk immediately made changes to Botha’s military security paradigm by down-grading the State Security Council and its local structure staffed mainly by the military and police, and restored <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/negotiations-and-transition">civilian rule by cabinet</a>.</p>
<p>As new party leader, he undertook an international tour after realising the extent of the international community’s abandonment of National Party rule. He met then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1989. She made the <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/margaret-thatchers-role-in-sas-transformation--fw-">urgency of Nelson Mandela’s release</a> clear to him. </p>
<p>In the ANC too changes were underway. The liberation movement took the initiative in the form of the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/history/INTERIM/NEGOTS-HARARE/89AUG21.PDF">Harare Declaration</a>, its framework for a democratic transition in South Africa. It publicly showed the ANC’s willingness to negotiate and not to rely mainly on strategies like the “people’s war” and armed struggle to bring an end to apartheid. </p>
<p>The ANC wanted to take the initiative in moulding a transition framework. The declaration was adopted by the Organisation of African Unity in <a href="https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/ZA_HarareDeclaration-21Aug_1989.pdf">August 1989</a> and later by the Commonwealth in <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/media/news/harare-declaration-reflections-landmark-accord-25-years">October 1991</a>. </p>
<h2>Prelude to change</h2>
<p>Other developments in the background provided impetus to De Klerk’s announcements. These included talks-about-talks in three separate processes between the NP and the ANC. South Africans knew nothing about these encounters.</p>
<p>The first was a series of meetings between Mandela and Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee and his team. It included talks about his release as well as Mandela’s views on a <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/the-star/my-top-secret-talks-with-mandela-1851304">range of policy matters</a>. </p>
<p>The second process was in the form of a number of meetings in Switzerland in the late 1980s between ANC leaders such as Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and Joe Nhlanhla, with senior officials of <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/lucerne-switzerland-september-12-1989">South Africa’s National Intelligence Service</a>. </p>
<p>The talks explored the ANC’s thinking on important matters like the economy and the armed struggle. With these talks both sides could determine whether there would be sufficient common ground for a dialogue.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312481/original/file-20200129-93004-1qplwt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312481/original/file-20200129-93004-1qplwt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312481/original/file-20200129-93004-1qplwt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312481/original/file-20200129-93004-1qplwt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312481/original/file-20200129-93004-1qplwt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312481/original/file-20200129-93004-1qplwt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312481/original/file-20200129-93004-1qplwt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their role in South Africa’s peaceful transition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The third process was a set of meetings in the UK between the ANC under Thabo Mbeki, and groups of Afrikaner intellectuals coordinated by the academic, <a href="https://www.news24.com/Archives/Witness/Talking-in-secret-20150430">Willie Esterhuyse</a>. As a civil society grouping with direct access to the National Party government, they explored the same topics as the Swiss talks.</p>
<p>In hindsight, this process served to legitimise future dialogue, both for the National Party government once official dialogue was publicly announced, and for the Afrikaans community, which respected its intellectuals.</p>
<p>All these talks helped the leaders on both sides view one another as fellow human beings capable of working together. They also clarified their views and strengthened the credibility of dialogue as a way to break South Africa’s political stalemate.</p>
<h2>Internal turmoil, external pressure</h2>
<p>Domestic factors also played a big role in De Klerk’s decision to deliver his momentous speech. </p>
<p>One was that the country was under a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/state-emergency-1985">state of emergency</a>. First announced in 1985, the government used it to quell the <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/ecc25/ecc_under_a_state_of_emergency.htm">growing revolt in the black townships</a>. </p>
<p>But the heavy-handed approach failed to pacify the townships, leading to a stalemate that hurt both the apartheid regime and its opponents. </p>
<p>The other domestic development was the impact of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/united-democratic-front-udf">United Democratic Front</a> formed in 1983, which united several anti-apartheid organisations, effectively under the banned ANC’s banner. </p>
<p>Public disillusionment with the state of emergency – and a general realisation that the National Party government had exhausted all its options – deepened the stalemate.</p>
<p>De Klerk responded by meeting leaders of the then Mass Democratic Movement, which brought together the United Democratic Front and the trade union movement, led by Bishop Desmond Tutu among others, in October 1989. He also announced the release of ANC leader <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG-sE6xPMnc">Walter Sisulu</a> and all the other Rivonia trialists, except Mandela whose turn would come four months later.</p>
<p>A huge welcome rally was held for the Sisulu group outside Soweto. The event amounted to a <em>de facto</em> unbanning of the ANC. All its banned symbols were on public display. Sisulu and others’ speeches were unmitigated renditions of the ANC’s message.</p>
<h2>Final push</h2>
<p>Two international moments served as the final push for De Klerk. On 9 November 1989, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-30-years-ago-resonated-across-africa-126521">the Berlin Wall fell</a>. De Klerk later explained that this signified the end of Soviet socialism and its influence on the ANC. That meant the ANC would be less ideological and more open for negotiated compromises, making it the opportune time to negotiate.</p>
<p>Four months later, Namibia became independent under the leadership of the ANC’s ally, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/21/world/namibia-achieves-independence-after-75-years-of-pretoria-s-rule.html">Swapo</a>. At the time of De Klerk’s speech most of the negotiations for Namibia’s independence had been concluded – with South Africa’s support. To some degree a free Namibia was therefore a precursor to a free South Africa.</p>
<p><em>The article has been updated to change 30 years to 31 years.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130803/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dirk Kotze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In his new capacity as President of South Africa, FW de Klerk directly experienced for the first time how the international community had abandoned its support for minority white rule.Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1101602019-01-22T13:56:28Z2019-01-22T13:56:28ZWhy Ramaphosa can’t stop the ANC’s decline, even with a win at the polls<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254695/original/file-20190121-100279-1o18z6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A victory at the polls might not be enough to give President Cyril Ramaphosa the leeway to fix South Africa's economy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent months there has been conjecture that if South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa wins a suitably large majority of the upcoming national vote, he will be able to achieve two notable outcomes. </p>
<p>Firstly, he’ll be able reverse the governing African National Congress’s (ANC’s) slide into populism and factionalism. And he’ll be able to see off challenges from the radical <a href="https://www.news24.com/Columnists/MelanieVerwoerd/how-the-anc-and-ramaphosa-can-counter-the-populist-eff-20181107">Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)</a>, the country’s third largest party. </p>
<p>The argument is that he would then have a sufficiently strong mandate to undertake economic reforms <a href="https://www.news24.com/Columnists/MaxduPreez/only-unpopular-decisions-will-lead-sa-out-of-zuma-ruins-20181113">needed to fix South Africa</a>. This includes broadening competition, limiting the size and scope of the state-owned entities and expanding the public transport system. Other things that need fixing include reducing red tape to boost entrepreneurship and small businesses, improving the education system and trade integration <a href="https://oecdecoscope.blog/2018/03/05/south-africa-it-is-time-to-rekindle-the-economy/">in the region</a>.</p>
<p>But critics and opposition party leaders hold a counter view. They argue that voters vote for the ANC – not for Ramaphosa. And that Ramaphosa only serves at the behest of the ANC’s National Executive Committee. Since the NEC is the principle executive arm of the party, this means that internal ANC factionalism <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2018-11-15-bigger-mandate-for-cyril-ramaphosa-in-2019-will-be-a-bigger-mistake/">is more important</a> than the electorate. </p>
<p>In reality, both these arguments ignore the extent to which Ramaphosa’s post-election reformist ability will be hampered by other factors. The most important of these is the outcome of the dysfunctional ANC <a href="https://city-press.news24.com/News/anc-postpones-conference-over-list-chaos-20181217">list process</a>. Historically, the compilation of the list of nominations for national and provincial MPs has been fraught with claims of <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-01-01-the-anc-must-take-the-list-process-seriously-or-it-will-be-punished-at-the-polls">fraud and vote-rigging</a>. </p>
<p>Another important factor is the concessions made to the ANC’s alliance partners. These are the trade union federation Cosatu, the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the South African National Civic Organisation. Based on recent pronouncements, it appears that the “radical economic transformation” <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2019-01-18-the-reserve-bank-and-the-national-democratic-revolutionary-alliance/">ideology</a> of the Zuma-faction has become accepted dogma among alliance members. </p>
<h2>Shortcuts</h2>
<p>Since coming to power in January 2018 Ramaphosa has made notable strides in dismantling <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-12-19-president-cyril-ramaphosa-and-his-team-what-a-difference-179-votes-make">Zuma’s “mafia state”</a>. But he is yet to gain the upper hand in the ANC’s collective policy making. </p>
<p>In addition to the <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Opinion/daniel-silke-fears-over-land-expropriation-are-undermining-the-economy-20180901-2">confused statements</a> about land expropriation without compensation, three other policy developments could prove damaging to Ramaphosa’s reformist agenda. </p>
<p>The first was the gazetting of changes to the Property Valuation Act of 2014 <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-01-13-latitude-for-expropriation-without-compensation-is-already-underway">in November 2018</a>. This seeks to change the formula that will be used to calculate the compensation payable when a property is targeted for land reform. Under the new formula, the value of a property will be determined based on its income. </p>
<p>Naturally, there are fears that if this new valuation formula is used irresponsibly, it could <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-01-13-latitude-for-expropriation-without-compensation-is-already-underway/">significantly affect</a> residential property values. </p>
<p>The second, contained in the ANC’s recent <a href="https://ewn.co.za/Topic/ANC-election-manifest">election manifesto</a>, is the issue of prescribed assets. The manifesto says the ANC must: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Investigate the introduction of prescribed assets on financial institutions’ funds to mobilise funds within a regulatory framework for socially productive investments (including housing, infrastructure for social and economic development and township and village economy) and job creation while considering the risk profiles of the affected entities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This will require the country’s pension funds and asset management companies to invest a significant portion of the savings of South African citizens in state-owned entities. The problem is that many are mired in corruption and delivery failure. There are fears that <a href="https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/south-africa/prescribed-assets-wont-work-industry/">this capital will be lost</a>.</p>
<p>The third is the contradictory statements about the South African Reserve Bank. On the one side the Zuma-aligned ANC secretary-general, Ace Magashule, recently said that the national reserve bank will be nationalised. He said this would be in line with the resolutions at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-south-africas-anc-bent-on-radical-policies-heres-why-the-answer-is-no-89801">ANC 2017 national conference</a>. And that the aim would be to ensure <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-01-16-ramaphosa-and-magashule-contradict-each-other-on-reserve-bank-nationalisation/">the adoption</a> of a “flexible monetary policy regime”. </p>
<p>Ramaphosa countered that this resolution was simply a <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-01-16-ramaphosa-and-magashule-contradict-each-other-on-reserve-bank-nationalisation/">“wish or aspiration”</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time, the Communist Party claims that nationalisation of the central bank is a tenet of the National Democratic Revolution, which is the central ideology of the governing tripartite alliance. The SACP argues that it’s therefore <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2019-01-18-the-reserve-bank-and-the-national-democratic-revolutionary-alliance/">a requirement</a> if the alliance is to support the ANC in the upcoming election. The ANC needs the SACP’s support in the election if it wants to avoid losing votes.</p>
<p>The constitutionality and practicality of all these measures will undoubtedly be challenged in court. Nevertheless, they signal to investors that fixed and liquid assets in South Africa are potentially at risk of government intervention. And, as <a href="https://econpapers.repec.org/article/cupintorg/v_3a57_3ay_3a2003_3ai_3a01_3ap_3a175-211_5f57.htm">studies show</a>, financial markets respond negatively to this perception. </p>
<h2>Sunset</h2>
<p>Over the last two decades the goodwill extended towards South Africa after its liberation – as well as the country’s financial defences – have been exhausted. This has been because of poor governance, ill-conceived policy choices and implementation, and democratic immaturity. As with with numerous other national liberation movements in Africa, the ANC has increasingly turned to populist policies as a means to retain power.</p>
<p>Many South Africans are pinning their hopes of economic recovery on a strong Ramaphosa-aligned ANC victory. But the extent of his ability to pursue reforms after the poll depends largely on the outcome of processes outside of the election. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, indications over the last year suggest that despite his promise of a “new dawn”, a Ramaphosa-led ANC election victory is unlikely to reverse the party’s decline in popular support. This raises the prospect of heightened <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2019-01-21-the-zuma-power-elite-is-alive-kicking-and-preparing-to-replace-ramaphosa/">factional battles</a> in the alliance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Gossel receives funding from the University of Cape Town and the National Research Fund.</span></em></p>Indications are that even an ANC victory at the polls is unlikely to reverse the party’s decline in popular support.Sean Gossel, Associate professor, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900312018-01-17T14:46:18Z2018-01-17T14:46:18ZNationalising South Africa’s central bank isn’t bad per se: just what’s done with it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202064/original/file-20180116-53289-1n1hdka.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C32%2C5447%2C3227&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), recently adopted a resolution to <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/business/2017-12-20-anc-instructs-government-to-start-nationalising-reserve-bank/">nationalise</a> the country’s central bank. The move comes on the back of calls for government to rein in the South African Reserve Bank, causing concerns that the bank’s independence will be lost. Sibonelo Radebe asked Jannie Rossouw to consider what’s at stake.</em></p>
<p><strong>What do you make of the ANC’s resolution?</strong></p>
<p>The ANC’s thinking around this resolution is a bit ambiguous and confusing. The resolution itself and subsequent comments by the new ANC President, Cyril Ramaphosa, say that the resolution should not affect the <a href="http://www.thenewage.co.za/anc-president-cyril-ramaphosa-delivers-his-first-january-8th-statement-full-text/">independence</a> of the bank. </p>
<p>While upholding the resolution to nationalise, Ramaphosa added this <a href="https://www.ujuh.co.za/nc-january-8-2018-statement-on-accelerated-radical-socio-economic-transformation/">qualification</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Reserve Bank plays a critical role in the life of any nation with regard to monetary policy and safeguarding and promoting the value of its currency. The ANC once more reaffirms the role, mandate and independence of the Reserve Bank.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He clearly wants to protect the central bank from political interference. This should be welcomed because political interference would have an impact on the constitutional mandate of the <a href="https://www.acts.co.za/constitution_of_/index.html">central bank</a>.</p>
<p>But those pushing for nationalisation are against it remaining independent from political interference. They want its independence curtailed. This view is aired by those on the left in the ANC, such as the <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/nationalise-reserve-bank-cosatu-tells-government-7435541">Congress of South African Trade Unions</a> and the <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/nationalise-the-reserve-bank--numsa">South African Communist Party</a>. They believe that the Reserve Bank is misguided on focusing on keeping inflation under control and that this compromises economic growth. <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/nationalise-the-reserve-bank--numsa">Prominent ANC leaders</a> have also backed this view.</p>
<p>On its own, a change of the bank’s ownership from private shareholders to the South African government wouldn’t affect the constitutional mandate of the central bank. Government ownership doesn’t automatically imply government control. This is evident in countries like the UK, Sweden and Denmark, where government ownership of central banks doesn’t affect their unwavering commitment to keep inflation under control. </p>
<p><strong>How does this resolution fit into global trends?</strong></p>
<p>Nationalisation would align the South African Reserve Bank’s ownership structure with the majority of central banks across the world. Other than in South Africa, central banks with private shareholders can be found in <a href="https://econrsa.org/system/files/publications/working_papers/working_paper_724.pdf">seven other countries</a>. These are Belgium, Greece, Italy, Japan, San Marino, Switzerland and Turkey.</p>
<p>The number of central banks with private shareholders have declined over the years since the nationalisation of the <a href="https://econrsa.org/system/files/publications/working_papers/working_paper_457.pdf">Reserve Bank of Zealand</a>. Many more countries followed. The most recent was the <a href="https://econrsa.org/system/files/publications/working_papers/working_paper_724.pdf">National Bank of Austria</a> in 2010. </p>
<p><strong>What influence and benefits do the shareholders of the bank have?</strong></p>
<p>The South African Reserve Bank has 2 million issued <a href="https://www.resbank.co.za/BanknotesandCoin/Upgrade1Banknotes/Documents/SA%20Reserve%20Bank%20Act%2090%20of%201989.pdf">shares</a>, held by the general public, which includes individuals and juristic persons. No group of shareholders (referred to as associates) can hold more than <a href="https://journals.co.za/content/journal/10520/EJC-8e0a85524">10 000 shares</a>. This ensures that no shareholder can exercise undue influence over the activities of the bank.</p>
<p>Shareholders in the Reserve Bank have very limited powers. And being a shareholder isn’t very lucrative. They are entitled by law to annual dividends not exceeding 10c per share per annum, which amounts to 8c per share after tax. </p>
<p>Shareholders also have the right to attend the bank’s ordinary annual general meeting where they are able to approve the appointment of the external auditors of the bank and set their remuneration. They also elect six of the 13 board members. The other board members, including the Governor and the deputy governors, are appointed by the president of the country.</p>
<p>The board plays an oversight role on the governance of the bank – including being responsible for the bank’s annual financial statements. But its mandate does not extend to monetary policy decisions. </p>
<p>This structure of general meetings adds an additional layer of transparency to the activities of the central bank and improves its accountability. At general meetings (which are also attended by journalists), the Governor answers questions on the bank’s activities and on its financial performance. The whole process adds to the transparency and general understanding of the role and activities of the central bank.</p>
<p><strong>What needs to happen to give effect to the ANC resolution?</strong></p>
<p>The nationalisation of the bank will require an amendment to the <a href="https://www.resbank.co.za/AboutUs/Legislation/Pages/default.aspx">South African Reserve Bank Act</a> which stipulates the private shareholding. Amendments require a simple majority in parliament. </p>
<p>Nationalisation could therefore happen as soon as legislation is prepared and a bill is passed in parliament.</p>
<p>But the process could become far more complex if nationalisation trampled on some international interests that are anchored in international treaties. At the moment it’s not clear whether or not this is the case.</p>
<p>The other challenge might be around determining the buyout value of the bank’s shares. This is because the South African Reserve Bank Act makes provision for the liquidation of the central bank, but not for its nationalisation. </p>
<p>In the event of liquidation, the legislation prescribes that shareholders should be reimbursed for their shares in terms of a formula based on the trading value of these shares. The shares are traded on an over the counter share trading platform. The last traded price per share was <a href="https://www.resbank.co.za/Lists/News%20and%20Publications/Attachments/8201/Share%20price%20and%20availability.pdf">R9,60</a>.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://journals.co.za/content/journal/10520/EJC-8e0a85524">different approach</a> could be to use the share price confirmed by the High Court in dealing with delinquent shareholders. The central bank had to approach the High Court to deal with shareholders who failed to adhere to legal prescriptions in respect of maximum of 10 000 shares held by associated shareholders. In this instance the High Court confirmed a price of R1,55 per share which was <a href="http://www.unisa.ac.za/static/corporate_web/Content/Colleges/CEMS/Journals/SA%20Business%20Review/documents/Sabview_21_Chap1.pdf">calculated</a> by consultant firm KPMG on behalf of the central bank.</p>
<p>These two examples highlight the fact that valuation won’t be a simple matter. Adding to the complexity is the fact that parliament could decide on a completely different value of the shares.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90031/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jannie Rossouw worked as Company Secretary of the SA Reserve Bank and holds shares in the central bank. He is also a pensioner of the SA Reserve Bank. He is a NRF C2-rated researcher and receives funding from the NRF. </span></em></p>A change in the ownership of the South African Reserve Bank from private shareholders to government shouldn’t impact the constitutional mandate of the central bank in any way.Jannie Rossouw, Head of School of Economic & Business Sciences, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/893172017-12-18T13:15:42Z2017-12-18T13:15:42ZVintage Zuma delivers a vengeful swansong, devoid of any responsibility<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199689/original/file-20171218-27607-1xxomej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African President Jacob Zuma sings before his opening address at the 54th National Conference of the governing ANC.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The hope was that in <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/anc-conference-2017/2017-12-16-in-full--president-jacob-zumas-final-speech-as-anc-president/">opening</a> the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/54th-national-conference">54th National Conference</a> of the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma would rise to the occasion, seize the moment of his last address as party president with honesty and leave something worthy of history. For posterity to cherish.</p>
<p>It sounded as though he was taking the bull by the horns when he referred to <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/jackson-mthembu-ending-slate-politics-cant-happen-like-instant-coffee-20151108">slate politics</a> as the function of ANC factionalism, which he acknowledged had fractured the governing party, including corrupting its systems and processes. Slate politics are the reason for internecine contests for leadership positions in the ANC, which, as he correctly pointed out, rob the ANC of good leadership.</p>
<p>But, in the end, his narcissistic streak shaped his swansong. It was largely couched in aspirational rather than diagnostic terms. For a political report of a leader whose 10-year tenure was coming to an end, it left much to be desired. </p>
<p>He claimed that he was leaving behind a stronger ANC, a statement he could only make if he’s suffering from delusions of grandeur, or because he’s indulging in self-gratification. Which ever it was, it exposed the dishonesty of the <a href="http://www.thenewage.co.za/anc-political-report-by-outgoing-president-jacob-zuma/">political report</a> he subsequently delivered, which was cluttered with rhetorical ploys and lacked a coherent theme for the august event. In truth, the divisions in the ANC are at their worst under him. So is its governing <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=2051">Tripartite Alliance</a> - with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-communist-party-strips-the-anc-of-its-multi-class-ruling-party-status-88647">South African Communist Party</a> and labour federation <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/zuma-banned-from-speaking-at-cosatu-events-9300206">Cosatu</a> - that it leads.</p>
<h2>An attack on democracy</h2>
<p>Zuma missed the purpose of a valedictory address – to guide the future in the wake of leadership changes. Instead, he became vengeful, taking issue with what he termed ill-discipline in the organisation. Here he was referring to members who <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/just-in-anc-free-state-pec-several-branches-barred-from-attending-elective-conference-20171215">take the ANC to court</a> for violating its own constitution and processes. He suggested that they should be dismissed from the organisation immediately. </p>
<p>This is a strange way of dealing with issues, particularly for a president in a constitutional democracy who spent <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jacob-gedleyihlekisa-zuma">half of his life</a> selflessly fighting for a more just system of organising society. The idea that someone’s membership of an organisation be immediately terminated when they take it to court to protect their rights is at variance with the principle of the supremacy of the constitution. </p>
<p>Zuma’s suggestion violates the right to external recourse for those aggrieved by internal organisational processes. That it’s even entertained by some in the leadership of the ANC demonstrates the extent of the crisis under Zuma. This is because ideas such as these pose a danger to the party’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/what-anc">foundational values</a> - of unity, non-racialism, non-sexism and democracy - as well as to the future of democracy in the country. That is because the ANC, despite its waning electoral performance, remains <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-has-remained-dominant-despite-shifts-in-support-base-63285">politically dominant</a>. Thus, what happens inside it ultimately affects the running of the country, hence it’s imperative <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-countrys-constitutional-court-can-consolidate-and-deepen-democracy-54184">internal party democracy</a> be entrenched in the ANC.</p>
<p>Had Zuma looked objectively and honestly into what led some members to take the ANC to court, his report would have perhaps managed to get to the core of the morass.</p>
<h2>Factional till the end</h2>
<p>Zuma also squandered the last opportunity he had to remove himself from petty factional politics of the ANC and assert himself as a unifier and a statesman. This was his chance to echo the voice of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-kaizana-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a>, the revered leader of the ANC who is attributed with holding the organisation together during its turbulent years as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">banned organisation</a>. </p>
<p>But he blew it by making a point of graciously thanking three senior members of the ANC who are leaders of the factions behind <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-03-anc-leadership-race-dlamini-zuma-supporters-in-battle-to-secure-the-final-prize-the-eastern-cape/">Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s presidential campaign</a>. These were the ANC Women’s League President <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/the-judiciary-carries-itself-as-if-its-being-lobbied-ancwl-president-20171209">Bathabile Dlamini</a>, ANC Youth’s League <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/anc-conference-2017/2017-12-16-maine-accuses-judges-of-seeking-to-influence-outcome-of-anc-conference/">Collen Maine</a>, and ANC military veterans leader <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-12-16-mkmva-boss-launches-scathing-attack-on-judiciary">Kebby Maphatsoe</a>.</p>
<p>On top of this, his political report lacked the valedictory message of hope for the future. It tinkered at the edges, and largely misrepresented the reality about the state of the ANC. Instead, he fanned the flames of revenge, particularly against those who have consistently tried to hold him accountable. </p>
<p>He made references to corruption, but deflected attention from his alleged implication in it. He set out to create the impression that South Africans are outraged only about corruption in the public sector, not what’s happening in the private sector. A veiled retort to those who have questioned his moral credentials and ethical leadership was that: if you don’t talk about corruption in the private sector, you shouldn’t talk about it in the public sector.</p>
<p>And rather than denouncing slate politics and factionalism, he stuck to lamenting their existence. I believe that the only reason he mentioned them at all was because they have led to splinter groups that have affected the ANC <a href="https://www.power987.co.za/news/read-its-been-an-honor-zumas-full-speech">“quantitatively and qualitatively”</a> . If slate politics hadn’t led to the current malaise, I doubt he would have made any reference to organisational maladies, which have in fact been spawned and sustained by his leadership over the past 10 years.</p>
<p>Zuma has bequeathed the ANC (and the country) a highly divided party, one that is factionalised and a threat to its own existence. Even when history gave him the opportunity to apologise for the mess his leadership has left the country in, the vintage Zuma didn’t want to take responsibility. </p>
<p>It is now left to those picking up the baton to take on the challenging task of returning the ANC to its foundational values of selflessness and service and its stature as a leader of society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89317/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mashupye Herbert Maserumule received funding from the National Research Foundation(NRF) for his post-graduate studies. He is a member of the South African Association of Public Administration and Management(SAAPAM). He is the Chief Editor of the Journal of Public Administration.</span></em></p>Zuma’s last address to South Africa’s governing party, the ANC, as its president, betrayed his strange way of dealing with issues. He came across as delusional and self-indulgent.Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/886472017-12-07T10:09:52Z2017-12-07T10:09:52ZSouth Africa’s communist party strips the ANC of its multi-class ruling party status<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197921/original/file-20171206-896-xftwg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There is a fallout between alliance partners the South African Communist Party and the governing ANC.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The South African Communist Party (SACP) has broken with history and challenged the governing African National Congress (ANC) in an election. The SACP’s decision to go it alone in the Metsimaholo municipality by-election marks a new low in relations within the tripartite alliance forged during the struggle against apartheid. The other alliance partner is the trade union federation Cosatu. The contest ended in a hung council, with the ANC taking 16 seats, the Democratic Alliance 11, the Economic Freedom Fighters eight and the SACP three. Politics and Society Editor Thabo Leshilo asked political scientist Professor Dirk Kotze about the development.</em></p>
<p><strong>What is the significance of this development?</strong></p>
<p>The decision to contest an election on its own clearly represents a watershed event for the SACP. It is the first tangible step towards implementation of a <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/12th_congress/resolutions.pdf">resolution</a> taken by the SACP in 2007. Then, unhappy with the ANC’s policies in government, the communists raised the issue of contesting elections themselves. It proposed doing this either within a “reconfigured alliance” or having its own candidates contest elections, after which it would come to an agreement with the ANC on how to cooperate in government.</p>
<p>The SACP’s decision to go it alone is the culmination of a fallout dating back to 1996. Then, the ANC government under President Thabo Mbeki announced a macro economic framework, known as Growth, Employment and Redistribution <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.za/publications/other/gear/chapters.pdf">(Gear)</a>, without substantial consultations with the SACP and Cosatu. Both slammed the policy as being <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=2957">anti-communist</a> and serving the interests of business at the expense of the poor working class.</p>
<p>The SACP, and Cosatu, thought that their fortunes had turned when, with their support, Jacob Zuma was elected president of the ANC in <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-18-zuma-is-new-anc-president">Polokwane in 2007</a>. But it wasn’t to be. Both groups have subsequently fallen out with <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/general/142598/how-zumas-faction-is-starting-to-unravel/">Zuma</a>. The relationship has deteriorated so badly that SACP members in KwaZulu-Natal are being assassinated over <a href="http://ewn.co.za/Topic/Moerane-Commission-of-Inquiry">municipal council positions</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Why is this so unusual?</strong></p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=2051">Tripartite Alliance</a> can be traced back to the late 1940s and the Communist Party’s subsequent underground involvement in the ANC-led <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/significance-congress-people-and-freedom-charter">Congress of the People in 1955</a>. The Congress Alliance adopted the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a> as its blueprint for a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-south-africas-freedom-charter-60-years-later-43647">democratic and prosperous South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>In the 1960s the formation of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a>, the armed wing formed by ANC and SACP members, was arguably the most concrete articulation of the ANC-SACP alliance. </p>
<p>In the decades that followed the SACP played a key role in facilitating the support of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc for the ANC and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/south-african-congress-trade-unions-sactu">South African Congress of Trade Unions</a>. The communists also shaped the ANC’s philosophy around national liberation as the <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=1850">“national democratic revolution”</a> and view of apartheid as <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/apartheid-south-africa-colonialism-special-type">“colonialism of a special type”</a>.</p>
<p>This influence on the ANC was personified by the likes of leading communists <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/moses-m-kotane">Moses Kotane</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/moses-mabhida">Moses Mabhida</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-yusuf-mohamed-dadoo">Dr Yusuf Dadoo</a>. The SACP viewed the alliance as a <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=6249">popular front</a> uniting the working class and progressive forces in the struggle for freedom. </p>
<p>The SACP is unique in Africa because very few communist parties survived after independence. Most of them were either <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-communism-appears-to-be-gaining-favour-in-south-africa-45063">banned or integrated</a> into nationalist liberation movement governments. </p>
<p>The party’s independent participation in the Metsimaholo by-election takes it back to the period before 1950 when communists such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jul/09/southafrica.pressandpublishing">Brian Bunting</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/sam-kahn">Sam Kahn</a> represented the then <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03462.htm">Communist Party of South Africa</a> in Parliament. </p>
<p>But after that, and after the party was banned, the SACP’s revolutionary theory of <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2638">armed struggle and insurrection</a> excluded an electoral approach. </p>
<p>Once the first inclusive elections were planned in South Africa, the SACP deferred to the ANC as the leader of the national democratic revolution to pursue an electoral approach. </p>
<p><strong>What is the significance for South Africa?</strong></p>
<p>Firstly, no one can continue to argue that the Tripartite Alliance is still a coherent political front bringing together a working class union movement (Cosatu), working class party (SACP) and a multi-class governing party (ANC). </p>
<p>What this means is that the ANC’s social democratic character in terms of a partnership with working class organisations has come to an end. The ANC will now have to reconfigure its own identity as a social democratic party, similar to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s reconfiguration of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-10518842">“New Labour”</a>. </p>
<p>Secondly, the SACP’s decision serves as an official recording of the radical changes the ANC’s identity has undergone in terms of how it defines its own interests or constituencies. It’s finally stating that its core interests and those of the ANC’s are in the process of parting ways. In socialist parlance, the ANC’s and SACP’s class interests have reached a crossroads. </p>
<p>This follows on the earlier decision by Cosatu’s largest affiliate the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa to part ways with the federation and to establish the <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/01/19/Numsa-United-Front-structures-registered-to-contest-local-elections">United Front</a> as its own political vehicle. It’s still unclear whether this this will result in a new left political movement. But, all the socio-economic conditions - <a href="https://issafrica.org/research/papers/economics-governance-and-instability-in-south-africa">such as high inequality, unemployment</a>, <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=10334">poverty </a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-protesters-echo-a-global-cry-democracy-isnt-making-peoples-lives-better-77639">social discontent</a> - provide fertile ground for just such a movement.</p>
<p><strong>What are the electoral prospects of the SACP?</strong></p>
<p>The SACP is not in a position to mobilise substantial support in the near future. The left is contested terrain and prone to fragmentation. This is partly the result of personality clashes and ideological hair-splitting. </p>
<p>It could possibly join forces with the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa which, for the last 30 years, has debated the ideal of a workers’ party. This would only be viable if the SACP combined its party programme with the social democratic (social welfare) needs of a rural, non-socialist populace. This would imply making ideological compromises, which is not uncommon for the SACP. It would also require it to establish a real party political infrastructure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88647/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dirk Kotze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The South African Communist Party’s decision to compete in an election against its alliance partner the ANC is a watershed moment for them, with important implications for the country.Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/883452017-12-04T13:24:40Z2017-12-04T13:24:40ZHistory explains why South Africans on the left argue for free passes for the rich<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197288/original/file-20171201-10169-1t1v68h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students from Wits University, in Johannesburg, during a protest for free education.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a society like South Africa in which one racial group has dominated another, poor people are ignored in economic debates by those who claim to speak for them. </p>
<p>Take the calls for <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Economy/treasury-rocked-as-budget-chief-quits-20171113">free higher education</a> which featured prominently in student protests over the past two to three years. They are back in the limelight because President Jacob Zuma’s desire to spend billions on providing free tertiary education has prompted a public controversy in which he was accused of wanting to bankrupt the Treasury for political gain. Although it later became clear that Zuma only wanted to pay for students whose household incomes were below <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-11-11-how-treasury-blocked-zumas-free-education-plan/">R350 000 a year</a>, the reports revived interest in the free education demand.</p>
<p>Outsiders might find something curious about the higher education fees debate in South Africa. The demand that no-one should pay is an article of faith among people who occupy the left in the country. The view that the well-off should continue to pay so that the poor are funded is seen as a sign of conservatism. Elsewhere in the world, it is the left which wants the rich to pay for services to the poor. </p>
<p>This is no isolated case in South Africa. Another example is <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/gauteng/gauteng-drivers-dont-give-two-hoots-for-e-tolls-9709924">electronic tolling</a> (e tolls) in the country’s economic heartland, Gauteng. Vehicle owners, including companies, pay the toll. People who use busses and minibus taxis, the vehicles of the poor, don’t. Anyone suggesting that it’s fair to expect people who own trucks and busses to pay for roads on which poor people can ride for free is likely to be dismissed as a right-wing zealot.</p>
<p>How did the interests of wealthy students and their families, or the owners of vehicles, become those of the left and <a href="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/80525/tollsk/">social justice campaigners</a>? Around the world, the views of well-off groups are often presented as those of everyone. The South African oddity is that those who in other societies would be arguing against free passes for the affluent, argue for them.</p>
<p>To see why, we must look at the history of the campaign against minority rule, which I discussed in a <a href="http://ukznpress.bookslive.co.za/blog/2015/01/26/excerpt-race-class-and-power-harold-wolpe-and-the-radical-critique-of-apartheid-by-steven-friedman/">book</a> on radical thought.</p>
<h2>Economic inequality versus race</h2>
<p>The first campaigners for economic change in South Africa were socialists and trade unionists who immigrated from Britain. They took the standard left view of the time – racial divisions were created by bosses and other fat cats who hoped to hang onto their privilege by dividing the workers. Because both black and white workers were exploited, they argued, they could and should unite against their common enemy, economic exploitation.</p>
<p>Within a few years, the view that economic inequality mattered more than race was killed by <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/account-events-rand-rebellion-1922">striking white miners</a> who, in 1922, added to a banner reading “Workers of the World Unite” the words and fight for a white South Africa’. </p>
<p>Competition for jobs from black workers was one reason the miners gave for the strike. For the next seven decades, white workers made it clear that the privileges which their whiteness offered were more important to them than their supposed common interest with black workers.</p>
<p>The view that race was more important than economic inequality was shared by those who fought against apartheid. Although left-wing activists, particularly in the South African Communist Party, were active in the African National Congress, they gave up early on the idea that race could take a back seat to the fight for economic change.</p>
<h2>Racial equality versus private ownership</h2>
<p>In the late 1920s, the <a href="http://domza.blogspot.co.za/2009/09/origin-of-national-democratic.html">Communist International</a>, to which the communist party belonged, adopted the theory of “national democratic revolution”. It committed communists to fight against colonialism and racial domination in colonised countries – the battle against capitalism could wait. </p>
<p>In South Africa, this “revolution” which even today is seen by some on the right as a call to destroy the market economy, was always about fighting for racial equality, not abolishing private ownership. Those who complain that the ANC has not delivered on this “revolution” are saying it has not done enough to end <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/anc-policies-serve-white-monopoly-capital-jimmy-manyi">white control</a> of the economy, not control by private owners.</p>
<p>While the ANC often used left rhetoric, <a href="http://www.armsdeal-vpo.co.za/special_items/profiles/mbeki_chief.html">black intellectuals and activists</a>, including those in the South African Communist Party, reminded white colleagues who wanted to emphasise economic inequalities that racial inequality was more important.</p>
<p>This view was shared by <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/pan-africanist-congress-pac">movements to the ANC’s left</a>. Instead of denouncing it for fixating on race rather than economic divisions, they argued that apartheid was a form of “racial capitalism” in which racial and economic exploitation was so intertwined that one could not survive without the other. While this meant that they could fight against racism while claiming they were fighting for socialism, it made race the central issue. </p>
<h2>The enemy was white minority rule</h2>
<p>The South African left may have read different books and chanted different slogans, but it endorsed the mainstream view that the key issue was racial inequality. Left-wingers earned their credentials by fighting harder against racial minority rule, not by fighting for economic equality – and they found no shortage of left-wing theories and slogans to justify this.</p>
<p>This history has shaped thinking, ensuring that there has never been a strong lobby, or an influential body of opinion, stressing the interests of the poor. If the problem is racial domination, it follows that economic differences within racial groups matter less, if at all. And so, it seems natural to demand changes which would benefit the rich by lumping them with the poor.</p>
<p>Since this prompts people to endorse policies which are biased against the poor, this analysis might seem to be a warning against racial thinking on the economy. It is not. The reason why race has always mattered more than economic inequality is that it is more important: black scholars and activists who emphasise race do so because this squares with their experience not only under apartheid, but now.</p>
<p>The point is illustrated, again, by the student protests demanding free higher education. A careful look shows that they are essentially about race – the protesters are rebelling against what they see as a failure of higher education institutions to take them seriously.</p>
<p>Two decades ago, the left-wing scholar <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/harold-wolpe">Harold Wolpe</a>– who started his academic career trying to convince the ANC and South African Communist Party that apartheid was simply a product of capitalism but who changed his position when he recognised how important race is in South Africa – wrote a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03050069529155?needAccess=true">paper</a> on higher education change. He argued that historically white universities were expecting black students to change to fit into their culture rather than changing to meet the needs of new students as the racial make-up of their student bodies changed. It’s this failure to accommodate black student needs which prompted the student slogan “Fees Must Fall”. </p>
<p>The history described here shows why it seems almost automatic to present this demand for racial change in an economic slogan which would again send the poor to the end of the line.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88345/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Friedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The South African oddity is that those who in other societies would be arguing against free passes for the affluent, argue for them.Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/847072017-10-01T08:06:19Z2017-10-01T08:06:19ZSouth Africa’s National Development Plan can be resuscitated: here’s how<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187863/original/file-20170927-24182-9ookzp.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's Deputy President, Cyril Ramaphosa and former finance minister Trevor Manuel were instrumental to the making of the country's National Development Plan.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Something is surely wrong when many influential people endorse or reject a document none of them have read. The document is South Africa’s <a href="https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/governance/ndp/the-national-development-plan-a-vision-for-2030">National Development Plan</a>, which was adopted by Parliament five years ago and is the product of a National Planning Commission which was led by former finance minister Trevor Manuel and current deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa. </p>
<p>The National Development Plan has become almost an article of faith for business leaders and business friendly commentators. In what has become a knee jerk reaction, they routinely <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/economy/busa-implement-ndp-plans-1468184">demand</a> that the government “implement it”. In an equally knee jerk reaction, unionists, activists and commentators on the left <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/sacp-hits-the-planning-commission-1507352">denounce</a> the plan as a programme to appease business by sacrificing workers and the poor to the market.</p>
<p>But the plan’s praise singers in the market place and its opponents in unions and citizens’ organisations have something important in common: neither has ever read the document which runs to almost 500 pages. If they had, they would know that the label they pin on it does not fit. The plan is not a clear step-by-step programme for change. It is a broad, sometimes internally contradictory, document which is a basis for negotiation far more than a road map.</p>
<p>Those who see the National Development Plan as a coherent document seem to have forgotten the political battle which was triggered when it was initiated by President <a href="https://www.gcis.gov.za/content/newsroom/media-releases/cabinet-statements/president-thabo-mbeki-outcome-july-cabinet-lekgotla">Thabo Mbeki’s administration</a> shortly before Mbeki was removed from office.</p>
<p>The ANC’s alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party, blamed Mbeki and Manuel for appeasing business. As Cosatu noted in a document released in late 2009, they believed that Manuel would use the National Planning Commission to impose a <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=2518">business friendly approach</a> on government and the alliance. </p>
<p>They suspected, probably correctly, that the Mbeki government had wanted the commission to become the centre of government planning. After Mbeki was replaced by Jacob Zuma, they mobilised successfully against this and the result was an agreement that the commission would simply provide support to government and that the NDP would be not a detailed plan but a broad vision for where the country would want to be in 2030. So the National Development Plan is not a firm plan because it was never meant to be one.</p>
<h2>A mixed bag</h2>
<p>Those who see the plan as a route map tend also to forget that the men and women sitting on the commission represented a range of interests and that it was, therefore, a compromise between them. This partly explains why it offers something to everyone – a point which is clear to anyone who takes the trouble to read it. </p>
<p>One who did is former South African Communist Party deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin. In a reply to left-wing unions who saw the plan as the work of the devil, <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=3829">Cronin argued</a> that it was impossible to endorse or reject the entire document because both the opponents and friends of the market could find support for their positions in it.</p>
<p>Cronin rejected the chapter on the economy, which he saw as too friendly to markets, but endorsed the chapter which saw a key role for the state in changing the shape of the cities and sections which suggested a strong government role in development. If Cronin worked for the Chamber of Business, he would no doubt have endorsed the economic chapter and rejected the passages on the state’s role. The key point in his analysis, however, was that, whichever side of the economic debate you were on, you would find passages in the plan to endorse and others to oppose.</p>
<p>The point was illustrated some years ago when organised agriculture denounced a government proposal for regional land redistribution committees. This, it turned out, came not from the left of the union movement or the friends of state capture but from the ‘business friendly’ National Development Plan.</p>
<p>Why do both sides endorse or reject the National Development Plan without bothering to read it? The answer may well lie in the personalised nature of South African politics. </p>
<p>Business and its supporters trust Manuel and Ramaphosa and so they assume that they must have produced a strongly market friendly document. The left distrust them and so they assume the same thing. This might be amusing if it did not prompt a sterile debate which does nothing to focus minds on what needs to change if the economy is to grow and include many more people. </p>
<h2>Useful bits and pieces</h2>
<p>Even if the National Development Plan was a clear map, it contains so many ideas for change that not even the most efficient government in the world could implement it in less than a decade or two. Given this, when parliament – and the government – promised to implement the plan they could not possibly have been committing to implementing all of it. If they were serious about implementing its economic and social proposals, they would have needed to signal clearly which ones they favoured. And, since this would inevitably have affected the interests of key economic interest groups, they would have needed to negotiate the changes with them.</p>
<p>The government has not done this and so it seems likely that what it does mean is that it will seek to implement those sections of the plan which affect it directly. </p>
<p>The plan might offer something to everyone on social and economic issues but it does also have a clear way to improve how government functions.
By endorsing the document, the government was surely agreeing to take the steps the plan recommended when it discussed how to build a “capable state”.So it makes sense to hold the government to account for the degree to which it has – or has not – implemented the plan’s recommendations on fixing itself. </p>
<p>For the rest, it would make more sense to insist that the government signal clearly which other sections of the document it plans to implement than to insist that it implement (or reject) all of it.</p>
<p>This offers a key to the role the National Development Plan could play in moving South Africa forward. Business, labour and other interest groups are far more likely to find the plan useful if they identify those sections they would like to see implemented and then pressed the government to act on them, using the fact that they appear in the document as a lever. </p>
<p>They will obviously face opposition from those with differing interests but that is how democracy works. The National Development Plan would then be a catalyst for debate and negotiation on details, not a take it or leave it recipe.</p>
<p>Five years on, the National Development Plan could help focus attention on economic change. But only if both sides stop seeing it as a fetish rather than a way of starting a conversation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84707/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Friedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa’s five-year-old National Development Plan suffers from gross misinterpretation by different parties.Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/828582017-08-24T19:28:48Z2017-08-24T19:28:48ZThose who brought Zuma to power shouldn’t be forgotten, or forgiven<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182996/original/file-20170822-30494-lc6f1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The SACP and Cosatu have spoken out against South Africa's President Jacob Zuma.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flcker/GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is now a matter of record – rather than an issue for serious debate – that the presidency of Jacob Zuma has been an unmitigated disaster for South Africa. </p>
<p>Zuma’s stewardship – if his tenure since 2009 can be dignified with such a description – has been one long narrative of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-20/jacob-zuma-blamed-for-south-africa-s-woes">national decline</a>. The fact that he remains in office is testament to the moral and intellectual decay of the governing African National Congress (ANC) over the course of his presidency. </p>
<p>That the party which produced such giants of the liberation struggle as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/chief-albert-john-mvumbi-luthuli">Albert Luthuli</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/his-life-and-legacy-oliver-tambo">O.R. Tambo</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a> should have repeatedly endorsed the leadership of such a compromised individual provides cause for great sadness at the humbling of a once great political movement.</p>
<p>But, as his presidency staggers on it has become noticeable that some in the ANC’s “broad church” are beginning to peel away in disgust. Over the last two years veterans of the movement have expressed dissatisfaction with the party’s direction and there have been frequent <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-04-06-anc-veterans-tell-president-zuma-to-step-down">calls for Zuma to stand down</a>. </p>
<p>There have been two unsuccessful attempts to unseat him at meetings of the ANC’s National Executive Committee (in <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/jacob-zuma-faces-confidence-vote-161128125939169.html">November 2016</a> and <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/breaking-motion-of-no-confidence-tabled-against-zuma-at-anc-nec-20170527">May 2017</a>. And eight motions of no confidence have been tabled against him in parliament. In the latest, 26 ANC MPs voted with the opposition, with a further <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-40869269">nine abstaining</a>.</p>
<p>In addition, the ANC’s alliance partners, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), have both <a href="http://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1473832/full-statement-sacp-calls-for-zumas-resignation/">called for his resignation</a>. Cosatu even barred Zuma from attending its gatherings, an unprecedented humiliation for an <a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/zuma-barred-from-speaking-at-any-official-cosatu-events/">ANC leader</a>. </p>
<p>Yet these expressions of revulsion at Zuma’s leadership should be placed within their proper historical context. It is important to recall the role these two organisations had in helping facilitate this disaster in the first place.</p>
<h2>Complicity and fantasy</h2>
<p>Between 2005 and 2007 the SACP and Cosatu were <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-18-zuma-is-new-anc-president">fervent cheerleaders</a> for Zuma in his successful campaign in 2009 to supplant Thabo Mbeki and become ANC president, and thus <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/jacob-zuma-presidency-2009-2017-march">president of the country</a>. The left projected their own ideological fantasies onto Zuma: they saw in him hope for a “left turn” and a repudiation of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/south-african-communist-party-sacp">neo-liberal economics</a> which they associated with Mbeki. </p>
<p>This was always a bizarre position. There was nothing in Zuma’s record to inspire confidence that he would engineer a shift to the left. As the country’s deputy president from 1999 to 2005, he failed to strike a single dissenting note about the ideological direction of <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.za/publications/other/gear/all.pdf">Mbeki’s macro-economic policy</a>, far less set out an alternative left-wing prospectus.</p>
<p>There was also a significant body of evidence suggesting his politics were highly reactionary, with strong overtones of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00847.x/full">sexual and ethnic chauvinism</a> which should have set alarm bells ringing for any self-respecting socialists. </p>
<p>For example, Zuma was acquitted of a rape charge <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-10-09-breaking-news-khwezi-jacob-zumas-rape-accuser-has-dead-family-confirms">in 2006</a> after deploying a defence that was deeply sexist and patriarchal. Zuma also uttered the notorious comment which would come to haunt him – that he had intercourse with his accuser knowing she was HIV positive but took a shower afterwards as a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4879822.stm">precaution against infection</a>. This was a comment so steeped in ignorance that it should have immediately disqualified him from ever holding high political office.</p>
<p>But it didn’t end there. Throughout the rape trial his supporters gathered outside the court each day to hurl vicious sexist abuse at his accuser. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/may/09/southafricasonemanwrecking">“Burn the Bitch”</a> was a favourite. Her name and address were also circulated in a contempt of court, actions that paved the way for harassment which eventually caused her to <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2006-05-11-zumas-rape-accuser-flees-south-africa">leave the country</a>. </p>
<p>Not once when addressing his supporters at the end of each day’s proceedings, did Zuma condemn the abuse, or reproach his supporters. Instead, in a display of machismo, he chose to whip up the mob with <a href="http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Will-Zumas-Letha-umshini-wami-Bring-my-Machine-gun-song-win-him-second-term-20120514">militaristic anthems</a> from the ANC armed struggle era. All of this in a country blighted by <a href="https://theconversation.com/gender-based-violence-in-south-africa-whats-missing-and-how-to-fix-it-78352">violence against women</a>.</p>
<h2>Rise of kleptocracy</h2>
<p>Zuma also commenced his presidency with <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2017/04/21/zuma-and-npa-appeal-hearings-against-reinstatement-of-783-criminal-charges-to-be-consolidated">783 unresolved charges</a> of fraud, money laundering and embezzlement hanging over him relating to the notorious arms deal scandal of the late 1990s and early 2000s. But the SACP and Cosatu leadership chose to view those charges as evidence of a <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/cosatu-admits-they-could-be-wrong-about-zuma-251585">“conspiracy”</a> against Zuma and an attempt to sabotage a socialist presidency.</p>
<p>They would now prefer their unconditional support for Zuma to be considered merely as an unfortunate historical footnote which has not tarnished their ideological credentials. They are wrong. Their willingness to overlook such egregious failings was a cynical betrayal of progressive values. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julius Malema, once a staunch Zuma supporter, is now his fierce critic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Equally, Julius Malema, now the leader of the <a href="http://www.effonline.org/">Economic Freedom Fighters</a>, has sought to reinvent himself as a passionate opponent of Zuma. Yet as head of the ANC Youth League back in 2006-2007 he championed Zuma’s candidacy with a messianic fervour usually laced with threats against his opponents such as the infamous <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/kill-for-zuma-gets-life-of-its-own-406340">“shoot to kill for Zuma”</a> slogan.</p>
<h2>Mea culpa</h2>
<p>Ten years on the chickens have come home to roost, and the grim reality of the Zuma presidency is now visible. The South African state has become little more than a plaything of the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-03-24-00-the-gupta-owned-state-enterprises">Zuma patronage</a> network. This descent into kleptocracy has been documented in <a href="https://www.outa.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2.-REPORT.pdf">rich detail</a> by a number of <a href="https://www.outa.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2.-REPORT.pdf">reports</a>. </p>
<p>Consequently, the SACP and Cosatu have been compelled to recognise that Zuma and his corrupt support networks are indeed a cancer in South African politics, shamelessly enriching themselves in a country still defined by <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=10334">poverty</a> and extreme inequality with <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-06-01-sa-unemployment-rate-rises-to-14-year-high/#.WZ1FgrpFzug">unemployment at 27.7%</a> in the first quarter of 2017, and youth <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=9960">unemployment standing at 38%</a> </p>
<p>The SACP and Cosatu may have found their voices over the last six months in lamenting this appalling record. But this has been a deathbed conversion, occurring much too late to carry any real conviction.</p>
<p>The monster that is the Zuma presidency has wrought massive damage on South Africa and is rightly reviled. The role of the SACP and Cosatu as architects of that debacle should be neither forgotten nor forgiven.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82858/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Hamill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The twilight of Jacob Zuma’s ruinous presidency coincides with growing revulsion at his misrule of South Africa. But, it’s important that his erstwhile supporters acknowledge their complicity.James Hamill, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/812122017-07-24T19:43:11Z2017-07-24T19:43:11ZWhy South Africa’s communists need to cut the ANC umbilical cord. Or perish<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179249/original/file-20170721-28498-1cnwfnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">SACP's Blade Nzimande, left, with Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The South African Communist Party <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/">(SACP)</a> <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=6249">resolved</a> at its recent <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/eventslist.php?eid=18">14th Congress</a> to contest future elections in the country independent of the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/">African National Congress (ANC)</a>, its dominant alliance partner.</p>
<p>If implemented, the resolution would fundamentally change the governing <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=2051">tripartite alliance</a> that’s been in place for more than 60 years. It was formed during the struggle for liberation and has governed South Africa since 1994. The other member of the alliance is the Congress of South African Trade Unions <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/">(Cosatu)</a>.</p>
<p>Between the mid 1940s and 1950s, South African communists <a href="http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/A3299/A3299-G1-2-6-001-jpeg.pdf">differed</a> with their international counterparts in their interpretation of the role of class struggle in <a href="http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/A3299/A3299-G1-2-6-001-jpeg.pdf">liberation politics</a>. Despite <a href="http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/A3299/A3299-G1-2-6-001-jpeg.pdf">fears</a>that nationalism would invariably deliver a political settlement with little change in the material living conditions of the working class, the party tactically aligned itself with the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/significance-congress-people-and-freedom-charter">Congress Movement</a>, led by the ANC. It regarded the South African situation as “unique” and therefore <a href="http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/A3299/A3299-G1-2-6-001-jpeg.pdf">requiring</a> “more creativity in how the party sought to advance the class struggle”. </p>
<p>Relations within the alliance are now at an all time low. Ahead of the latest congress, the increasingly strained relations between the SACP and President Jacob Zuma, who is also president of the ANC, and thus the leader of the alliance, had reached an unprecedented low point.</p>
<p>This came amid <a href="http://amabhungane.co.za/article/2016-09-23-two-to-tango-the-story-of-zuma-and-the-guptas">growing claims</a> alleging that Zuma is the kingpin behind the <a href="http://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/">capture of the state</a> by private business interests. The party has called for the president’s resignation and <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-07-11-sacp-congress-no-explosions--but-much-simmering/">barred</a> him from speaking at <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/eventslist.php?eid=18">its congress</a>. Zuma had earlier been subjected to similar treatment by <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=12763">Cosatu</a>. </p>
<p>Oddly, the SACP says it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGlz_WtsFaQ">will remain</a> within the alliance despite its stated aim to contest elections, effectively in opposition to the ANC. Yet, the mere act of it contesting elections may be construed as a split in practical terms. </p>
<p>But, the party has been here before.</p>
<h2>A decade of indecision</h2>
<p>Relations among the alliance partners have been strained throughout the democratic period because of the policies of the ANC in power, with Thabo Mbeki’s administration <a href="https://www.mbeki.org/profile-of-former-president-thabo-mbeki/">from 1999 to 2008</a> associated with <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/neoliberalism.asp?lgl=rira-baseline-vertical">“neoliberalism”</a> or <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2816">“the class project of 1996”</a>. In turn, Mbeki was critical of what he called divisive <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/mbeki-accuses-ultra-leftists-of-abusing-anc-membership-1.1109299">“ultra-leftists”</a> in the alliance when closing the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/51st-national-conference-stellenbosch">51st ANC conference</a> at Stellenbosch in 2002, increasing <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/ANC-poised-to-purge-ultra-leftists-20021019">fears</a> of a possible split. </p>
<p>Consequently, the leftist SACP first resolved to contest state power independently at its <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=3111">12th Congress</a> in 2007. But then the party deferred the final decision to implement the resolution to its central committee, the highest decision making body between congresses. </p>
<p>The central committee was mandated to either lobby for a <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=3111">“reconfigured alliance”</a> with greater leftist influence and control, or to decide on contesting elections independently. The idea of a reconfigured alliance won the day, with the SACP then pinning its hopes on an expected victory by leftists in the ANC. Zuma, its preferred supposedly leftist candidate for the position of ANC president, went on to defeat Mbeki in December 2007.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179250/original/file-20170721-28474-gwtlrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179250/original/file-20170721-28474-gwtlrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179250/original/file-20170721-28474-gwtlrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179250/original/file-20170721-28474-gwtlrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179250/original/file-20170721-28474-gwtlrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179250/original/file-20170721-28474-gwtlrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179250/original/file-20170721-28474-gwtlrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa, had a fraught relationship with the SACP.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The party <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/docs/decl/2012/13th_congress.pdf">“reaffirmed”</a> the decision to contest state power at its 13th congress in 2012. But, once again, it failed to empower its central committee to implement the decision. It only mandated it to <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/docs/decl/2012/13th_congress.pdf">table “a report”</a> to “enable fuller discussion” in December that year. </p>
<p>Again at the 2017 congress, the party has resolved to contest elections but qualified the resolution by asking its central committee to conduct further analysis and engage its stakeholders on the best way to achieve this. </p>
<p>In essence, the SACP has been tiptoeing about the idea of contesting state power at its three conferences over the past 10 years. </p>
<p>The resolution from the 14th Congress, therefore, could have shown a bolder commitment by the SACP to contesting state power. But once again, decisive action has effectively been postponed by failing to instruct the central committee explicitly to implement it. </p>
<p>When pressed to clarify the tentative nature of the party’s resolution, SACP General Secretary, Blade Nzimande, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGlz_WtsFaQ">confirmed</a> that more discussions were to follow before a final decision could be made. This deferring of a final decision to another structure makes the resolution exactly the same as those of the past two conferences. </p>
<h2>Clinging onto the ANC’s coattails</h2>
<p>Despite successive disappointments, the party still appears to be hoping for an outcome that will favour it in the ANC succession race. Nzimande has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGlz_WtsFaQ">denied</a> this. This time, their key man is ANC presidential hopeful and deputy president of the country <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cyril-matamela-ramaphosa">Cyril Ramaphosa</a>.</p>
<p>This reliance on ANC succession politics may see the SACP fail to contest elections in 2019 once again. But the failure to stop relying on developments in the ANC and start implementing a now ten-year old resolution to contest elections will be more spectacular this time round. That’s because at the rate the governing party is <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a4d6f4c2-5a03-11e6-9f70-badea1b336d4">losing support</a>, there might no longer be a dominant ANC in South African electoral politics. </p>
<p>That the ANC is leaking votes presents the SACP with its best ever chance to strengthen its hand within the alliance. It’s a golden opportunity to end the ANC’s abusive tendency to act unilaterally, regardless of the SACP’s position on key issues. </p>
<p>The SACP might have more direct and observable value from real electoral support, which can be translated into seats in municipal councils, provincial legislatures and in parliament.</p>
<h2>One more alternative to the ANC?</h2>
<p>There has not been a practical and scientific way to determine what the SACP brings to the ANC in terms of electoral support. The picture was complicated by the fact that SACP members are also often members of the ANC. The party could not take for granted that its <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-communism-appears-to-be-gaining-favour-in-south-africa-45063">close to 220 000 members</a> would vote for it if it left the alliance. </p>
<p>But with the ANC in its current crisis, the SACP might present a close enough alternative for supporters who are fed up with the governing party and who don’t have an alternative party to vote for. </p>
<p>But it will never know unless it breaks the perpetual indecisiveness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81212/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ongama Mtimka receives government-supported funding for his PhD studies. He chairs the boards of Bophelo-Impilo Development Agency. </span></em></p>After tiptoeing around the idea of contesting state power South Africa’s Communist Party is looking to strengthen its position now that the ANC is no longer the dominant force it used to be.Ongama Mtimka, Lecturer and PhD Candidate, Department of Political & Conflict Studies, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/791242017-06-08T16:31:15Z2017-06-08T16:31:15ZIt’s cold outside Zuma’s ANC. But there’s little warmth left inside<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172920/original/file-20170608-32301-170ol4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protest in support of Raymond Suttner released from detention in 1988 by apartheid authorities.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert Botha/Times Media Group</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In the liberation struggle against apartheid a small number of white people joined the battle to overthrow the South African regime. One of them, academic Raymond Suttner, was first arrested in 1975 and tortured with electric shocks because he refused to supply information to the police. He then served eight years in prison because of his underground activities for the African National Congress and South African Communist Party.</em></p>
<p><em>After his release in 1983 he was forced - after two years - to go underground to evade arrest, but was re-detained in 1986 under repeatedly renewed states of emergency for 27 months – 18 of these in solitary confinement.</em></p>
<p><em>First published in 2001, Suttner’s prison memoir “Inside Apartheid’s Prison”, has been made available again, now with a completely new introduction. The Conversation Africa’s Charles Leonard spoke to Suttner.</em></p>
<p><strong>Why did you write the book?</strong></p>
<p>I was hesitant to write it because there is a culture of modesty that is inculcated in cadres. I used to think it was “not done” to write about myself. I also thought that my experience was a “parking ticket” compared with the sentences of Nelson Mandela and others. But I came to feel that I have a story to tell. </p>
<p>Nevertheless I hope that resources will be found so that more stories are told, not only of prison but the many unknown people who pursued resistance in different ways in a range of relatively unknown places.</p>
<p><strong>You were imprisoned and on house arrest for over 11 years. It was based on choices you made. Would you make the same choices today?</strong></p>
<p>Yes. I did what I believed was right at the time and even if things are not turning out so well at the moment that does not invalidate those choices. I saw the liberation struggle as having a sacred quality and considered it an honour to be part of it. </p>
<p>I was very influenced by the great Afrikaner Communist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abram-fischer">Bram Fischer</a>. He had nothing to gain personally and could have been a judge, the president of the country or anything else. Instead he chose a life of danger and later life imprisonment. I was inspired by that example, amongst others, to do what I could. </p>
<p>When one embarks on revolutionary activities there are no guarantees of success. I was not sure that I would come out alive. I did what I believed was right and would make the same choices again.</p>
<p><strong>So those choices were worth it?</strong></p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
<p>Definitely. This was not a business venture where one could answer such a question through balancing profits and losses. For me joining the struggle, as a white, gave me the opportunity to start my life afresh by joining my fortunes with those who were oppressed. It gave me the chance to link myself with the majority of South Africans. </p>
<p>That was a more authentic way of living my life than whatever successes I may have achieved, had I simply focused on professional success. Most importantly I see this choice – to join the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/liberation-struggle-south-africa">liberation struggle</a> – as giving me the opportunity to humanise myself as a white South African in apartheid South Africa.</p>
<p><strong>Do you still feel the damage after all these years in prison?</strong></p>
<p>Yes. I have post-traumatic stress. I am not sure that it will ever be eliminated or that I always recognise its appearance. Many of us live with scars from that period.</p>
<p>I have not always acknowledged or understood that I have been damaged but it is directly related to my having <a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/fibromyalgia/home/ovc-20317786">fibromyalgia</a> (a disorder characterised by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues), according to the specialist who diagnosed it. She cautioned me about returning to my prison experiences, in this book, fearing the possibility of it setting off physically painful symptoms. That didn’t happen as far as I am aware and returning to the scene of trauma may be part of healing, according to some. </p>
<p><strong>Why did you break with the ANC over 10 years ago?</strong></p>
<p>I had not been happy with many aspects of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a>’s presidency but that did not mean I should align myself with his successor <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jacob-gedleyihlekisa-zuma">Jacob Zuma</a>. Zuma’s candidacy was promoted not only by ANC people but especially the South African Communist Party (SACP) and trade union federation <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/congress-south-african-trade-unions-cosatu">Cosatu</a>’s leaderships, presenting him as having qualities that were not valid. In particular the claim that Zuma was a man of the people with sympathy for the poor and downtrodden was untrue.</p>
<p>It was already known that he was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/president-thabo-mbeki-sacks-deputy-president-jacob-zuma">linked</a> with corrupt activities before he was elected as ANC president in 2007. But what was decisive for me was Zuma’s 2006 <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-08-10-the-khanga-womanhood-and-how-zumas-2006-rape-trial-changed-its-meaning">rape trial</a>. There was something very cruel in the way the complainant, known as <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/10/10/who-was-khwezi-heres-what-we-learnt-during-the-zuma-rape-trial">“Khwezi”</a>, was treated, in the mode of defence that Zuma chose. I found that <a href="http://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/191680/khwezi-was-let-down-by-the-justice-system-of-this-country-nomboniso-gasa">unacceptable</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Is it not lonely outside the ANC?</strong></p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Raymond Suttner in 2001, when ‘Inside Apartheid’s Prison’ was first published.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Raymond Preston/Times Media Group</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I miss the comradeship that I understood to bind me to people with whom I had shared dangers, joys and sorrows. When you are together in difficult times it creates a special bond. I did not conceive of that being broken.</p>
<p>But when you break away in a <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/news/2017-04-11-uct-slams-corruption-state-capture-under-zuma/">time of decadence</a>, what is it that one misses? I cannot resume relationships on the same basis as those which I previously counted as comradeship. Our paths diverged. I went out into the cold and some with whom I used to be very close chose to link themselves with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-need-to-despair-even-as-the-dream-of-south-africa-feels-like-a-nightmare-76129">project</a> that has meant corruption, violence and destroying everything that was once valued in the liberation tradition. </p>
<p>These former comrades have all been accomplices in <a href="https://mg.co.za/report/zumaville-a-special-report">Nkandla</a> (Zuma’s private rural home which was upgraded at a cost to the country of R246-million to taxpayers), the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-grant-scandal-exposes-myths-about-how-the-state-should-run-things-74325">social grants scandal</a> and many other <a href="http://www.groundup.org.za/article/who-are-guptas/">features of this period</a> which have seen some individuals benefit unlawfully and at the expense of the poor. I do not say that every person I know has been improperly enriched. But all those who have been in the ANC/SACP/Cosatu leadership have endorsed, indeed even provided elaborate defences of some of the worst features of the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-17450447">Zuma period</a>. </p>
<p>In the new introduction to the book I use the word “betrayal” and I choose it to refer to these people, many of whom were once brave, who turned their backs on those from whom they came or whose cause they once adopted as their own.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s lonely. But that loneliness cannot be remedied by resuming bonds
with people who have taken fundamentally different paths. I now build relationships with others from whom I am learning and growing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raymond Suttner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the new introduction to his prison memoir South African anti-apartheid stalwart Raymond Suttner uses the word ‘betrayal’ to explain his break from the ANC.Raymond Suttner, Emeritus Professor, University of South Africa and part-time professor Rhodes University, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/782652017-05-29T13:59:17Z2017-05-29T13:59:17ZToxic leaders affect companies, and governments. How to deal with them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170939/original/file-20170525-23267-16v1yuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/ICT-12-2013-0086">Toxic leadership</a> is characterised by a number of familiar traits: unwillingness to take feedback, lying or inconsistency, cliquishness, autocracy, manipulation, intimidation, bullying, and narcissism. The toxic leader can - if allowed to run rampant for long enough – destroy organisational structures over time and bring down an entire organisation. This applies to countries too.</p>
<p>There are a number of reasons for this. The most obvious is that a toxic leader can <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Leaders-When-Organizations-Bad/dp/0899309984">influence organisational culture</a> through aversive action. This can include flouting organisational processes, rewarding loyalty over competence, normalising socially unacceptable behaviours like infighting, and by breaking down trust and eroding clear lines of authority.</p>
<p>A toxic leader’s other, more insidious, influence is through what they do to the relationships between people around them. </p>
<p>Psychologists, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061147890/snakes-in-suits">describe</a> how two factions typically develop in an organisation once the deviant leader’s ascent has begun. One faction consists of supporters, pawns and patrons. The other is made out of people who remain true to their principles, realising they have been used and abused, or that the organisation whose ultimate goals they still support is in danger.</p>
<p>If it sounds familiar it’s because South Africans are spectators to exactly this kind of factionalism. In recent months pro and anti President Jacob Zuma factions have been involved in increasingly energetic <a href="https://theconversation.com/zuma-lives-to-fight-another-day-but-fallout-from-latest-revolt-will-live-on-69587">mudslinging matches</a>. </p>
<p>For many, Zuma represents the quintessential toxic leader. Whether one is for or against the president, it remains that he’s at very least a controversial figure, and criticism of him has been known to lead to <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/05/24/anc-stalwarts-receive-threats-over-zuma-criticism">reprisals</a>. </p>
<p>The good news is that toxic leadership can be overcome. When it’s understood and challenged, it can be dismantled or reformed.</p>
<h2>The toxic environment</h2>
<p>Where there is toxic leadership, the ethics of the working environment are <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Leaders-When-Organizations-Bad/dp/0899309984">compromised</a>. Typical behaviours are abuse of privileges, theft, violence and verbal abuse. Any number of these can be recognised from news reports around South African politics.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-real-risks-behind-south-africas-social-grant-payment-crisis-73224">Scandals over the awarding of government tenders</a>, the mismanagement of taxpayer funds and the maintenance of <a href="https://www.ujuh.co.za/state-of-capture-public-protectors-report/">corrupt relationships</a> are now an all too familiar reality in South Africa. </p>
<p>But a toxic leader does not absolve employees who choose to engage in deviant conduct. Ministers and private sector supporters who choose personal gain or corrupt relationships remain responsible for their own choices. Of course, it’s much easier to make the wrong decision if it’s the dominant way of doing things in a particular environment. </p>
<p>Such behaviour may be <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.599.654&rep=rep1&type=pdf">rooted</a> in financial gain, or lie within the culture of an organisation. The motivation to achieve results may spark greater numbers of people to either actively harm, or passively ignore, the welfare of others to achieve their desired end. </p>
<p>This is why the removal of a psychopathic leader doesn’t guarantee the eradication of toxicity as it’s likely to be entrenched at lower levels of organisational leadership by the leader’s sycophants.</p>
<h2>Fighting from the bottom up</h2>
<p>The responsibility to move against toxic leadership doesn’t lie with an individual, but <a href="https://works.bepress.com/marcotavanti/32/">concerns</a> the organisation as a whole. </p>
<p>In the public sphere, this responsibility extends to society as a whole. </p>
<p>Crucial to overcoming the toxic leader’s negative impact is for other members of the organisation to remain firm and loyal to their principles, and to take a united stand. </p>
<p>If people are able to stand together against toxic leadership, the leader may leave of their own accord. Once this happens individuals in the rest of the organisation need to cleanse the organisation by distancing themselves from the leader’s negative actions.</p>
<p>Another way of tackling toxic leadership is to find out who they answer to, if it’s not immediately apparent, and appeal to this authority. Bullies are not always swayed by open dialogue or whistleblowing, but may answer to a higher law if this is done formally and armed with the facts. In the case of an errant public servant, this may be achieved through, for example, the judiciary and institutions like the Public Protector.</p>
<p>If all these fail, there are ways to manage the situation with the toxic leader in position. It’s necessary to understand the leader’s history to analyse how they got to this point. Share this with key decision makers. This is vital because a core aspect of the solution is to establish a coalition of like-minded individuals who understand the leader’s negative impact. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://works.bepress.com/marcotavanti/32/">coalition</a> should not take a punitive, antagonistic approach, but rather a supportive one, using appropriate benchmarks and timelines that reflect the goals of all key stakeholders.</p>
<p>Much of what’s observed in the corporate world applies to leadership in the public sector. With proper interventions, a valuable level of accountability can be brought into the workplace and to service delivery. </p>
<p>The accountability of leaders can be increased through forums like townhall meetings to force them to think deeply about their behaviour and decisions. Where politics is concerned, visible performance management like this can do wonders for the well-being of citizens.</p>
<p>It’s also critical to establish mechanisms to protect people speaking up against leaders – the whistleblowers – as their actions should be free of fear, such as loss of income. </p>
<p>With protection mechanisms in place, employees and citizens alike should be able to freely raise issues and protect both themselves and their ideals, whether their concerns relate to a private company or a government department.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78265/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Linda Ronnie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Organisational psychopathy, generally known as toxic leadership, is common in the private sector. It’s emerging more often in the public space too.Linda Ronnie, Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour and People Management, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647152017-04-09T08:50:33Z2017-04-09T08:50:33ZRemembering South African struggle hero Chris Hani: lessons for today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139576/original/image-20160928-27034-7l1lh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the South African Communist Party (SACP) sing and dance with a poster of Chris Hani.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The “what if” game is popular with the media and the <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/commentariat">commentariat</a> in South Africa. A popular example is “what if …” South African Communist Party (SACP) leader <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thembisile-chris-hani">Chris Hani</a> were still alive.</p>
<p>What, for example, would he say about the SACP’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/kids/tripartite-alliance">tripartate alliance</a> partner, the African National Congress? What would he say about the state of the alliance after recent calls by both partners, the SACP and union federation Cosatu for President Jacob Zuma <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-04-04-cosatu-the-time-has-come-for-president-jacob-zuma-to-step-down">to step down</a>?</p>
<p>These questions are being asked again on the anniversary of Hani’s <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/stnews/2016/03/10/Remember-How-the-Sunday-Times-covered-Chris-Hanis-assassination">assassination</a> on April 10, 1992 by two rightwing extremists.</p>
<p>But such use, often by the liberal media, of Hani’s name (and those of other fallen cadres of the liberation movement) is problematic. It seeks to isolate Hani from the movement that produced him, presenting him as an exception it can then appropriate.</p>
<p>Hani’s name is also regularly invoked by the SACP and the ANC come election time. Many campaign posters call on supporters to “Do it for Chris Hani”. Here, the summoning of Hani’s memory has become little more than empty rhetoric. </p>
<p>A more useful exercise may be to reflect on Hani’s life, actions and beliefs, and their significance for today. </p>
<h2>A popular hero</h2>
<p>In his book “<a href="http://jacana.bookslive.co.za/blog/2014/11/21/new-pocket-biographies-chris-hani-thomas-sankara-patrice-lumumba-and-haile-selassie/">A Jacana Pocket Biography: Chris Hani</a>” historian Hugh Macmillan argues it was Hani’s physical and moral bravery, his compassion and humanity that made him a “popular hero” – the words used by French philosopher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/oct/11/guardianobituaries.france">Jacques Derrida</a> to describe Hani in his <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=sEENbAP5FZsC&redir_esc=y">Spectres of Marx</a> lecture.</p>
<p>Hani helped build a culture of internal criticism in the ANC. In 1969 he and six other commissars and commanders of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing, signed what became known as the “<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/%26lsquo%3Bhani-memorandum%E2%80%99-%26ndash%3B-introduced-and-annotated-hugh-macmillan">Hani memorandum</a>”. The memorandum <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/08/10/time-for-a-hani-memo">outlined</a> the “frightening depth of the rot in the ANC”, accusing its leadership of careerism, corruption and persecution by the party’s security.</p>
<p>Hani’s memorandum was the catalyst for one of the most significant events in the history of the ANC in exile, a conference in Morogoro, Tanzania. But it was viewed as treacherous by some within the leadership, particularly those it had criticised. Hani and his comrades were expelled from the ANC and only reinstated after the Morogoro conference. </p>
<p>Russian scholar <a href="http://www.inafran.ru/en/node/350">Vladimir Shubin</a> has <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/current-affairs-a-history/anc-a-view-from-moscow-detail">argued</a> that it was largely thanks to the memorandum that the delegates to the conference included rank and file MK members and not just the leadership.</p>
<p>The Morogoro conference opened ANC membership to non-Africans. It also adopted the important “Strategy and Tactics” <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/strategy-and-tactics-statement-adopted-anc-morogoro-conference-april-may-1969-abridged-0">document</a>. This provided – for the first time since the ANC’s banning in 1960 – a systematic assessment of the conditions of struggle and an overall vision for defeating apartheid in a time of deep political demoralisation. </p>
<p>The conference was a moment of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/sadet1_chap14.pdf">self-reflection</a>. It helped the ANC to overcome the state of crisis and demoralisation that had set in. </p>
<p>The ability of the leadership of both the ANC and its closest ally, the SACP, to reassess circumstances, interrogate these and themselves, and learn from past mistakes to overcome difficult moments is one of the most important lessons from their history. This tradition of internal debate has become eroded, and criticism keeps being silenced as <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2017-04-05-fighting-violations-of-what-the-anc-stands-for-is-not-sowing-disunity/">sowing disunity</a>.</p>
<h2>Disrupting notions of masculinity</h2>
<p>A famous quote by Che Guevara states that “the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love”. Leaders like Hani were moved to act by their hearts as well as by reason. The decision to join the liberation struggle was one of reason – a conscious rejection of apartheid oppression and inequality. But it was also a choice informed by “revolutionary love” or a “love for the people” – shaped by a sense of justice and by compassion, as well as by a vision, the ability to imagine a different future.</p>
<p>As struggle veteran and public intellectual <a href="https://raymondsuttner.com/about/">Raymond Suttner</a> points out in <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/current-affairs-a-history/recovering-democracy-in-south-africa-detail">Recovering Democracy in South Africa</a>, what is new and alarming about many of the ANC’s current leaders is their callousness. The plight of the poor no longer evokes compassion or empathy from a government that is supposed to represent them.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chris Hani salutes at a rally of the African National Congress (ANC) in this file picture taken December 16, 1991.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hutchings/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both Suttner and Macmillan also highlight Hani’s commitment to disrupting notions of heroic masculinity. In his book Macmillan tells the story of one of Hani’s comrades <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thenjiwe-mtintso">Thenjiwe Mtintso</a> who credited him with introducing her to the gender content of the liberation struggle when she arrived in exile.</p>
<p>Hani’s concern with gender issues can also be seen in his reaction to the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/Aspects_of_the_experiences_of_10_women_in_MK.pdf">abuse of women</a> in MK camps. He <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/anc_underground_mplan_rivonia.pdf">introduced a rule</a> that prevented officers from forming relationships with new women recruits.</p>
<p>By looking at the life of people like Hani South Africans can recover the possibility of alternative and gentler types of masculinity to the prevailing models of patriarchal, machoist, militaristic and violent manhood.</p>
<h2>Communist for life</h2>
<p>At the time of South Africa’s transition to democracy Hani decided to resign from ANC structures and concentrate his efforts on building the SACP. He understood that there would be a need to build the party for it to be a truly democratic and democratising force in a post-apartheid South Africa intent on taking the struggle of the working class and the poor forward.</p>
<p>While the SACP would have to redefine itself in the new South Africa, Hani believed that it should be the main agent of change. That’s where his loyalty to the party was rooted.</p>
<p>Hani was not a communist in passing. He immersed himself completely into the liberation struggle. And it was “a communist as communist”, to <a href="http://bat020.tumblr.com/post/47613716841/jacques-derrida-on-chris-hani">quote</a> Derrida again, that his assassins were out to get.</p>
<p>The story of his life –- and that of many others –- is exemplary of this total commitment and willingness to sacrifice one’s life for an ideal. It was ideas, a political project and the movement that counted – not individuals, because no one would have made it on their own. </p>
<p>This may be difficult to imagine in today’s society where individualism and self-interest reign supreme and personalised politics has become the norm. But it was by doing things with, and for others, as part of a collective movement that people like Hani found their self-realisation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64715/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arianna Lissoni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The name of ANC struggle hero Chris Hani, who was assassinated in 1993, is regularly invoked to win political arguments in South Africa.Arianna Lissoni, Researcher at History Workshop, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696632016-12-01T12:01:10Z2016-12-01T12:01:10ZMinisters’ call for Zuma to resign signals internal rebellion in South Africa’s cabinet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148138/original/image-20161130-17034-18tlbho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The ANC got rid of one president , Thabo Mbeki (right) in 2008. The groundswell against incumbent Jacob Zuma is growing.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hutchings/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The call led by South Africa’s tourism minister Derek Hanekom at the meeting of the ANC’s National Executive Committee <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/officials/national-executive-committee-0">(NEC)</a> for President Jacob Zuma’s <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/11/28/anc-top-brass-asked-to-pick-sides-in-zuma-no-confidence-motion">resignation</a> resembles the call for former president Thabo Mbeki’s resignation – also by the NEC which runs the party between its five-yearly party conferences – in <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2008-09-20-anc-recalls-mbeki">2008</a>.</p>
<p>It differs, however, in important respects. Mbeki was no longer the president of the ANC at the time as Zuma had already been <a href="https://theconversation.com/zuma-lives-to-fight-another-day-but-fallout-from-latest-revolt-will-live-on-69587">elected as his successor</a>, while Zuma is the president of the ANC and his successor is not yet known.</p>
<p>The post-Mbeki dispensation was therefore much more predictable. This is an important consideration when taking a position in the Zuma debate.</p>
<p>Much of the current dynamics – directed by the leaders of three provinces known as the <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Premier-league-coined-by-those-with-political-agenda-Mahumapelo-20151011">Premier League</a>, the ANC’s <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/ancyl-nominate-dlamini-zuma-for-anc-president-2085745">Youth League</a> and <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/09/05/women-s-league-defies-anc-on-president-zuma-s-successor">Women’s League</a>, as well as the <a href="http://citizen.co.za/news/news-national/803418/mk-vets-back-dlamini-zuma-in-succession-race/">MK Veterans’ Association</a> – are about securing a successor within Zuma’s sphere of influence. Securing the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ancs-path-to-corruption-was-set-in-south-africas-1994-transition-64774">patronage network</a> for the post-Zuma era is arguably another important motivation for these dynamics.</p>
<p>The immediate significance of the latest move against Zuma is that it publicly exposed the <a href="https://theconversation.com/zuma-lives-to-fight-another-day-but-fallout-from-latest-revolt-will-live-on-69587">fault lines in the NEC</a>. The fact that the meeting lasted for three days instead of the scheduled two days, is an indication of the intensity of the discussion, its divisive nature and the fact that Zuma could not quickly take control of it.</p>
<p>Once the bastion of support for Zuma in the ANC, the NEC is now a divided constituency. Moreover, cabinet has effectively also become divided. According to <a href="http://www.heraldlive.co.za/news/2016/11/29/anc-split-widens-battle-axe-zuma/">media reports</a>, as many as six cabinet ministers supported Zuma’s resignation. </p>
<p>For Zuma this means that he can no longer rely on the two real centres of power that can determine his future – the NEC in the ANC and cabinet in government.</p>
<h2>A president under pressure</h2>
<p>Zuma has been in a constant state of crisis management since <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-10-20-calm-restored-at-union-buildings-following-feesmustfall-march">late 2015</a>. He had to make <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/feesmustfall-find-the-money-says-zuma-20160821">serious concessions</a> to the student <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/university-funding-5277">#FeesMustFall movement</a>, comply with the Constitutional Court’s <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2016/09/12/Zuma-used-home-loan-to-pay-back-Nkandla-costs">judgment on Nkandla</a> and fend off an <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-04-06-why-anc-mps-rejected-the-zuma-impeachment-motion">impeachment motion</a> in Parliament. This, after the Constitutional Court ruled that he acted illegally and not consistent with the constitution. </p>
<p>Zuma has also lost the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-appropriate-that-south-africans-rally-behind-their-finance-minister-59872">public relations battle</a> against the National Treasury and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. He has come under even greater pressure following the former Public Protector’s <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/download-the-full-state-of-capture-pdf-20161102">“State of Capture”</a> report. </p>
<p>In the process he lost staunch supporters in the state-owned enterprises and criminal justice system, such as <a href="http://www.dispatchlive.co.za/featured/2016/11/11/brian-molefe-resigns-eskom-gupta-link-denies-wrongdoing/">Brian Molefe</a>, CEO of power utility Eskom and <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-09-15-npas-nomgcobo-jiba-and-lawrence-mrwebi-struck-from-the-roll-for-advocates">Nomgcobo Jiba</a>, deputy head of the National Prosecuting Authority <a href="https://www.npa.gov.za/">(NPA)</a>. Molefe resigned after he was implicated in the state capture report. Jiba was declared “not fit and proper” by the High Court and struck off the roll of advocates. </p>
<p>Other Zuma acolytes under pressure include NPA head <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-11-28-shaun-abrahams-tells-zuma-why-he-should-keep-his-job">Shaun Abrahams</a>, the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s <a href="http://mg.co.za/tag/hlaudi-motsoeneng">Hlaudi Motsoeneng</a>, head of the Hawks elite crime-fighting unit, General Berning Ntlemeza. The politically connected business family and Zuma’s close friends, the <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/parliamentary-investigations-on-guptas-baseless-anc-20160328">Guptas</a>, find themselves at the heart of state capture allegations. They are now <a href="http://www.fin24.com/BizNews/azar-jammine-what-gupta-move-to-dubai-means-for-zuma-must-read-20160411">fighting for survival</a>.</p>
<h2>Implications for the state and governance</h2>
<p>The NEC meeting clearly exposed how the ANC’s factionalism has spilled over into government. This is likely to paralyse governance even further. Policy implementation and interdepartmental cooperation will grind to a halt as ministers and senior officials become increasingly preoccupied with securing their own careers.</p>
<p>This trajectory is not new. But Hanekom’s proposal has given it a public face.</p>
<p>The latest developments are in essence an internal rebellion in the cabinet. Up until now most of the fault lines in the ANC have only been visible within the party. Contestation around Zuma has been evident in the provinces, within the ANC leagues and in the party’s alliance partners – the South African Communist Party and Congress of South African Trade Unions. But now cabinet is also directly involved. </p>
<p>Cabinets anywhere in the world depend on a relationship of mutual trust between the president (or prime minister) and their ministers. The fact that at least six ministers have openly defied Zuma’s authority as head of government means that their relationship of trust no longer exists. </p>
<p>Another indicator of the trust deficit in cabinet has been the ongoing power struggle between Gordhan and Zuma for control over the public sector <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/134456/why-zuma-is-so-desperate-to-get-rid-of-gordhan/">financial management</a>. Gordhan is supported by several ministers and Deputy President <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/ramaphosa-supports-gordhan-warns-against-state-at-war-with-itself-20160825">Cyril Ramaphosa</a>. </p>
<p>It would be unrealistic to expect quality government by such a divided executive.</p>
<h2>Broader political implications</h2>
<p>The ANC’s latest predicament has several longer term implications. The most immediate is that it clearly demonstrates Zuma’s ability to survive almost any challenge. By now the most realistic scenario is that he will only vacate his office as ANC president in December 2017 – the date at which his present term expires. In the meantime, more controversies, scandals and concomitant political uncertainties, can be expected in 2017.</p>
<p>The latest events effectively open the door to the leadership succession debate in the ANC. In line with this, the country can expect the use of almost any means, including state institutions like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-zuma-has-used-the-capture-of-south-africas-state-institutions-to-stay-in-power-68175">Hawks and NPA</a>, during the contest. </p>
<p>The resultant deeper divisions in the ANC will predictably leave a “scorched earth” for the successor. Zuma’s successor will not have enough time to salvage the situation by the time of the next general election due in the first half of 2019.</p>
<p>The current developments also signal the end of the governing <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/kids/tripartite-alliance">tripartite alliance</a>. The South African Communist Party has already published a discussion document to <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=5686">go it alone in 2019</a>. The Congress of South African Trade Unions is becoming more divided and weakened every day. It is reported to have lost more than <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/cosatu-membership-down-by-thousands-20151117">300 000 members</a>. </p>
<p>An unintended consequence of the ANC predicament is a pragmatic rapprochement between the opposition <a href="https://www.da.org.za/">Democratic Alliance</a> and <a href="http://effighters.org.za/">Economic Freedom Fighter</a>. They are already cooperating in the country’s two biggest metropoles – Johannesburg and Tshwane – where they wrested power from the ANC after the recent local government <a href="https://theconversation.com/sharp-tongued-south-african-voters-give-ruling-anc-a-stiff-rebuke-63606">elections</a>. Coalition politics at provincial and national are likely to follow.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69663/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dirk Kotze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The fallout at the meeting of South Africa’s governing ANC clearly exposed how the party’s factionalism has spilled over into government. This is likely to paralyse governance even further.Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/687732016-11-21T20:53:07Z2016-11-21T20:53:07Z#FeesMustFall: the poster child for new forms of struggle in South Africa?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146558/original/image-20161118-19356-1hju881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">#FeesMustFall, and its demands for zero university fee increases, is in a second cycle of mass resistance in South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hutchings/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, national liberation politics was mass politics. It was grounded in building class and national popular alliances as a basis of a national liberation bloc. </p>
<p>A reading of the <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/anc/1969/strategy-tactics.htm">strategy and tactics documents</a> of the African National Congress (ANC) confirms the centrality of class agency, particularly that of the working class, while affirming the importance of nonracial unity. The material foundations for this, at least in the 1980s, were mass movements such as trade unions as well as civic, youth and student organisations.</p>
<p>The United Democratic Front (UDF), deemed by some as the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/united-democratic-front-udf">“internal wing”</a> of the then still banned ANC, congealed these forces into a bloc of resistance. In this ferment, hierarchical forms of organisation were established. Most importantly, vanguardist leadership played a determining role through the ANC and the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/south-african-communist-party-sacp">South African Communist Party</a> (SACP). The idea of an elite vanguard, a centralised underground leadership managing a strategic line of command, defined this politics. </p>
<p>The UDF was a mass front for waging a “people’s war” through mass mobilisation. While the UDF had its own democratic grassroots impulses, the Marxist-Leninist imprint and template of this politics was apparent. And, it was not unique to South Africa. The bolshevising of “national liberation” politics or “painting nationalism red” was a feature of 20th century revolutionary politics because of the influence of the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>This is not the politics of the current uprising of South African students, collectively known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/feesmustfall-21801">#FeesMustFall</a> which has <a href="http://defendingpopulardemocracy.blogspot.co.za/2015/10/fees-must-fall-to-neoliberal-sa-must.html">emerged</a> as part of a <a href="http://www.africafiles.org/printableversion.asp?id=27893">second cycle of resistance</a> (2007 to the present) in post-apartheid South Africa. </p>
<h2>Post-apartheid cycles of resistance</h2>
<p>The first cycle against neoliberalisation (late 1990s into early 2000s) was marked by the rise of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/birth-treatment-action-campaign">Treatment Action Campaign</a>, the <a href="http://www.naoexemplar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/The-rural-landless-people%E2%80%99s-movement-cas-6-ago-2014.pdf">Landless People’s Movement</a> and the <a href="http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/1197">Anti-Privatisation Forum</a>. These formations are now either moribund or very weak. In the case of the Treatment Action Campaign, there is an attempt at renewal.</p>
<p>Since 2007, South Africa’s civic <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/public-protest-democratic-south-africa">protest actions</a> against the lack of service delivery have become much more frequent and more violent. It has become the object of analysis of various sociological studies and sometimes vaunted as the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056241003637870?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=crea20">“rebellion of the poor”</a> or <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056244.2013.854040?journalCode=crea20">“violent democracy”</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa has also been witnessing the emergence of new transformative movements that mark out a second cycle of resistance. They include struggles around building solidarity economies (waste pickers building worker cooperatives), the right to know, equal education, social justice and defence of constitutional freedoms. It also includes struggles for food sovereignty, rural democracy and rights for women. </p>
<p>These struggles cover extractivism (particularly challenging pollution and land dispossessions related to mining), climate jobs and housing. They further include fighting for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexed (LGBTI) people, as well as struggles against corruption, moves towards rebuilding a new worker-controlled labour federation and a growing emphasis on climate justice. </p>
<p>These are social forces attempting to advance transformation from below. After the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012">Marikana massacre</a> in 2012 there has been a realignment of political forces. With it has come a detachment from the national liberation bloc of parties like the ANC. </p>
<p>These <a href="http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/geography/n48.xml">anti-systemic</a> forces are not led by any vanguards. They are agents of transformative counter-hegemony, opposing the dominant ruling class.</p>
<p>#FeesMustFall’s demands for zero fee increases, decommodified education, an end to outsourcing and decolonisation, is in this second cycle of mass resistance. The anti-capitalist impulses in South African society are amplified by all these forces. Alongside Marikana, #FeesMustFall has brought this to the fore in dramatic ways.</p>
<h2>Three new developments</h2>
<p>#FeesMustFall heralded three new developments in mass politics in post-apartheid South Africa. First, it married social media to mass politics which did not exist in 1976, for instance. This enabled telescoped, speedy and cross-campus mobilisation. Students used Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp groups and even webpages to communicate with each other. They also married situated mass practices (such as assemblies or occupations or sit ins) to larger political mobilisation. This was new for South Africa.</p>
<p>Second, this political matrix was amorphous, except for moments of media representation which presented “leaders” at the forefront. In practice, this was not the case in the university space. There, various groups jostled for influence. Mass mobilisation was catalysed through social media and common resistance activity, providing moments for mass convergence.</p>
<p>In many ways, #FeesMustFall was leaderless. At the same time, it had a powerful group and populist logic at work. It was a prototype of a grassroots-driven force with a leaning towards horizontality – but this did not fully mature. </p>
<p>At Wits University, for example, deliberative processes did not mature into intense democratic group deliberation as they had done in the <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/media/news-migration/files/Capitalisms%20CrisesAI.pdf">US Occupy Movement</a>. This has to do with the nature and orientation of crowd politics coming together in #FeesMustFall and its limits. Instead, final decisions were made through a rather loose assembly format and yes/no procedure around actions (<a href="http://wpj.dukejournals.org/content/33/1/30.abstract">Molefe 2016</a>) and were often driven by particular groups.</p>
<p>This weakness and internal tension of leaderlessness, existing alongside intense contestation between groups for leadership, did not provide much space for debate about strategy and tactics. Ultimately it also fed into divisions within #FeesMustFall. </p>
<p>Third, #FeesMustFall was about copying developments from different campuses, what is known as a mimetic politics. So if students marched and protested at one campus, others followed. </p>
<p>Or, if students occupied particular spaces at a certain university this was repeated at other campuses embracing the revolt. It was a copycat practice that also had a life of its own and reinforced the role of social media and “leaderlessness”. This mass dynamic, however, could have been given greater coherence if #FeesMustFall had moved early on to democratically elect a collective leadership on campuses and nationally. That did not happen, but despite the weakness, the mimetic dynamic gave a critical mass to #FeesMustFall. It gave a capacity for <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-10-23-sas-students-take-on-union-buildings">mobilisation</a> which culminated at the South African government’s seat of power, the Union Buildings in Pretoria in October 2015.</p>
<p>#FeesMustFall represents a new populist crowd politics. It brings forth strengths but also weaknesses. Without deeply democratic practices and institutional representation it could easily degenerate. At the same time, it is about a post-apartheid generation evolving a politics of its own. Its aim is to reclaim and transform the public university and challenge the crisis of national liberation politics, alongside other rising movements.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited version of a chapter from ‘Fees Must Fall; Student Revolt, Decolonisation and Governance in South Africa’ (Wits University Press)</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68773/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vishwas Satgar receives funding from the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation for the Democratic Marxism series he edits. He is a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign(SAFSC) and also the Chairperson of the Board of the Cooperative and Policy Alternative Centre (COPAC). </span></em></p>The leaderlessness of South Africa’s #FeesMustFall student movement has ultimately fed into divisions within the grouping.Vishwas Satgar, Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/683502016-11-10T15:34:44Z2016-11-10T15:34:44ZSouth Africa’s crisis could become a monster if Zuma is left unchecked<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145213/original/image-20161109-19060-1daefb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Jacob Zuma is the common denominator in South Africa's governance problems.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nic Bothma/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The events of the past few weeks in South Africa, including the release of the Public Protector’s <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/329757088/State-of-Capture-Public-Protector-Report#from_embed">state capture report</a>, are signs of how the country’s condition has been corroded under President Jacob Zuma’s leadership.</p>
<p>Given that a formidable faction still reinforces Zuma both within and outside of the African National Congress (ANC), he is unlikely to vacate power willingly. The stakes are high, particularly given that corruption charges still await him following the North Gauteng High Court’s ruling that fraud and corruption charges against him should be <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/concourt-refuses-to-hear-npa-appeal-on-zuma-corruption-charges-da-20161007">reinstated</a>. </p>
<p>The state capture report is emphatic in its claim that there appears to be a conflict of interest between Zuma’s official duties and private interests. It states that Zuma has used his official position to</p>
<blockquote>
<p>extend preferential treatment to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22513410">Gupta-linked</a> businesses in the form of state contracts, business financing and trading licenses. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It seems a shade of malfeasance follows Zuma.</p>
<p>Madonsela’s report is essentially about how the country’s institutional framework has been undermined. It <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-11-02-breaking-read-the-full-state-capture-report">details serious breaches</a> of a number of laws including the Members Executive Ethics Code, the Public Finance Management Act, Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act and Income Tax Act.</p>
<p>At its core, the report is also about governance. After all, it was sparked by claims that Zuma’s cronies are the ones who make – or promise – cabinet appointments, suggesting the president is a proxy of influential business elite.</p>
<p>It also pieces together a web of relationships that binds together some of the key actors in businesses associated with the Gupta family, executives and board members of state-owned enterprises and the president through members of his family. </p>
<p>There is a governance and institutional crisis that, if allowed to continue, could become an insurmountable monster. </p>
<p>Defects in political governance, especially Zuma’s failure to provide leadership, have induced a crisis of confidence in South Africa’s economy. </p>
<p>In addition institutions of state such as the National Directorate of Public Prosecution (colloquially called the Hawks), the intelligence community, and the South African Revenue Services have become weaker. Individuals who occupy these institutions are suspected of being close to Zuma, and are deployed in the ANC’s factional battles. </p>
<p>There’s no better example of this than the Hawks’ <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/exclusive-pravin-to-be-charged-again-20161106-2">on and off cases</a> against Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. The integrity of an important institution has been diminished. And tensions within the ANC have been deepened.</p>
<p>Zuma is the common denominator in all of this.</p>
<p>How did he rise to such an influential position that his own party struggles to rein him in? </p>
<h2>Shifting alliances within the ANC</h2>
<p>The marks of venality witnessed today are nothing new. Zuma already had a chequered history when he came to power in 2009. Before he ascended to the highest office he had an unresolved bribery case resulting from the arms procurement package, and for which his benefactor Schabir Shaik <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/Shaik%20HC%20judgement.pdf">was convicted</a> in 2005. Citing a complaint by Standard Bank, Judge Hilary Squires noted at the trial that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He [Zuma] was not only over his head in personal debt … but also concerned about the future education of his children.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His moral underbelly was evident early on. He was never fit to be president.</p>
<p>Some of the facts that became clear in the Squires case included Zuma’s heavy dependence on others to pay his debts; his preoccupation with extending the Nkandla homestead through donations back in 2000; his penchant for living beyond his means; and his desire to enjoy a comfortable existence funded by others.</p>
<p>Political scientist Goran Hyden refers to this phenomenon as the economy of affection. It is characterised by personal investment in reciprocal, informal relations with other individuals as a means of maximising self-interest by circumventing formalised processes. Such practices, as Hyden <a href="http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/56164/frontmatter/9780521856164_frontmatter.pdf">suggests</a>, could undermine governance, notably accountability and transparency. </p>
<p>Indeed, Zuma’s rule has been synonymous with the perversion of governance and weakening of independent institutions. </p>
<p>Yet still, with all his vulnerabilities and ethical lapses, the ANC chose Zuma as its best candidate to lead the party both <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/52nd-national-conference-polokwane">in 2007</a> <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/53rd-national-conference-mangaung">and 2012</a>. And then, despite his troubled first term as president of the country between 2009 and 2014, the ANC handed him a second term after <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2014/05/09/south-africa-election-results-2014">the national elections</a> in 2014. </p>
<p>Initially the ANC and its alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party, believed that Zuma bore hope for the poor. His rise had an ideological pretense: to facilitate a shift away from neo-liberal policies towards serving the interests of the poor. </p>
<p>Zuma’s second phase as leader of the party was cemented at the ANC’s Mangaung elective conference in December 2012. It was here that he became unstoppable. He stared down his political opponents. The thorn in his flesh, Julius Malema, was expelled along with various other errant ANC Youth League leaders.</p>
<p>At this point, Zuma’s political life was defined by a singular motive: to sustain his political survival until the 2019 national elections while using cronies as front men to accumulate wealth. As the Guptas tightened their grip on Zuma, the initial consensus that had the façade of a political project built around the ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe, Zwelinzima Vavi, and South African Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande, began to crumble.</p>
<p>There are grave implications for this kind of leadership. Policy uncertainty has multiplied. This is particularly true of economic policy. Public trust in institutions is generally low. This was particularly evident in <a href="https://theconversation.com/charges-against-finance-minister-show-misuse-of-south-african-law-67177">the protestations</a> against National Director of Public Prosecutions Shaun Abraham’s threat to charge Gordhan. </p>
<p>The foundations of democratic governance have become weaker in the seven years that Zuma has presided over the state. He also cost the ANC electoral support in 2016 local government elections and a great deal of embarrassment over the Nkandla matter. The ANC’s political capital will continue to evaporate while it remains wedded to him. Zuma may become the party’s grave digger in 2019.</p>
<h2>What next?</h2>
<p>If South Africa is to restore hope in governance and rebuild its institutions, the ANC would need to get rid of Zuma soon. If they choose to remain with him until the party’s elective conference in 2017, much damage would have been done in the country’s institutions by the 2019 elections. For that, the ANC would deserve to be punished at the polls.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68350/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mzukisi Qobo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Defects in political governance, especially President Jacob Zuma’s failure to provide leadership, have induced a crisis of confidence in South Africa’s economy.Mzukisi Qobo, Associate Professor at the Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/669692016-10-13T07:57:03Z2016-10-13T07:57:03ZPrexit: as South Africa looks over the abyss who will blink?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141532/original/image-20161012-16203-1homloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's President Jacob Zuma (right) and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa. The jury is out on whether Ramaphosa will break ranks.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hutchings/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Like the lemming that is about to throw itself off the proverbial cliff, South Africa appears unable to stop itself from preventing a self-inflicted act of such monumental folly that it could easily send Africa’s biggest economy into a tailspin. </p>
<p>It has been a long time coming. Nevertheless the announcement that finance minister Pravin Gordhan had been summonsed to appear in court <a href="http://businesstech.co.za/news/government/139621/these-are-the-official-charges-gordhan-faces-and-what-lies-ahead/">on charges of fraud and theft</a> was still shocking. It prompted <a href="https://www.enca.com/money/rand-plunges-as-gordhan-issued-with-summons">a sharp fall</a> in the country’s currency and provoked dismay from market analysts, constitutional watchdogs and political commentators alike. </p>
<p>How things unfold in response to this dramatic event over the coming days will have a huge long-term impact. In turn this will reveal a great deal about the balance of power within the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the prospects of deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa succeeding Jacob Zuma as president of both the ANC and the country, increased political risk and socioeconomic uncertainty, and whether South Africa will be able to avoid a damaging rating agencies’ downgrade before the end of the year. </p>
<p>The announcement has been a long time coming because ever since Zuma was forced on 13 December last year to <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/pravin-gordhan-appointed-minister-of-finance-20151213">re-appoint Gordhan</a> to the position he held in the cabinet between 2009-14, the president has been waging a cold war against his own finance minister. </p>
<p>Five days earlier Zuma had, without any warning, <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-12-09-nhlanhla-nene-removed-as-finance-minister">fired Nhlanhla Nene</a>. He had taken this bold decision to clear the path for the “capture” of the National Treasury, which is widely viewed as the one part of government capable of standing up to attempts by Zuma and his cronies to push through disreputable deals and policies intended to enrich a small group of Zuma insiders at the expense of the national fiscus and the wider population. </p>
<p>This history and context is essential to understanding what is happening now. </p>
<h2>Prosecution or persecution</h2>
<p>In his budget speech in late February Gordhan drew a line in the stand, telling Zuma “no more”. He unveiled a package of reforms essential to South Africa avoiding a downgrade by rating agencies. Such a move would have a dramatically adverse impact on South Africa’s sluggish economy, its prospects for growth, inflation and the cost of borrowing. In short, on the living conditions of the country’s poorest citizens. </p>
<p>Zuma has fought back through loyal proxies such as General Mthandazo Berning Ntlemeza, the head of police’s elite unit, The Hawks, and now, it would seem, the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Shaun Abrahams. It was Abrahams who held a press conference to announce that Gordhan would be charged. This was notwithstanding the fact that Gordhan had been informed in May that he was not a suspect in the Hawks’ investigation and would in any case be given an opportunity to make representations should that situation change. </p>
<p>For seasoned observers, the detail of the charge sheet was revealing. Earlier in the year Gordhan had faced a list of 27 questions relating to the establishment of a so-called “rogue unit” within the South African Revenue Service a decade ago. Gordhan was at that time commissioner of the revenue body. </p>
<p>But the charges Gordhan now faces have nothing to do with the rogue unit. This is probably because there is <a href="http://www.biznews.com/leadership/2016/08/30/hawks-case-against-gordhan-a-legal-sham-expert-insights/">no sound basis for them</a>. </p>
<p>And the goalposts have also been moved in relation <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/pillay-retirement-entirely-above-board-gordhan-20160824">to the payment of R1m</a> to former deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay. This is the cost to the revenue service of an early payout, which, by all accounts, is a common occurrence in the public sector.</p>
<p>The National Prosecuting Authority was clearly forced to scrabble around for a different legal basis for charging Gordhan and have come up with fraud and theft. These charges will require the state to prove several elements beyond reasonable doubt, making its prospects of success even less likely. </p>
<p>So less of a prosecution and more of a persecution. And an example of what is known as “selective prosecution”. What, then, will happen next? </p>
<p>The assumption is that no-one in the National Prosecurity Authority, including its head Abrahams, seriously believes that they have a sound case. But this does not matter since the primary, and perhaps only purpose, of the charges is to provide Zuma with the pretext to remove Gordhan regardless of <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/08/26/HandsOffGordhan-Chorus-of-support-grows">the support he has received</a> from a range of organisations and individuals. These include business leaders, civil society, parts of the ANC and its alliance supporters including the South African Communist Party and the ruling party’s own chief whip, Jackson Mthembu. </p>
<p>All eyes, therefore, are on Zuma. There is no doubt that he is brave and bold enough to fire Gordhan. He may do this in a desperate “last man standing” bid to ward off forces within the ANC that want him to go. The chorus of voices for a change at the top has grown stronger with recent calls from, among others, <a href="http://www.biznews.com/sa-investing/2016/09/07/watch-anglogold-chairman-sipho-pityana-skewers-zuma-as-anc-bigwigs-look-on/">ANC stalwarts Sipho Pityana</a>, Trevor Manuel and Barbara Hogan. Along with others they have <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/manuel-tells-zuma-to-be-honourable-and-quit-20161007">formed a new organisation</a> – Save South Africa – whose sole purpose is to persuade parliament, and the ANC majority within it, to remove their President. </p>
<h2>Who will blink first?</h2>
<p>How will the rest of the ANC leadership and Zuma’s cabinet react?</p>
<p>Attention will also be focused on ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe, who has been consistently vocal in backing Gordhan, and even more so on Ramaphosa, the deputy president of the ANC and the country. </p>
<p>This is a crucial fork in the road moment. Who will blink first? Ramaphosa, backed by Mantashe, needs to abandon his overly prudential approach, and finally make a decisive move. He must insist that Gordhan stays and, if Zuma threatens to fire Gordhan or does so, then Ramaphosa should resign as a matter of principle. </p>
<p>As much as anything, this moment is a test of Ramaphosa’s own leadership. He had a chance to act last December. But he is increasingly viewed as a man who never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It may be now or never for him and for the ANC moderate traditionalists and social democrats who began to find their voice when Nene was fired, but who are persistently out muscled by the venal nationalists on the right of the ruling party, with whom Zuma has increasingly aligned himself. He has done so by exploiting the “transformation” agenda to secure the fidelity of pliable placemen such as Hlaudi Motsoneng at the South African Broadcasting Authority, among others.</p>
<p>The implications for the ANC are profound; it faces its own acute dilemma. Act decisively and force Zuma from power, and it may tear the party apart. Fail to act, and allow him to continue his self-serving project of state capture, and the outcome may be the same, but with even more collateral damage as South Africa plunges into a Brazil-like tailspin caused by overlapping leadership and economic crises, stirred by a militant student movement. </p>
<p>The stakes have not been higher since the heady days of the early 1990s when South Africa also looked over the brink. Now it is less about brink and more about who will blink: Zuma, or Gordhan, or Abrahams or Ramaphosa. Which of these men will do the right thing and accept, or defend, the hard-won principles of constitutional democracy and public accountability that have been so sorely tested since Zuma came to power in 2009?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Calland is a founding partner of The Paternoster Group and Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town. He is author of "Make or Break: How The Next Three Years Will Shape South Africa’s next three Decades".</span></em></p>The stakes have not been higher since the heady days of the early 1990s when South Africa also looked over the brink. Now it is less about brink and more about who will blinkRichard Calland, Associate Professor in Public Law, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/630222016-07-28T10:12:25Z2016-07-28T10:12:25ZCracks in South Africa’s governing alliance could cost the ANC dearly<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131960/original/image-20160726-7023-wr02n5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters of South Africa's governing ANC during campaigning for upcoming local election.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa has been governed by the African National Congress (ANC) since 1994. The party has operated in an alliance with two other players – the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), known as the <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=2051">Tripartite Alliance</a>. But the arrangement has become increasingly fractious, so much so that it could, for the first time, badly damage the ANC’s performance in the upcoming <a href="http://www.elections.org.za/content/Elections/2016-Municipal-Elections/Home/">local elections</a>. </p>
<p>South Africa’s governing alliance should be understood as a product of history. The ANC and Communist Party formed a partnership in the late 1940s and the trade union body the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu), the pre-cursor to the current union federation Cosatu, joined them in 1955 to form the Congress Alliance. They united to produce the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/congress-people-kliptown-1955">Freedom Charter</a>, viewed as the ANC-led alliance’s blueprint for an equal, nonracial and democratic society.</p>
<p>After the apartheid government unbanned black liberation movements and released political prisoners in the 1990s, the ANC and the largest domestic anti-apartheid organisation, the United Democratic Front, merged and Sactu was replaced by Cosatu in the alliance. In the negotiations on a new constitution for the country the alliance was represented by the ANC and SACP.</p>
<h2>The new South Africa and the alliance</h2>
<p>All alliance partners were represented in the first government that was formed after the 1994 elections. There was relative harmony at this point as all were united behind the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02103/05lv02120/06lv02126.htm">Reconstruction and Development Programme</a>. </p>
<p>The first serious policy fault-lines began to emerge two years later when the government adopted a new macroeconomic policy. The introduction of Growth, Employment and Redistribution <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.za/publications/other/gear/chapters.pdf">(GEAR)</a>, plus President Thabo Mbeki’s particular style of leadership, led to the marginalisation of the SACP and Cosatu. Their members nevertheless continued to vote for the ANC.</p>
<p>The SACP always regarded itself as the vanguard of the Tripartite Alliance, in the sense of providing the ideological and intellectual <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/docs/conf/2015/conf0709.html">leadership</a>. It was difficult to sustain this role during the Mbeki period. At the ANC’s National Conference in Polokwane in 2007, the new ANC President, Jacob Zuma, promised their rehabilitation into the mainstream.</p>
<p>The SACP’s contribution in elections is virtually impossible to quantify because of overlapping membership between the three alliance members, as well as the spillover effect it has on extended family members and acquaintances.</p>
<p>But an analysis of membership numbers and electoral support suggests that in the 2014 elections only about 10% of the ANC’s electoral support came from paid-up members of the alliance. That year more than 11 million South Africans <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2014-05-11-the-partys-over-anc-sees-decline-in-support">voted for the ANC</a>. At the time Cosatu had a membership of almost two million, the SACP 220,000 members (2015) while the ANC reached its apex in 2012 with more than a million <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-communism-appears-to-be-gaining-favour-in-south-africa-45063">members</a>.</p>
<h2>The fault-lines</h2>
<p>There are at least three fault-lines in the alliance:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>internal strains within the trade union federation, Cosatu; </p></li>
<li><p>tensions between the ANC and the SACP; and</p></li>
<li><p>fractiousness over the ANC’s succession process which will result in a new leader being elected in 2017.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The trade union federation suffered a <a href="http://www.financialmail.co.za/features/2014/06/19/fixing-the-eastern-cape-province">major split</a> when eight unions joined the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) to support the federation’s then general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi. Unions that remained in the federation included the National Union of Mineworkers, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union and the South African Democratic Teachers Union. Several national union leaders also remained in the federation, including its president S’dumo Dlamini. A major source of contention was around the unions’ independence in relation to political organisations.</p>
<p>The split was also partly an extension of the ANC’s <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-06-16-00-the-num-wants-ramaphosa-to-lead-the-anc-saying-a-kzn-boss-would-be-tribalistic">internal power struggles</a> between those supporting Zuma and those who are either independent or supporters of deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa.</p>
<p>There was also a regional component. Many union branches in the ANC’s traditional stronghold, the Eastern Cape, are pro-Vavi. In pro-Zuma provinces, such as KwaZulu-Natal, the Dlamini-Cosatu faction is prominent.</p>
<p>So who now has the dominant influence in the Tripartite Alliance? Traditionally the SACP assumed that role but in several recent ANC elections three provincial premiers (known as <a href="http://www.rdm.co.za/politics/2015/09/29/jacob-zuma-is-behind-the-premier-league">the Premier League</a>) have come to the fore. The anti-Communist league has served as the pro-Zuma provincial lobby, effectively wanting to circumvent the alliance in favour of provincial caucusing in the ANC. SACP members are excluded from these processes.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131962/original/image-20160726-7051-9dzuck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131962/original/image-20160726-7051-9dzuck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131962/original/image-20160726-7051-9dzuck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131962/original/image-20160726-7051-9dzuck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131962/original/image-20160726-7051-9dzuck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131962/original/image-20160726-7051-9dzuck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131962/original/image-20160726-7051-9dzuck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">ANC President Jacob Zuma on the campaign trail in Pretoria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The SACP’s power has further been eroded by tensions that have emerged around its general secretary <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/SiteAssets/Minister's%20Profile/Minister's%20Profile.pdf">Blade Nzimande</a> who is also the national Minister of Higher Education and Training. Attempts by student organisations to hijack the independent student movement in 2015 led to the ANC-aligned SA Students Congress (Sasco) <a href="http://www.sasco.org.za/show.php?include=pr/2015/pr0720.html">criticising Nzimande</a> for not implementing the ANC’s free education policy. The Young Communist League responded to Sasco by accusing their criticism of Nzimande as criticism of the SACP.</p>
<p>The 2017 national succession considerations also constitute a fault-line in the alliance. It has already developed into a contest between Zuma’s and Ramaphosa’s supporters. The Zuma group includes the ANC Youth and Women’s Leagues, the Dlamini-Cosatu group, the Umkhonto we Sizwe Veterans’ League and provinces linked to the <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-05-25-on-the-chopping-block-why-a-slashed-anc-suits-zuma-and-the-premier-league/">Premier League</a>. The Ramaphosa group includes provinces like Gauteng, Western Cape and Limpopo, most of the SACP and some unions in Cosatu.</p>
<h2>The chances at the polls</h2>
<p>These fault-lines and ANC factionalism are clearly not new developments. What might be new is that they can start to influence the voting patterns of alliance supporters.</p>
<p>For the 2016 local elections the SACP has publicly called its supporters to vote for the ANC. It is unpredictable what the members of <a href="http://www.financialmail.co.za/features/2014/06/19/fixing-the-eastern-cape-province">Numsa</a>, which enjoys enormous support among unionised workers in the motor industry, will do but it could have a significant impact on the results in the automotive centres like Tshwane (Rosslyn) and the Eastern Cape (Buffalo City and Nelson Mandela Bay). These metropolitan areas are generally regarded as the <a href="http://www.enca.com/elections2016/">most contested points</a> for the ANC. Most unionised workers in the huge industry, which includes Volkswagen, General Motors, BMW and Mercedes Benz, belong to Numsa. </p>
<p>It is likely that the ANC’s national average will for the first time decline to below 60%. An unknown factor is the <a href="http://effighters.org.za/">Economic Freedom Fighters</a> (EFF). It is the <a href="http://businesstech.co.za/news/general/122547/these-are-the-eff-strongholds-across-south-africa/">strongest</a> in Gauteng, Limpopo and the North West. The EFF’s voter turnout is still unknown but it might follow the ANC’s pattern. With anything more than 15% in Gauteng it can play a key role in local coalition governments.</p>
<p>In the past the Tripartite Alliance provided the diversity of support for the ANC which secured its majority. Lately the fault-lines in the alliance reinforce much of the factionalism in the ANC, while the ANC’s internal power struggles are also duplicated in the alliance members. Many would argue that the alliance effectively came to an end with the split in Cosatu and the emergence of the so-called Premier League. As a result Cosatu and the ANC lost almost a million members in total between 2012 and 2015.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63022/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dirk Kotze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Tripartite Alliance in South Africa has previously provided the governing African National Congress with diverse support, securing it victory at the polls. It is now riven with dissension.Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/529892016-01-11T17:19:15Z2016-01-11T17:19:15ZSouth Africa’s governing party celebrates with eye on tough year ahead<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107739/original/image-20160111-6977-tkhd1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African President Jacob Zuma, who is also the president of the governing African National Congress, with his deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>These days, most big ticket political speeches are written by a committee. The South African governing party’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=11874">January 8 Statement</a> was no exception. </p>
<p>Formally from the African National Congress’ <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=4769">National Executive Committee</a>, a mere summary took President Jacob Zuma an hour to read out. Zuma is president of the country as well as the party.</p>
<p>One example of the collective character of the statement is that Zuma, personally a <a href="http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/zuma-the-patriarch-versus-anc-gender-equality/">cultural traditionalist</a>, read out full party <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=11874">support for equality</a> for specifically lesbians, gays, transgendered, bisexual and intersexed persons.</p>
<p>During its decades as a banned, underground organisation, the ANC used its <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/anc-january-8th-statements">January 8 statement</a> to announce its agenda for the struggle, and a theme for the coming year. </p>
<p>Since democracy, the ANC uses it to set the tone ahead of the February State of the Nation <a href="http://www.gov.za/president-jacob-zuma-state-nation-address-2015">address</a> in parliament. This January 8 Statement held no surprises, and reaffirms the ANC’s current course.</p>
<h2>Tensions in the ranks</h2>
<p>The days ahead of the statement included a controversy that the ANC’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/kids/main.php?id=14">alliance partners</a>, the Congress of South African Trade Unions <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/index.php">(Cosatu)</a> and the South African Communist Party <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/">(SACP)</a>, were denied their usual speaking slot. This was granted to them at short notice.</p>
<p>Their <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/01/09/anc-and-alliance-partners-promise-unity-to-win-elections">messages of support</a> included an appeal by the Cosatu leader <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=1027">Sdumo Dlamini</a> for unity amidst their split, and the SACP leader <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/SiteAssets/Minister's%20Profile/Minister's%20Profile.pdf">Blade Nzimande</a> urging the ANC to follow its own procedures for nominating municipal councillors.</p>
<p>Both the SACP secretary-general and the ANC president reiterated their support for the permanent alliance.</p>
<p>Globally, the only analogies for such an alliance come from the other side of the political spectrum: the relationship between India’s <a href="http://www.bjp.org/">Bharatiya Janata Party</a> and <a href="http://www.britannica.com/topic/Rashtriya-Swayamsevak-Sangh">Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh</a> (National Volunteer Organisation), and the six-decade-old alliance between Germany’s <a href="https://www.cdu.de/artikel/overview">Christian Democratic Union</a> and <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/christian-social-union-csu/t-17439619">Christian Social Union</a>.</p>
<h2>Symbolism of venue choice</h2>
<p>The choice of venue for the January 8 rally and statement is always made with strategic considerations in mind. That this one was held in the <a href="http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-royal-bafokeng-stadium-rustenburg">Royal Bafokeng Stadium</a> in Rustenburg obviously had two objectives. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>First, to mitigate the memories of the nearby <a href="https://theconversation.com/marikana-tragedy-must-be-understood-against-the-backdrop-of-structural-violence-in-south-africa-43868">Marikana massacre</a>. The state has not yet paid out compensation to the bereaved. Thirty-four miners were shot dead and 78 injured on that fateful day on August 16, 2012. The events followed the killing of ten people, including two policemen, by the strikers, at <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012">Marikana</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Second, ahead of the coming <a href="http://www.elections.org.za/content/Elections/2016-Municipal-Elections/Home/">municipal elections</a>, to rally the ANC in the province where support for the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters is highest. It is the official opposition in the area after winning <a href="http://www.elections.org.za/resultsnpe2014/">13.21%</a> of the provincial vote last year.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Constraints on the ANC’s ability to act</h2>
<p>Every January 8 Statement includes much of what Americans term motherhood and apple pie. Who could take issue with the five pillars: people first; deliver basic services; good governance; sound financial management; and building strong institutions? Or to oppose and expose corruption?</p>
<p>Here, the ANC is judged, and will be judged, on the extent of its ability to actually implement these ideals. The media have frequently highlighted <a href="http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/why-is-corruption-getting-worse-in-south-africa/">corruption scandals</a>. Another problem has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-needs-a-professional-civil-service-41771">churn</a> in high-level executive positions such as ministers, directors-general, and the chairs and board members of parastatals.</p>
<p>These <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-africa-should-gird-itself-for-tumultuous-times-52161">repetitive dismissals</a> have disrupted smooth operations of the entities affected. These problems, plus severe budgetary constraints, limit the government’s ability to implement policies.</p>
<p>Similarly, will denouncing factionalism and “slate politics” have any impact on the day-to-day behaviour of ANC provincial executives, including Zuma supporters?</p>
<p>Parts of the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=11874">January 8 statement</a> sounded like an opposition newspaper editorial page – full support for chapter nine institutions. Included on the list were the <a href="http://www.publicprotector.org/">Public Protector</a> and the <a href="http://www.elections.org.za/content/">Independent Electoral Commission</a>. </p>
<p>The institutions, which also include those mentioned elsewhere in the constitution, are those which support democracy. Examples include the <a href="https://www.agsa.co.za/">Auditor-General</a>, the Reserve Bank, and the <a href="http://www.icd.gov.za/">Independent Police Investigative Directorate</a>.</p>
<p>Zuma also pledged sound fiscal management and prudent financial policy. Could this perhaps have been intended as reassurances to ratings agencies and the international investment community?</p>
<p>He also declared that restitution of land taken from black people during white rule must be followed by improved farm productivity. Here too, the ANC will be judged by its actions. </p>
<p>The ANC’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=262">1994 election manifesto</a> pledged to restitute and redistribute one-third of white-owned farms within five years. Even this has <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21645232-south-africa-takes-populist-turn-land-reform-i-had-farm-africa">not been achieved</a>. Some of the redistributed farms continued as going commercial businesses, but others provided merely household food subsistence for the families concerned.</p>
<p>The ANC conflict with opposition parties and NGOs came across in a grumble about “low-intensity lawfare”. This refers to claims by the ANC that the country’s courts are being used to deny it the space to govern, despite it winning elections.</p>
<p>Here, South Africans will have to accept that one unintended consequence of having the world’s most elaborate <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng-02.pdf">Bill of Rights</a> is, and will always be, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-judges-in-south-africa-under-threat-or-do-they-complain-too-much-45459">“judicialisation” of politics</a>, especially when one party repeatedly wins election after election.</p>
<p>The only paragraphs of the address with specific details and figures were on post-school education, with pledges of a fees freeze for 2016. Zuma announced R4.5 billion extra for the National Student Financial Aid Scheme <a href="http://www.nsfas.org.za/">(NFSAS)</a>, and that NSFAS loan-holders would not have to pay upfront registration fees. Significantly, this got the loudest rounds of applause and vuvuzela-blowing of the entire speech, perhaps reflecting who made up a significant portion of the ANC members bussed in.</p>
<p>Both condemnation of racism, and restitution of land, received their routine reiterations.</p>
<h2>Eye on elections</h2>
<p>With the <a href="http://www.elections.org.za/content/Elections/2016-Municipal-Elections/Home/">municipal elections</a> only four months ahead, most eyes on the statement would have this perspective. Here the January 8 Statement reiterated that each ANC branch must nominate three municipal election candidates. Their performance in front of a community meeting will be the key criterion in choosing one amongst them, not their popularity within the ANC members themselves.</p>
<p>The reality is that in all working class wards, the municipal councillor posts are the most highly paid jobs: up to <a href="http://businesstech.co.za/news/general/92054/south-african-councillors-demand-r1-3-million-salary/">R500,000</a> – about US$30,000 – a year. So <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2015/10/17/infighting-may-cost-anc-votes">factionalism</a> is at its most brutal. This includes assassinations when it comes to electing candidates as well as ruthless competition among candidates’ donors who have been awarded municipal tenders.</p>
<p>The ANC pledge that promulgating the first nationwide <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-fresh-look-confirms-national-minimum-wage-would-be-good-for-south-africa-51209">minimum wage</a> is in its final stages is also clearly made with Cosatu voters in mind in the upcoming elections.</p>
<p>In recent years, public responses to the January 8 statements has been muted. This is due to growing realisation of the government’s limited capacity and capability to implement them. This year promises to be an interesting one, though, made tough for all governments by the international depression caused by the end of the <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-25/if-china-killed-commodities-super-cycle-fed-is-about-to-bury-it">commodities super-cycle</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52989/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member. This analysis is in his personal capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>The ANC will be judged by its ability to deliver on its promises to provide basic services and good governance, practise sound financial management and combat corruption this election year.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.