New South African Review 2. Paul Hoffman

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СКАЧАТЬ was not involved in the liberation struggle. In South Africa the trade unions are a key component of the Tripartite Alliance. The involvement of Cosatu in the process of liberation and in the current government has no counterpart in Zimbabwe. Nor does the role of the SACP. It is true that the SACP has authoritarian instincts, and like the trade unions (in which it is influential) it played a significant part in bringing the current ANC leadership to power. Both the SACP general secretary, Blade Nzimande, and his deputy, Jeremy Cronin, currently serve in the Zuma government. That said, the SACP has helped to counteract trends towards the type of narrow black nationalism which dominates Zanu PF’s politics and which some in the ANC broad church – particularly the Youth League – might otherwise find tempting. The SACP has championed a class analysis which rejects racism and racial categories, although it is true that the theory of ‘colonialism of a special type’ and the national democratic revolution (each of which the SACP embraced) did recognise the reality of racial division. It has also been a source of significant white involvement in the liberation struggle and its existence reflects the much more urbanised character of the South African struggle. With the trade unions, it will challenge state policies which do not deliver progress for the poorer sections of South African society, although Cosatu is concerned that the SACP presence in government is causing it to mute these protests. The SACP was bitterly opposed to the movement away from redistribution under Mandela and Mbeki and is critical of the neoliberal orthodoxies which investors demand from South Africa. It is also strongly opposed to the Mugabe regime and will doubtless seek to pressurise the Zuma government into adopting a more critical policy towards Zimbabwe.

      INTERNAL DEMOCRACY

      In a sombre 2009 article, Lotshwao speaks of the ANC as ‘internally undemocratic and highly centralised’ (2009: 912) and fears this could lead to the slow death of democracy in South Africa. The absence of strong interparty competition to provide a check on the dominant party certainly places greater pressure on the ANC’s own internal pluralism to provide a degree of democratic balance, and Lotshwao sees little evidence of this. His argument raises valid concerns but is overstated and requires qualification, given that the ANC has only recently emerged from a process in which it unseated Thabo Mbeki as both party and state president, the rarest of events in Africa. While trends towards centralisation and elitism are real, the aftermath of such important events may seem a singularly inopportune moment to write the ANC off as ‘internally undemocratic’. Our judgement is that such a view of the ANC lacks nuance and subtlety and therefore struggles to explain such a groundbreaking event. It is true that the ANC leadership is still too remote from its membership and from the people at large – Zuma’s more inclusive persona notwithstanding – and parliament still largely serves as a docile instrument of the ANC leadership. The autonomy of ANC MPs is eroded by both the practice of democratic centralism and by the list system of proportional representation, each of which invests enormous power in party elites. Lotshwao argues that when Mbeki was ‘recalled’ in 2008, this resulted from his alleged interference in the prosecution of Jacob Zuma, not from pressure by the ANC membership (2009: 912), although this fails to account for his earlier removal from the ANC presidency which was directly attributable to pressure from the mass membership. Although he argues that the executive is virtually free to act as it wishes (2009: 907) it is at least possible that Polokwane has released a democratic genie from the bottle which the ANC leadership will now struggle to return and Zuma’s room for manoeuvre in the South African political system is greatly constrained when compared to Mugabe’s, even in Zimbabwe’s post-GPA era. Although the ANC has an autocratic character which adversely affects the quality of South African democracy as a whole, it still has a more diverse political base than Zanu PF and a degree of internal pluralism which is wholly absent in Zimbabwe. From a bleaker perspective, however, it could be argued that this plurality is increasingly a plurality of rival factions seeking to access and ultimately plunder the state, rather than a genuine clash of rival ideologies (Suttner, 2008).

      CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE LIBERAL TRADITION

      South Africa has a strongly democratic constitution which is jealously guarded by its Constitutional Court and compliance with the constitution is monitored by a range of ‘chapter nine institutions’ – the Human Rights Commission, the Public Protector, the Gender Commission – although their autonomy is invariably encroached upon by the reality of ANC dominance. It is revealing that when Zuma (2006) expressed homophobic sentiments some years ago, he felt compelled to apologise and to acknowledge the constitution’s protection for freedom of sexual orientation. The ANC government has also had to accept a number of adverse rulings by the courts, particularly on the HIV/AIDS issue and it has done so without demur although some of the threatening noises made against the courts from sections of the party when Zuma’s prosecution was still a possibility were reprehensible. There is, however, a lack of enforcement of the constitution and the adoption of policies, particularly in the international sphere, that tend to be incompatible with the constitution – for example the position it has adopted on gay rights at the UN and, arguably, its policy towards Zimbabwe. It is also true that there is a gulf between an enlightened constitution and grassroots sentiment, as is evidenced in popular attitudes towards capital punishment, women’s equality, same-sex unions, gay liberation and the incidence of ‘corrective rape’ against lesbians. Steven Robins has suggested that those committed to sexual and gender equality constitute a ‘relatively small, educated middle class enclave within a sea of sexual and social conservatism’ (Robins, 2008: 412). Nevertheless the constitution accepts gay marriage and outlaws capital punishment, and is buttressed by a powerful legal profession and a highly critical and feisty media – comfortably the most vibrant on the continent – which asks awkward questions and fiercely upholds the constitution.

      CONCLUSION

      There is certainly some evidence to support the Zanufication thesis: the liberationist and ‘exceptionalist’ ideology to which the ANC adheres; the blurred demarcation lines between party and state; the insidious relationship between the ANC and the business community; the overt hostility to much of the print media; the growing levels of corruption; and the frustrations building up over the distribution of land. But, as we have seen, there are also important aspects of the political landscape which differ from that of Zimbabwe – the strength of civil society, the degree of urbanisation, a robust liberal tradition, a liberal democratic polity and constitution, the political role of the trade unions and a relatively influential Communist Party committed to nonracialism. We should also note the role that South Africa’s much deeper integration in the global economy than Zimbabwe’s, and its aspirations as an emerging power of the ‘global South’, are likely to have in tempering any drift towards outright Zanufication.

      Authoritarian trends are unmistakable, but our overall conclusion is that the Zimbabwean road is a possibility, not an inevitability. Of course it is possible that South Africa may yet follow an autocratic path that is unique in itself rather than one emulating the Zimbabwean ‘model’, one which is more complex, even chaotic and indefinable, in which the ruling party’s authoritarian impulses are contested by opposition parties, the media, civil society and by elements of the ANC itself. Indeed the ANC captures this confusing situation in microcosm as plunderers, and demagogues coexist in its ranks alongside those still committed to the ethos of service and sacrifice which informed the liberation struggle. In short, it may be that South Africa will develop an authoritarian politics resembling certain aspects of the Zimbabwean polity but its complexity is unlikely to be adequately captured by the all-embracing notion of Zanufication.

      NOTES

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