New South African Review 2. Paul Hoffman

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СКАЧАТЬ to serve only one term as president, he has plunged the ANC back into a succession struggle, with rivals scheming to unseat him at the ANC’s five-yearly conference in December 2012 (although, as ever, the ANC publicly denies what is plain for all to see). So it is that Zuma fiddles while South Africa stumbles along a path of political uncertainty. An unknowing observer studying the recent 2011 local government election campaign of the ANC could be forgiven for concluding that Julius Malema held the party’s presidency and not the hapless Zuma, who seems to have lost the brilliant politicking touch he so adroitly displayed in the 2009 national elections.

      In 1976, Soweto erupted, taking the then exiled ANC as much by surprise as the then National Party government and fundamentally shifting the terrain of South African politics as, over the following decade and a half, popular resistance was to render the continuance of white minority rule unsustainable. The eventual outcome was the celebrated compromise between popular forces and the white state in 1994, resulting in a liberal democratic constitution which balanced minority protection against majority rule, sought to render government accountable under a system of constitutional rule, and entrenched myriad individual, human and social rights. It has been in many ways remarkable: South Africa has now conducted four free and generally fair general elections; there is freedom of speech and extensive and critical debate; on significant occasions the constitutional and other courts have held government to account; and for all the criticisms of the government’s economic strategy there has been a concerted expansion of grants and benefits to the poor. No one seriously questions whether South Africa in 2011 is a better place to live in than in 1976, even though there are many people at the bottom of the social pile who have only seen limited change or no change at all. Nonetheless, there is widespread concern that the ANC, the party of liberation, has become the major problem in regard to the health and prospects of South African democracy.

      It is commonplace that the ANC has struggled to transit from a liberation movement to just another political party within a liberal democracy. Nonetheless, the ANC has become the ‘dominant party’, one which dominates South Africa not only electorally but by setting the national agenda. The fundamental thrust of such opinions is that the ANC views itself as the embodiment of a ‘historical project’ whereby, as the representative of the popular will as demonstrated by the liberation struggle, it has earned the right to rule irrespective of its performance. With such a worldview, and with party interests having deeply penetrated the functioning of the state (and particularly its security organs), it is hardly surprising that it interprets criticism of the ruling party not as healthy or normal but as originating from reactionary (read racist) motivations or, if from within the popular movement, from treachery or misconception. From such a perspective, ambition and competition for high office is not normal and healthy but treacherous, if not treasonable. And it should not be forgotten that the ANC is a member of that family of African liberation movements-cum-ruling parties – among them Zimbabwe’s African National Union Patrotic Front (Zanu PF) and Angola’s Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) – most of which have abrogated democracy and trampled on human rights in their respective domains. The ANC is neither of these two corrupt and authoritarian entities. But the ANC in power (or individual members of the government, notably the minister of Defence, Lindiwe Sisulu) have displayed a disturbing arrogance, a contempt for media criticism and a total disdain for popular opinion and for parliament’s role of oversight. Worse, Zuma’s own rise to power was in the teeth of evidence that he had been deeply implicated in the corruption of the 1998 arms deal, and was achieved on the back of a populist campaign conducted by his supporters which severely compromised the integrity of the state’s security services and undermined the authority of the courts.

      Nevertheless, any serious analysis of the ANC in power suggests that it is a much more complicated animal than the assessment of it as a self-justifying liberation movement implies. Overall, in its tenure of seventeen years in power, it has remained true to the tenets of electoral democracy and, as Zuma’s displacement of Thabo Mbeki as party president at Polokwane in December 2007 demonstrated, it is to a reasonable degree responsive to popular opinion – or at least that which is channelled through its own structures. But will it stay true to this tradition? How will it respond to that ultimate democratic test – the prospect of, or the reality of, losing political power? Will it follow the catastrophic Kenyan-Zimbabwean path or that of Ghana in more recent times?

      The chapters that follow in this section of the New South African Review illustrate and explore the character of the ANC while also demonstrating the complexity of South African society. In their contribution, British observers of the African political economy, James Hamill and John Hoffman, discuss the suggestion initially made by Jeremy Cronin (deputy general secretary of the SACP) in 2002: that the ANC had become subject to a condition he dubbed ‘Zanufication’, meaning that under Thabo Mbeki it had come to display authoritarian and corrupting behaviours and tendencies similar to the ruling Zanu PF in Zimbabwe. Cronin had implied, further, that South Africa under Mbeki was in danger of pursuing a trajectory of political and economic meltdown analogous to what was then occurring in Zimbabwe; from such a perspective, South Africa was in danger of becoming another failing African country, with enormous consequences for the region. Hamill and Hoffman, however, indicate that there are some disturbing similarities within the ANC, notably a tendency towards political intolerance, but they also point out major differences. They note South Africa’s strongly democratic constitution ‘jealously guarded by its constitutional court … buttressed by a powerful legal profession and a highly critical and feisty media’. They point out that whereas Mugabe has established a highly personalised rule which has brusquely ignored all constitutional constraints, the ANC has not only acted to ensure adherence to its constitutional prescription that no party president should serve more than two five-year terms, but it also has in place – and has used – internal party mechanisms whereby incumbent leaders can legitimately be challenged and overthrown.

      Nonetheless, Hamill and Hoffman note that the political prospect for South Africa is not simply either Zanufication or strict adherence to constitutionalism. The ANC is also the focus of Devan Pillay’s contribution, in the context of its historic development as an alliance of classes. Taking as his cue the elaboration of the theory of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) whereby South Africa’s diverse classes and races among the politically oppressed came together in alliance under the leadership of the ANC, he argues that the party has very self-consciously become an embodiment of political ambiguity and of the varying interests of different classes. Thus, whereas critics to the left of the ANC-Cosatu-SACP Tripartite Alliance now argue that the theory of the NDR provides a framework for a conservative class alliance of white and black capitalists and a black middle class to pursue market-driven policies contrary to the interests of the impoverished mass of South Africans, supporters of the alliance argue that –despite manifold tensions – it holds the political centre together, and prevents South Africa from becoming victim to a politics of blatant and unprincipled factional struggle for resources. The ANC is many things to many people. Despite its failings and faults, it continues to retain the electoral support of its historic constituencies – with the least advantaged by its policies, the working class and the poor, not yet ready to abandon the ‘party of Mandela’.

      Pillay argues that, given electoral difficulties which any self-proclaimed party of the left would have in confronting the ANC, Cosatu – although disposed to establishing linkages with civil society organisations, and tendencies critical of the government – remains committed to using its experience in propelling Zuma to power to continue to push the ruling party in a direction favourable to the working class. Again, however, he observes the political ambiguity of the ANC, discussing how the SACP’s direct involvement in the Zuma government has placed it much closer to the centre of power and increasingly distant from Cosatu. From this, it is inferred, the struggles for influence, position, and policy will continue within – are indeed inherent to – the ANC. Pillay does not directly link Zuma’s personal lack of authority and decisiveness to the historic ambiguity of the ANC as an alliance of contending class forces, yet his analysis does provide an insight into why the ruling party has lapsed into a politics of paralysis, leaning simultaneously to right and left. The danger, as Pillay points out, is that South Africa may soon hit up against the limits to its present development СКАЧАТЬ