It is possible that events in recent months may have signalled the beginning of the end for South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma. True, Zuma has proved to be a resilient politician in the face of relentless criticism, ridicule and scandal, which began long before he came to power and premature predictions of his demise abound. There are signs, however, that the endgame has begun. The worry is that it will serve to distract attention from the country’s most pressing problems.
The country is beset with challenges, not least persistent poverty, unemployment, inequality, a flat-lining economy, declining minerals sector, looming credit rating downgrade, falling Rand, underperforming state owned companies, corruption and state incapacity, to name but a few. Protests over access to services, corruption, and university tuition fees are growing, while the unprecedented industrial action witnessed in recent years is likely to spike when important wage negotiations reopen this year. Many of these protests take aim directly at Zuma himself, and have even generated a #ZumaMustFall campaign.
They are accompanied by unending criticism of Zuma by the opposition parties and press. Such pressures are taking a toll, but Zuma’s downfall will not be heralded by this cacophony of moral outrage and liberal tut-tutting. His receding power is symbolised by a reluctance among all but his closest allies to speak out for him. At the same time, section of his own party has become emboldened enough to challenge his increasingly erratic and autocratic decision making. Zuma’s U-turns in recent weeks regarding the appointment of his favoured finance minister and his offer to pay back some of the public money spent on his controversial Nkandla residence are symptomatic of his weakened position. While the court of public opinion might claim a victory, it is manoeuvrings within his own party that have Zuma most worried.
Zuma’s recent declaration that he will not run for a third term as ANC president reflects an admission of weakness, rather than a heartfelt commitment to democratic change and renewal in the movement. The fallout from the local elections in 2016 will provide the starting gun for the struggles for ANC leadership positions. Whether or not the ANC manages to hold on to the major metro areas it fears losing, the poll is likely to reflect longer-term trends of slowly diminishing ANC support. The apportioning of blame for this will likely reveal the factional fault lines ahead of the ANC’s elective conference in December 2017; a contest that Zuma is slowly losing influence over. There is even speculation that Zuma could be recalled by the ANC before then.
The danger with all this speculation, however, is that while Zuma’s future is of great importance to the country, there is a tendency among analysts to play the man and not the ball. A post-Zuma era would be welcome if for no other reason than refocussing attention away from a man whose leadership has, for much too long, been understood as being synonymous with, rather than symptomatic of, South Africa’s problems.
A pressing issue is the extent to which private patron-client networks have come to determine the distribution of public goods. Individual gatekeepers in positions of party or public administration control access to resources and opportunities and exercise a form of discretionary power by regulating who gains access to such resources; decisions that are often made on the basis of political loyalty, rather than competence. Such practices are therefore not synonymous with corruption, though corruption is a pervasive symptom of it. Instead, they reflect something much broader: political and social structures through which authority and power are cultivated, disseminated, and contested.
There are two dimensions to this. The first is the distribution and consumption of state spoils (jobs, status, authority, services, housing etc.) along private networks for political gain. The second is the facilitation of capitalist accumulation through direct state support and influence, including the discretionary control and distribution of public contracts, BEE deals and market access. Large sections of the emerging black capitalist class in South Africa are highly dependent on continued state patronage for their future. This resembles the kind of capital accumulation one can witness in the crony capitalism evident in the East Asian ‘Tiger’ economies, post-Soviet Russia, and the ‘oligarchic’ politics evident in Western countries where private capitalist lobbyists wield huge influence over public officials.
This kind of gatekeeper politics is not the ineluctable way in which the ANC works. These tendencies were a prevalent feature of the National Party’s governance and thus predate the ANC’s assumption of office, let alone Jacob Zuma’s presidency. Patronage, corruption, cronyism, poverty, and inequality might instead be seen as intractable features of contemporary global capitalism, and South Africa’s historical insertion within it. Mitigating the fallout of these will require much more than stopping Zuma.
And yet, debates about Zuma’s future have come to embody debates about the country’s future. South Africa needs a far more reflective, mature conversation about the development of capitalism and its implications for party politics, democracy and development. Whether or not Zuma falls, this conversation cannot become solely a plebiscite on one man’s leadership; South Africa cannot afford such a blinkered fascination.
Featured Image Credit: Jacob Zuma, 2009 World Economic Forum on Africa-2.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
I think is would be wise decision to recall him before 2017. just for the sake of our economy. Mr President has done more great damages its time up… He must retire now
“This kind of gatekeeper politics is not the ineluctable way in which the ANC works.”
– Unfortunately the ‘predatory accumulative’ element is so deeply entrenched (with former ANC stalwarts increasingly, but fruitlessly raising their heads above the parapet) that, like Apartheid, Corruptheid cannot be reformed, fixed or reduced to “petty Corruptheid” – the entire ANC cabal must be removed.
“These tendencies were a prevalent feature of the National Party’s governance and thus predate the ANC’s assumption of office, let alone Jacob Zuma’s presidency.”
But never reached the scale of the present kleptocracy. Besides, “two wrongs don’t make a right” and the “our turn to eat” argument, implicit in Bereford’s sophistry is harming the “wretched of the earth” black majority the most.
“Patronage, corruption, cronyism, poverty, and inequality might instead be seen as intractable features of contemporary global capitalism, and South Africa’s historical insertion within it.”
– the giveaway. Corruption is no more endemic to capitalism and free markets than to socialism or central planning (perhaps young Alex is so fixated on waiting for a “Lula moment” that he has missed the latter’s arrest on corruption charges. The only cure for rent-seeking and nomenklature cronyism are the checks and balances of (all successful) modern democracies which JZ783 Zuma, the ANC and the Left abhor and abjure.
What the article does get correct is that Zuma is not the cause but a symptom of the deep moral abyss the once-honourable ANC has sunk into.
CJB, I fail to see the effectiveness of the so-called checks and balances on the “(all successful) modern democracies” of which you speak. To take the one most obvious example of the USA where thr Bush family exercised state capture by having that country go to war to enrich themselves, by Wall Street having licence to plunge the world economy into a recession for profit, and to have bankers bailed out by tax money. You see when corruption becomes normative because the beneficieries are rich white men we fail to see it as corruption any longer but rather as the way things should operate when checks and balances are in place. The point is there are no great succesful modern democracies. Only states where the “right” people benefit from that corruption.
Most troubling is Zuma’s seeming capitulation to the Guptas in exchange one assumes for massive financial subsidisation of the Zuma family and entourage. Is this foreign private sector direct involvement in Presidential politics in SA, Africa not highly unusual?
“Cry the beloved country” can now be used litteratley. How much power and greed can one person have. What is hidden in the cupboards of the NEC (skeletons if any) that they don’t want to recall Zuma. Surely they can see that the ship we fought so very hard for to keep afloat in the apartheid years is now sinking.