Jacob Zuma is about to complete a long and arduous pathway to the
pinnacle of power in South Africa.
The ruling African National Congress is expected to win next
Wednesday’s general election by somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the
vote. A breakaway party, the Congress of the People (Cope), which once
threatened an upset, has faded and will be happy to get five percent.
For the newly elected President Zuma, the taste of victory will
be sweet.
He has overcome opposition from the party’s former leader Thabo
Mbeki (who consigned him to the wilderness), rape charges (for which he was
acquitted), corruption charges (which were withdrawn two weeks ago) and
unrelenting hostility from some of the elite who consider him not up to the
job.
Because of the bad press,
Zuma often exceeds expectations. His appeal to the masses, especially the Zulu
supporters in his heartland, is based on a charismatic personality that
contrasts with the intellectual, emotionally distant Mbeki.
The fact that Zuma has little formal education, five wives,
dresses in animal skins at ceremonial occasions and has had run-ins with the
law will not lose him many votes in the South African townships, where most
urban blacks live.
When talking to the business community, foreign dignitaries or
journalists, Zuma can be equally impressive. He has great personal warmth and
is lucid on the challenges ahead.
He wants a crackdown on crime and corruption, greater
accountability from politicians and office bearers and a concerted effort to
deal with the country’s neglected education and health systems.
Even white Afrikaners, the group that was responsible for the
system of apartheid and have felt a bit lost in the democratic era, prefer the
big Zulu chief who allows them to walk tall as Africans to the edgy Mbeki.
Cheers, with caution but there remains deep-seated scepticism
about Zuma, even among rank and file ANC members. Mokotedi Mpshe, the Director
of the National Prosecuting Authority, withdrew corruption charges against Zuma
two weeks ago because conversations secretly taped by the National Intelligence
Agency revealed that there had been political manipulation over the timing of
his trial.
It was a convenient decision, bringing to an end seven years of
legal process but, as Mpshe stressed, the decision was not based on the merits
of the case. Zuma will now never be able to disprove the litany of corruption
charges against him in a court of law. The cloud of doubt will always hang over
him.
But it does not change the reality that the ANC will win big next
week. Two questions remain to be answered: whether the ruling party will get a
two thirds majority and whether it will lose the Western Cape, the only one of
the nine provinces seriously in contention.
Both outcomes hinge on another unknown: how first-time voters -
the ipod-Youtube-Facebook generation that has little direct knowledge of
apartheid - will vote.
Battle for the Cape The Western Cape, the region of Cape Town,
has never been core ANC territory. It has a unique demographic combination (to
use South African terminology) of mixed race “coloured” voters, whites and
Africans. Here the Democratic Alliance, a liberal party with predominantly
white and coloured support, is favoured to come first.
This would make Helen Zille, its leader and an outspoken crusader
against corruption, Premier of the province.
The breakaway Cope, which was created by ANC stalwarts embittered
by the summary removal of their boss, Mbeki, from office last year, erred by
appointing as leader the Reverend Mvume Dandala, a Methodist Minister with
little background in the anti-apartheid struggle. Cope is unlikely to poll more
than a handful of votes outside of its Eastern Cape base, and even there will
struggle to get 20 %.
For South Africa’s black majority the ANC remains the symbol of
liberation and their struggle for better lives, and the alternative brands are
not very compelling.
Those commentators who bang on about how nothing has changed
since the end of apartheid in 1994 beyond the emergence of a small, wealthy
black elite are blind to the enormous socio-economic revolution that has swept
South Africa.
There remains massive poverty and unemployment. But many millions
have houses, electricity,
bank accounts and prospects today that they did not dream about
under white rule. A system of social welfare and remittances has provided
relief for the poorest in the rural areas. More than a quarter of the black
population has been moved into the middle class since 1994. People will not be
voting for the ANC out of misplaced racial identification.
Tough at the top Unfortunately for Zuma, he is becoming President
just as the gains of the last decade are threatened by the global crash. The
showpiece of Mbeki’s transformation, Black Economic Empowerment, is one
casualty.
The black middle class is laden with debt and its newly acquired
equity in the South African economy has dipped into negative figures. BMWs and
Audis are being repossessed at the rate of 7,000 a month.Meanwhile, the focus
of the country after the election will be a mad scramble to be ready for next
year’s soccer World Cup - an event that will make or break South Africa’s
international image.
Zuma’s difficulty in all this is that he is not yet master of his
own party. The groups who united behind him at the historic ANC conference in
Polokwane in December 2007 are fractured. It was an anti-Mbeki rather than a
pro-Zuma coalition.
Though Zuma is himself a moderate and does not want to move the
country to the left, his big tent includes the leftist Congress of South
African Trade Unions and South African Communist Party who have demanded more
say over economic and social policy.
Even more vexing, he has to contend with those businessmen who
expect payback for their support and ambitious individuals in the inner circle
who are sharpening their knives as they wait for him to fail.
Zuma’s leadership will be profoundly challenged by the need to keep everyone
happy and on the same page, and to prevent a new split in the ANC. He could
well find that, difficult as his path to the top has been, staying there might
be even tougher.