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South Africa headed for leadership change?

Despite the acrimony of the bruising electoral battles at the 52nd national conference of the African National Congress (December 16-19) at Polokwane, it would be wrong to see the outcome as the beginning of the ANC’s end as a movement and political party. However, it was certainly a setback to the incumbent ANC president, Thabo Mbeki, and may even mark the beginning of the decline of his political authority even though he will remain President of South Africa till A pril 2009. This position invests him with executive power that, according to his rival, Jacob Zuma’s supporters, is already being misused to hobble Mr. Zuma and curb his political ambitions, if not destroy him politically.

The scale and near-totality of the rejection of Mr. Mbeki and his supporters by the national conference are truly immense. Not merely did he lose the contest for ANC president to Mr. Zuma, the ANC deputy president whom he sacked as the country’s Deputy President in June 2005; all the other candidates for the remaining five top party executive positions (deputy president, national chairperson, secretary general, treasurer general and deputy secretary general), openly identified with Mr. Mbeki, lost to known Zuma supporters. Further, the outcome of the election to the powerful 80-member National Executive Committee (NEC), ‘the highest organ of the ANC between Conferences [with] the authority to lead the organisation,’ a day later, emphatically reconfirmed the overwhelming support Mr. Zuma enjoys in the organisation. Again, almost all known Mbeki supporters were defeated, including three of the five who had formed the Mbeki ‘ticket’ — a rather inaccurate American importation — for the six top positions.

Among the notable and vocal Mbeki supporters who failed to retain their seats in the powerful NEC were Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who was appointed Deputy President of the country after Mr. Zuma was sacked; ANC national chairperson Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota, who earlier lost the contest for secretary general; Smuts Ngoynyama, head of the ANC president’s office; Frank Chikane, director general in the presidency; Essop Pahad, Cabinet Minister in the presidency; Ronnie Kasrils, Minister for Intelligence; Charles Nqkula, Safety and Security Minister, who was earlier replaced as chairperson of the South African Communist Party (SACP) by Gwede Mantshse and was now the new ANC secretary general. However, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, the Foreign Minister who Mr. Mbeki favoured for deputy president but lost the contest, and Joel Netshithenze, a close Mbeki advisor who had lost the contest for national chairperson, managed to retain their NEC seats.

Significantly, while most ministers dealing with the economy failed to retain their seats, Trevor Manuel, Finance Minister and main driver of the macroeconomic policy, which was firmly opposed by both the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the SACP who backed Mr. Zuma, retained his seat, albeit at a lowly 57th position, in contrast to the first position he secured at the 2002 national conference in Stellenbosch.

This growth strategy, encapsulated in the June 1996 document, Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), under President Nelson Mandela has, from its inception, been contested by Cosatu and the SACP, partners of the ANC at the political level even if not formally in the government as Cosatu and SACP members. Even sections of the ANC are known to be opposed to GEAR. However, the ANC-SACP-Cosatu tripartite alliance, forged during the struggle against apartheid, continues to be operative, though in the years since liberation it has been fraught with tension, mainly because of differences over the macroeconomic policy. The alliance has not broken down, despite the open differences over the Zuma issue, and the wish-fulfilling prognoses of the dominant sections of the media.

Considering the outcome, which was evident in the very composition of the nearly 4,000 delegates elected from the branches, most of them Zuma supporters, one wonders why Mr. Mbeki, with two terms as ANC president, decided to enter the fray at all. The reason could well be his genuine conviction that Mr. Zuma, whose personality flaws are more apparent than those of his peers in the ANC, was not fit to be his successor as head of the party and the state. The ‘irretrievable breakdown’ between the two which, according to analysts, goes back to the days following the unbanning of the ANC and other people’s organisations and the return of the ‘exiles’, prominent among whom was Mr. Mbeki, was prefigured in developments in the party and government well before the prosecution and conviction of Mr. Zuma’s financial adviser, Schabir Sheikh, in June 2005 on charges of bribery and corruption, the proximate factor that led to Mr. Zuma’s dismissal as South Africa’s Deputy President. (See Signs of Decay, Frontline, 13 January 2006.)

Part of the case against Sheikh was that he brokered a bribe of rand 5,00,000 from the local subsidiary of a French company involved in the 1998-99 multibillion-rand arms deal on behalf of Mr. Zuma, in expectation of special favours in the defence deal. Sheikh was also charged with paying bribes to Mr. Zuma to advance his business interests.

However, while Sheikh was convicted, the prosecution of Mr. Zuma, initiated following Sheikh’s conviction, collapsed on procedural grounds. Undaunted, the National Prosecuting Authority, a constitutional structure which Zuma supporters maintain has been consistently misused by the state (meaning President Mbeki himself) to persecute Mr. Zuma, renewed its efforts to build an unassailable case. Mr. Zuma, with backing from two of his strong allies in the tripartite alliance, Cosatu and the SACP, as well as the ANC Youth League and indeed from within the ANC itself — proven in the Polokwane outcome — vigorously defended himself against these accusations.

The ANC’s national conference was held in the backdrop of these developments over the past two years. However, his very triumph in Polokwane has, to no one’s surprise, exacerbated Mr. Zuma’s legal problems. Within days of the conclusion of the conference, the Directorate of Special Operations (Scorpions), the striking arm of the NPA, indicted (technically, arrested), Mr. Zuma on charges of corruption, fraud, money-laundering, racketeering and several other charges. According to one report, the indictment included 354 corrupt and illegal payments made by way of bribes received by Mr. Zuma accounting to over rand four million. Both Cosatu and the ANC Youth League have strongly condemned this indictment, in particular its ‘peculiar timing’ so soon after Mr. Zuma’s triumph at Polokwane. Reiterating its well-known stand on the seemingly ceaseless attempts by the NPA to secure Mr. Zuma’s conviction, Cosatu said the renewed allegations meant that his human rights, including the right to a speedy and fair trial, were being “systematically and grossly violated.” Using even stronger language, ANC Youth League president Fikile Mbalula said the decision to reinstate the charges and indeed the very case against Mr. Zuma were being “led by Mbeki.”

Normatively, the NPA is a structure functioning independently of the executive, though only the most innocent will believe that such high-profile prosecutions as that of the ANC president are launched without political clearance.

Article 179 (5) (a) of South Africa’s Constitution explicitly lays down that in determining the ‘prosecution policy,’ “the National Director of Public Prosecutions [now NPA] must determine, with the concurrence of the Cabinet member responsible for the administration of justice, and after consulting the Directors of Public Prosecutions, prosecution policy, which must be observed in the prosecution process” (emphasis added). In other words, the determination of the prosecution policy requiring the concurrence of the executive is an executive decision, and not simply a notionally independent legal initiative.

Expectedly, the acting head of the NPA has strongly refuted suggestions that the decision was influenced by President Mbeki. In an interview soon after the national conference, Mr. Mbeki too said: “If they [the National Prosecuting Authority] think they have a case, they should proceed [against Zuma] … they haven’t said anything to me.”

However, even if the prosecution were to proceed and Mr. Zuma’s trial, as announced by the NPA, were to begin on August 14, it would not be able to stop him in his tracks. For, Mr. Zuma has repeatedly said he does not consider an indictment that amounts to little more than allegations a conviction; that he will step down as ANC president only if he is convicted. Given South Africa’s legal system — even the NPA, presumably anxious to secure a conviction, has set the date for the beginning of the trial seven-and-a-half months from now — and the avenues for appeals and revisions at the level of the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court, the legal process one way or the other is unlikely to conclude before Mr. Mbeki’s term ends. The whole political dynamics will have then changed. It has already changed, as is evident in calls by the Zuma supporters that the ANC must assert its authority, even to the extent, if necessary, of ‘redeploying’ persons in the executive.

This raises complex constitutional questions for, the President is elected by members of the National Assembly who have attained their positions by virtue of nomination by their political parties. While the ANC can tinker with the list of its MPs, deploying if considered necessary a member of the National Assembly to a Provincial Assembly, such freedom is not available in respect of the members of the executive. The president is elected by the National Assembly, and the rest of the executive (ministers and deputy ministers) are appointed by the president.

Constitutionally speaking, the next few months will be a dance on eggshells in South Africa.

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