ALTHOUGH Jacob Zuma is a survivor, even he had to finally relinquish the South African presidency nine years after his election. Under huge pressure from the public and the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), Zuma resigned after his last-ditch effort to negotiate a six-month delay was rejected. Having fought off eight no-confidence motions in the past, many thought he would succeed in obtaining a stay in his departure this time as well. But now, even his most loyal supporters abandoned him, and his fall from grace was sealed.
Zuma joined the ANC’s armed wing in 1962 at a very early age, and served in the infamous Robben Island prison with Nelson Mandela and his ANC colleagues for 10 years. During the anti-apartheid campaign, he served as intelligence chief, and thus gained a lot of information about the ANC’s top leadership. His detractors allege that he used this to maintain his grip on power during his controversial rule. But to hear Zuma defend himself, his political problems have been caused by racist whites who wanted to get rid of him.
With general elections due next year, the ANC could ill-afford to be painted with Zuma’s brush. As it is, he faces some 800 charges of corruption, and the immunity conferred on him by virtue of being the president has shielded him thus far. Now, the chickens will come home to roost. In just one case, he was ordered by the high court to reimburse the exchequer $500,000 for renovating his private residence at taxpayers’ expense.
But it was his close association with the three Indian-born Gupta brothers that rang the loudest alarm bells. These businessmen were able to appoint minsters of their choice, and obtain large government contracts. Their power gave rise to the phrase ‘state capture’ to signify the authority the Guptas and their associates had acquired. Scandal followed scandal as the public and potential investors watched, and the rand fell sharply.
Even before Zuma’s deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa was sworn in, the Hawks, an elite unit of the country’s police force designated to investigate economic crimes, had begun raiding properties belonging to the Guptas and their associates. Duduzane, Jacob Zuma’s son, was last seen in January boarding a flight for Dubai. He was employed by the Guptas in 2005, and was their partner in various business deals with the government. The National Prosecution Authority (NPA) is now attempting to recover 50 billion rand ($4.3m) in 17 cases relating to deals between the state and the Guptas. The organisation for undoing tax abuse, a civil society pressure group, has urged the NPA to seize Gupta assets that include supercars, planes, helicopters, houses, flats and vast plots of land. They themselves live in a palatial residence in Johannesburg’s most exclusive housing estate.
Expectations of Ramaphosa are very high. As one of the country’s richest black citizens, he is viewed by the business community as somebody who can reboot the flagging economy, and restore South Africa as Sub-Saharan Africa’s most prosperous country. But he faces many challenges in a country that, for many blacks, has changed little since the apartheid era that officially ended over a quarter century ago. When I was there a couple of years ago, I was struck by the fact that virtually all the serving staff at Johannesburg’s and Cape Town’s smart shops and restaurants were black, while the customers were uniformly white.
This continuing divide has given birth to the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a political party that advocates land redistribution of wealth and the appropriation of white businesses. Although far from being a major political force, the EFF has pushed the ANC into adopting a more populist stance. As it is, the ruling party’s record on land redistribution has been very poor. Seeing the disastrous results of Zimbabwe’s forced expropriation of highly productive white farms, politicians like Ramaphosa want to avoid the disruption and the loss of foreign investment such a move would cause. In a recent issue, The Economist wrote:
“Under colonial rule and then apartheid, black South Africans were systematically pushed off the land. Righting this historical injustice has been a creakingly slow process over 24 years of democracy. The government promised to transfer 30 per cent of white-owned farmland to blacks by 1999; most estimates reckon it has transferred only 10pc. This dawdling pace, combined with a stagnant economy and rising unemployment (it recently hit 37pc), provides fertile ground for populist politicians…”
One problem with redistributing land is that the new owners lack access to capital and technology, and their farms are frequently unproductive. In addition, the allure of good jobs in cities remains powerful, and many people who lost their lands to the colonial practice of appropriation have said they would be willing to settle for cash compensation.
The present deeply entrenched economic disparities will be difficult for the new president to eliminate. The educational system remains heavily skewed, with state schools performing dismally, while mostly white pupils at private schools do far better at university entrance exams. One reason for this gap is the fact that qualified white teachers at state school were encouraged to accept golden handshakes and resign in order to open up jobs for less qualified black teachers.
Another problem is the policy of forcing all new businesses to have a black partner. This individual does not have to work, but imposes a burden on new ventures. The idea was to encourage the emergence of a pool of black entrepreneurs, but in reality, it has only encouraged those with political connections to obtain well-paid sinecures. Undoing these policies will demand considerable political will.
Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2018
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