JACOB Zuma’s remarkable ascendancy may well turn out to be a temporary phenomenon, given that he faces corruption charges and a criminal conviction would almost certainly derail his political career, but his election last week as leader of the African National Congress marks an intriguing watershed in South Africa’s post-apartheid trajectory.
Zuma’s overwhelming victory against the country’s president, Thabo Mbeki, highlights the ANC rank and file’s disillusionment with a government whose tight embrace of the corporate capitalist model means that not a great deal has changed for the worst-off South Africans in the years since apartheid was finally vanquished.
Actually, that’s not entirely accurate: a survey conducted by the South African Institute of Race Relations revealed earlier this month that the number of people living in absolute poverty — that is, on less than $1 a day — had risen from 1.9 million to 4.2 million between 1996 and 2005.
The figure has more than doubled within a decade, notwithstanding an ostensibly enviable economic growth rate. According to the survey (whose findings have been questioned, albeit not very convincingly, by Mbeki), the level of unemployment during that period remained steady at about 26 per cent.
The increase in extreme poverty is attributed not only to the huge proportion of people out of work but also to an HIV-Aids epidemic that the present regime has been lackadaisical in tackling, not least because Mbeki, contrary to all scientific evidence, believes that the link between HIV and Aids has been dreamt up by the pharmaceutical industry as a profit-maximisation device.
Consequently, anti-retroviral medicines that have been saving the lives of Aids victims across the world have only begrudgingly been made available in South Africa, where an average of nearly 1,000 people succumb to the disease every day. That’s right, every single day. Even at the height of the conflict, the death toll in Iraq did not approach that level.
Last August, Mbeki fired deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge after she flew to Madrid to attend an Aids-related international conference, while retaining the services of health minister Manto Tshabala-Msimang, who evidently believes beetroot and garlic are as effective in countering the HIV virus as anti-retroviral medications, and who, according to allegations in South African media, is an alcoholic and a kleptomaniac.
Mbeki — whose father, Govan, was a highly venerated ANC elder who spent 24 years incarcerated on Robben Island alongside Nelson Mandela — is by no means an unintelligent man, which makes his mental block on the Aids question somewhat surprising.
His attitude towards multinational pharmaceutical concerns may not entirely be baseless, but it would have been more credible had it been matched by a comparable scepticism towards international corporations in general.
That is clearly not the case, particularly when it comes to weapons manufacturers — and it has been suggested that the willingness of the arms vendors (unlike the pharmaceuticals) to provide kickbacks may help to explain this anomaly.
Thabo Mbeki was at the forefront of ANC stalwarts who, in consultations with foreign investors and the like ahead of the inauguration of majority rule, vowed to maintain the capitalist structure of the apartheid years. Privatisation was one of the key words in his economic vocabulary, and ten years ago, as deputy president under Mandela, he was happy to describe himself as a Thatcherite — notwithstanding the association of that term with a British prime minister who regarded the likes of Mandela and Mbeki’s father as terrorists and criminals.
In the extended section on South Africa in last year’s Freedom Next Time, journalist John Pilger rather convincingly makes the case that the violence-free transition from minority to majority rule was facilitated by the fact that international capital, which had invested heavily in South Africa, was keen on a face-saving device whereby it could maintain its profit margins without being accused of sustaining a racist entity.
By the same token, the South African economic elite — exclusively white at the time — bristled at the opprobrium its homeland attracted globally, despite the best efforts of the friends of apartheid, an unofficial club that included Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and the Israeli government.
The international cricket and rugby boycotts were, similarly, an irritant to sports fans and organisers.
A large section of the apartheid establishment gradually realised that the best chance of retaining its riches lay in selective desegregation.
It found eager collaborators among the top tier of the ANC, who were all too willing to ignore those aspects of the liberation movement’s charter that pointed towards a redistribution of wealth.
As a result of this compromise, the ranks of South Africa’s millionaires and even billionaires are now peppered with blacks, who now share the privileges that were once the exclusive preserve of whites. This means, however, that the conditions faced by those who bore the brunt of economic apartheid remain largely unchanged.
What’s more, as part of the deal, the vast majority of those responsible for the most egregious crimes against humanity under apartheid got away scot-free.
The majority of them continue to lead privileged lives behind high walls in the suburbs of Pretoria and Johannesburg. Most of South Africa’s agricultural land also remains under white control: unlike before, blacks now have the right to purchase farms; the overwhelming majority of them cannot, however, afford such extravagances.
It has to be admitted, sadly, that Mandela was part of the compromise that entrenched privilege. Since retiring from the presidency, he has been more outspoken, and one would be disinclined to query veteran British socialist Tony Benn’s description of him as “the president of humanity” at the unveiling of a statue of Mandela in London’s Parliament Square some months ago.
There’s little reason to doubt that his heart is still in the right place and, unlike his successor, he is untainted by allegations of corruption. To his credit, Mandela is also on record as having said: “If the ANC does not deliver the goods, the people must do to it what they have done to the apartheid regime.”
Members of the ANC appear to have taken his advice last week, when 60 per cent of them opted for an alternative to the compromised incumbent, and also voted Mbeki’s allies off the ruling party’s national executive committee (NEC). The highest vote-getter in elections to the NEC was Mandela’s militant — albeit less than morally upright — ex-wife Winnie, and the ANC’s new secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, is also the chairman of the Communist Party.
The trade union umbrella organisation Cosatu was also instrumental in the election of Zuma, whose anti-Mbeki alliance stretched across the political spectrum.
The Mbeki regime, entrenched until elections scheduled for 2009, has been remarkably selective in pursuing allegations of bribery, but if evidence exists against Zuma — who in the recent past has been cleared of rape and corruption charges — there can be little doubt that it will be pursued.
Those striving for change would have done better to throw their weight behind a less controversial personality. In the likely event of Zuma being sidelined, it remains to be seen what will happen.
His election proves, however, that democracy remains alive in South Africa as well as within the ANC, and the inevitable struggle against an untenable status quo may well acquire irresistible dimensions before long.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Sydney.
mahir.worldview@gmail.com