South Africa

A future of division, factionalism, stagnation and patronage

The African National Congress under Jacob Zuma shows signs of losing its way

A LITTLE over half a year after Thabo Mbeki was ousted as president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), worries are growing about the party’s new leadership and where it may take South Africa after a general election due next year. Arguments still rage over the corruption charges facing the new leader, Jacob Zuma, who is likely to replace Mr Mbeki as the country’s president. An unseemly fight within the ANC across the country is denting people’s confidence in their rulers.

Mr Zuma appeared in court this week in a bid to have the charges against him dismissed. Other appeals will probably follow and his trial—if it happens at all—is unlikely to start before the election. Critics accuse Mr Zuma of delaying tactics, but hundreds of supporters, including ANC bigwigs and some cabinet ministers, went to the small town of Pietermaritzburg to support their champion. They want the charges dismissed on the grounds that he is the victim of a political conspiracy and that a fair trial has become impossible.

There are worries as to how far Mr Zuma’s zealous supporters may go. The ANC’s leader in the Free State province, re-elected last month, turned the party’s provincial conference into a fund-raiser, with delegates urged to open their wallets to help pay Mr Zuma’s legal bills. Some go much further than this. The new leader of the ANC Youth League, Julius Malema, created a storm when he bellowed at a rally in June that he was ready to “kill” for Mr Zuma. He later said that his words should not be taken literally, but refused to apologise for them. The row caught fire again when the secretary-general of the Congress of South African Trade Unions expressed his undying support for Mr Zuma by repeating Mr Malema’s words.

The ANC itself, though professing its belief in democratic institutions, has failed to denounce Mr Malema’s words publicly, beyond a statement from Kgalema Motlanthe, the party’s deputy president, that they were “irresponsible”. An unrepentant Mr Malema then declared that the opposition had to be “eliminated”. Those who objected to his words were “political imbeciles” and “forces of counter-revolution”, said the Youth League.

Quarrels are also swirling around the constitutional court. Last week it ruled against Mr Zuma in a case related to the charges he faces. Mr Zuma’s supporters have openly questioned its judges’ impartiality, an unprecedented slight against one of the country’s most respected institutions. The court’s judges had earlier accused John Hlophe, a controversial judge who presides over the high court in the Western Cape, of trying to lean on two members of the constitutional court to persuade them to rule in favour of Mr Zuma.

Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s secretary-general, lashed out at the constitutional court judges for going public with their accusations against Mr Hlophe before following the proper complaint procedures. Mr Mantashe saw it as a preparation for an onslaught on Mr Zuma. Whatever the outcome of the spat, the judiciary is damaged. One side insists that some judges are part of a witch hunt, while the other argues that the ANC is undermining judicial independence.

In any event, divisions inside the ANC since Mr Zuma’s election as the party’s national leader are as wide as ever—and are being replicated in local leadership contests. At the North West provincial conference in May, police had to disperse irate delegates claiming they were wrongfully excluded from the gathering. In the same province, some party members have taken the ANC to court. Others have been beaten up or shot.

In the Western Cape, the ANC’s provincial secretary was stabbed in the neck at a party get-together. Countless other party meetings and nominations of candidates have been marred by intimidation and allegations of patronage and vote-buying. When the Youth League gathered to elect its leadership in April, the conference was suspended after some delegates got into drunken brawls, throwing chairs and exposing their bare bottoms to the media.

After decades of stitching up party elections behind closed doors, the ANC is finding it hard to become more open without rancour or greed. Mr Motlanthe warned a recent provincial conference in Limpopo that the party was in danger of following other liberation movements that lost their way after succumbing to “division, factionalism, stagnation and patronage”.

If this scramble for office and its spoils turns uglier, the ANC’s popularity could dip. More importantly, it could damage South African democracy, since the ANC is likely to remain in power for a long time. Party bigwigs have been sent to problem provinces to discipline troublemakers. The new ANC leaders say that officials who perform badly will be replaced, a surprisingly novel idea in a party used to rewarding loyalty more than competence. Parliament, where the ANC has a big majority, seems to be keeping the executive in check more vigorously since Mr Zuma ousted Mr Mbeki as the party boss. But it is unclear whether this refreshing zeal will endure once the new guard takes charge, almost certainly with Mr Zuma as the country’s president next year.

The ANC’s new leaders say they want to make government work better to improve people’s lives faster. They recently sacked two of the country’s nine provincial premiers, both of them appointed by Mr Mbeki. One ran the worst-performing province, the Eastern Cape, long stained by dismal management, crumbling schools and hospitals, and allegations of corruption. The other, Ebrahim Rasool, was in charge of one of the best-performing provinces, the Western Cape, but had long been scrapping with the party’s local bosses. The opposition Democratic Alliance could wrest the province from the ANC at the election if it manages to join forces with a flurry of smaller opposition parties, as it did to win control of the city of Cape Town. Still, there is little doubt that the ANC, as the party of liberation under Nelson Mandela and others, will retain a solid majority in the national Parliament.

Meanwhile, violent crime remains high, food and petrol prices have soared and power-cuts earlier this year dented people’s confidence. The economy has slowed and higher interest rates are biting. There were strikes across the country on August 6th. The ANC’s unedifying internal wrangles are only adding to South Africans’ growing sense of gloom.