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John Daniel and Roger Southall

That the ANC will become another ZANU is possible, but by no means certain, even if the entrenchment of a one-party dominant system is likely to continue generating a range of democratic deficits in South Africa.

(James Hamill and John Hoffman in Chapter 2 in this volume)

The intent of the Zuma presidency, according to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), both of which played vital roles in bringing about its political ascendancy, was to create a government that would be less remote, more responsive and closer to the people, and which would, above all, implement a shift in economic policy that would create more jobs and be more pro-poor. In short, we were led to believe that Thabo Mbeki’s conservative macroeconomic policies would give way to Zuma’s more activist, interventionist ‘developmental state’. The reality, however, has fallen dismally short of such expectations. Popular anger has been stirred by the personal extravagance of countless government officials, including members of the cabinet. Corruption appears rampant. Key agencies of the state, notably the police, seem unaccountable, if not out of control – an entity as in apartheid days, more to be feared than relied upon. The capacity of local governments in numerous ANC-run councils seems on the verge of collapse. The global recession has bit deeply, causing continuing job losses and spreading indebtedness while a high rand is stimulating higher prices, notably of food. Although some movement towards a significantly different, perhaps employment-creating, industrial path has been presaged by the government’s New Growth Path, official policy seems as largely beholden to the market as ever – except insofar as its penchant for ramping up regulations and controls in areas such as mining seems designed to discourage rather than facilitate foreign investment.

Amid this evidence of stasis and looming crisis, Zuma himself appears indecisive and weak. Brought to power by a coalition of those at odds with Mbeki rather than merely of the left, he has seemed to devote more effort to shoring up his position (and promoting the material interests of his family, his friends and his home village) within the ANC than to meeting the challenges of government; he seems so beholden to the diverse constituents of the alliance that enabled him to unseat Mbeki that he seems reluctant to offend any of them. Having, it seems, reneged on his pledge to serve only one term as president, he has plunged the ANC back into a succession struggle, with rivals scheming to unseat him at the ANC’s five-yearly conference in December 2012 (although, as ever, the ANC publicly denies what is plain for all to see). So it is that Zuma fiddles while South Africa stumbles along a path of political uncertainty. An unknowing observer studying the recent 2011 local government election campaign of the ANC could be forgiven for concluding that Julius Malema held the party’s presidency and not the hapless Zuma, who seems to have lost the brilliant politicking touch he so adroitly displayed in the 2009 national elections.

In 1976, Soweto erupted, taking the then exiled ANC as much by surprise as the then National Party government and fundamentally shifting the terrain of South African politics as, over the following decade and a half, popular resistance was to render the continuance of white minority rule unsustainable. The eventual outcome was the celebrated compromise between popular forces and the white state in 1994, resulting in a liberal democratic constitution which balanced minority protection against majority rule, sought to render government accountable under a system of constitutional rule, and entrenched myriad individual, human and social rights. It has been in many ways remarkable: South Africa has now conducted four free and generally fair general elections; there is freedom of speech and extensive and critical debate; on significant occasions the constitutional and other courts have held government to account; and for all the criticisms of the government’s economic strategy there has been a concerted expansion of grants and benefits to the poor. No one seriously questions whether South Africa in 2011 is a better place to live in than in 1976, even though there are many people at the bottom of the social pile who have only seen limited change or no change at all. Nonetheless, there is widespread concern that the ANC, the party of liberation, has become the major problem in regard to the health and prospects of South African democracy.

It is commonplace that the ANC has struggled to transit from a liberation movement to just another political party within a liberal democracy. Nonetheless, the ANC has become the ‘dominant party’, one which dominates South Africa not only electorally but by setting the national agenda. The fundamental thrust of such opinions is that the ANC views itself as the embodiment of a ‘historical project’ whereby, as the representative of the popular will as demonstrated by the liberation struggle, it has earned the right to rule irrespective of its performance. With such a worldview, and with party interests having deeply penetrated the functioning of the state (and particularly its security organs), it is hardly surprising that it interprets criticism of the ruling party not as healthy or normal but as originating from reactionary (read racist) motivations or, if from within the popular movement, from treachery or misconception. From such a perspective, ambition and competition for high office is not normal and healthy but treacherous, if not treasonable. And it should not be forgotten that the ANC is a member of that family of African liberation movements-cum-ruling parties – among them Zimbabwe’s African National Union Patrotic Front (Zanu PF) and Angola’s Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) – most of which have abrogated democracy and trampled on human rights in their respective domains. The ANC is neither of these two corrupt and authoritarian entities. But the ANC in power (or individual members of the government, notably the minister of Defence, Lindiwe Sisulu) have displayed a disturbing arrogance, a contempt for media criticism and a total disdain for popular opinion and for parliament’s role of oversight. Worse, Zuma’s own rise to power was in the teeth of evidence that he had been deeply implicated in the corruption of the 1998 arms deal, and was achieved on the back of a populist campaign conducted by his supporters which severely compromised the integrity of the state’s security services and undermined the authority of the courts.

Nevertheless, any serious analysis of the ANC in power suggests that it is a much more complicated animal than the assessment of it as a self-justifying liberation movement implies. Overall, in its tenure of seventeen years in power, it has remained true to the tenets of electoral democracy and, as Zuma’s displacement of Thabo Mbeki as party president at Polokwane in December 2007 demonstrated, it is to a reasonable degree responsive to popular opinion – or at least that which is channelled through its own structures. But will it stay true to this tradition? How will it respond to that ultimate democratic test – the prospect of, or the reality of, losing political power? Will it follow the catastrophic Kenyan-Zimbabwean path or that of Ghana in more recent times?

The chapters that follow in this section of the New South African Review illustrate and explore the character of the ANC while also demonstrating the complexity of South African society. In their contribution, British observers of the African political economy, James Hamill and John Hoffman, discuss the suggestion initially made by Jeremy Cronin (deputy general secretary of the SACP) in 2002: that the ANC had become subject to a condition he dubbed ‘Zanufication’, meaning that under Thabo Mbeki it had come to display authoritarian and corrupting behaviours and tendencies similar to the ruling Zanu PF in Zimbabwe. Cronin had implied, further, that South Africa under Mbeki was in danger of pursuing a trajectory of political and economic meltdown analogous to what was then occurring in Zimbabwe; from such a perspective, South Africa was in danger of becoming another failing African country, with enormous consequences for the region. Hamill and Hoffman, however, indicate that there are some disturbing similarities within the ANC, notably a tendency towards political intolerance, but they also point out major differences. They note South Africa’s strongly democratic constitution ‘jealously guarded by its constitutional court … buttressed by a powerful legal profession and a highly critical and feisty media’. They point out that whereas Mugabe has established a highly personalised rule which has brusquely ignored all constitutional constraints, the ANC has not only acted to ensure adherence to its constitutional prescription that no party president should serve more than two five-year terms, but it also has in place – and has used – internal party mechanisms whereby incumbent leaders can legitimately be challenged and overthrown.

Nonetheless, Hamill and Hoffman note that the political prospect for South Africa is not simply either Zanufication or strict adherence to constitutionalism. The ANC is also the focus of Devan Pillay’s contribution, in the context of its historic development as an alliance of classes. Taking as his cue the elaboration of the theory of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) whereby South Africa’s diverse classes and races among the politically oppressed came together in alliance under the leadership of the ANC, he argues that the party has very self-consciously become an embodiment of political ambiguity and of the varying interests of different classes. Thus, whereas critics to the left of the ANC-Cosatu-SACP Tripartite Alliance now argue that the theory of the NDR provides a framework for a conservative class alliance of white and black capitalists and a black middle class to pursue market-driven policies contrary to the interests of the impoverished mass of South Africans, supporters of the alliance argue that –despite manifold tensions – it holds the political centre together, and prevents South Africa from becoming victim to a politics of blatant and unprincipled factional struggle for resources. The ANC is many things to many people. Despite its failings and faults, it continues to retain the electoral support of its historic constituencies – with the least advantaged by its policies, the working class and the poor, not yet ready to abandon the ‘party of Mandela’.

Pillay argues that, given electoral difficulties which any self-proclaimed party of the left would have in confronting the ANC, Cosatu – although disposed to establishing linkages with civil society organisations, and tendencies critical of the government – remains committed to using its experience in propelling Zuma to power to continue to push the ruling party in a direction favourable to the working class. Again, however, he observes the political ambiguity of the ANC, discussing how the SACP’s direct involvement in the Zuma government has placed it much closer to the centre of power and increasingly distant from Cosatu. From this, it is inferred, the struggles for influence, position, and policy will continue within – are indeed inherent to – the ANC. Pillay does not directly link Zuma’s personal lack of authority and decisiveness to the historic ambiguity of the ANC as an alliance of contending class forces, yet his analysis does provide an insight into why the ruling party has lapsed into a politics of paralysis, leaning simultaneously to right and left. The danger, as Pillay points out, is that South Africa may soon hit up against the limits to its present development model, and that its present failure to shift away from dependence upon the ‘minerals-energy complex’ and to develop an alternative path of sustainable industrialisation will lead, in relatively short order, to the inability to fund its extensive provision of social grants to the poor.

Does the focus by Pillay (and the left in general) upon relationships between the working class (or working poor) and the ANC betray an urban bias, one which loses sight of the fact that a huge portion of the ruling party’s constituency resides in the countryside, notably within the former bantustans? To what extent, one might ask, are traditional leaders a vital component of the ANC Alliance? And just what is the connection between the ANC and the rural poor? Leslie Bank and Clifford Mabhena, analysing the implications of the overturning of the government’s Communal Land Rights Act (CLRA) by the Constitutional Court in May 2010 on the grounds that it made it too easy for the tribal authorities of the former bantustans to reconstitute themselves (and to become, in effect, a fourth tier of government), pose such questions and provide an important insight into basis of ANC rule in rural areas, most particularly the former Transkei region of the Eastern Cape.

The CLRA had sought a compromise between a shift to individual, freehold tenure in communal areas and a retention of communal-tenure regimes, on the grounds that they offered some protection for the poor. After years of deliberation, the CLRA sought to find a balance between giving people real and secure land rights, while recognising that in some areas traditional government had continued to work effectively and that it would be counterproductive to destroy functioning systems. The Act stopped short of giving rural people individual ownership rights, proposing instead the idea of permanent rights, and also allowing for a system of ‘commonhold’, where groups took control of land as collective units. However, because this was thought by various NGOs, land activists and rural communities to provide for a reassertion of the chiefs’ power, the CLRA ended up in the constitutional court and, consequent to a contrary judgment, the government is now having to rework the law so that it conforms to constitutional principles.

Bank and Mabhena untangle the strands of this very complicated story. Basing their analysis upon a detailed survey conducted in 2007–2008, they demonstrate that traditional authorities remain firmly in control of rural land allocation across the Eastern Cape, and that most rural households believe that they should continue to direct the process. On the other hand, there is considerable support at household level for more individual title to land within a system of ‘commonhold’. Meanwhile, the level of de-agrarianisation within the former homeland areas has reached such a level that an overwhelming number of rural households are heavily dependent upon social grants provided by the government, and herein lies a major reason for the strong support which inhabitants of rural areas continue to give to the ANC. Against that, there lies deep discontent with rural development policies and, in particular, popular anger, directed at the democratically-elected local authorities and councillors who are widely seen as incompetent and corrupt. In contrast, chiefs are seen as far more responsive to their local communities (as indeed, to an extent, they had been forced to be under apartheid), resulting in considerable nostalgia for the era of Kaiser Matanzima, the long-time ruler of the Transkei bantustan. Bank and Mabhena are, however, careful to stress that this does not imply that rural dwellers want to go back to the political authoritarianism of Matanzima’s rule. Rather, the nostalgia is an expression of a sense of social marginalisation felt by the rural poor, and the fact that traditional leaders have – under the ANC, and in contrast to local councils – reinvented themselves as community builders, consensus seekers and intermediaries between state and society. Their representative organ, the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa), has proved to be among the most effective of the civil society groupings spawned by the post-apartheid dispensation. Hence the importance to the ANC of Jacob Zuma, a populist of rural origin with strong traditionalist tendencies, who can shore-up or even win new support for the party from the chieftaincy and from their rural subjects.

The analysis of Pillay and that of Bank and Mabhena are conjoined by the apparent contradiction that, despite multiple dissatisfactions and popular disillusion with the ANC government, its constituency continues to vote it back into power. This forces us to examine vital contours of contemporary South African democracy. But how can an electorally dominant party be held accountable? And what are the future prospects for institutionalised political uncertainty; that is, for the development of a political opposition with the capacity to mount a serious electoral challenge to the ANC? And moreover, if there is a disjuncture (as it appears) between electoral democracy and holding the government accountable, what does this say about the content and nature of political participation?

Paul Hoffman approaches the issue of accountability from a robustly liberal basis, arguing that if constitutionalism obtains (imposing limitations upon government; enjoying domestic legitimacy; and protecting, promoting and enforcing human rights), then true democracy or ‘people power’ will flourish. Without the rule of law and enforcement of property rights, he argues, no country can prosper under present global conditions. However, the ANC, as a former liberation movement, insists upon its historical right to rule, and the majority continue to vote for it. The result is that the ANC has at times, he claims, displayed a dangerous disregard for the constitution and has ignored demands for accountability. It has become the instrument of a political elite and a focus of struggle by factions for perquisites and power.

Although this is his general thrust, Hoffman is at one with Pillay in recognising the manifold and varying tendencies within the ANC. He therefore notes that the ANC’s ‘theatrics’, dressed-up in the ideological clothing of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), are often at odds not only with the tenets of the constitution, but also with the various exigencies which the ANC faces as a government. The government’s actions have therefore often been far more pragmatic than its formal ideologies would seem to allow, and this tendency towards realism and pragmatism accounts for the various successes which the ANC has chalked up in government. He argues that this is no coincidence, for where the ANC has adhered to the values and requirements of the constitution, good governance has ensued; where, by contrast, the values of the NDR have predominated, as in the practice of ‘deploying’ ANC loyalists to state positions in order to ensure the predominance of the party over the state, there has been consistent government dysfunction and corruption. Overall, the encroachment of party power into all spheres of the constitution, justified by the NDR, is undermining democracy and is at fundamental odds with constitutionalism, not least through an attempted ‘transformation’ of the judiciary and the erosion of the separation of powers built into the constitution. Ironically, it is the champions of the NDR who are slowing the progress towards a more egalitarian society in which human rights and freedoms for all are to be found. Ultimately, Hoffman finds that the ‘crisis of social delivery’which has come to characterise so many departments and levels of government results from a lack of accountability of officialdom to the demands of the constitution. It is therefore up to civil society and ordinary people to keep the politicians in check.

But what of the parliamentary opposition? Classically, in liberal democracies, parliamentary oppositions have two functions. The first is to hold governments to account. The second is to provide institutionalised uncertainty; that is, to be capable of replacing incumbent governments if and when they are unable to summon a parliamentary majority. The problem for democracy in South Africa, however, is that the manner by which the ANC exercises its voter-derived dominance of the polity threatens both of these oppositional roles. On the one hand, ANC control of the parliamentary machinery – and the apparent growing ministerial contempt for parliament – has eroded the capacity of the opposition parties to render government accountable. Often, therefore, it is only when it suits the ANC to allow probing of government departments that opposition parties are allowed free rein. On the other hand, for reasons to do with the legacy of apartheid, opposition parties have hitherto been unable to pose a serious challenge to the ANC electorally, except where the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in 1994 and 1999 in KwaZulu-Natal, the National Party in 1994 and the Democratic Alliance (DA) in 2009 in the Western Cape were able to assert themselves provincially.

The 2009 general election provided further evidence that the IFP is now dying under the twin pressures of Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s inability to give up the party’s leadership and the inroads made in KwaZulu-Natal by an ANC which championed Jacob Zuma in 2009 as a ‘hundred per cent Zulu boy’. The same election revealed the DA as steadily consolidating its role as the only serious locus of parliamentary opposition. From the 1.73 per cent of the total vote taken by its predecessor, the Democratic Party in 1994, the proportion taken by the DA had increased to 16.66 per cent in 2009, so that today it boasts 67 out of the total 136 seats held by opposition parties in the 400-seat National Assembly. Its achievement has been based on a combination of factors, notably vigorous and astute leadership under Tony Leon and, at present, Helen Zille; absorption of rump elements of the former New National Party (NNP); and its drawing on the long experience of parliamentary opposition of its predecessor liberal parties. Even so, for all the DA’s gains (including those of the recent 2011 local government elections), the question is whether it can continue to grow. This is the challenge that Southern and Southall analyse in their chapter.

They discuss the efforts of the DA to change its profile in order to appeal to more black, as well as to white, voters. The DP’s early mission, they argue, was to establish the legitimacy of opposition, often in the face of ANC liberation movement implications that opposition was illegitimate or disloyal. At one level, this was pursued by adroit use of opportunities in parliament to criticise government policies and to demand answers to awkward questions, a role it has continued to play and in which it outshines all other opposition parties. At another level, it sought to counter numerical weakness by opening itself up to coalition, notably with the NNP when the latter left the Government of National Unity in 1996, and thereby transforming itself into the DA. Later, this alliance with the NNP was to collapse when the latter’s leadership, distraught at no longer having its snout in the trough, moved back into government and collaboration with the ANC (although leaving behind many NNP adherents). From there, the DA has consistently worked to forge working alliances with other opposition parties at both national and provincial level, most recently absorbing Patricia de Lille and the Independent Democrats in 2010. The important corollary of this strategy has been to transform its imagery and personnel by variously securing the election of a handful of black politicians to parliament, campaigning aggressively in black areas among those aggrieved by the ANC and, during the recent local government elections, putting up black candidates for mayor in major cities (notably Johannesburg and Cape Town). Having secured control of the Western Cape in 2009 while simultaneously running the Cape Town metropole, and having won control of some eighteen local councils outright in the recent local government elections, the DA has begun to present itself as a party of power, performance and delivery. In short, the DA claims today that it is increasingly able to offer itself as an alternative to the ANC as a party of government.

Southern and Southall suggest that, despite a performance remarkable in many ways, there are limits to what the DA can achieve. Fundamentally, electoral outcomes in South Africa will continue to be determined by what happens among the ANC’s historic constituency. The ANC’s hold on it appeared to be threatened by the formation of the Congress of the People (Cope) in the lead-up to the 2009 election, but in the end Cope has turned out to be a damp squib. Meanwhile, despite edging closer to social movements, Cosatu remains locked into the ruling Tripartite Alliance and, despite strains therein, seems unlikely to leave to form the core of a party of the working poor. Despite the potential fluidity of this situation, the DA seems an unlikely vehicle to garner the support of that diverse mixture of social groupings which gather behind the new social movements, and which usually espouse a gospel of the left (to which the pro-market DA is unsympathetic). While the DA does claim today to be far more nonracial in composition than an increasingly Africanist ANC; while it may claim increased support from among blacks (across, it says, the class spectrum); and while it appears set to forge a solid alliance across the white/coloured divide around the country, it appears unlikely to appeal to the mass of impoverished African voters whose support is ultimately needed to give any political party a parliamentary majority.

The theme of first-rate policies and poor implementation is familiar by now. It resonates in Janine Hicks’s and Imraan Buccus’s discussion of the state of public participation in policy making in South Africa. They note that the constitution and such legislation as the Municipality Structures Act of 1998 provide frameworks operative at all three tiers of government for open and participatory democracy in South Africa; that a variety of instruments has been devised for citizen input – green and white policy papers, town meetings, largely rural-based izimbizo, petitions, ward committees, public hearings, access to the parliamentary and provincial portfolio committees, and more. Even so, they talk of the ‘significant gap at policy level’, the existence of a ‘democracy deficit’ in the failure of the established representative bodies ‘to link citizens with the institutions and processes of the state’. They feel that while the system is not wholly closed to the views of the citizenry, overall they are disappointed at the limited successes the participatory model has had in improving the accountability and performance levels of governance structures in the post-apartheid era.

They acknowledge that this is not entirely the fault of the state sector. For the model to be more effective in this electronic era requires higher literacy and educational skills levels of the people in general, and a far greater degree of internet access than currently prevails. But Hicks and Buccus show that the system has not entirely failed and that there have been successes where government has been forced to retreat from unacceptable policy proposals and intentions. They cite the campaign against the provisions of draconian anti-terrorism legislation in the post-9/11 era, and the current Right2Know campaign which has forced the state to back away from, and dilute, many of the highly restrictive provisions of the spectacularly misnamed Freedom of Information Bill. We would add, however, that such examples are probably less a case of what the participatory framework can achieve and more a testimony to what civil society can achieve if it can put together broad coalitions and stand firm in the face of government’s intimidatory tendencies and the sometimes overweening arrogance of portfolio committee chairs, not to mention their sheep-like tendency to vote willy nilly for the ANC position. To be fair, however, it is probably true that the Zuma administration is more willing to listen and give ground than the Mbeki government ever was, headed by a man who believed he ‘knew it all’ and was oblivious to the cost in human lives of some of his flawed beliefs. It was often only the Constitutional Court which stopped him in his trail of HIV/AIDS deaths and ruined lives. Fortunately, that historical cul-de-sac is a road less travelled under the Zuma administration.

The final contribution in this section is the only article with a foreign policy perspective. Christopher Saunders’s chapter looks at South Africa’s relations with its neighbours seventeen years into a new era of regional engagement, and at the performance of the regional organ which South Africa opted to join in 1994: the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It is, again, largely a story of promises unkept and of principles conceded. It is impossible to reconcile the Mandela presidency’s promise to put human rights considerations at the centre of South Africa’s foreign policy with the decision to move into alliance, via the BRICS arrangement, with two of the globe’s more authoritarian regimes, China and Russia.

Another of South Africa’s foreign policy promises of 1994 was to give priority to the needs of its regional backyard. This has proved largely not to be the case, even though South Africa was, to its credit, party to a renegotiation of the Southern African Customs Union’s provisions. From lopsidedly favouring South Africa’s interests, the agreement is now more democratic in its decision making and more equitable in the distribution of its tariff revenues but, that said, the Union is now so badly split over its dealings with the European Union that its future may be in the balance. This should not be taken to mean that South Africa has been neglectful of Africa as a whole. It has not. As Saunders notes, President Mbeki’s main foreign policy preoccupation was the continent, with his promotion of an ‘African renaissance’ and ‘his own version of Kwame Nkrumah’s pan-African dream’. To that end, South Africa has been deeply engaged in peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts in Africa, contributing more personnel to peace operations than any other African government. It has also been the key player (on behalf of the African Union) in the effort to bring South Sudan to independence in July 2011.

Saunders, however, has little positive to say about SADC. He argues that, geographically, it is too large and amorphous ‘for there to be close ties between all its states or even for them to agree on common policies’. Two key members of its most important project, the crafting of a Free Trade Agreement – Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo – have failed to come on board. But it is not merely its cumbersome size, its inefficiency, and its poor public relations that have rendered SADC ineffective. The larger factor is that collectively it is politically impotent, unable and unwilling to take any of its members to task for flagrant political misbehaviour. Saunders discusses, as a case in point, the failure of SADC to enforce the rulings of its tribunal on land expropriations in Zimbabwe. But it is not the only example. Saunders notes the lack of action by SADC, and bilaterally by the South African government, over Swaziland and correctly describes post-apartheid South Africa’s continued collaboration and cosseting of the deeply corrupt Swazi monarchy as a ‘betrayal’ of principle.

Saunders’s conclusion is that SADC is so diverse and supine a body that South Africa’s regional interests would be better served if it focused its attention on an inner core of southern African states comprising the Sacu members Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola and Mozambique. He adds that the prospect of a more effective and enlightened regional arrangement has been enhanced by President Zuma’s appointment of Robert Davies as minister of Trade and Industry. Davies has vast experience and knowledge of the region and an enlightened perspective of what needs to be done. On his watch, South Africa is unlikely to pursue policies which put its narrow self-interests first.

South African democracy and its political and economic role in Africa and the world face short- and long-term challenges. Whether an ANC government constrained by internal factionalism and weak leadership can rise to meet the challenge is an open question. While it was once fashionable to be optimistic about post-apartheid South Africa, the reality is that most South Africans are concerned, no longer believing in the inevitability of a happy ever after.