The appearance of President Nelson Mandela at the election rally of the African National Congress last Sunday, a few days before the country’s general elections, suggests that the ANC is taking no chances. It recognizes that, for the first time, its battle for a further term of office is not only against the party’s traditional opponents, but against the faction of the ANC which has split off to form a new opposition grouping, the Congress of the People (COPE). The ANC is, of course, going into the elections with a new leader, Mr Jacob Zuma, though one of the same generation as former President Thabo Mbeki, unceremoniously removed from the leadership of the country now over a year ago. But however minimal the threat to its domination may seem, the party is aware that for the first time since the end of apartheid, another organization is challenging its legitimacy as the only representative of the majority African section of the population.
That Mr Zuma is not viewed with the same deference that either Mandela or Mbeki had been is no secret. He has been accused of a variety of criminal offences, although he has not been convicted of any. He is seen to have links with persons convicted of various kinds of corruption. But it would appear that the anxiety of his opponents to bring him down, has led to rulings, including the latest last week, that the judiciary was not being allowed to do its work without interference, and therefore to the abandonment of the cases against him.
There have been strong suggestions that Mr Mbeki, as President, had come to the conclusion that Mr Zuma should not run with him for another term as Deputy President. He therefore sought to politically isolate Zuma, until the occasion of what appeared to be “stickable” charges laid against Zuma arose, to dismiss him from his position. But Zuma, one of those once imprisoned in Robben Island, the place in which Nelson Mandela had been isolated during the apartheid era, himself had what might be called a high political pedigree in the ANC, and could not be so easily dispensed with.
Mbeki appears not to have been on solid political ground when he began his struggle against Zuma. Having reached the top of the ANC as a result of his prestige as one of the ANC’s main negotiators in the last years of apartheid, he seemed, as President, to increasingly isolate himself from others in the party, and to take stances, like that on the origins and treatment of AIDS in South Africa which seemed odd, and not in line with professional opinion. In addition, though in the country as a whole, and indeed outside of the country, he seemed to have a certain prestige, particularly for having kept post-apartheid South Africa on a stable economic course, his support among the masses seemed to wane, as they did not feel themselves to be reaping the benefits of his strategies.
Concern seems to have developed in South Africa also about the unwillingness of Mbeki to act decisively in the matter of the growing instability in Zimbabwe, itself the cause of large-scale migration from that country into a South Africa hardly capable of meeting the demands of its own citizens for adequate housing. And finally, if some judicial personnel are to be believed, Mbeki, or his agents, seem to have gone overboard in their enthusiasm to see Zuma go the way of judicial prosecution as the path to his political elimination. But Zuma himself appears to have been something of a teflon figure, escaping the judicial nooses and, in an odd way, gaining popularity for his, as it were, Houdini-like escapes.
Zuma obviously anticipated his own dismissal by Mbeki, and having chosen the path of securing his political future within the ANC party machine, challenged Mbeki directly for the leadership of the party. In this effort he was decisively successful. Middle-class concerns about judicial manipulation in ensuring Zuma’s escape from criminal charges, seemed to have had little salience among the party masses.
President Mandela’s second appearance at a mass rally, in spite of what is claimed to be his increasing frailty, and showing direct support for Zuma, indicates the priority which the party puts on the survival of the ANC as the leading political institution in South Africa. In many cases in Africa, the party taking the country into independence as a national formation has not survived the internal struggles that have taken place soon after independence was achieved.
The ANC, however, is well aware of the extent to which the ethnic structure of the country can easily succumb, as it has in other places, to fissiparous tendencies. And it does have the advantage of an organizational structure based on principles of organization designed to preserve its integrity in the difficult times of apartheid. Its electioneering emphasis therefore continues to be a focus on itself as the historic guarantor of the liberation of the South African masses, and projections being made on the election suggest that the masses maintain that image of the party.
Nonetheless, there does seem to be an air of the election as a turning point in the country’s history. Not only is there a certain concern, more among elements of the middle and upper classes of course, that the struggle for a post-Mandela leadership can test the solidity of the country’s political institutions. There is also an awareness that the global economic situation will prove a testing ground for South Africa’s economy, and that the capacity of the expected new leadership of the country to cope with this has not been put to the test.
In addition there is much awareness in the country that South Africa carries a sensitive political position in southern Africa, and on the continent as a whole, having a responsibility, as one of the so-called emerging economies, for leading the arguments in the Group of 20 for a more balanced approach to global economic growth and stability; and that in part, its credibility for this role rests on its own continuing political and economic stability. In that respect, external observers too, will be anxious to see the extent to which, on the morrow of his electoral victory, Mr Zuma makes, or does not make, substantial changes in the leadership core of the government.
