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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781868148851 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wits University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Susan Booysen is an analyst and media commentator is Director of Research at the Mapungubwe Institute of Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) and Visiting Professor at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Susan Booysen is an analyst and media commentator is Director of Research at the Mapungubwe Institute of Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) and Visiting Professor at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her two major books on the ANC are The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power (2011) and Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma (2015), both published by Wits University Press.
Read an Excerpt
Dominance and Decline
The ANC in the Time of Zuma
By Susan Booysen, Monica Seeber
Wits University Press
Copyright © 2015 Susan BooysenAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-86814-885-1
CHAPTER 1
THE ANC'S FUSED PARTY-STATE
Jacob Zuma's years in command of the ANC have irrevocably changed the party as organisation – and the South African state. The ANC is captured as a tide gradually receding towards a point that marks the end of its hegemony, its fate linked to, but not solely determined by, President Zuma. The power of Zuma is formidable, but also contested. While factions are battling out the succession, the damages that the Zuma era has inflicted on the ANC pose two questions. Would the ANC recover from the wounds inflicted by Zuma? Could the ANC reposition itself to rise above the party that installed, retained and protected Zuma?
Some of the changes to the ANC organisationally in the course of Zuma's two presidential terms have resulted specifically from his presidency, his style of leadership and the way in which he rules over the ANC and the government. Other organisational changes might have materialised no matter which ANC leader was in power – many were due to the organisation's own continuous metamorphosis from liberation movement to a powerful majoritarian and dominant party that fused with the state. It was a particular type of organisation that allowed Zuma to become and to remain its president for two terms. But Zuma and those close to him in the organisation also have agency – they shape events rather than experience them passively. They fostered the ANC's integration with the state and they allowed an ANC in which the president rules. As a result, there is more emphasis on a party that sees state institutions as personal (and, occasionally, organisational) fiefdoms. Under this tutelage the ANC has become even more of an organisation that readily submits to the top leadership, plays extensively in succession politics and excels at factional mobilisation. In such an orgy of power there is little time to contemplate accountability to the public who had put the party in power – except in the narrow sense of reporting to ANC structures and events and roughly abiding by state-institutional processes.
The intra-ANC wrangle is about the extent to which the Zuma band of leaders – forcefully but ambiguously because of uncertain succession outcomes – will create openings for a post-Zuma order that will dare to diverge from the dictates of the Zuma era. Zuma-ists might be steering the ANC towards Zuma-cloning, extended presidential protection and continuous subjugation of institutions of democracy to the will of a commanding leader. The next round in the succession game has become fraught, as the most likely choices are between those candidates made by Zuma, and those who made him and facilitated his incumbency. A further likelihood is that a succession project run by this core group (anchored by Zuma and Secretary General Gwede Mantashe, before evidence grew of schisms between the two) will fracture and open a new game. Two prime layers of contestation are at stake: the contest to succeed Zuma as ANC president, and the contest to become ANC deputy president and best positioned for the next round.
This chapter considers aspects of the ANC as organisation in the time of Zuma along the lines of the subjugation of the ANC to the travails of the leader, while allowing for strains of organisational autonomy to prevail as well. It focuses on changes that the ANC underwent in the time of Zuma, often because of Zuma. It explores how the ANC in the time of Zuma related to the people and how the ANC branches mediated this relationship. It spells out the 'rules' by which the contemporary ANC operated. This ANC is inseparable from personalised power and from the fusion of organisation and state.
FUSED WITH THE STATE
Well into its third decade in office, the ANC is a mass of contradictions. Above all, the synthesis of state and party has grown in leaps and bounds from the already substantial conflation under Thabo Mbeki. Zuma has 'perfected' the mix and in his reign the ANC has received the ultimate gift of power: it is now inseparable and often indistinguishable from the state.
The ANC has become an organisation boosted (if not sustained) by drawing on the state and its resources. It has almost undisputed control, a reality that is also evident from the state mechanisms through which the ANC regenerates its power. Given the ANC's power and resources in relation to the state it is almost inconceivable that it could be defeated by any opposition party. Yet at the same time as the ANC has become firmly ensconced in state power it has also suffered organisational weakening in some respects.
The weaknesses are evident in daily displays and in longer-term trends. Demonstrations of factions and splits within factions are significant, especially at ANC nomination and election times. As the provinces usually constitute important ANC national conference blocs, and the provinces comprise regions, many of the regional elections and emerging affiliations to top leadership contests carry weight. In the run-up to Mangaung a few ANC figures lost their lives and many more their political lives; in KwaZulu-Natal in 2015, bribery and manipulation of regional elections appeared the order of the day. In the Western Cape, factions effectively hijacked several regional conferences, stepping roughshod over rules and procedures to install predetermined office bearers. The Eastern Cape was plagued by gatekeeping – the practice of ANC factions barring members who support rival factions from branch general meetings.
Factions are common to political parties, so what is the problem with factions in the ANC? It is hardly more factional than other parties, as Pallo Jordan once observed. It is problematic, however, in the sense that ANC contests and their repercussions are directly transferred into the state when the fear of antagonising leaders triggers inaction and paralysis in the public sector. Top-level political deployees change frequently, as political executive appointments change, and their loyalty amid paranoia – for fear of being set up for failure or brought to book for malfeasance – needs constant massaging. The ANC deploys to influential positions people with uneven or suspect professional and personal records knowing that these persons would be dependent on their principals to be retained and rewarded. This has far-reaching implications for governance and the fiscus. They have to protect their executive political handlers – keeping them out of court, shielding them from uncomfortable questions, moderating succession contests. In this way, the state and the ANC's governance project are in many respects subjugated to narrow interests. Moreover, the state security services are frequent participants in the internal manoeuvres. Further down the state hierarchy, in the provinces and municipalities, the game is replicated around lesser principals.
There are privileges in enclaves beyond the formal rules of the state for those who operate on the right side of the ANC president, especially (but not necessarily) if they have helped to protect him over time, even back in exile days, but even more so if they have been following through consistently. The saga of lieutenant general Richard Mdluli is one example: a former head of police intelligence, suspended (ongoing by 2015) and appearing in court on a charge of a 1999 murder in a love triangle, his rumoured bond to the presidential protection circle is an intelligence report in which he cautioned the president against political enemies. Others point out that he regularly produces such reports. Serial revelations of Mdluli living the high life off crime intelligence funds and appointing cronies to intelligence jobs did not clip his wings. Mdluli was brought to task because Mxolisi Nxasana, embattled and, from June 2015, former national director of public prosecutions (NDPP), had reinstated the withdrawn charges as part of a raging National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) war. In 2015, the non-governmental organisation Freedom under Law won a Supreme Court of Appeal ruling to reinstate charges. The existence of a Special Operations Unit within the South African Revenue Service (Sars) 'geared to enrichment and fighting political battles' was revealed, leading to the exposé of yet another inner state organ geared to serving high-level political agendas. State institutional misuse in the security sector is rife, and entangled in top-level ANC party politics.
The party has gained the 'right' over time, and in parallel operations not covered in the Constitution and state-operational legislation and regulations, to intervene and direct strategic state decisions. When high-level interests are at stake the ANC does so at will. Examples abound. Vusi Pikoli recalls that despite the Ginwala Commission's finding that he was fit to hold the NDPP office, provincial leaders of the ANC, a businessman from KwaZulu-Natal, and a member of the Johannesburg Bar warned him to resign or they would let the ANC overrule the Ginwala recommendation to Parliament. In similar vein were the 2014 revelations that the president intervened to fire senior intelligence officials on suspicion that they had remained loyal to their redeployed former minister. The redeployed staff said they were being moved into ambassadorial posts by (rather than being fired from) the State Security Agency (SSA) owing to top-level fears that they might turn into enemies, as were former intelligence agency boss Billy Masetlha and his two senior chiefs, Bob Mhlanga and Gibson Njenje, in the time of Mbeki. Beyond the security sector, the political determination of public sector and political appointments continued.
Through weakness at the top of the ANC, combined with fusion between party and state, the ANC government is struggling to pull together its governance project. It declares – after more than two decades in government – that 'now is the time for implementation'. Despite such acknowledgements and undertakings to clamp down, civil servants and politicians in all spheres of government continue to conduct business with the state and to trade on their public positions. This corruption spreads into the police service and legal system, giving the green light to criminally inclined citizens to go about their business with impunity. At the same time, the ANC in the elected institutions suffers – yet defends – the corrupt practices in the name of the president (a president who has earned himself the nickname of 'there is no case against me') and a range of other party principals. In local government, corruption and dysfunctionality are common, despite multiple strategic interventions. It is only in occasional internal ANC and government reports that the truths of these failures are mentioned. The Tripartite Alliance notes that 'subversion of internal democratic processes through the manipulation of membership through gatekeeping and the use of money to advance individual ambitions and factions based on patronage and nepotism' alienates people from leadership.
Before factions started spreading their wings tentatively to prepare for a post-Zuma order, this space was highly controlled: little was left to chance because chance might have brought results most unpalatable to ANC incumbents. The ruling party became a highly structured, measured mass party under factional leadership, the president and his regiments of loyalists exercising control through commanding the branches and regions. Add to that the continuation of the prevailing economic order, executive rule over the state and sophisticated operations to curb expressions of discontent, and continued control seems to be on track, for now.
Under Jacob Zuma, the ANC's liberation dividend continued to be its great insurance for retaining high popular standing. The liberation struggle link remains, and its conventional identity of 'parent-party' merges with 'patronage-broker'. During its first fifteen years in power prior to Zuma's rule, the ANC had already metamorphosed into an organisation that leverages state power to build the fortunes of the governing party. This happened both directly by delivering goods and indirectly through control over resources and information to build the ANC image.
It became the state information apparatus's function to drive home the message of the link between liberation status and present-day deliverer. The apparatus includes privately owned media that have started moving into closer relationships with the governing party, through personal friendships, increased government investment, and transfers from the state to these media by way of advertising or events. Cases in point are The New Age media, Independent Media and Hosken Consolidated Investment and e.tv (some more consistently and better trusted than others by the ANC). The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was already in a close relationship.
The ANC, expertly so in the time of Zuma, never lets an opportunity slip to connect its present to the self-sacrificing past to ensure that South Africans will not forget to link liberation to the ANC. In the government report on twenty years of democracy, the point of comparison remained the apartheid order, rather than the ANC's original goals. In comparison, even modest ANC achievements came across as outstanding. Continuous reinvigoration is possible, given figureheads such as Nelson Mandela and the selection of glorious liberation struggle moments which can be exhibited, at least for another generation.
The fusion of state and party is at the heart of the ANC's regeneration of its political power. The impression by 2015 is that as the ANC becomes weaker electorally, it becomes more firmly entrenched in state power. It remains the first 'port of call' for the elite, the gateway for the politically and economically ambitious to advance – and this has spilled over into much of society. Before people start disaffecting openly they consider the near certainty of ongoing ANC incumbency. Political elites largely only break from the ANC, or become severely critical, if they have alternative careers in place, or when retirement benefits are secured, or when they have little to lose. The ANC is the keyholder to state power and opportunity.
IN SYNC, AT ODDS – THE PEOPLE AND THE NEW ANC
The ANC is as strong as its bond with the people of South Africa. This is where the final endorsements are vested, even if the contemporary ANC often acts as if it is autonomous and the leaders a force of their own. The people are famed for their patience with their ANC. They acknowledge that 'Rome was not built in a day'. They recognise the enormity of the task of recovery from the legacies of apartheid and colonialism. They know their leaders face enormous challenges, by far not all of their own making. Yet there are signs that the patience and tolerance are running thin.
Damage is still limited. The new character of the ANC as an elite beneficiation machine with patronage as a big component did inflict electoral damage but it was far less than the disappointment and discontent expressed in pre-election periods. As demonstrated in Regeneration, the problems and grievances about the ANC and ANC-in-government are largely not carried into elections. Issues with the party and its leaders are often forgiven, but displeasure is simply suspended. Despite this general trend, the 2014 election, more than any preceding post-1994 election, was used as a point of reckoning (as judged by the ANC's decline nationally and in several provinces). In 2015, the ANC viewed with loathing the possibility that 2016 local elections would register another bar in its consistently dropping popular support. Public polls of 2015 showed that ANC support continued declining across most provinces.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dominance and Decline by Susan Booysen, Monica Seeber. Copyright © 2015 Susan Booysen. Excerpted by permission of Wits University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES, vii,PREFACE, ix,
INTRODUCTION, 1,
CHAPTER 1: The ANC's fused party-state, 27,
CHAPTER 2: Configuring Zuma's presidency, 57,
CHAPTER 3: Constructing the ANC's compliant state, 93,
CHAPTER 4: Desperately seeking 'radical' policy, 126,
CHAPTER 5: The wake-up calls of Election 2014, 163,
CHAPTER 6: The DA's encroaching march, 192,
CHAPTER 7: EFF and the left claiming ANC turf, 221,
CHAPTER 8: ANC in the cauldron of protest, 261,
CHAPTER 9: Conclusion – 'The ANC is in trouble', 292,
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY, 311,
INDEX, 313,