Johannesburg: South African president Jacob Zuma is expected to survive the coming weeks of protest actions calling for his removal from office, but it will be an empty victory that will come at great cost to his governing party, the African National Congress (ANC).
This week saw the largest mass marches against a president of a democratic South Africa. Government estimates that 60,000 people participated in the protests across the country. This coming Wednesday, Zuma’s 75th birthday, will be marked by another mass march to the Union Building in Pretoria, the seat of the executive. “We don’t want him to have a proper birthday. He must question the reason for his existence on that day, particularly in the highest office in the country,” said a representative of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, one of the opposition parties that have called for the march, during a television interview. The ANC will be hosting a celebration for Zuma.
Then on April 18, Zuma faces another vote of no confidence in the South African Parliament. While the ANC has made it clear that it will again use its overwhelming majority to back the president, there are expectations that some of its Members of Parliament may break ranks for the first time. The South African Communist Party (SACP), a long-time ally of the ANC that has members in Parliament and the Cabinet on an ANC ticket, has called on Zuma to step down.
There has been open discontent in ANC ranks — significant in an organisation that prides itself on maintaining a facade of unity — since Zuma recently reshuffled his Cabinet, removing the then finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, and his deputy Mcebisi Jonas. The two were seen to be blocking Zuma’s unfettered access to the national treasury. Zuma has been found wanting in his duties as head of state by the Constitutional Court, has 783 counts of corruption hanging over him, and has been alleged to have granted some of his family’s business partners undue influence in state enterprises. Zuma and his allies have vociferously denied the accusations and have so far been able to whip the ANC into line behind him.
Opposition to Zuma in the ANC is rudderless at present. It would most likely rally around the organisation’s deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a businessman with a stellar record in the struggle against apartheid. But, while he was among those who publicly challenged Zuma on the Cabinet reshuffle, Ramaphosa has not yet set out his stall for a leadership challenge. While Zuma’s term as president of South Africa only ends in 2019, he is due to be replaced as leader of the ANC in December this year. Zuma is believed to be backing his former wife and African Union chair, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to succeed him.
As the ANC does not seem to be able to call their president to order, civil society has stepped into the vacuum and is trying to hold Zuma to account for his perceived disregard of the country’s constitution and use of his office for personal benefit. But, political analyst Ebrahim Fakir told Gulf News that he is concerned that because civil society and state institutions have been drawn into the ANC’s internal battles, what is now at stake are “South African’s fundamental rights, to organise, to associate, to protest”.
In the event, this week’s marches went off relatively smoothly, with the protesters drawing on the now often-quoted words of Nelson Mandela: “If the ANC does to you what the apartheid government did to you, then you must do to the ANC what you did to the apartheid government.”
Fakir thinks that the cleanest way for the ANC — and the country — to get past Zuma is for the organisation to elect a new leader at its national conference this year, and then recall Zuma before his term as state president is up. However, this is unlikely to happen if Zuma is able keep control of the ANC and install his favoured candidate. South Africa will continue to be seen to be risking its political and financial stability as those in the ANC pursue personal agendas.
Most analysts will concede that from the outside, it is very difficult to know what is going on in the ANC. Fakir’s view is that it is unlikely that the ANC will be able to reform itself, and even if it could South Africa would still face a period of unstable government, as a new faction took control of the organisation.
Looking ahead to the next election, Fakir’s scenarios are: “If the ANC did all the right things and restored credibility and trust, then it might end up with a majority in the next election. But I don’t see this happening. In that case it will dip [below 50 per cent] and need alliances with smaller parties. But definitely, its majority will be reduced.”
