Karima Brown
25 October 2007
Johannesburg — AMID investor unease about President Thabo Mbeki's intention to run for re-election as African National Congress (ANC) leader, his main rival, ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma, yesterday continued his charm offensive to woo investors.
Zuma continued to try to allay market fears about his bid for control of the ruling party, assuring investors that there would be no major shifts on economic policy when the party's leadership changed guard in December.
Zuma was speaking to investors from Merrill Lynch, one of the US's biggest investment banks, at a high-powered lunch in Johannesburg -- amid worries from a top US ratings agency that the ANC's succession race would create uncertainty in the market.
Zuma's speech to the investors was aimed at reassuring them that there was no need for the market to be "jittery", no matter the outcome of the ANC's watershed December elective conference in Polokwane, a Zuma aide said.
Zuma spoke at length about the interdependence between political and economic stability and told the investors that the ANC's internal process would ensure a smooth transition when the ruling party changes guard.
Zuma told the 20 asset and hedge fund managers that there would be no major shifts on economic policy post-Polokwane, and that the ANC policy conference proposals would guide the party on key political economic and social questions.
Zuma's charm offensive comes hard on the heels of concerns by US ratings agency Moody's about Mbeki's determination to run for a third term as ANC president. Mbeki and Zuma are the front runners in the ANC presidential succession battle. Zuma's talk, which came at the request of Merrill Lynch, was "warmly received" and covered a broad range of topics, including the economy, crime, the independence of the judiciary, Zimbabwe and media freedom, a senior company official said.
"We had a big lunch attended by asset and hedge fund managers, most of whom are (based) in the US and Europe. We invited him (Zuma) as part of our annual October SA conference for investors where we meet with companies and do site visits to plants. We are getting a sense of the investment climate," an official at Merrill Lynch said.
On social policy Zuma spoke of the importance of partnerships between the government and businesses, and said that the education sector needed greater investment from the private sector to yield stability in the longer term .
Zuma's talk follows a similar lunch the ANC deputy president had with a similar group from Citibank about a month ago.
Earlier this year Zuma also spoke to local businessmen and women at a breakfast meeting organised by the Institute of Race Relations. Aubrey Matshiqi, an analyst at the Centre for Policy Studies, said there were two ways of looking at interpreting the relationship between Zuma and the investment community.
One suggested that Zuma was beginning to project presidentially in anticipation of a possible victory in December and that some sections of the investment community were beginning to factor in such a possibility and were therefore trying to sensitise a possible successor to Mbeki to their policy concerns.
"They are trying to get a sense of whether a Zuma presidency will negatively affect economic policy. Their understanding of a negative impact means deviation from the current economic trajectory," Matshiqi said.
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