Allister Sparks
11 November 2009
column
OUR country badly needs clear leadership. The silence at the top while cacophony rages in the ranks below is causing confusion and uncertainty. There is a sense of drift in the air.
One can understand why President Jacob Zuma is so hesitant to spell out his own vision of the road ahead.
He is presiding over a fractious coalition that is at war with itself, and to choose any side too clearly in that power struggle is to risk alienating the other and suffering the fate of the departed Thabo Mbeki . So he prevaricates, hoping that by lending an attentive ear to everyone without explicitly siding with any he can keep all sufficiently unruffled to stay in the big alliance tent.
Thus has Mbeki become Banquo's ghost, spooking Zuma into a state of inertia at a time when the country cries out for strong, decisive leadership to deal with a range of structural problems that threaten to stunt our future growth.
The problem has as much to do with the changed character of the African National Congress (ANC) as with Zuma's political inhibitions. From its inception, the ANC has been a coalition drawn together from all sectors of the ideological spectrum for the common purpose of opposing first, the Land Act of 1913, then later to waging the broader liberation struggle against apartheid.
That common objective was the glue that bonded the different elements of the coalition together. But once that objective was achieved in 1994, the glue began to weaken.
The culture of the coalition also began to change. To join the ANC during the struggle years required great self-sacrifice. One ran the risk of being imprisoned, tortured, killed. Going into exile meant sacrificing career opportunities, severing family ties, leaving one's home and friends and country. All for the cause of fighting for the liberation of one's people. So the organisation became infused with a spirit of selfless idealism.
But no longer. Joining the ANC today involves no risk or self-sacrifice. Quite the opposite. It is the gateway to opportunity, to power, status and wealth. So the spirit of idealism has given way to a culture of personal ambition and avarice.
The nature of the ANC's constituency has also changed. In the past all black people, whatever their station in life, shared the common condition of being oppressed. Rich or poor, educated or illiterate, all were in the same boat — disadvantaged.
But again, no longer. Our new democracy brought with it nine years of sustained economic growth, which, coupled with affirmative action and black economic empowerment, has seen the emergence of a burgeoning black middle class. There are now three distinct constituencies in the black population — a middle class, a blue-collar working class and a large underclass of the jobless and poor — each with different and often conflicting class interests. So the ANC coalition with its weakening glue and changed inner culture is now being pulled in different directions by these conflicting class interests.
Mbeki sought to deal with these mounting tensions by centralising power in the organisation. He took the view that the alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), could present their policy proposals rather in the manner of petitioners, but that the ANC as the elected government had to decide on the policy course to be followed and get on with the business of governing. It could not be micro- managed from the sidelines.
Cosatu and the SACP, as loyal and disciplined members of the alliance, could not be allowed to criticise the government in public. To borrow George Bush's phrase, he, Mbeki, was "the decider".
That was no way to hold such a broad coalition together. Cosatu and the SACP felt they were being treated with disdain, that their support was expected at election time but they were then excluded from the decision-making processes of the government between elections.
Resentment of Mbeki built up, and when Zuma was dismissed as deputy president following his implication in the Schabir Shaik judgment, the dissidents found a leading figure they could use to symbolise their sense of grievance. So the campaign for the Polokwane putsch got under way.
The bitterness of that campaign further weakened the bonds holding the coalition together, while the Congress of the People split did little to narrow the width of the coalition. It is still as broad a church as ever, stretching from Blade Nzimande on the left to Trevor Manuel on the right. So the power struggle continues. The only thing that has changed is the new president's way of trying to handle it.
Zuma is not an ideologist, of either the left or the right. He is an African traditionalist. So in his eagerness to avoid Mbeki's error he is not laying down a policy line for his government to follow.
He is trying to deal with his broad coalition in a traditional African way by allowing every faction in the coalition to have its say, while he listens to them all — presumably with a view to ultimately distilling from the whole kgotla or indaba what he deems to be a consensus way forward that will be acceptable to all and alienate none.
The problem is that such a process of government by consensus or constant compromise does not allow for strong, decisive leadership — and some of our serious structural problems, such as the large number of dysfunctional schools staffed by underqualified teachers, and the burgeoning number of young, unskilled people who can't get "decent" first-time jobs, require just that.
Zuma must know that to deal with these critical problems he needs to face up to the protective unions to get rid of the ineffective teachers and make it easier for those young people to enter the job market, where they can acquire on-the-job skills.
But he shrinks from alienating the unions. Alliance unity comes before the national interest.
Confronted with this dilemma, Zuma is doing nothing. The traditional leader has heard all the arguments from all the factions, but we still await his announcement of the course to be followed. There is silence at the top. No leadership.
Meanwhile, the cacophony below is intensifying as each faction tries to step up the pressure on what it senses to be a weak leadership that can be moved in its favour.
So we have the outrageous Julius Malema and his youth league stepping into the leadership vacuum and taking it upon themselves to fire a town council, overrule the board of Eskom in deciding who should be the CEO of the country's most important parastatal corporation, and declare that the mining industry must be nationalised.
And Zuma does nothing to discipline this young upstart. Instead he pats him on the head and anoints him as a future president. All to curry favour with him and his followers and keep them inside the coalition tent.
SA deserves better than this.
The great indaba has gone on long enough and it is time Zuma spoke up and told us clearly and decisively where he stands on all these disputed issues and what policy vision he has for the new decade we are about to enter. It is time for our elected leader to lead.
Sparks is a former editor of the Rand Daily Mail and a veteran political analyst. His fortnightly column appears regularly on Business Day's website.
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"OUR country badly needs clear leadership. "
Oh.
What do you know about "leadership"?
[Or it it your contention that those natives - the people of Shaka - cannot offer "leadership"?]
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" .. deciding who should be the CEO of .. corporation, and declare that the mining industry must be nationalised. .."
We knew it: Rhodies would protect the ill-gotten native plunder!
Remember this: As far as the long-suffering patriotic natives of Shaka's lands are concerned, the economy of their lands has been in a perpetual depression ever since the vile rhodie defiled it by stepping foot on it.
As such, drastic measures are called for.
Do you remember the measures Pres Obama took when he assumed office amidst one of the worst recessions the USA - and the world - ever faced? CEOs were not spared and corporations were essentially nationalized.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. ...
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"SA deserves better than this."
If you don't like it in South Africa, you don't have to stay a moment longer.
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