CORRUPTION-SOUTH AFRICA: Inquiry Unlikely to Affect Next Year’s Elections

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Badia Jacobs

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 7 2003 (IPS) - South African deputy president Jacob Zuma is a returnee, like President Thabo Mbeki. He was born in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa’s most populous province and one that remains firmly in the hands of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a self-proclaimed Zulu aristocrat who heads the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Buthelezi serves in the cabinet as the minister of home affairs in the ANC-led government.

Zuma comes with a mix of credentials. He was a former Umkhonto we Sizwe soldier and the head of the ANC’s intelligence unit in Zambia. He became a smooth negotiator and politician who headed the province’s economics department after the general election of 1994.

But it is as deputy president of the most powerful economy in Africa that he has hit the headlines. Zuma is under investigation by South Africa’s elite Scorpions, a graft unit that was set up in 2001 at the recommendation of the country’s public service department.

The main charge against Zuma is that he attempted to solicit R500,000 (around 67,000 U.S. dollars) in 1999 from a French company, Thales, offering to protect it during investigations into a 3.6-billion-U.S.-dollar arms deal that the government had entered into.

Political analyst Patrick Lawrence, who is also a contributing editor to The Star, a Johannesburg-based daily, muses that the investigation into Zuma, and Mbeki’s silence on the matter, suggest that Mbeki may be contemplating a third term in 2009. If this probe destroys the deputy president, Mbeki will have no serious challenger to the throne, Lawrence speculates.

Apart from the fact that South Africa’s constitution does not allow for a third term in office, Lawrence’s picturesque musings are hard to take seriously.

The African National Congress (ANC) is made of a colourful potpourri of conservative and radical nationalists, communists and hard-core new and old capitalists. Mbeki hails from a communist tradition but has moved considerably to embrace the Third Way of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and former U.S. president Bill Clinton. Economically this has meant making globalisation palatable to the Third World in its efforts to mix "economic individualism" with "social solidarity".

Zuma, on the other hand, does not appear to involve himself too much with the intellectual meanderings of his boss, but is known to be a loyal Mbeki supporter. Together with Essop Pahad, the minister in the office of the president, Zuma is the parliamentary face of Mbeki. Rumours that he intends to be more than this are pure speculation. Looking for stories where none exists is the bane of all analysts and journalists, especially those with a conspiratorial bent.

As a radical nationalist and a celebrated returnee, Zuma is firmly entrenched as a beneficiary of Mbeki’s largesse. Eyeing the top political job would seem somewhat far-fetched at this point.

The tensions within the African National Congress are hardly about rearranging the deckchairs nor are they about pro and anti-Zuma factions. Instead, they are about the inevitable clashes between the various interest groups angling for position and influence in the ANC’s hierarchy.

The ANC-led government is in alliance with the trade union federation, COSATU, and the communists. If Zuma is cleared of all the charges, the earth is hardly likely to move. If Zuma is not cleared, Mbeki faces a dilemma: does he fire the man in charge of the moral regeneration (Zuma heads the state-sponsored moral regeneration programme) of the nation, or will he simply allow the law and Zuma’s conscience to take their course?

Or will he be like Tony Yengeni, the former ANC parliamentary whip who was found guilty of misleading South Africa’s parliament about a discount he received on the purchase of a 4X4 Mercedes-Benz?

Either way, the presidency stands to gain. KwaZulu-Natal’s vote is not essential to the ANC’s grip on power. Far more strategic is the continued buy-in of organised labour and the intellectual input of the communists. Beyond next year’s election, the alliance is likely to fracture catastrophically. This, perhaps, is as it should be. Mbeki’s government is unapologetically business friendly and its macroeconomic plan is firmly rooted in market-inspired shenanigans.

South Africa’s Gini coefficient – the measure of inequality in the society – is dangerously close to Brazil’s, which is reputed to have the biggest gap between the rich and the poor in the world. This is unlikely to change dramatically before next year’s election.

And Zuma’s fate is not going to significantly change the increasing middle-class character of the ANC. If anything, it might mean that a more socialist-inclined pretender to the presidential throne may emerge. This would be in the ANC’s strategic interest as the party angles to retain the acquiescence of the communists and COSATU beyond 2004.