South Africa - What the ANC's victory means

The ANC is poised to win a convincing majority in national polls on Wednesday on the back of an effective electoral machinery and a resurgence in the populous province of KwaZulu-Natal.

But beneath the headline figures, which will likely see the party coming close to the critical two-thirds majority it so urgently wants, there are signs of an important change in the political landscape.

The ANC’s victory portends an arguably more significant realignment: a shift in the political landscape which could see the Democratic Alliance and Cope work closely together and so begin the work of crafting a governing alternative for future elections.

Cope galvanises ANC
The formation of Cope put the ANC in battle mode: it threw all its campaigning talent and tens of millions of rands into the campaign. ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe, who spoke to the Mail & Guardian this week, predicted a two-thirds majority for his party and said the ANC strategy had been to protect its traditional support bases from the newcomer. The latest Ipsos Markinor poll, released this week, suggests the ANC will do well but that it will end with a 65% majority victory.

Mantashe denied organising events in areas where Cope events were planned. “It was a coincidence that we were always in the same area. The main issue was to contest and reassert the ANC in traditional ANC areas.”

Mantashe said the ANC’s election campaign had been successful because of its decision to do away with rival power centres in the party, loyal either to former president Thabo Mbeki or to ANC president Jacob Zuma.

“Many thought this would backfire and strengthen Cope. But as things unfolded, we became convinced it was the right decision.”

Mantashe acknowledged that Cope’s formation had an initial impact on the ANC, but said this was no longer true.

“We could not take the formation of Cope as a non-event. It distracted our programmes, but we went through that phase quickly and started focusing on ANC programmes.”

The South African culture of support for the underdog has proven to be the wind beneath the ANC’s wings: while the opposition is up in arms over the withdrawal of charges against party president Zuma, the campaign is likely to be boosted by his perceived victory.

The survey said Zuma’s legal woes have not affected his party and that only the controversial behaviour of the ANC Youth League and its president, Julius Malema, have cost it support.

One-third of voters polled said they would vote for an opposition party because of Malema, while 10% said they would not vote at all because of him. More than 50% of those polled said Zuma’s legal troubles will “make them more likely to vote for the ANC”.

Realignment
South Africa stands on the brink of a major political realignment, as opposition parties, particularly Cope and the DA, move quickly towards a cooperative relationship after next week’s elections.

While the elections are likely to set Cope and the DA on the road to convergence, there are also indications that the lesser parties, particularly the IFP and the UDM, will take a heavy hit at the polls.

Some analysts believe that the Zuma factor could push the IFP below 20% in its KwaZulu-Natal stronghold, from 48% in 2004.

Opposition leaders are already preparing to work together more closely to fight the ANC. The combined court challenge by the DA, Cope, UDM, ACDP and IFP to the National Prosecuting Authority’s decision to drop charges against Zuma could be a straw in the wind.

Cope second deputy president Lynda Odendaal confirmed that opposition parties are growing closer. “We have a more conciliatory approach, because we have the same issues. It makes sense for us to be closer,” she told the M&G.

The election is also likely to highlight a growing Zimbabwe-style divide between rural and urban voters, with the ANC pulling almost half of its votes from rural areas and the DA receiving almost 70% of its support from towns and cities.

Despite a vibrant and well-resourced election campaign, the ANC could lose its two-thirds majority in Parliament, preventing it from unilaterally altering the Constitution. The survey, gives the party a clear majority, with 64,7% nationally.

It predicted that the DA will drop to 10,8%, from 12,4%, while Cope will poll 8,9% and the IFP 2,7%.

Smaller parties such as the UDM and ID will also decline to 0,7% and 1,1% respectively.

Markinor polled 3 531 voters countrywide between February 24 and March 10 this year.

But the parties’ final vote-catching push this week will play an important role, as 4,2% of the electorate, or 900 000 votes, is still undecided. About 3,9% (800 000 voters) would not state their preference. Roughly 50 000 votes are needed for a party to secure one parliamentary seat.

A racial glass ceiling
Voting will continue to be mainly race-based, with 78,8% of black voters backing the ANC, while the majority of the DA’s votes come from whites (59,8% of whites sampled), coloureds (35,1%) and Indians (29,6%).

About 22,2% of coloureds surveyed will vote for Cope and 13,7% of whites, suggesting Cope is the only party likely to break racial patterns of electoral support.

The survey showed that the ANC is the party of choice for most rural voters, while Cope and DA support is concentrated in the metros.

Markinor found 69,7% of DA votes come from urban voters in areas such as Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and the East Rand.

DA leader Helen Zille campaigned nationally, but the party focused on the Western Cape, where Zille has a strong presence as Cape Town mayor.

And the parties think?
Assessing their own chances, political parties are, predictably, more optimistic than the survey.

Cope is convinced it will take between 15% and 20% of the national vote. Its first deputy president, Mbhazima Shilowa, told the M&G the party wants to govern in six provinces -- Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Limpopo, Gauteng and North West -- on its own or in coalition.

The party has given up on KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State, despite president Mosiuoa Lekota and secretary general Charlotte Lobe hailing from the latter province.

Cope expects its best election result in Limpopo, where it estimates it will take 42% and be placed to lead a coalition government. An earlier Markinor survey found 30% backing in Limpopo.

In the Western Cape the party is aiming for 25% and claims to have strong support in black and coloured townships.

The DA is likely to be the province’s majority party, while falling short of an absolute majority -- meaning that coalition rule with smaller parties is likely there.

In the Northern Cape Cope expects to win 35% of the vote, making it the official opposition. It expects a similar outcome in Mpumalanga.

In the Eastern Cape, once considered a Cope stronghold, a recent spate of by-election losses and the defection of regional Cope leaders to the ANC have hurt its support.

Mantashe said the ANC would use the Siyanqoba (Victory) rally, taking place simultaneously at two stadiums at the weekend, to send a clear message to “right-wing” elements out to destroy the ANC and Zuma.

Source: Mail & Guardian Online

MMANALEDI MATABOGE, MANDY ROSSOUW AND MATUMA LETSOALO | JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-04-17-what-the-ancs-victory-means

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South Africa - THE ANC GOVERNMENT: TWO VIEWS

3 April 2009

By their very nature, general elections represent an end and a beginning: the end of one term and the beginning of another; and as opposing politicians do battle against each other, the election, and the changes which this could represent, almost demands that political commentators, editorial writers and columnists offer their audiences assessments of the term that is ending, and their expectations, hopes and fears for the term about to begin. And this all happens in a very feverish atmosphere.

It is against this background that I am reproducing Max Du Preez's column from the Argus newspaper of 19 March 2009. He damns the ANC government - some will say he is over harsh. But many will agree with his sentiments. Of particular relevance, however, is that these are Max Du Preez's views. Max was probably the National Party governments' most trenchant critic – especially being an Afrikaner. In fact, the government of PW Botha tried their damnest to frustrate him. He is therefore a significant commentator on current affairs with considerable influence, both domestically and internationally.

I personally don't accept the overall message of this particular column. Very simply, South Africa and its people are much bigger and more enduring than the ANC. But I wanted somebody in the ANC to respond specifically to Max's column and am delighted to publish Jeremy Cronin's contribution. Most South Africans know who Jeremy is. But for the benefit of our many international readers - Jeremy Cronin is a Member of Parliament, ANC National Executive Council member and Deputy General Secretary of the South African Communist Party. He happens also to be a poet of some note.

“ANC apparatchiks ‘didn’t struggle to be poor’ – by Max du Preez
I am going to say something today that I was so sure for so long I would never say; something that I told many an audience over more than a decade would never happen: corruption has become systemic, has become a part of our culture in South Africa.

We have now become like Angola and Nigeria. Bribery, theft of public money, tender fraud and general racketeering are no longer aberrations condemned by society, they’re accepted as normal.

What I thought was an almost understandable human weakness of “its now our turn”, a sense of entitlement after the end of the struggle against apartheid, has moved on to become an integral part of how our state and our ruling party operate.

This is why pollsters tell us a sizeable chunk of ANC supporters believe the allegations of criminal behaviour against their leader, Jacob Zuma, may well be true, yet they will still vote for him.

This is why I won’t be surprised if the reports that all charges against Zuma will be dropped, eventually prove to be true.

What the hell, why not appoint Tony Yengeni Minister of Finance?

It was when I was told that Parliament spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ rands to close the door on the Travelgate scandal and that 60 MP’s got away with stealing from their voters that it finally dawned on me that we had moved beyond a tipping point with corruption.

It meant that there is now no possibility left of claiming back the millions lost through the dishonesty of the MPs and travel agents. It means the ANC is condoning the fact that members voted into Parliament by the citizens steal from Parliament without any sanction.

Yes, I know, I was naïve.

I was naïve, as white racists told me thousands of times, to believe the liberation movement would have higher ethical standards than the evil apartheid regimes of Verwoerd, Vorster and Botha.

The ANC apparatchiks clearly didn’t “struggle to be poor”.

Perhaps it is true that they fought for power, perhaps even freedom, but certainly not for a decent and moral democracy.

Of course, the signs have been there for a very long time.

But suddenly the evidence that the ANC has the cancer of corruption growing in its very heart has become overwhelming.

Like putting someone found guilty of fraud and unlikely to withstand a legal challenge to her candidature at number five on the electoral list – someone who had earlier been convicted of the kidnapping of a young boy who died a horror death shortly afterwards. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Like tasking another fraudster who is not allowed to take up a seat in Parliament, Tony Yengeni, to lead the ANC’s election campaign in the Western Cape.

Like refusing, in the face of over-whelming suspicion of possible dirty dealings, to order a review of the release on medical parole of the man found guilty of bribing the leader of the ANC.

Virtually every week now a new scandal breaks of senior ANC personnel or top bureaucrats committing fraud or theft or bribery or nepotism.

ANC leaders condemn corruption in public statements, but few crooks in the party ever suffer any consequences.

And all this happens in the dark shadow cast by the massive and massively corrupt arms procurement deal which the government and the ANC refuse to have investigated properly.

Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC MP and member of Scopa, wrote a damning book about the arms deal scandal with first-hand evidence of gross wrong-doing.

But he might as well not have bothered – it had no effect.

We hear former president Thabo Mbeki had meetings with French arms traders, but he simply can’t remember.

We hear he received $22 million from the arms dealers and gave most of it to the ANC’s election fund, but no one investigates that any further. Just like Oilgate.

One of the top men in the South African Communist Party stole a paper bag with R500 000 in cash in it that was donated to the party, but nobody gets prosecuted.

We make a big hullabaloo out of ANC spokesman Carl Niehaus’s dishonest behaviour, but let’s be honest: his only real sin was that he got caught.

We’re in trouble, we really are.”

“The danger in delusions of grandeur – by Jeremy Cronin
I generally enjoy Max du Preez’s feisty columns. They are not always accurate, but they are never boring. However, there is also a predictable rhythm about them. Over the years, du Preez has tracked between bubbly euphoria and abject despair. Not infrequently, these zigzags occur, back and forth, between one week and the next (which is why, I guess, his column is called “Maximum Headroom” – he needs it).

If this manic behaviour were confined to a handful of media commentators, we could put it down to the competitive demands of weekly journalism, the need to say something truly big every week. But du Preez’s columns are symptomatic in other ways. They reflect something about our national psyche.

The popular (and global) portrayal of post-apartheid SA, as welcome as it might have been, was always over-cooked - the “South African miracle”, “the rainbow nation”, “the winning nation”. This provoked all manner of hubris on our part. Yes, of course, the negotiated transition to democracy was an immense and collective South African achievement, but much remained (and still remains) to be done. In the mid-1990s, a half-dozen Western leaders (Francois Mitterrand, among them), in trouble with their domestic electorates, flew out for a photo-opportunity with our global icon, Nelson Mandela. Nothing wrong with that, but again we were encouraged to believe that behind the photo-opportunity lay an eager avalanche of Marshall Aid.

After Mandela, Thabo Mbeki continued to nurture elevated expectations of being able “to punch above our weight”. He envisaged SA leading an imminent African Renaissance.

The danger in delusions of grandeur is that, when reality bumps into your script, you are liable to move into denialism (about AIDS or Zimbabwe), or blame some improbable conspiracy (“it’s the West”, or the “ultra-left”), or you plunge into an overwrought and generalising post-colonial despair (“we are just like the rest of Africa”).

Which brings me specifically to Max du Preez’s recent column. It is a litany of woes ostensibly showing that the ANC and its support base are thoroughly venal, “we have now become like Angola and Nigeria”. (Why are these the negative references and not, say, Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, or, in the light of recent scandals, Wall Street itself?)

Du Preez’s list of examples of supposed ANC moral laxity is a mixture of part truth and plain error. On a minor note, Tony Yengeni is not leading the ANC’s Western Cape election campaign. “One of the top men in the SACP” (a reference to Blade Nzimande) stole a paper bag with R500,000 in cash” we are told. In reality, it was an accusation (two black plastic bags, by the way) made by a fraudster currently behind bars. Nzimande voluntarily opened personal and family accounts to the police. Absolutely no evidence was found for this libellous accusation. But who cares? After all, Nzimande looks like he could be Angolan.

Space permitting, there’s more in detail that might be said about du Preez’s other allegations. But, yes, there are challenges we confront in regard to corruption. These challenges are within the ruling party and indeed in other sectors too – as recent excellent work done by our Competitions Commission into big corporates has unveiled.

The ANC, like SA at large, is not an out-of-this-world model of perfection. But nor are we on the brink of a ground zero dystopia. The real story of our times is to be found, not in some fictional paper bag, but in the relative durability of our economy and democratic institutions. In the recent period, we have seen the recall of a serving president without the remotest hint of “civil war” (a ludicrous prediction made at the time by Archbishop Tutu), a noisy but typical break-away from a ruling party in power now for 15 years, and a robust but peaceful electoral campaign. Our economy is doing better than most in the midst of the current bleak global situation. We are a pretty average country, with our strengths and weaknesses. Let’s honestly admit to both…and then let’s try to avoid hyperbolic mood-swings.”

Dr Denis Worrall
Email: kamreyac@omegainvest.co.za for all enquiries

Copyright 2009. Omega Investment Research. All Rights Reserved
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THE ANC SPLIT: SUSTAINABLE THREAT OR SHORT TERM HICCUP?

How seriously should Mosiua Lekota and Mbhazima Shilowa’s break-away Congress of the People (COPE) be taken? In a nutshell, seriously. Is it a positive development? Unquestionably.

The ANC’s Polokwane conference last December was dominated by one big personal issue: who was to lead the ANC? – Jacob Zuma or Thabo Mbeki. This was central and dominant; policy issues were secondary. Reasons for supporting Zuma varied. The SACP and COSATU, who were they to contest a general election on their own probably would not get more than 8% of the vote, believe – with good reason – that they can manipulate Jacob Zuma into supporting their more left-wing interpretation of ANC policy.

To others, because he had crossed them or because they dislike him (he is perceived to be arrogant and aloof), the main priority was to prevent Mbeki from being re-elected – and the only person who could do this was Zuma. Among those who supported Zuma for this reason are ANC notables like Tokyo Sexwale, Mathews Phosa, and Cyril Ramaphosa – all three of whom Mbeki in 2001 had publicly accused of plotting against him. (Incidentally, Tokyo Sexwale, before throwing his weight behind Zuma, courageously launched an individual and personal, but unfortunately futile, campaign for the ANC presidency in mid-2007.)

Two important things happened at Polokwane. Firstly, Zuma was elected. Although defeated the general assumption was that Mbeki would see out his term. His humiliating and forced resignation in September 2008 was largely the result of certain judicial decisions – and the dynamics which these set in motion and which his enemies on the left took advantage of. But the second development coming out of Polokwane was a dramatic increase in the influence of the SACP and COSATU within the ANC alliance. Emboldened by their success in getting Zuma elected, they began calling the shots – and, reminiscent of passages in Whitaker Chambers Witness, they know what they want, they know how to get what they want, and they have the passion to follow through. But having called the shots – starting with a purge of Mbeki sympathisers at all levels of government – they overplayed their hand. And this is reflected in the emergence of the Congress of the People.

The break-away led by Lekota and Sam Shilowa (Sam and his wife business woman Wendy Luhabe add considerable credibility) is not “the splinter” the media initially described it as. What emerged from the well-attended National Convention which the duo organised in Sandton at relatively short notice over the week-end of 25 October was a significant (for want of a better description) middle class response to the trends and the events set out above. (By the way, all speakers at the convention wore suits and ties. Zuma, addressing an ANC rally the next day, wore a baseball cap and leather jacket!)

Firstly, it reflects unhappiness at the way Mbeki was forced out of office. Wendy Luhabe in an interview in The Independent on Sunday (9 November) says of the decision to summarily dismiss Mbeki: “In hindsight, the ANC’s decision to recall former president Mbeki has become a gift – a gift this country will only appreciate 10 to 20 years from now. This is because it forced the decision to launch a new political party and has got South African talking, casting a sharp light on the murky side of political life.”

Secondly, it reflects revulsion at the debasement of political language and dialogue, and crude political behaviour especially from ANC’s youth league. (The reason Desmond Tutu said he would not vote.) Thirdly, deep concern at increasingly vituperate attacks on the judiciary. And fourthly, and very importantly, the increasingly dominant influence of the SACP and COSATU and concern at its impact on economic and social policy. While the break-away group has yet to formulate its own social and economic policies, it is this further factor which explains its emphasis on constitutional reform aiming at greater accountability: the introduction of individual Parliamentary constituencies (as opposed to proportional representation) and a directly elected president.

The establishment of the Congress of the People has implications for all political parties in South Africa – including (and perhaps especially) Helen Zille’s Democratic Alliance. [The resignation last week of Simon Grindrod, Deputy President of the Independent Democrats, from the ID and his decision to join COPE is a case in point] As far as the ANC is concerned, the process of re-alignment is not complete – particularly as regards individuals. Although they have Trevor Manuel with them, Tokyo Sexwale, Mathews Phosa and Cyril can’t be happy with Blade Nzimade and Gwede Mantashe calling the tune within the ANC.

The break-away has happened very quickly, and nobody knows what the new party’s social and economic policies will be. But from what I hear and read I get a sense that the predominant feeling is one of expectation, with some surprising people discreetly indicating support. Jakes Gerwel, who is extremely close to Nelson Mandela, in a column that he occasionally contributes to the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper Rapport, discussed the implications of Obama’s victory under the heading “Turn-around needed here as in America”. The column concluded with the sentiment: “Are there presently South African political figures and leaders who can achieve something similar?”

Dr Denis Worrall Email: kamreyac@omegainvest.co.za

Copyright 2008. Omega Investment Research. All Rights Reserved

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Denis Worrall is Chairman of Omega Investment Research, a South African based investment advisory and strategic marketing consultancy. He is a graduate of the University Cape Town (M. A.), University of South Africa (LLB) and Cornell University (Ph.D) where he was a Fulbright Scholar He started his career as an academic lecturing at universities in the US, Nigeria and South Africa . His last post was as research Professor at Rhodes University. He practised as an advocate for seven years in Cape Town, before going into public life. He has been a Member of Parliament, chairman of the Constitutional committee of the Presidents’ council, South African Ambassador to Australia and the Court of St James (London).

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