Zuma's presidency bid on a knife-edge
September 26 2006 at 03:26PM
By Patrick Laurence
A week in politics is a long time, former British prime minister Harold Wilson remarked in the 1960s in what is perhaps the most memorable statement he bequeathed to posterity.
It is a maxim that South Africans should bear in mind before either sinking into gloom or bursting into song at the decision of Judge Herbert Msimang to strike the corruption charges against Jacob Zuma off the roll.
Though Zuma's prospects of becoming the next ANC supremo and South Africa's third post-apartheid president have been improved greatly by Msimang's decision, his successful election to these high-ranking offices is not guaranteed.
Zuma rose through ANC ranks
The ANC's 2007 national conference, at which its next national leader will be chosen, is still more than a year away, while the next national and provincial elections, which precede the election of a new national president, are not until 2009.
Many weeks still stretch ahead, during which significant events capable of changing the fate of the nation may occur.
One, of course, is a decision by the National Prosecuting Authority to indict Zuma under renewed charges, possibly as a result of winning appeals against existing court orders declaring the seizure of documents from Zuma's homes and the offices of his lawyers illegal, thus allowing the state to make use of the information in the confiscated documents in the reconstituted indictment.
Another is the emergence of a viable alternative candidate to Zuma from within the ANC's ranks. Though Zuma is undoubtedly the front-runner at present, early leaders have been known to peak too soon in political contests. Aesop's fable of the race between the hare and the tortoise is an appropriate tale for people to ponder.
A third consideration needs to be brought into the equation: the impact on women - who constitute at least half the electorate - of Zuma's admission that he had sexual intercourse with an HIV-positive woman young enough to be his daughter and had a shower afterwards in the belief it would protect him against infection from the human immuno-deficiency virus.
While it is true that Zuma apologised at a press conference after he was acquitted of rape charges in May, very little is known about whether his apology has reinstated him as a suitable presidential candidate in the eyes of women who were dismayed by what they perceived as his sexual naivete and/or hypocrisy, given his former leadership positions on the National Aids Councils and the Moral Regeneration Campaign.
None of these considerations mean Zuma will not succeed in his bid to secure the party and national presidential positions. They merely signify that his succession is not written in stone. However, as a presidential candidate, who is the favourite at the present time and in the present situation, it is appropriate to offer an appraisal of his strengths and weaknesses.
On the positive side, Zuma's inclination appears to be that of a reconciler, though his quarrel with President Thabo Mbeki has shown that he has the propensity to assume the role of a fighter if need be.
Evidence of his peace-making qualities is the bestowal on him of the Nelson Mandela Award for Outstanding Leadership for his peacemaking role in KwaZulu-Natal during the late 1980s and early to middle 1990s, when the province was an arena for fratricidal conflict between Zulus loyal to the ANC and those loyal to the Inkatha Freedom Party.
Added to that is his substantial contribution to mediating a negotiated settlement to the bloody conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in Burundi.
Roger Southall, of the Human Science Research Council, rates Zuma's role as "absolutely crucial".
Zuma, aged 64, is a man of rudimentary formal education. his father, a police ser-geant, died when he was a young boy, forcing him to take casual work to help supplement the meagre income his widowed mother earned as a household worker.
An ANC member when he was barely out of his teens, he rose through the ranks to become ANC chief of intelligence which, prima facie, is a sign of innate intelligence, his minimal formal education notwithstanding.
In terms of political skills and tactical acumen, he has demonstrated that he is at least the equal of Mbeki, a graduate of the University of Sussex in Britain who was adjudged an outstanding student of Marxism in Moscow during the days of the old Soviet Union.
Thus it may be assumed that Zuma is not doomed to fail as a president through his lack of formal intellectual tutoring and certificates to prove it, provided, of course, he is prepared to recognise his lack of high-level knowledge in specialised fields - economics and medicine come to mind - and to accept advice from experts in the relevant disciplines.
If Zuma has a single glaring weakness it is his inability to manage his household budget and, consequently to allow his expenses to outstrip his income, even though, as provincial minister of economic affairs in KwaZulu-Natal and as national deputy president under Mbeki for six years, he was not badly remunerated.
A related weakness is his inclination to accept "loans" from businessmen (and -women) instead of borrowing money from the bank and tightening his belt until that debt is paid off.
It is a failing which could have disastrous consequences for South Africa if it occurs during a future Zuma presidency.
It would, at the least, render him vulnerable to exploitation by his ostensible benefactors.
One can only hope that he has learnt appropriate lessons from his experience as South Africa's deputy president.
Accepting hypothetically that Zuma was, as he insists, the victim of a conspiracy by his adversaries in the ANC, he laid himself open to their machinations by his financial indiscretions.
Another fear is that Zuma has committed himself to populism as the price to be paid for the support of "the masses" and their champions, Cosatu and SA Communist Party, in his battle against Mbeki and his allies in the ANC.
There is thus the danger that he will be the hostage of the left, rather than representative of the South African people, if he becomes president.
However, against that there is the speech he delivered at last week's Cosatu conference, in which he unequivocally stated that the ANC's disciplined macro-economic policy was the responsibility of the ANC as a whole, including, by implication, himself as the ANC's deputy president.
If he was sincere, that is an auspicious portent.
# Patrick Laurence is the editor of Focus, journal of the Helen Suzman Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity. |
