Jacob Zuma and the South African left
Posted on Sunday 16 December, 2007
Filed Under International
Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma – simply ‘JZ’ to his supporters, and pictured left – seems set to take the leadership of the African National Congress. That, in turn, effectively guarantees him the South African presidency in two years’ time.
This is important to both the South African and international left, not because of who or what Zuma is, but because of the social forces on the back of which he has risen to political prominence.
By all accounts, this man is not a particularly pleasant person. He has been acquitted of the rape of an HIV positive woman half his age, who apparently regarded him as a father figure, while (probably well-founded) corruption charges against him are on hold.
His record in the anti-apartheid struggle – which includes ten years on Robben Island – vouches for a degree of political courage, at least in the past. But what is decisive is what he stands for now.
Zuma’s platform, such as he has one, is based on amorphous left populism. He has detected the breadth and depth of the disillusionment with the South African Blairism of Thabo Mbeki, and positioned himself to take advantage of it.
Yet even as he drops hints to his support base that he will redistribute wealth in favour of the black poor, he has let it be known to South African business that their vital interests will not be challenged. His speeches travel notably light on concrete commitments.
Even so, Zuma has effectively been forced to reflect a changed mood in the townships. It’s been a long time coming. When the ANC took office in 1994, Many Marxists expected rapid radicalisation, as its pro-capitalist policies failed to deliver meaningful improvements to living standards.
Instead, the black majority cut what they regarded as ‘their’ party an awful lot of slack. The newfound enthusiasm for Zuma indicates that they now want to speed up the pace of change.
In the popular imagination, he represents an alternative to neoliberalism. Yet once in office, the likelihood is that Zuma will disappoint the people who put him there. He might talk the Chavez talk, but without the oil money, he is hardly in a position to walk the Chavez walk.
The South African Communist Party risks sustaining collateral damage by their strong support for him, although there is reportedly a dissenting minority.
The task for the thinking left is to keep its political bearings in the next period, neither demeaning itself by cheerleading the president-in-waiting or cutting itself off from the evident frustrations that lie behind the surge in his support.
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7 Responses to “Jacob Zuma and the South African left”
“By all accounts, this man is not a particularly pleasant person. He has been acquitted of the rape of an HIV positive woman half his age…”
How does not (as far as any of us know) being a rapist suggest that he’s unpleasant?
Many Marxists expected rapid radicalisation, as its pro-capitalist policies failed to deliver meaningful improvements to living standards.
…you mean, you wanted them to starve the way their neighbors in Zimbabwe and Soviet precursors did? Why do you expect radicalization to turn out any better?
No, South Africa hasn’t suddenly got a chicken and a pony in every pot. But they sure turned better than Zimbabwe, didn’t they? Do you think that’s a coincidence?
There are two reasons Marxism fails. The first is that property is a useful tool in real life if we want to keep most people fed; it’s so basic to animals, even cats and babies get it. The other reason is that a single nationalized industry has a worse class system (everybody in one big bureaucracy) and no competition and gobs of corruption.
Chris, because he was having an affair with a family friend half his age who was HIV positive. It all adds up to him being an unsavoury character, and his claim that he ensured he would not catch HIV because he showered after sex just makes him seem more idiotic. The man’s a loon.
I’d be very concerned at the thought of a Zuma victory. When I was last in South Africa, which was for three months last summer, it wasn’t at all clear how the leadership race would pan out. I was hoping that Ramaphosa would emerge: of all the candidates he had the best struggle credentials, and the longest service in the trade union movement (although he had also become wealthy in the past ten years, as had all of the candidates).
(And in response to Grumpy, one of the reasons why people in the ANC leadership have been able to get so fabulously rich is that in key parts of the South Africa economy, eg. mining, you have both private ownership and monopoly. “Competition”, on the other hand, you don’t have).
To me, Zuma seems to project a particular kind of leadership politics: which is very much about age, gender, family ties to important people in Kwa-Zulu Natal. His top allies are the least political and least socialist parts of the ANC. Many have always been in business. While Zuma himself was part of the movement, none of his allies did anything in the 1970s or 1980s.
The rape trial was a particularly bad moment: yes, he got off, but given what he said at the hearing, which barely amounted to a denial. There is a very strong sense in South Africa among non-Zuma people, that if he hadn’t been who he was, he would have been convicted.
The left hasn’t had a great record recently in Britain or elsewhere with saviours from on high delivering, Zuma belongs to that category. In fact, he is its extreme form.
…in key parts of the South Africa economy, eg. mining, you have both private ownership and monopoly.
Yes, of course – it’d help many people if De Beers were broken up. The same is true of most other monopolies – except monopolies of force, alas (outsourcing that is how the Roman Republic’s constitution was hacked).
What I’m not getting is why the special love you guys have for government monopolies. After all, that’s what Socialism is and a part of Communism. Shoppers for shoes and almost every other consumer item the USSR could explain to you that such monopolies are no better. Here in the US, Social Security disability appeals cases have a backlog 3/4M cases long. Having to deal with Medicare is so hard it’s taken the small clinics off the street in my city. Social Security and Medicare are both US govt monopolies.
It might be worthwhile to post a more up to date M&G article or to do a follow up posting about what has happened inside the SACP and the left leaning trade union block (COSATU).
Since the 2006 article, the SACP and COSATU leadership have consolidated around the JZ block. Sceptical leaders like Dexter and Jara (in the SACP) and Willie Madisha (who is both a Party activist and COSATU President) appear to have lost whatever influence they once had.
The tone of the debate in both organizations seems to have been very ugly. Instead of ideological dispute or policy disagreement, everything turned on accusations and counter-charges of plots, frame-ups, personal vendettas, or procedural offenses. The outcome is not only more solid support for Zuma but also a coarser, less ideological, more personalized, and less open discourse within both of the main left wing organizations of South African civil society.
- an American trade union observer
I cannot help think that Zuma is little more than an empty populist, though a lot of that is over-emphasised in British coverage, where we are still trained to believe that, in the end (cf Mugabe) black people just cannot hack it.
The guy is not stupid and he deserves respect from anyone (like me and a lot here, I’d guess) who has come no closer to state repression than being threatened with arrest at a student sit in.
But I find anyone who gives the impression that the problems of governing from the left are easy as deeply suspect.
Incidentally, I don’t think Mbeki (a former member of the SACP’s politbureau iirc) is in trouble because of his “Blairism” – it is because of his haughty manner.
And does the fact that the essential theses of Trotskyism – that reform is impossible in capitalism – have been proved to be nonsense again, really surprise anybody.
According to the Trotskyists cpaitalism has been in its death agony since 1940 and yet the commodity form and capitalist system is ever more productive.