The EFF: no coalitions, no promises ... no future?

 

There will be minority governments in South Africa's major metros, coalitions that are led by either the African National Congress or the Democratic Alliance, but count the Economic Freedom Fighters out.

That was the message from Commander-in-Chief Julius Malema in a press conference today. He made clear the EFF would not join forces with either major party, but instead constitute the opposition in hung municipalities resulting from the 2016 local elections.

 

The coming cooperative period in local government, whatever it turns out to be, marks a fundamental change from the past. It will test and develop the professionalism, administrative skills and staying power of South Africa's political parties as never before.

 

After some well publicised days in conference, the EFF could not join them. In spite of the media billing it as kingmakers, the EFF is not a negotiable democratic party so much as a loosely knit Marxist-Leninist or fascist grouping, the breakaway far left or right of the ANC, depending on how people see and label it.

As a result, its mediocre election results have left it in limbo. Under the leadership of Mr Malema, the EFF has alienated the majority party ANC and its president, but has nothing to offer a democratic opposition, the DA, besides serious problems. Its revolutionary programme threatens to wreck government at the local level in the same way it has threatened government at national level, through calculated disruptions of parliament and inflammatory talk of meeting violence with violence.

With President Zuma remaining in office, the scene is set for these methods to resume more widely.

These are admittedly early days. But if the EFF is ever to become a tsunami the signs would be there now. The party apparently does not enjoy the confidence of voters; its manifesto cannot work except through coercion; alone, it has no chance of demonstrating a sense of responsibility in government. The question going forward is how, and if, it can manage to hold together during a long period out in the cold.

THE LIES AND TRUTH ABOUT BREXIT

Brexit was not about 'ordinary people' being confused by the facts; not about expert opinion being superior to grassroots opinion; not about sovereignty and bureaucracy as if these are absolutes; not about 'getting your country back' and 'saving' £380m a week in EU contributions that will go to the National Health in future - not about any of the populist sloganeering and mendacity that passed for a serious national debate.

Fundamentally the problem was - and remains - how you run a democracy, specifically Britain’s democracy, in a responsive and responsible manner in a complex global world.

And that, very plainly now, is not by asking the public to decide a major issue by answering Remain or Leave to a childishly simplified question in a simple majority, one-off referendum got up to 'settle' the Tory party's internal problems. No number of referendums on the EU could ever settle those.

The evidence comes straight from the horse's mouth. A few weeks before the Brexit referendum, Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), an alarming right wing threat to the Tory government and party, was nervous about his chances. To guard against a narrow defeat, he claimed that a narrow victory for Remain - something like 52%-48% - would not end the argument. And, indeed, millions of people would find such a close finish unconvincing. Mr Farage was pointing out the obvious.

But the change was startling when in fact the Brexit side won by much the same margin. Now the referendum was, unarguably, a 'clear mandate' from the British people to leave the EU, presumably unconditionally and forever. And equally, of course, had the Remain camp won 52%-48%, we would now be hearing the British people had given a clear mandate to stay in the EU, presumably on existing terms forever.

Dividing the United Kingdom

Only those on whichever side won so narrowly would ever consider the matter closed. 'The people have spoken' does not describe an outcome where even the 72% who felt strongly enough to vote split almost down the middle. On another day, in different circumstances, even just different weather, the people clearly might give a different 'clear mandate'.

A referendum is arguably no more than a measure of a nation's mood, a manifestly unreliable way to determine what 'the people' want, and no way at all to run a country. That is why the UK evolved into a representative democracy with parliament sovereign, not a 'direct democracy', whatever that is imagined to be and however one is supposed to function.

By gambling on one throw of the dice, Britain’s political classes divided their country and people disastrously and to no avail, the more concerned citizens feeling the deceit sooner and more keenly than those happy to be left to get on with their lives.

What now, after the framers of the futile turmoil have quit and gone? Only the hope new leadership can restore stability and a sense of reality, as frightened and chastened politicians row back on the lies and false hopes they raised.

 

 

British Government to follow up success of Brexit referendum

Following David Cameron's triumph in the Brexit referendum, which enabled the British people to vote for or against almost anything besides the issue - Boris Johnson's hair was a concern for many - the new Tory prime minister intends to follow up with three further referendums. These will decide:

1] Does God exist? If the people decide S/He doesn't, Boris Johnson will assure members of all faiths that government will not pull down churches, mosques and synagogues immediately. Rather everything will be alright after a period of time that will become clear to people as they go along. Mr Johnson cannot say how long that will be, nor when the process will commence, though he is sure things must not be delayed too long;

2] Should capital punishment be restored? In the certain event of a Yes decision here, executions will be made retroactive to 1910, to protect everyone's democratic rights and safety; 

2a] What is the best means of execution? After the Yes vote to 2], there will be a second referendum. This is not, as some people may imagine, to reverse the first one, but to guarantee strict democracy again by allowing people a free vote between hanging, poison injection and shooting. They will not be able to opt for public executions. Some MPs think that is going too far; 

3] Should England annex Scotland and Northern Ireland? That would guard against these awkward provinces deciding for themselves to stay in the EU or, indeed, deciding anything. If this regrettably calls for the use of force, the government wishes to reassure the world the Treasury and armed forces have been laying contingency plans for invasion since October last year.

However, an official statement confirms there is not going to be a referendum on whether the entire Tory government should resign. Though useful to pass the buck from time to time, referendums do not mean the people govern the country.

 

 

HOW BRITAIN COULD BAIL OUT OF BREXIT: some serious and not so serious thoughts

Serious thoughts 

After his inglorious defeat in the UK referendum, David Cameron has resigned as Tory prime minister. 

However, like him, a majority of MPs of all parties in the UK House of Commons are reportedly against Brexit. They could organise on non-party lines to threaten a vote of no confidence in any proposed new leader, whether Tory or Labour or coalition, who is in favour of Brexit. They would only support a new PM on the side of Remain.

The new majority Remain leader would select his cabinet and call a general election to secure a mandate from the voters to undo the referendum result. The opposition to this move in the House would be insufficient to block it and the Labour Party would have little chance of winning the general election under the weak and divisive leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

The UK's friends and allies in Europe would be informed and involved in the plan and take the pressure off Britain to make a speedy Brexit.

In neglecting to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to exit immediately after the referendum, the Conservative government may already have in mind such a plan, working through the backbenchers 1922 Committee and party whips.

It requires Cameron to go very soon, not to take three months; for Boris Johnson to be emphatically rejected as the new Tory leader - a distinct possibility; and for Remain MPs and any supporting ministers to stick together to pull the executive's chestnuts out of the fire. All that is extremely difficult, but not impossible to achieve. It requires only a commitment to the national interest instead of narrow party interest.

What would help also is a true parliamentarian once again: a John Hampden (1595-1643) with the courage and will to fight (in his time against the King) for the sovereignty of parliament. That is perhaps too much to ask for in this age of disciplined political parties.

But it already seems likely the country's MPs will find their own way to bail out Britain in a similar spirit.

Not so serious thoughts - hopefully

Following David Cameron's triumph in the Brexit referendum, which enabled the British people to vote for or against almost anything besides the issue - Boris Johnson's hair was a concern for many - the new Tory prime minister intends to follow up with three further referendums. These will decide:

1] Does God exist? If the people decide S/He doesn't, Boris Johnson will assure members of all faiths that government will not pull down churches, mosques and synagogues immediately. Rather they will all fall into ruin over a period of time that will become clear to people as they go along;

2] Should capital punishment be restored? In the certain event of a Yes decision here, executions will be made retroactive to 1910, to protect everyone's democratic rights and safety; 

2a] What is the best means of execution? After the Yes vote to 2], there will be a second referendum. This is not, as some people may imagine, to reverse the first one, but to guarantee strict democracy again by allowing people a free vote between hanging, poison injection and shooting. They will not be able to opt for public executions. Some MPs think that is going too far; 

finally 3] Should England annex Scotland and Northern Ireland? That would guard against these awkward provinces deciding for themselves to stay in the EU or, indeed, deciding anything. If this regrettably calls for the use of force, the government wishes to reassure the world the Treasury and armed forces have been laying contingency plans for invasion since October last year.

However, an official statement confirms there is not going to be a referendum on whether the entire Tory government should resign. Though useful to pass the buck from time to time, referendums do not mean the people govern the country.

(Also, Dave says privately he's relieved to be the hell out of it.)

 

 

BREXIT: WHERE TO NOW?

Cheer up - well, at least cheer up a little.

 

There will be some kind of renegotiation because it is unavoidable. Britain is 'in Europe' whether it likes it or not: it's called History and Geography. There is no way out of either of them.

 

The renegotiation will eventually agree issues that could equally have been dealt with by staying in and fighting for them: democracy has always involved doing that.

But prime minister David Cameron chose to solve his internal Tory party problems by referring them to 'the people', a cop out for party political ends, not to keep faith with 'democracy', and least of all to protect the national interest. It has backfired disastrously for him and his country and he has gone. 

 

The tragedy is all the pointless and avoidable waste and chaos, as we start solving the same problems over again. That's what people do. We're a dopey and fragile lot.

Would you say this is a successful blog?

Since I started my blog three or four years back, I've had by this morning 66666 reads - if that is what a 'hit' is.

 

I have no idea if that is a lot or a little for a blog, but it is certainly very many more than I imagined I would get when I posted my first piece.

 

A blog is of course online publishing; there are no hard copies to handle and browse in book shops and libraries and maybe to glance through again from time to time at home. 

 

But I look at it this way. If I had written a book (non-fiction) and been read 66666 times, I think it would be something to write home about. I'm sure my publisher would be smiling. And there would be 66666 copies on shelves out there somewhere with a squared-up pic of me on the inside front or back dust cover.

 

So, late though it is, and for what it's worth, here's a pic. Hope it doesn't put you off reading in future.

 

Thanks for reading anything you have read so far.

What kind of revolution does Julius Malema intend for South Africa?

There is something incongruous, if not contradictory, about Julius Malema holding up on TV a copy of South Africa’s constitution and swearing allegiance to it.

Mr Malema was expelled from the African National Congress for advocating rebellion. His Damascene conversion appears to be due to SA’s constitutional court judgment on Nkandla, praised on all sides for its ringing endorsement of democracy and the rule of law. 

But the revolutionary Mr Malema wants to nationalise mines and banks, although it is government policy not to. He threatens to take back the land without compensation. He speaks of eliminating ‘white supremacy’ in language that hints at violence: he maintains always he is speaking metaphorically. In the ANC, he proposed the overthrow of the legitimate government of Botswana, a friendly neighbour. That was perhaps the last straw.

Mr Malema formed his own party, the Marxist-Leninist Economic Freedom Fighters. There, he is unchallenged Commander-in-Chief and has made the EFF a thorn in the ANC's side.

It serves the ANC right: the party has only itself to blame for Julius Malema. He is the heir to its own promise of revolution - except the ANC’s revolution was meant rhetorically, especially after real revolutions saw the implosion of the state in Libya, Egypt and Syria. What has counted for the ANC since 1994 is that SA earns the best living it can in a capitalist world and ANC leaders and loyalists live very well in the mixed economy they preside over.

Cut off now from such benefits, having little to lose and much to gain, Mr Malema gleefully rocks the overloaded ANC boat. But after his conversion to constitutionalism, it is impossible to see how his Marxist-Leninism would work. And if it would not work, what other kind of revolution he would intend - or, horror of horrors, unleash on SA’s fragile democracy.

Many are suspicious Mr Malema is the champion of people whose lives he visibly does not share. In everyday language, they cannot understand how he can be a ‘communist' and an obvious capitalist at the same time. People are not lost for words. They explain in their own way how he contrives to speak for the poorest of the poor when his personal preferences are plainly the riches of the rich. Mr Malema is a hypocrite, a populist, a demagogue - are three of the more polite ways his detractors put it.

That still leaves a political explanation outstanding. Can Karl Marx go hand in hand with what some openly call Mr Malema's fascism? There seems to be another contradiction there.

Marxism springs from the highest ideals of humanity - the community of all, internationalism and peace. Fascism is not an ideology in any sense. Fascism is a politics of coercion which, if it entails anything besides verbal and physical violence, promotes extreme nationalism or nativism shading into racism, all being embodied in a messianic leader ready to be martyred for the sake of 'the people'.

However, these theoretical differences have always had a way of vanishing in practice. In Europe a century ago, communism and fascism were implacable enemies: their street brawls in Germany after World War I finally ended in the World War II fight to the death between Comrade Stalin's USSR and Herr Hitler's Third Reich.

But in both cases, the revolutionary party-state had extinguished civil liberties much earlier. The difference in reality was only between a dictatorship of the proletariat and a dictatorship of the German volk.

Outside Europe, communism got a new lease of life by teaming up with new and growing national feelings. In China in the early 1920s and in the long war against Japan, communists and nationalists fought on the same side. Later the two worked together to end French rule in Indo-China and to replace the corrupt regime in Cuba. In SA the story has been similar. Nativism-nationalism fought to free the land from colonial rule; communism fought to free the people from capitalism. Both marked out the imperial west, and its one-sided democratic values, as the permanent enemy and threat.

This is the complex inheritance of Julius Malema: African and European; white and black; national and universal. Whichever descriptions you use - imperialism, Marxism, democratic centralism, fascism - all are driven by a crusading zeal to dominate. What that means for SA, we must decide. Mr Malema cannot tell us when he cannot say what he means himself.

              

What is 'state capture' in South Africa all about?

When some idea or other becomes a buzzword, especially if it sounds impressive or alarming, it is time to stay calm, take a deep breath, and think about it. ‘Quiet diplomacy’, ‘western plot’, ‘National Development Plan’, ‘innocent until proven guilty’, are buzzwords that served the African National Congress’s political purposes in the past. Now the party has a dire warning for us of ‘state capture’.

State capture refers to the control of the state by substantial private interests, the state thereby losing its independence and the power to legislate and act for all. France before the 1789 Revolution provides a good example of state capture: the state was hobbled by a privileged untaxed aristocracy that meant it had to raise money by selling state offices to a rising business class.

As a modern example of state capture, the left like to point to the USA, the state there having lost much of its freedom of action to pressure groups. The NRA is the best known among very many.

State capture in this sense is not the condition of South Africa; it is a buzzword here. It asks South Africans to believe an affluent business family, the Guptas, appoint and remove cabinet ministers at will, and generally run the Republic without the knowledge and say-so of its ANC president. Since that is evidently impossible, it is necessary to look at who has most to gain from this fiction. It cannot be the Guptas, who are likely to end up scapegoats. It certainly will not be President Zuma. That leaves the party.

We must never forget South Africa is a party-state and the governing ANC is there to remain in power. No political organization manages that by sticking rigidly to principles or individuals. The ANC’s priority always is to shelve or smother issues that could divide or even ultimately destroy it like other African liberation parties.

The ANC cannot indulge any major internal dispute, however morally significant. From start to finish in the long drawn-out scandal of Nkandla, where President Zuma only finally surrendered in the constitutional court, the ANC dummied up and closed ranks as always in a crisis. It was not so much to save President Zuma; it was to keep the party intact.

Last week dummying up ended abruptly. Mr Mcebisi Jonas created an uproar by revealing the Guptas had offered him the finance ministry. President Zuma was immediately at the centre of a climactic row as it became clear he must be guilty of putting the interests of business friends before his oath of office.

In case anyone was still in doubt about it, the Honourable Member Mosiuoa Lekota shouted out in the national assembly that President Zuma was no longer ‘honourable’ because of his conduct. Mr Lekota's performance has featured on TV almost every day since.

The party is in a terrible dilemma. The leadership knows beyond doubt that what South Africa has is not a case of state capture, but of Zuma capture. It isn’t the first time. Schabir Shaik and his family captured Zuma; the ANC leadership had to manage his escape. But they ignored all objections, and arguably the law, to elect Zuma as party president and then to elect him again in parliament as state president.

Rank and file, parliamentary caucus, Cabinet, cronies and hangers-on are all trapped together in this and local elections are coming. President Zuma can only lend his face to these as a discredited leader, or not feature in them at all. Yet to replace him right now is as impossible as anything could be in politics.

The ANC leadership is falling back on the old stand-bys of shelving and smothering the issue. An exasperated ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe told insistent journalists over the weekend that the party’s National Executive Committee was under ‘no pressure’ even to consider recalling President Zuma. It seems he is safe for now.

What could be the break point to change that? Only the coming elections.

If the ANC do well, or even just okay in them, President Zuma could serve out his full term, not because he has support to spare anymore, but because it is very difficult, not to say dangerous, for the party to 'recall' a second president after the splits that followed former president Thabo Mbeki’s recall in 2008.

However a bad result, even without the ANC losing the major municipalities the opposition claim are up for grabs, would be fatal. An outright victory, a clear winner and loser, are not required for this. Elections are also measured by share of vote.

Mr Mantashe will be counting anxiously later this year, even if he can blame 'low turnout' for any fall off in the party's support. A low turnout is a favourite get-out for bad local election results.

Everything is where it should be to force change: in the hands of South African voters. Has their loyalty to the ANC been seriously dented at last? Has democracy been moving forwards underneath all these dramatic events, or does South Africa remain, dangerously, a party-state despite them?

 

 

Julius Malema and Donald Trump: two of a kind

Radicals - reformers, activists, extremists, call them what you will - are part and not part of every society. Readers do not need examples: in France, in the UK, in Iran, Pakistan and other Asian countries, across the Middle East, they are to be seen more than ever today, some working for good, some for ill, some more famous - or notorious - than others.

Political extremism - Isis, Boko Haram, to name two among countless others - implies a significant coercive movement depending on a broad and particular context to take root and flourish, as Nazism and Stalinism did in a largely undemocratic Europe in the last century.

How then to look at two radicals or extremists, both falling into the famous or notorious category: Donald Trump in the United States and Julius Malema here in South Africa? Can they lead, have they led, to extremism?

 

Finding Mr Trump as awful as just about everyone else, Douglas Gibson writes in a recent article, America's democracy trumped*: 'Trump has proved in this campaign that a candidate can say anything and get away with it.' 

In fact, he hasn't done any such thing yet. US free speech permits political candidates to be crude and vulgar and, like children when they are cross, to say anything they want. But the US people and their representatives decide if they get  away with it. The US President and Vice President are elected in a complex process full of checks and balances that from start to finish takes around two years. By the end of it, Mr Trump may find his free speech has won him fewer friends than his supporters like to claim.

There is another way to look at what's going on. Whether or not he seems to be preaching extremism, Mr Trump is most certainly an extreme example of the politics of entertainment. The politics of entertainment lays down that, like everything else in today's 24/7 surround-sound mass media world, politics has to amuse and divert. If it isn't entertaining, politics won't get a look in. On top of giving folk some timeless punch-and-judy knockabout, Mr Trump can also be seen as a useful fool in America: he says all the repugnant things 'ordinary people' often feel, but fortunately do not generally practice. In America's established, confident democracy, he is cathartic rather than incendiary.

Like Mr Gibson, I believe the world needs the United States and what it stands for, and I am sticking with arguably the country's greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, who always trusted the American people to do the right thing when it came to having their say.

Will that be the case in South Africa with Julius Malema, Commander-in-Chief of the EFF, a party some see as major opposition already and would like to see as the future government?

Mr Malema is the sworn enemy of President Zuma and ZANC, the term of abuse he uses to distinguish between the late great ANC and what he relentlessly attacks now as President Zuma's corrupted party.

He gives away nothing to Donald Trump in terms of radicalism: Mr Trump promises to expel Muslims and to build a wall between the United States and Mexico; Mr Malema's  declared objective, after getting rid of President Zuma, is to rid the country of 'whiteness' and overthrow the status quo. In the context of South Africa's young and fragile democracy, it is impossible to see Mr Malema as a useful fool.  

Imperfect as its democracy is, however, South Africa is plainly a democracy of sorts. Of course the country's elections this year are not about electing a president; they are local elections. In any case, presidents are not elected by the people of South Africa even in national elections. After voting a party into government, you get the president the party gives you, take it or leave it. The ANC gave us President Zuma.

 

Prophesy is foolhardy. But it seems safe to say this year's elections cannot avoid involving a verdict on President Zuma's disastrous presidency, inevitably dragging in the ANC's overall performance.

The revolutionary Mr Malema has been oddly quiet on this point so far, perhaps because, by Marxist-Leninist rules, he should really shun, or at the least sniff at elections as a bourgeois instrument of oppression; as ever it is not certain where he stands on that. But shuffle his position as he may, the coming elections will surely be a verdict on Julius Malema and EFF radicalism, as the presidential elections in the US will be on Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

 

These are not easy times in the States and they are hard times for South Africa with harder times to come. In the elections in both democracies this year, will the people do what Abraham Lincoln always trusted the American people to do?

 

 

 *http://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/americas-democracy-trumped

Corruption in South Africa's government: a few words of advice

 

South Africa does not need another commission of enquiry. It does not need an appeal to the Constitutional Court.

It does not need a revolution.
 

It simply needs some more voters to stop voting ANC. Change will commence that moment.

Things you must know before writing on Twitter

Professional writers, assisted and managed by experienced subs and editors, produced the traditional media. But times have changed. You and I produce the social media. And we're on our own. 

Before You Write

Understand that whatever you believe, someone, somewhere, will not agree with you. Lots of people do not believe in god; lots do. Some people support the soccer team you think are rubbish. Some believe everyone should own guns.

Some people are dedicated supporters of the political leader you can’t stand. Many don't know Charlize Theron is South African. Some will tell you Charlize Theron isn't all she's cracked up to be. A few don't know who Charlize Theron is. Others support England at rugby.

There is no accounting for taste.

Before you write one word, understand also it is like shouting it all out in the street and at work. Or, more accurately, like airing your views in the UK Sun, New York Times, on CNN and all of them together. Except that what you say on the internet will reach millions more people than all those media together, and reach more influential people than the people in the street or at work. And reach them all at once, there and then.

Remember things you write on the internet may be actionable at law. You may get yourself into serious trouble by a single ill-considered remark - you know about the famous and frightening examples in South Africa recently. You aren’t safe even if you’re hiding behind a pseudonym, or just clicking the ‘Like’ button. Someone may RT you, with dates and times and a critical comment.

Remember, above all, that what you write is permanent. It may come back to bite you from long ago and faraway.

After You’ve Written

Remember the first point in Before You Write and be prepared to encounter at least four types of respondents: [a] people who agree with you; [b] people who are prepared to have a rational disagreement; [c] people who are only looking for an argument; [d] people who like to insult and abuse anyone available.

You don’t need any advice on types [a] and [b] because these are presumably the people you wish to engage on your subject. But never get personal or rude, even if you find you strongly disagree and s/he scores a good point. S/he is entitled to her/his opinion like you and may be as smart as you. Maybe smarter.

Type [c] - amateur arguers (AAs) - are difficult to detect at first. They write something to snare you. It may seem reasonable, even polite. But as soon as you begin to suspect someone is in it just for an argument, watch for these tell tale signs and do not fall into the trap:

1. AAs will dispute anything you say but never answer any of your points. Watch for that particularly; it is the first sure giveaway. Do not repeat what you said or defend it. Do not deny accusations and say you did not say that; AAs will say you did. Remember you are being drawn into an endless argument, which is all the AA is about. Whether or not that works, AAs also try to escalate the argument.

2. Escalation can be detected in a number of ways. An AA will accuse you of saying something you did not say, and also of saying the very opposite of what you said. Another ploy is to switch the argument by moving on from the original subject. Be wary of answering remarks like - “So you’re saying that …?” or “Why are you defending such-and-such?” - when you are not saying or defending any such things and never would. Don’t start to do so with an AA then.

3. Here is a splendid way to remember all this. In one of his great sketches, John Cleese runs a ‘Buy-an-Argument’ shop. An argument costs you £5. A customer pays over his £5 but Cleese says and does nothing. The customer therefore says he wants an argument. ‘No you don’t,’ says John Cleese. 

4. Even if it gets that silly, never become rude or personal. That is not because the person who becomes rude loses the argument; it is because any fool can be rude back.  You are escalated into category [d] and set yourself up for insults.

5. Lastly, AAs always want the last word. It is what they are about and futile to try beating them at their own game by having the last word yourself. They will come back as long as you carry on, because - always remember - their aim is to have an argument. When you’ve said what you want, stop. Let the AA have the last word. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how feebly it reads, last.

6. Under no circumstances ignore any of these points. Unless, of course, you are looking for an argument yourself.  

7. In the same way, with regard to category [d], repeat: never resort to personal abuse. Unless you don’t mind personal abuse in return.

8. Add any points I’ve missed. These days we writers need all the help we can get.

Is violence becoming an end in itself? - the choice for South Afica's democracy

The problem in SA is not that the ANC or President Zuma is uniquely corrupt, but that one party is unchallenged in power and has been for too long. Corruption inevitably follows that everywhere.

Moreover, what everyone forgets is that it started long ago with the arms deal under former president Thabo Mbeki, not President Zuma. President Mbeki is remembered for not firing a single minister or official except those who disagreed with him. No one called it tyranny then. No one dared to.

The criticism of ANC government - that it is absolutely corrupt and ineffectual, that Zuma is a 'tyrant' - runs to extremes, just as constant publicity encourages the Economic Freedom Fighters to excess. The freedom of the press can be used to harm freedom as well as to defend it.

If we hope to put right evident wrongs like Nkandla, as the EFF insist they will, the means must be weighted in the scales as well as the end. There is a choice. There is the way of due process and the rule of law, the way unmistakably marked out by the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela of "trust, common decency and rational discourse". And there is the way of Julius Malema and the EFF.

We must ask ourselves what in the end that offers other than the threat of meeting violence, as they see it, with violence.

Also http://paulwhelanwriting.blogspot.com/2014/08/red-overalls-nazis-eff-and-fascism.html
        http://paulwhelanwriting.blogspot.com/2012/05/understanding-what-julius-malema-means.html

The scourge of corruption in South Africa

Heaven forbid people are stopped from blaming the government, the resort of authoritarian regimes. And heaven knows twenty years of ANC government has spawned nepotism, cronyism and incompetence enough to keep a whole nation of critics at work.

But as the proposals to solve the problems crowd in - a new ANC leader, a DA electoral breakthrough, achieving the promised land of the ANC's 'national democratic revolution' or the wonderland of the 'fighters for economic freedom', the EFF - we need to remember: no person or party can run a modern rights-based state without an autonomous bureaucracy that works both efficiently and effectively. To put it less academically, a corps of people who see themselves as public servants, trained for the job and committed to doing it decently.

This vital component is still missing in South Africa not only due to the governing ANC's policy of cadre deployment, though that plainly makes things worse.

The human resources to transform the state and society for the hopeful successor generation of 1994 did not exist. How could they, after half a century of legalised apartheid had neglected or ignored education for the majority of non-citizens and reserved positions of leadership and control to a minority?

All South Africans live with the consequences today, but with an ironic as well as painful extra twist.

As the ANC government comes under increasing democratic pressure to tackle corruption and inefficiency, so the word goes out through the party-state that such misdeeds are starting to be penalised.

Honest and competent officials, along with the venal, face a baffling new threat. In a system where loyalty and connections, not merit, have been the criteria, they find they had better now enforce the regulations to the letter.

Two things follow hand in hand: delivery slows further while rule-breaking continues to grow.

Corruption after all is a black market, closing the gap between the supply and demand of goods and services.

 

Can deputy president Ramaphosa be the answer to South Africa's looming crisis?

RW Johnson in his new book and a follow-up series of articles on Politicsweb has as his theme How long will South Africa survive? The Looming Crisis. This involves him covering many more aspects of the subject than can be answered short of writing another book.

 

However, something should be said regarding the specific point of the role a new leader might play after replacing the compromised President Zuma. On this question, Mr Johnson naturally raises the name of Cyril Ramaphosa. Along with commentators who identify leadership as both the problem and the solution to the country's woes, many South Africans would see Mr Ramaphosa as at least a candidate for next president on his qualities as a leader. He is strongly placed also by being deputy president already. 

But Mr Johnson does not fancy Mr Ramaphosa's chances of 'reversing the present downward drift' even if he wins the leadership struggle. He writes:

"What discussions [of the leadership struggle] lack is the comprehension that the visible decline in South Africa's governance and economic management is not finally to do with this or that leader; it is a social process" [emphasis in original]. 

This assertion seems oddly out of place coming from Mr Johnson. He is hardly a communist and, one imagines, no Marxist either. Perhaps he means only, as he puts it in his last article, that Cyril Ramaphosa, "lacking any real base within [the ANC] system .. would be even more at its mercy .. The system would prevail." There seem to be two worthwhile points to make on that. The first is academic.

If Mr Johnson is not intending to suggest determinism by his reference to 'a social process', then politicians, including all contemporary politicians in South Africa, have agency - meaning they are not wholly at the mercy of circumstances. It will not help to argue this point further here. Those who believe people are puppets out of stupidity, or made so out of the promise of money, will not be persuaded otherwise. 

The second point comes from observation. Even if Mr Ramaphosa is at the mercy of the ANC 'system', all the rest of the ANC and all the rest of SA's complex society are not. Certainly not indefinitely, come what may.

The key point to grasp in SA's early stage democracy is 'the system' that Mr Johnson asserts nothing can beat is not the ANC per se: it is one-party government that equates the ANC with the state.

The ANC's hegemony has political and economic effects that can be challenged and changed, but it has shaped the country's moral climate and thinking. Until recently, it was unpatriotic to take sides against what the party of liberation said or did, not to mention 'racist' and imprudent to do so. President Zuma still appeals to South Africans to be 'patriotic'; he means support him and the ANC in all they do. Who seriously believes that can work as it once did?

Mr Johnson’s impossible-to-beat ‘system’ cannot of course finally change until the ANC loses its virtual monopoly of power. That is coming, fast or too slowly depending on your views, but inevitably producing all manner of opposition.

It is arguable what form this opposition is taking and how it will work out. Instead of Tony Leon not so many years ago, followed by Helen Zille, there is a new and articulate young black man at the top of the DA. There are the extraordinary claims for Mr Malema as next, or at least a future, SA president. That this idea is entertained at all is because of his supposed appeal to 'the young', the future being the young. There is the real time, real split in Cosatu and the prospect of Numsa and other affiliates forming a workers party. 

SA is a changing situation in a rapidly changing global world. Different 'class' interests are stirring the pot, but not in the old decisive Marxist sense: the ANC operates in an infinitely more complicated social and political context than Marx ever imagined.

The bigger truth is all of us, the ANC included, are currently living in a patronage phase with the resulting infighting, incompetence and stalemate Mr Johnson lists. But these are more symptoms than causes. 'The ANC' is not uniquely flawed intellectually and morally to a man - and woman. Nor is SA's 'decline', if that is what it is called, a 'social process' that is determined; it is as open as ever to change as SA changes and different leaders take the stage in response to it.

Leadership, or lack of it, will always play its due role in events, and events in determining leadership.

 

Why even the Constitutional Court hasn't put an end to the scandal of Nkandla

The difficulty with the media’s sustained campaign against President Zuma is it suggests that if we can somehow get rid of the man all will be well. Is the president, along with the earlier scandals the ANC massaged away for him, personally responsible for Nkandla? Yes, of course he is, but as the head of a declaredly democratic ANC government, not for the cost of the window fastenings or even the notorious swimming pool.

If Nkandla were only about the items the Public Protector reported on, President Zuma could easily enough raise the two or three million rand to pay for them out of his own pocket. But Nkandla has always been about far more than his improper benefits and their price.

It is about a total lack of state system, supervision and management. It is about a civil service that lacks competence and confidence, training and professional standards. It involves a culture in which the local Big Man shares largesse with his 'people' in a traditional exchange of favours. It is about the three modern 'estates' of business, unions and government sticking together through thick and thin.

Above all, it is about the one-party state, which enables individuals and government, assured always of servile party support, to ignore the law and all accepted norms of democracy without any come-back.

When President Zuma goes, as he will and maybe sooner than we think - remember how former president Thabo Mbeki suddenly went overnight when it suited a handful of people at the top - South Africa still faces a massive journey before it becomes a democratic society. The hope is Nkandla has at least been the first real step on the way.

The Economic Freedom Fighters fight over their overalls

The Economic Freedom Fighters fiercest fight, the party insists, is going to be to keep their red overalls on in the national assembly.

There are media reports that, failing that, EFF members will go naked. Perhaps that is journalistic licence, a fickle media's dig at their recent darlings, now their over exposed 'new kids on the block' are starting to look as if they may be running out of road - or at least running out of headline-catching gimmicks, which detractors say is the same thing in the EFF's case.

Parliament should never have allowed the EFF to turn up in what is party uniform in the first place. The concession was profoundly mistaken, either patronising or cowardly of the house. It flouts an institution that is supposed to represent all the people of South Africa and to work, in spite of great differences, for the collective good, not to divide the country's citizens into 'class enemies'.  . .more

The red overalls signalled danger clearly enough. Their extravagance and the even more extravagant claims made for their symbolism - that the EFF speak uniquely for 'the poor' - secures publicity for the EFF rather than any benefits for the poor or, for that matter, 'answers' about the Nkandla scandal. Nkandla is a public disgrace for the African National Congress, a democratic party and government, without the need for theatre.

EFF overalls and rowdiness are not bringing the ANC to heel. They have merely provided sensational material to a media starved of more worthwhile opposition to report. Most dangerous of all, EFF conduct is increasing the chances of an authoritarian response from a jittery majority party that has always been out of temper with opposition and is inclined to overreact to it.

SA has a great and testing objective to pursue. The country and its diverse people are attempting to become a democracy under a constitution widely acknowledged for its enlightened liberalism.

Even if the ANC are clumsily throwing their weight about in the early stages of the project, it should be countered by constitutional process. The only people to profit from anarchy are the instigators of anarchy. 

Will President Zuma of South Africa serve out his full term?

In an article in Politicsweb, RW Johnson suggests 'regime change' is in the air in South Africa, but ends by warning that President Zuma still enjoys a great deal of support and may cling on to power. It is a well known practice of presidents, not just in Africa but worldwide.

It is worth taking another look at this*, though what we should be talking about by now is not 'regime change', but simply a change of government or administration.

'Regime change' is a loaded expression. It was used by former South African president Thabo Mbeki to imply how undesirable it was - in Mr Mbeki's view - for President Mugabe of Zimbabwe to be pressured by 'the west' into holding free and fair elections and possibly losing them. Mr Mbeki wished to imply that if the Zanu-PF president were to be 'changed' under any circumstances at all, the outcome could only be a horrible return to apartheid and colonialism. Needless to say, this also applied to Mr Mbeki, as sitting president at home in SA.

It is worth considering Mr Johnson's points also because what 'democracy' involves is always hotly disputed in the new South Africa. 'White' commentators, according to Mr Johnson, believe the ANC must 'dump Zuma'. In this, apparently, they are mistaken. The country is not a democracy and can never become one. Rather it is an organised smash-and-grab raid by ANC crooks and a badly organised one at that.

However, if change is in the air, President Jacob Zuma - presented in the article, reasonably enough, as an old-style 'Chief' - must be first among those blown away by it. It is impossible for anyone to tell the future, but it remains very difficult to see how he can survive in the face of the steady erosion of ANC popularity, much less have his term extended. Traditional Chiefs too were removed when they became a problem, by traditional means.

In today's South Africa the watershed, unavoidably, will be the 2016 democratic elections. If the ANC do badly in them, panic will set in. But, fortunately for the party, President Zuma is of an age when it need not look like a repeat of the unruly Mbeki recall for him to 'retire'. Hints of 'health' problems have already been floated.

On the other hand, if the ANC surprise with a strong comeback - by no means impossible, because the conduct of the Economic Freedom Fighters could well drive voters back to the majority party - then the stage will be set for an 'honourable' retirement, with all the signs so far pointing to Mr Ramaphosa as a shoo-in replacement.

Dangerous as it is to play the prophet, we can see the ANC's decline as an inevitable historical process: change is the only certainty in life and politics. In this sense, the EFF are more a symptom than a cause of it and their disorderly treatment of parliament could hold back as much as help 'regime change'. But either way, it still seems likely President Zuma will go.

      
        *See my article, Why you needn't lose hope if President Zuma gets a second term

The EFF's riotous behaviour in South Africa's parliament - again.

 

If we've come to think of President Zuma as a 'tyrant' breaking the law and undermining the constitution, we need to see that actually he is not - not, that is, until the law brings him to book.

President Zuma has simply been using every legal loophole to duck out of (among a number of other scandals) the scandal of Nkandla, a private residence the Public Protector found had been enhanced beyond any legitimate security purpose at the expense of SA's taxpayers. The law in the form of the Constitutional Court finally caught up with the president. But it has taken a very great deal of time and trouble when democracy has a more direct way: in the end, the only way.

 

We must distinguish between the law and politics. We should remember Nkandla is the sort of abuse many African leaders, including the president of SA's next door neighbour, President Mugabe of Zimbabwe, have been accused of for years. And we should remember the Commander-in-Chief of the EFF Julius Malema has long vaunted President Mugabe as the African leader to follow. 

 

The problem of parliament being disrupted, therefore, seems unlikely to be solved by Mr Malema and his fellow rowdies acting on democratic principle. Democratic principle, one can safely say, has been lacking on all sides in the Nkandla affair. Nor need we trust Mr Malema when he or his publicity machine suggests he is single-handedly putting everything to rights for us all. Distracted by the repetitive antics, we have lost sight of the fact that President Zuma never responded to the EFF breaking the rules. He has been snared by the rules being followed.

There is, then, the legitimate political alternative to consider. The solution to an evasive president and an opposition that makes a show of its contempt for the rules is for the people of SA to exercise their individual and collective authority. This involves each pondering how the parties governing, or presuming to govern, are really performing, not as they say they are. Are they dealing with practical problems and being honest with the voters? Is there a better way, even if it is only a change in who runs the show? Isn't it time to think very seriously about which party to vote for? Elections are round the corner.

 

The people of South Africa may of course choose to vote for the ANC as usual, or for the EFF in larger numbers than last time: that is democracy. But everyone should remember the ANC that elected Jacob Zuma also finds itself bound by legal authority now. By rules.

The only rules the EFF appear to be willing to follow are their own.

 

 

Red overalls, Nazis, the EFF and fascism

People forget that the German Nazi Party were also 'socialist': they were national socialist. As such, they claimed to speak for 'the people', 'the people' of Germany - or, as they put it, the volk.

South Africa's Economic Freedom Fighters are not made 'left wing' because they wear red overalls and . .more claim to speak for 'the people', 'the people' of Africa - or, as they put it, 'the poor'. All parties claim to speak for 'the people', and none would say it is not on the side of the poor, least of all in autocracies.

The questions for South Africans of all colours are: what is the EFF's programme? Is it practical? Could the aim of economic freedom be attempted, let alone carried out, without coercion - without the loss of civil and political freedoms? If it cannot, can the EFF be said to be democratic?

If the EFF are not left wing and not democratic, are they fascist?

Fascism takes many forms: it differed in Spain and Italy, in eastern Europe and South America; it differs today in parts of the Arab world and Africa. Nazism remains only the most notorious version.

But all versions are more or less an irrational cult, appealing to the emotions, often the most basic like envy or revenge, not to logic or the pragmatic. Hitler's favourite word was 'fanatical'.

Fascism is intolerant . .more of all views differing from its own and ready to resort to violence, on which it thrives; it is especially hostile to the ideals of the left, equality and a common  humanity, and embraces racism as and when necessary. Fascism, most notably, centres around and promotes a messianic leader, whose authority is absolute and beyond challenge. The Leader is not, needless to say, elected or subject to any democratic process. He is above all that.

Very many factors give rise to fascism and they depend on time and place. In the case of Germany after WWI, the Treaty of Versailles could be exploited by the nationalist right and Hitler in a way that obviously could never be repeated elsewhere . .mor. The humiliation of defeat got the party that became the Nazi Party off the ground: it was a particular situation. Even then, no one condition was enough: the Great Depression had to come into the mix, a decade later. And the presence of Adolf Hitler from start to finish was decisive.

In the most general terms, what prepares the ground for the rise of fascism is widespread discontent (commentators of the right and left like to boil it down finally to 'economic causes'). But central to the discontent is always the all-knowing Leader, who appears to have and to be the Answer. It is human nature to look for a messiah.

Nor should we overlook human ambition and ruthlessness. There is a built-in desire, it appears, to dominate others while claiming it is for their benefit - the very opposite of anything that might be called a democratic or humane tradition. Not that fascist leaders are all thugs; fascist leaders employ thugs.

Not slowly but very surely, the EFF emerge as less a genuine party, more a revolutionary band dedicated to the overthrow of what perhaps many of their members, and certainly some of their leaders, deem 'bourgeois', counter-revolutionary institutions. The EFF participate in these institutions more to disrupt than to debate and decide, seeking to discredit them while exploiting them for publicity.

If the red overalls are not the band's uniform in this project, it is impossible to say what they are. The EFF do not exclusively represent 'the poor' and, from a showy life style and dress pursued outside SA's legislatures, appear to a large majority not to represent them at all.

It is for you to decide whether that is socialist, democratic, or fascist.


Also:

http://paulwhelanwriting.blogspot.com/2012/05/understanding-what-julius-malema-means.html

Is President Zuma really to blame for everything?

 

Letter to Business Day March 24 2014

 

Sir -

 

Your leader, 'Nkandla reports just not the same' (March 20), shows admirable good sense and self-control in the face of very considerable provocation, except that it should by now be clearly wrong to claim, or to accept, that this is 'really all about JZ.'

Nkandla, nothing more than the most egregious abuse among a great number of abuses, is about one-party rule and the sense of impunity it breeds; it is about cultural deference to the prince or chief; it is about the lack of professional training and standards of SA's public servants; it is about the lingering belief in the liberation party's entitlement.

Above all, it is about the absence of a democratic alternative to the ANC in a society that is not democratized and will return the party to power again.

 

The last condition is the most intractable and the best hope is that Nkandla will help to speed up change.



SA's election spotlight shifts from DA-Agang to the Economic Freedom Fighters

With the DA-Agang 'game-changer' gone if not forgotten, a key remaining interest in the elections is how far the ‘millions’ of voters for the Economic Freedom Fighters prove to be a reality, not just media hype.

There is no dodging an answer now for Mr Malema and his team: SA’s neo-neo-Marxist-Leninists have made themselves hostages to fortune by competing in neo-liberal polls. Sorry to stir, guys, but Lenin did not allow that and Stalin would have had you shot.

If the EFF underperforms in such difficult times as these (what would you say underperforms means? - under 10%?), it would suggest SA has no significant constituency, young or otherwise, for political radicalism at any time.

 

But even if dissidents show up in some numbers, the result will be further splits as major power-brokers opt to stay on board. That is what Cosatu, representing the workers as a federation, wish to do. Whatever their rhetoric, trades unions are part of the system. The last thing the leaders want is revolution. In a liberal or social democracy, they want representation.

As for the South African Communist Party, it has always known which side its bread is buttered.

The upshot may well be the ANC gets re-elected with comfortably over 60% once more, as it pulls out all the stops in the election fight. Obviously that would be bad news for the DA, who will just have to soldier on again, maybe beyond 2019.

 

Helen Zille, as she freely admits, is in a hurry for change. Delivery protests notwithstanding, it still seems unlikely South African society is.

 

Featured letter in Business Day February 11 2014

 

Are Julius Malema and the EFF fascists or not?

Mathew Blatchford's views on fascism in his letter to today's Sunday Times are no less open to argument than those of Imraan Buccus in his article in the paper last week, The EFF and the spectre of fascism, which Mr Blatchford declares 'extraordinarily inaccurate'.

 

In fact, there is no settled way to see 'fascism' anymore than there is 'communism', 'anarchism' or any other '-ism'. 

 

Adolf Hitler's Nazism in Germany was fundamentally racist; Benito Mussolini's fascism in Italy was not. The pre-Nazi extreme right in Germany and Austria attacked 'big business' as radically as contemporary Marxists, the small man, artisans and the petit bourgeois being its chief support.

Once in power fascism of course co-opted big business, destroying organized labour as the prime threat to the revolutionary, all-embracing state. But one needs always to remember Hitler and his murderous gang were national socialists, as opposed to the international socialism of Lenin's Bolsheviks in Russia, their ideological and 'natural' enemy. Unions that played ball could get by with fascism, as could Catholics and Lutherans.

 

In so far as any of this relates to Julius Malema and the Economic Freedom Fighters in SA today, it is because the Commander-in-Chief of the EFF is clearly a revolutionary and a nationalist, using any discontent and ideology at hand to muster support. The two Sunday Times writers at least seemed agreed Mr Malema is hostile to democracy, which should concern us if nothing else does.

 

It is not theory but how the Revolution works out in practice that people need to worry about.

 

Are the ANC right to complain the SA press is always negative?

Even those who are not loyal supporters of South Africa’s ruling party sometimes argue that the press in SA should be regulated or controlled in some way because newspapers are unfair to the ANC in never presenting any good news.

Is that reasonable? Do they have a point?

Let us suppose - impossible though this obviously is in the real world - that the government was perfect and doing nothing wrong or open to criticism by anyone. It would be pointless for the press to report political ‘news’ at all in those circumstances since there would be no bad news and no one would be unhappy.

The logical course for the press to pursue, then, given that things can never be perfect, is to point out what is going badly, not what is going well - that is, to appear critical rather than supportive (which is of course how a free press always appears anywhere in the world). 

The problem in SA, once again, is the party-state. If parties alternated in government, it would be unremarkable that the press criticises ‘the government’ whatever they do, as a kind of national duty or pastime.

But there is only ever one party of national government in SA.

That is why criticism of it can only ever appear one-sided.

This first appeared as a letter in Business Day, November 25 2011

Let the voters decide Julius Malema's future

 

 

Chester Missing, who needs no introduction from me, tweeted at the time: "Give your boyfriend millions and you get a slap and then redeployed. Comment on Botswana and you get expelled."

 

The famous puppet was referring to two sharply contrasting disciplinary actions taken by the ANC. The party punished Dina Pule for an extravagant life style with her lover at the taxpayers' expense by demoting her to a mere member of parliament.

 

But it eventually expelled Julius Malema from the party altogether for proposing the overthrow of the legitimate government of Botswana (an assignment presumably to be undertaken at some time convenient to them by Mr Malema and the band of brothers who have since those apprentice days matured into the Economic Freedom Fighters).

 

However, another issue more weighty than either of these transgressions seems to concern what are patronisingly referred to as ‘ordinary South Africans'. They have been astonished to see the South African Revenue Service publicly testifying against Mr Malema for what appears to be tax evasion.

 

If readers' letters to the newspapers and comments on the internet are anything to go by, many people are uncomprehending, if not outraged, that 'Juju' has not already been tried and imprisoned for this, among a menu of other misdeeds, real or imagined.

 

The law's delay aside, a cogent explanation is that it would make a martyr of him. All populist leaders and dictators need to appear as not only speaking for 'the people', but also as suffering for them. They feed and grow on anything that can be presented as persecution, a word Mr Malema uses calculatedly when addressing his followers.

 

Indeed, students of Mr Malema's public speeches will have noted signs that he would not mind, might even welcome, being locked up for a little while in the undemanding conditions the political elite enjoy in SA. He knows a spell in prison would confirm his status, fuelling the fires of publicity he relies on and enshrining his cause as nothing else could. In case he should be so lucky, he is now shrewdly positioned as Commander-in-Chief, an icon above the fray, ready and able to be sacrificed - and immortalised - while his Economic Freedom Fighters bravely soldier on.

 

In short, it would be the worst thing the ANC could let happen.

 

But perhaps the leaders of the party have finally accepted that, just as they could not patronise, mollify or discipline Julius Malema when he was one of them, they cannot intimidate him now he is an outcast revolutionary with nothing to lose.

 

Showing neither malice nor deference, the ANC should allow Mr Malema to follow his star and prove himself in the 2016 and all future elections on the basis of his revolutionary programme.

 

Julius Malema and what he stands for can only be beaten at the ballot box, or not at all. Fear of the ANC no longer works; times have changed.

 

It is over to the South African voter now.

 

 

This is a slightly edited version of an article appearing on Politicsweb on August 12 2013.

Why the ANC has always supported Zanu-PF: morality and self-interest in SA's foreign policy

The Treasurer General of Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change, Roy Bennett, asked on Politicsweb on March 25: Why is the ANC still supporting Zanu-PF?

His question was prompted by ANC spokesman Keith Khoza's statement confirming that to be the official position of SA’s ruling party on the forthcoming Zimbabwe elections under its new constitution. Mr Khoza justified this outrageous and undemocratic intervention - before elections had even been called, let alone conducted freely and fairly so that Zimbabweans can decide the matter - by claiming Zanu-PF has ‘government experience’.

Well, no argument on that point at least. By fair means and foul, the party of President Mugabe, age 89, has been Zimbabwe’s government for over thirty years, which explains why many more besides Mr Bennett are not as keen as the ANC to repeat the experience.

But only on the face of it is the ANC's position ‘simply incredible’, as Mr Bennett writes. In his heart, he must know the answer to his question, for it has always been the same. It involves history and geography and, more than either, the age-old story of self-interest.

Remember how the SA press beat up for years on former president Thabo Mbeki over Zimbabwe, how immoral his policy was? They were less vocal about a Human Sciences Research Council report back in 2008 that suggested elements of Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change were undergoing military training. Whether that was fact or ruling Zanu-PF propaganda, no doubt SA's patriotic papers were conscious of a more disturbing problem: that SA's undermanned, sickly and perhaps less than neutral National Defence Force was in no shape to take on a peace-keeping role, let alone a serious outbreak of fighting in our next door neighbour.

Here is a crucial consideration in any balanced view of what is plainly the new South Africa's settled policy towards Zimbabwe - though 'supporting Mugabe' was taken to be and widely condemned as President Mbeki’s personal policy choice back then. It is easy to see why.

The start of Mugabe's farm invasions was a time when President Mbeki automatically got his way. In one SABC interview he dismissively asked how he was expected to stop things that were going on in another country. Zimbabwe, he said, was not SA. The ugly events broadcast on TV night after night created no pressure on Mbeki at home or, at first, from abroad. In those early days of violence, he did not need to claim, as he notoriously did later, that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe.

As Mugabe went from bad to worse and international outrage grew, this bland approach had to be adjusted. But to admit there was a problem would mean having to take action and the visionary leader who preached the African Renaissance was well aware of another stumbling block. Mugabe enjoyed strong support inside the ANC and SADC. Not only was SA’s military backup unreliable: the political will to impose western-style sanctions on a former ally was altogether missing. The presidency had no answer to the insistent calls to do something - except to assure everyone that quietly, behind the scenes, Mbeki was using diplomacy.

This understandable side-step was soon labelled 'quiet diplomacy', two words that would eventually help to destroy Mbeki. Intended only to fend off charges of inaction, they fatefully suggested Mbeki was 'handling' a brother and comrade and could settle everything peaceably. No one pointed out that diplomacy, quiet or otherwise, is not a 'policy' at all, but a method. No one asked what Mbeki was using quiet diplomacy for.

Was it to rein in Mugabe's tyranny or to get him to stand down? Was it to uphold human rights? Was it to ensure fair play for the MDC in elections, even if that brought an untried opposition in another country to power?

It should be obvious that no SA government could have seriously entertained any of these aims, if only because diplomacy unsupported by coercion cannot achieve them. Whatever South Africans thought about it, the Zimbabwe crisis for President Mbeki was about the direction of SA's foreign policy. The prime aim at all times was to preserve SA's security and regional stability. In Mbeki’s terms that meant keeping out the west and avoiding any action that needlessly divided the ANC.

For Mugabe, the matter has always been simpler: Zanu-PF must stay in power at all costs. The Zimbabwean autocrat threatened publicly that the MDC would never govern in Zimbabwe and must have said the same to Mbeki in private. Powerless before naked power and more weakened than strengthened by SA's membership of the divided SADC, Mbeki's only option was to persist in trying to confine the fallout to Zimbabwe. He kept SA's borders closed (at least technically) and never wavered from lending Mugabe's regime full diplomatic support internationally, despite its brutal abuse of its citizens and contempt for all democratic standards.

A common accusation was that Mbeki was Mugabe's lackey or that the two leaders were cut from the same cloth, even shared shady financial interests. But once more these views miss the point.

While Mbeki is a proud son of Africa and dedicated foe of neo-colonialism, he is also every inch a politician. As state and ANC president, and with Mugabe's excesses giving him every justification on moral grounds, Mbeki had the authority to distance himself from the Zanu-PF leader, if only rhetorically. Zuma did so immediately after his election at Polokwane; what stopped Mbeki doing so earlier?

It is not because as SA president and later as SADC mediator Mbeki could not take sides: the MDC regularly complained of his bias against them. Nor can it be explained away as incurable stubbornness: post Polokwane Mbeki changed direction when he knew he had to - on keeping the Scorpions and on bringing Motlanthe into his cabinet. 

 

With politicians, always look for the political motive. Maintaining the regional status quo brought with it a major domestic benefit for Mbeki. As his problems with Jacob Zuma and his union allies deepened at home, it ended any chance of a post-liberation opposition coming to power on SA’s doorstep, the very last thing Mbeki or his party wanted.

Domestic and foreign affairs are never separable. Jacob Zuma is ANC president now and following tried and trusted policy towards Zimbabwe. Only the names and the form of apologia have changed.