Lost Decade’ James Hamill Zuma’S Scandals Threaten ANC, South BRIEFINGWPR Africa with ‘Lost Decade’

November 5, 2014

Zuma’s Scandals Threaten ANC, South Africa With ‘Lost Decade’ James Hamill Zuma’s Scandals Threaten ANC, South BRIEFINGWPR Africa With ‘Lost Decade’

James Hamill November 5, 2014

Since May 2009, Jacob Zuma’s leadership of South Africa has played out against a backdrop of corruption scandals and other damaging revelations that have drained the lifeblood from his presidency. Crisis management has effectively become Zuma’s modus operandi, with short-term political survival eclipsing the need to provide South Af- rica with stable and effective governance. Zuma’s re-election last May, following the decisive, if qualified, victory of the African National Congress (ANC) in national elections, did not provide the hoped-for new beginning. That has the ANC hierarchy scrambling.

Zuma contaminates contemporary South African politics so much that it is difficult to envisage things turning around while he remains at the helm. As a result, South Africa faces the prospect of a lost political decade and a largely squandered presidency. That raises a range of questions for the ANC as it seeks to balance the short-term instinct to rally round a besieged leader against its own medium- and long-term political fortunes that Zuma continues to jeopardize.

Zuma’s re-election failed to enhance his authority or provide the platform for a successful second term. For the third consecutive poll, Zuma lowered the ANC’s vote total; the party now looks vulnerable in many of the big municipalities ahead of the 2016 local elections. The campaign was fought on the defensive, with the ANC constantly fend- ing off accusations that Zuma had misused public money and received undue benefits as a result of the supposed “security upgrades” provid- ed at considerable state expense to his private residence in Nkandla.

That scandal has festered since the election, and the ANC has been busy defending Zuma by blaming the Nkandla overspending on lower bureaucrats. The ANC has also launched a sustained assault on the credibility of widely respected Public Protector Thuli Madonsela,

WPR BRIEFING | WWW.WORLDPOLITICSREVIEW.COM 2 WPR BRIEFINGWPR who issued a damning pre-election report on the scandal, and it even BRIEFINGWPR attempted to restrict a parliamentary committee of inquiry into Nkan- dla, which prompted an opposition walkout.

Nkandla serves as a metaphor for the Zuma era, characterized by the misuse of public funds for private gain; the absence of a culture of accountability; the attempted intimidation of critics; and a belief that the constitution, and the institutions created by it, must bend to the will of the ruling party, not vice versa. But Nkandla is only one of Zuma’s many troubles. Corruption allegations that have dogged him since 2005 will not go away, including charges that he received bribes from arms companies, which were finally dropped by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) just weeks before the 2009 election. But the NPA’s decision has always been challenged, and after a five-year legal battle, the opposition Democratic Alliance has succeeded in securing access to the so-called spy tapes on which the decision was based.

In September, the South African Sunday Times added more grist to the mill by publishing allegations that in 2000 Zuma had accepted an annual 500,000 rand (about $45,250) bribe from a French arms company, Thales. That could lead to over 781 earlier dropped charges of fraud, money laundering and racketeering against Zuma being rein- stated, along with the specter of prosecution, which is certain to once again absorb Zuma’s energies to the detriment of the more mundane business of actual governance.

For now, the ANC has closed ranks behind Zuma, but there are good reasons for the party to rethink the wisdom of that approach. With Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay and Pretoria all credible opposition targets in the 2016 municipal elections, the ANC has to consider the potential electoral damage of continuing to defend a tarnished Zuma at all costs.

His governing record itself should be cause for alarm: Under Zuma’s stewardship, South Africa’s performance has been deficient in far too many areas, and the ANC cannot keep ignoring that impact on its support base. Unemployment stands at 25 percent of the workforce, with youth unemployment at 60 percent. Economic growth is forecast

WPR BRIEFING | WWW.WORLDPOLITICSREVIEW.COM 3 at a meager 1.4 percent for 2014, well below the 6-7 percent required BRIEFINGWPR to make a dent in those unemployment figures.

The past two years have also witnessed a grave deterioration in labor relations, an ongoing energy crisis and worsening performances by a raft of state-owned enterprises from South African Airways to Eskom, a utility company. South Africa’s economy has been downgraded by ratings agencies, even as its ranking on Transparency International’s annual corruption index has fallen sharply during the Zuma era. Pub- lic education and health care systems, meanwhile, are either failing or dysfunctional.

This lamentable state of affairs falls far short of the social and economic program that the ANC promised in this year’s election. Things have gotten so bad that South African officials were even spinning Zuma’s recent last-minute decision to cancel his visit to the United Kingdom—after Prime Minister David Cameron reportedly wouldn’t meet with him—on the grounds that it would actually allow the minis- terial delegations to achieve more.

The ANC cannot escape its responsibility for Zuma. He is very much a product of the organization and was twice elected as its leader, in 2007 and 2012. His shortcomings were common knowledge before then, given corruption allegations and his behavior while on trial for rape in 2006, when his defense lawyers relied on crass sexism and sexual stereotyping, incompatible with the ANC’s commitments to gender equality, to have the charges dismissed. His supporters also fostered a culture of intimidation and threats against his female ac- cuser, and repeated those threats against the judiciary to prevent his corruption prosecution from proceeding.

As Paul Hoffman of the Institute for Accountability in Southern Af- rica has noted, Zuma’s desire to assume the leadership of both party and country seems to have been principally driven by a desire to avoid prosecution, rather than by any strategic vision for South Africa or any coherent set of ideas or principles informing his leadership. Yet the desire within the ANC to remove former President Thabo Mbeki was so strong, perhaps understandably given Mbeki’s own excesses, that Zuma’s defects were overlooked or viewed as of secondary impor-

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