Review of African Political Economy No. 121:317-333 # ROAPE Publications Ltd., 2009 Understanding the ‘Zuma Tsunami’ Roger Southall Jacob Zuma’s defeat of Thabo Mbeki’s bid to serve a third term as the president of the African National Congress (ANC) at the party’s 52nd National Conference in Polokwane in December 2007 provoked a torrent of analysis. In large part, this was because Zuma himself was a highly controversial and con- tradictory figure. On the one hand, the ANC’s new president was at the time having to fight against myriad charges of corruption through the courts; on the other, although highly patriarchal and conservative, he had earned the backing of the political left within the Tripartite Alliance and, apparently, the enthusiastic support of many among the poor. This article identifies eight ways in which the ‘Zuma tsunami’ was represented in the public discourse in South Africa, identifying their sources, motivations, limitations and over- laps, and concludes that the confusion around the issue of ‘what Zuma means’ represents a moment of extreme political fluidity within the ANC. Introduction Although South Africa’s constitution limits tenure of office by the country’s president to two terms, President Thabo Mbeki opted to stand for a third term as the leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in opposition to Jacob Zuma. The outcome, at the party’s 52nd National Conference in Polokwane in December 2007, was victory for the latter, and humiliation for the former. Mbeki, whose term of office was due to expire at the latest by June 2009, now remained state president while having lost the confidence of his party. This culminated in his ‘recall’ by the ANC from the presidency in September 2008 following an opinion delivered in the High Court by Judge Chris- topher Nicholson that Mbeki had politically interfered with the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and its investigative body, popularly known as the Scorpions, to ensure the prosecution of Zuma for corruption, fraud and tax evasion. Mbeki was succeeded as president by Kgalema Motlanthe, elected at Polokwane as party deputy president, Zuma not wanting to become president until after the forthcoming election in 2009. Although the ANC claimed that party tradition did not allow for formal campaigning, the battle between Mbeki and Zuma had been visceral. The two men were fighting not only over power, but also over the ANC’s ‘political project’, Zuma drawing much of his popular backing from the ANC’s allies, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), which had long registered objection from the left towards Mbeki’s pro-market economic strategy. Zuma was also fighting to stay out of jail because for a considerable period he had been fending off attempts by the NPA to prosecute him. These had come to a head in September 2005 when it was indicated in the High Court that he had been in ISSN 0305-6244 Print, 1740-1720 Online/09/030317-17 DOI: 10.1080/03056240903210739 318 Review of African Political Economy a corrupt relationship with Mo Shaik, upon whom he was financially dependent, and whom Judge Hilary Squires proceeded to convict upon charges of corruption relating to the arms deal which the government had concluded with European arms compa- nies in 1998. Mbeki proclaimed this situation as one which required him to ‘recall’ Zuma, then deputy president, from his state office. Mbeki was widely hailed as striking a blow for constitutional propriety. Yet Zuma’s dismissal was far from being unanimously popular. Within days the ANC’s National Working Committee was to slap Mbeki down by confirming Zuma as party deputy president. Nonetheless, the NPA launched a high profile campaign to pursue Zuma through the courts, only for his lawyers to throw up one legal obstacle after another to moves to bring their client to trial. Zuma also received the vigorous support of the party’s left, notably COSATU, whose secretary-general, Zwelinzima Vavi, had pro- nounced previously that efforts to stop Zuma from succeeding Mbeki as president of South Africa would be ‘like trying to fight against the big wave of the tsunami’ (Mail & Guardian Online, 7 March 2005). Central to the left’s campaign was that the NPA’s attempts to prosecute Zuma were politically motivated. When Judge Nicholson backed this allegation in September 2008, the Zuma camp was triumphant. Zuma himself proclaimed that Mbeki should see out his second term, but the forces behind him were less conciliatory. Although the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) was divided, the majority that the Zuma camp had enjoyed on that body since Polokwane decided that Mbeki should be ‘recalled’ from the presidency. The NEC was following the line that the party had ‘deployed’ Mbeki to the presidency and therefore had the right to recall him, although it recognised that constitutionally only Parliament had the authority to end a president’s tenure of office before its legally constituted end – either by passing a vote of confidence, requiring a simple majority (which would necessitate the calling of a general election), or by a complex process of impeachment. Mbeki could have challenged the ANC to a battle in parlia- ment. However, either steeped in the ways of the ANC, or reluctant to risk humiliation, he acceded to the NEC’s instruction. Even as spare an outline of the political drama as the above is likely to be contested. Certainly, there is widespread agreement that Zuma’s ascent represents a watershed in South African democracy. In particular, Mbeki’s dismissal triggered a significant defection from the ANC of those either loyal to Mbeki or offended by Zuma, and their formation of a new party, the Congress of the People (COPE), which sought to pose a significant electoral challenge to the ruling party. Nonetheless, apart from such generalities, there is a remarkable diversity of opinion about how Zuma’s rise should be interpreted. This article is therefore devoted to identifying alternative interpretations of the ‘Zuma tsunami’, the extent to which they are compatible and the extent to which they clash. Interpretations of the ‘Zuma Tsunami’ Any interpretation of the ‘Zuma tsunami’ is perilous. Considered academic assess- ments are few, in contrast to a mega-flow of media analysis. Nonetheless, some eight perspectives appear to have taken root, some striking out clearly along branches of their own, others distinctive yet intimately entangled. Understanding the ‘Zuma Tsunami’ 319 The Overthrow of Mbeki as a Restoration of Democracy The first interpretation celebrates the triumph of South Africa in dispensing with a sitting president through political rather than unconstitutional means. At one level, this is located in a comparative African framework, contrasting Mbeki’s fall with the obduracy of Kibaki in Kenya and Mugabe in Zimbabwe, both of whom clung to power in 2008 in the face of adverse elections (Southall 2008a). At another, it points to the saliency of the constitution, not least in the manner in which the fate of Mbeki was significantly determined by the courts (Southall 2008b). The perspective is sustained by two further dimensions. First, there is the insightful portrayal of Mbeki’s end as constituting a political and a personal tragedy. This interpretation is most strongly associated with Mark Gevisser, who has suggested that in updating his biography of Mbeki (Gevisser 2007), he will be writing ‘a fifth act, perhaps of a Shakespearean tragedy, in which a courageous and very brilliant man has been unable to overcome his fatal flaws’ (Gevisser 2008a). Mbeki had come to the presidency with a mission of modernising both South Africa and the ANC. Fur- thermore, he had come to believe that a Zuma presidency would be disastrous, and that it was his duty to stop it. Yet in his psychological insecurities he had alienated many within the ANC, and surrounded himself with sycophants who had weaved together an ‘edifice of bad intelligence’ that glued denialism together. He had therefore ignored the signs that, in the build-up to Polokwane, it was time for him to go. ‘Not only because he saw himself as a king ... but [because] the ANC had made him into a king, ... the only way to move on was by decapitating him’ (Star, 22 February 2008). Polokwane thus constituted ‘a regicide’ (Gevisser 2008a). For Mbeki, there was a large element of personal hurt because the ANC had been the only family he had ever really had. At Polokwane, he was to feel that he had not only been fired, but ‘cast out’ (Gevisser 2008a). Hence when he was ‘recalled’ from the pre- sidency, his resignation speech proclaimed his dismay that he had been treated in an undignified manner not befitting the traditions of the political family he knew (Gevisser 2008b). There was also irony, for unlike his hero Coriolanus, who after his banishment from Rome had raised an army to vanquish his enemies, Mbeki would never want to be remembered for having collapsed ‘the old struggle hegemony’ of the ANC. However, his authoritarian rule had done precisely that, and had created the conditions for the emergence of COPE, presenting a real choice other than the ANC for the majority of black voters. The second dimension, proffered most strongly from within the Zuma camp, stresses the freedom that has come from the overthrow of a dictator. Not many would go as far as Malegapuru Makgoba, the erratic vice-chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, who has condemned Mbeki as no better than Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe and Mobutu Sese Seko (Sunday Independent, 13 July 2008). Nonetheless, they exult in the idea of the restoration of internal democracy within the ANC.