28 May 1999 Vol 40 No 11 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL ZAMBIA 3 SOUTH AFRICA Down, not out Zambia has little to show to the Gauteng for Mbeki Paris Club meeting this week. The election of a provincial prime minister may give a foretaste of Ironically, the government now future politics finds it easier to talk about human rights than about financial matters. The privatisation of the copper The smallest and richest of South Africa’s nine provinces seems certain to give the ruling African mines has still not happened and a National Congress a solid majority at the national and provincial elections on 2 June. Yet the arm- massive fire at the country's oil twisting which the party has used to pick its provincial leadership has put on show some problems refinery has affected the world price that will be faced again and again by Thabo Mbeki, President Nelson Mandela’s chosen heir as of copper. leader of the party and the nation. Gauteng Province covers what used to be known as the ‘Pretoria Witwatersrand-Vereeniging GHANA 4 Triangle’, the country’s commercial, industrial, mining and financial hub. PWV’s new name means ‘place of gold’ in the Sesotho language and at the centre of this hub is Johannesburg. Nowadays, Reforming the Gauteng is home not only to the Basotho but to one fifth of the country’s population and it produces reformers two-fifths of its gross domestic product. Suitably enough for such a concentration of industry, the man Mbeki has installed as provincial ANC leader, and thus the next provincial premier, is a trades The ruling NDC is now finding its union leader - Mbhazima (formerly Sam) Shilowa, outgoing General Secretary of the Congress of own dissidents a bigger threat than the official opposition. At the heart South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). of NDC dissent is speculation about To make room for Shilowa, Mbeki’s party faction has ditched Mathole Motshekga, the current Rawlings' future: is he really going ANC Premier of Gauteng. Motshekga himself succeeded Tokyo Sexwale, who left the premiership to retire in December next year? abruptly in early 1998. Sexwale’s mistake was to expose himself as a possible successor to Mandela in preference to Mbeki. Motshekga’s error was to stand for the Gauteng premiership - and to win TANZANIA 5 - against Mbeki’s choice for the job, Reverend Frank Chikane, the former church leader who is now Director General of Mbeki’s office. Divided republic Action and faction As Tanzanians wait with bated breath for the signature of the Motshekga also made some unfortunate allies, the most important of whom was Dan Mofokeng, the Zanzibar agreement, President provincial executive councillor in charge of housing, who has faced several (unproven) allegations Ben Mkapa tries to reassure donors of corruption, provoking vast press coverage and an ANC inquiry. Last week the ANC’s national with his 'clean hands' campaign. leadership struck Mofokeng's name off the party’s list of candidates for the Gauteng legislature, at the same time inserting Shilowa’s name at the top of the list, above Motshekga’s. Allegations of MALAWI 6 ineptitude and corruption have haunted Gauteng’s administration since 1994, contributing to a steady decline in the provincial government’s approval rating among voters, from 61 per cent in Muluzi's democracy surveys in late 1995 to 35 per cent now. It was widely assumed that by intervening openly in provincial affairs, the ANC would put voters test off. The reverse seems to have happened. The pollsters suggest that the ANC would now be Malawi's second multi-party supported by 48 per cent of the province’s adult population, up from 39 per cent in September last elections are set to be a close run year. This surge in ANC support should carry the party’s share of the vote in the Province well race. The late dictator Dr Hastings Banda's old single party has now beyond the required 51 per cent; and Mbeki’s decision to replace Motshekga by Shilowa is expected formed an alliance with a party it to improve the party’s chances. had banned when it was in power. The original idea was that provincial premiers would be chosen by provincial legislatures. Now the ANC’s national leadership has changed the rules and simply tells provincial councillors who to vote for - except where the party lacks an overall majority (as, probably, in Western Cape Province, POINTERS 8 AC Vol 40 No 9), when the choice is left to the legislature. The ANC’s National Executive Committee is determined to block ambitious politicians, who might spread what the leadership calls Sierra Leone, South ‘factionalism’. For the elections on 2 June, three provincial premiers have been deposed. The risk is that local branches will resent intervention by headquarters, though in Motshekga’s case, his Africa/Nigeria and backing seems to be weaker than his supporters claimed. African Development Shilowa has for some time been part of Mbeki’s political inner circle and has sought, not always Bank successfully, to ease relations between Mbeki and the ANC’s intimate allies, Cosatu and the South Recalcitrant foes; smear African Communist Party. Last year, as left-wingers moved against Mbeki’s faction, Shilowa lost campaign; and replenishment. his place on the SACP Politbureau and came under increasing pressure within Cosatu. He may be 28 May 1999 Africa Confidential Vol 40 No 11 replaced as Cosatu’s General Secretary by Zwelinzima Vavi, an and that by no means all those registered will vote, the ANC is anti-Mbeki member of the SACP Politbureau, although moderates expected to garner well over half the votes cast. Of the 23 per cent in Cosatu may put forward their own candidate. whom polls have found to be undecided, most of those who do vote Shilowa, who wears a Lenin-style cap and projects himself as a will probably vote ANC. man of the people, is a good performer on the hustings. Soon after Shilowa will have trouble identifying able and reliable colleagues. his appointment as the ANC’s candidate for the premiership, it was One with a reputation for probity and hard work is Jabu Moleketi, revealed in the press that he had four debt judgments against him the executive councillor in charge of finance. His wife is Geraldine in court, totalling over 440,000 rand (US$71,000). He is married Fraser-Moleketi, the national Minister of Social Welfare, and he to one of South Africa’s top black businesswomen, Wendy Luhabe, worked in the ANC’s security and intelligence department in and they have a large home in Johannesburg’s expensive northern Zimbabwe under the name ‘Raphael’ during the late 1980s. Both suburbs. However, his luxurious lifestyle, which includes Audi husband and wife are senior members of the SACP (Fraser-Moleketi cars and expensive cigars, is not likely to deter many voters. is its Deputy Chairperson) but their primary loyalty is thought to be Motshekga, the man Shilowa replaced, has had his own share of to Mbeki. Another pretty able colleague on the ANC’s Gauteng list bad publicity, including unproven accusations that he misused is Mary Metcalfe, who has held the provincial education portfolio. donor funds at a law clinic he ran during the apartheid years. At the Shilowa’s ANC government in Gauteng is likely to be more start of his premiership, critics also remarked upon his long- sharply opposed than its predecessor. The Democratic Party’s standing relationships with Abel Rudman, an apartheid-era military provincial leader, Peter Leon (brother of DP leader Tony Leon), intelligence agent and businessman, whose operations in Botswana can be a ferocious political opponent. At the last elections five included, briefly, running an anti-ANC newspaper; and with years ago, the DP won 5 per cent of the provincial vote; the polls Professor André Thomashausen, of the University of South Africa are now giving it 12 per cent. The DP is likely to take over as the in Pretoria, a former adviser to the Resistência Nacional official opposition from the New National Party, whose support Moçambicana, the Mozambican rebel movement which South has slipped from 24 per cent at the last polls to about 6 per cent now. Africa then backed, during P.W. Botha’s presidency. An ANC Support in Gauteng for Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha internal inquiry concluded Motshekga’s management of donor Freedom Party (AC Vol 40 No 10) seems to have collapsed, from funds had been abysmal but made no finding on whether he had had 4 per cent five years ago to an estimated 1 per cent now. The new a relationship with apartheid-era security services. United Democratic Movement (UDM), led by General Bantu It seems, anyway, that the people of Gauteng are not very keen Holomisa, formerly boss of the Transkei ‘homeland’, and ex- on voting. Polling organisations indicate that the lower the turnout, National Party minister Roelf Meyer, registers less than 3 per cent the higher the ANC’s share of the vote will be. Given that one in support. The ANC may have a fairly clear run but winning the four adult citizens has failed to register on Gauteng’s electoral roll, provincial election is only the beginning. Figuring it out Up to 2 million fewer votes may be cast in the national and provincial fewer of them than in 1994. Most results should be out by late elections on 2 June than in the 1994 polls, which ended the apartheid afternoon on 4 June, with final results, as the constitution requires, by era. Some opposition politicians claim the shortfall could be 5 million, 9 June.