It is not always clear who runs President Jacob Zuma's strange republic
due to a poverty of political leadership in the country
Published: 2012/05/04 06:43:24 AM
NO TWO recent events better illustrate the poverty of political
leadership in South Africa than the reinstatement of Lt-Gen Richard
Mdluli as the police's crime intelligence head despite a raft of charges
and allegations around him, and the casual way in which the African
National Congress (ANC) and labour federation Cosatu last week "agreed"
to delay e-tolling in Gauteng for a month while government lawyers were
arguing in court that such a delay would be a disaster.
This is President Jacob Zuma 's strange republic at work, a place where
politics trumps principle, the reputations of the state and its officers
are of little account and where no price is too high to pay for the
re-election of Mr Zuma as head of his party this year and of the country
in 2014.
Is the president laughing at us? The police force leadership is in
tatters as his man, Lt-Gen Mdluli, acquires new powers at a dizzying
speed - one day it is control over VIP protection (all the police who
guard ministers and can thus tell him who they've been seeing), the next
he becomes the only policeman in the land able to sanction a wire tap.
South Africa's credit rating is being directly threatened by Mr Zuma's
leadership on the Sanral issue. He must have sanctioned the party-union
meeting despite knowing his finance minister would be left humiliated by
any decision to delay the start of e-tolling.
It was entirely predictable that Cosatu's political star would rise this
year, after the ANC Youth League's falling out with the party's
leadership.
Without Cosatu's backing Mr Zuma has little chance of being re-elected
at the ANC's conference at Mangaung in December. And, if he loses his
grip on the levers of power, the odds are that the fraud and corruption
charges that were controversially withdrawn shortly before the 2009
election that elevated him to the Presidency, could be reinstated.
Mr Zuma is acutely aware of how much he needs Cosatu. More important,
Cosatu's wily general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, knows it too. That is
why, in contrast to 2007 when the union federation threw its weight
behind Mr Zuma as part of a successful effort to oust Thabo Mbeki as ANC
president at Polokwane, it now refuses to pin its colours to the mast
during the buildup to Mangaung.
Cosatu felt let down by the Zuma administration after the much-debated
"lurch to the left" at Polokwane was limited by the practicalities of
governance, Mr Zuma's need to placate a range of constituencies with
contradictory demands, and intense lobbying by the youth league as
representative of the party's growing African nationalist faction.
Cosatu is not about to make the same mistake twice - Mr Zuma is going to
have to deliver the goods before he gets paid off this time.
This, of course, is how politics works the world over. But the fact that
it is not unusual does not mean its profoundly negative economic,
political and constitutional consequences should not be exposed. And,
such political expediency cannot be allowed to legitimise a cynical
abuse of state institutions for party or individual benefit. There is,
unfortunately, mounting evidence of both occurring in South Africa at
present.
The government's botched implementation of the Gauteng Freeway
Improvement Project provided Cosatu with an ideal opportunity to flex
its muscles. Since public transport was excluded from the e-tolling
system, the vast majority of the revenue that would have been collected
would have come from businesses and the wealthier 40% of Gauteng's
population, not predominantly from the "workers" Cosatu counts as its
constituency.
Nevertheless, the toll road concept is unpopular across class groups in
Gauteng, and just days before the e-toll gantries were scheduled to go
live on May 1, Cosatu strong-armed the ANC into "discussions" on the
issue with the threat of a national strike. With not even a pretence of
differentiating between party and state, the ANC caved in and announced
that the launch would be delayed by a month for further consultation.
That the high court granted an urgent interdict against the
implementation of the system subject to a full review only hours later,
does not change the fact that the ANC blinked first. Even as state
lawyers were arguing that delaying it would be financially disastrous,
the party was glibly humiliating Pravin Gordhan by elevating the
political interests of one of its factions above the Treasury's
standing.
Similarly, while it is abundantly clear that the inflexibility of the
labour market is preventing businesses from hiring more young people in
particular, this does not suit Cosatu's agenda of defending existing
workers' rights at all costs. Hence its loud opposition to the proposed
labour law amendments that are now before Parliament.
It emerged earlier in the week that another cozy "discussion" with the
ANC has resulted in agreement that clauses requiring that ballots be
held before strikes can begin, and expanding the list of essential
service work categories whose right to strike is limited, will be
scrapped. If this is endorsed by ANC MPs it will make a complete mockery
of the long negotiation process recently in the National Economic
Development and Labour Council.
The question should be asked: who runs this country? The democratically
elected government, a particular faction of the ruling party, or Cosatu?
Or is it the small group of securocrats Mr Zuma has surrounded himself
with in his desperate bid to keep out of the courts?
The vicious power struggle that is playing out at present between police
management, crime intelligence and the prosecuting authorities is a
chilling reminder that the abuse of state institutions that was
ostensibly Cosatu's prime motivation for removing Mr Mbeki, has got
worse, not better, under Mr Zuma.
The manner in which investigations into the alleged criminal activities
of Lt-Gen Mdluli have repeatedly been stymied, and those trying to
follow due process have been undermined, points to political
intervention at the highest level. The situation has become untenable -
a prosecutor has been shot at; the very future of the rule of law and
democratic accountability is at stake.
Yet Lt-Gen Mdluli has not only been reinstated to his powerful position,
but it emerges he has been handed sole responsibility for the police's
covert phone-tapping activities. It was just such an intelligence tape
that was used - almost certainly illegally - by Mr Zuma's lawyers to
persuade prosecutors to drop the corruption charges he faced.
The flagrant disregard for the constitutional safeguards that are
supposed to check individual power in our democracy has got to stop
before irreparable damage is done.
But it is clear it won't be Mr Zuma who does the stopping. Why do other
senior ANC leaders sit on their hands while the freedom they fought for
is sacrificed to save one man's skin?
Like Cosatu, they are apparently hedging their bets as they manoeuvre in
preparation for the showdown at the end of the year. But by then it
could be too late for them and South Africa. They have a tiger by the
tail and will have to be extremely agile if they wish to avoid being
eaten as soon as they have outlived their usefulness.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=170988
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