The outcome of the ANC Polokwane conference, in December 2007, has produced two big non-stories. The first is how the rifts in the three-way alliance among the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the trade union federation Cosatu have evaporated. Instead, the big rift is that the leadership of the ANC is, in effect, in opposition to the country's president. The second is how Jacob Zuma won the presidency of the ANC. Zuma's emergence as the sole contender to Thabo Mbeki is a fact now so firmly accomplished that his ascendancy seems to require no further explanation, beyond asserting that he was swept to power by a many-headed revolt precipitated by Mbeki's arrogance in defence of unpopular policies.
The consequent change in the leadership of the ANC has been total. Zuma, whose mother was a kitchen worker and who is personable, charismatic and friendly, won 1.5 votes for each of Mbeki's. Mbeki remains president of South Africa, but not a single one of his camp was originally included in the new National Working Committee (NWC), which is the everyday centre of the ANC.
These non-stories, taken together, hold the key to a dissonance between the social character of the revolt and aspects of the person, Zuma. Zuma proclaimed himself a Zulu traditionalist, repeated the worst myths about rape in his defence in 2006, and stands accused of corruption together with the arms merchant Thales. How then did he become the champion of the poor and of a trade union movement built by rejecting ethnic division which organises thousands of women?
Mbeki's demise must be understood in the context of a reviving mass movement exacerbating a crisis within the ANC. But Zuma's rise has much to do with constraints imposed on Cosatu and the SACP by their strategic outlook. This understanding is essential if we are to grasp what the new leadership around Zuma actually represents and what it means for the future.
The following discussion is based on ongoing media research, on conference documents and on my own ‘political diary’ since 2005, which includes observations from very many picket lines, marches and meetings and hundreds of discussions, short and long, with their participants.
The Social Character of the Zuma Victory
Cosatu's New Year Message takes up the theme that Zuma's election symbolizes a grassroots uprising:
[The Polokwane conference] was not a clash of individual leaders or ‘camps’. It was a revolutionary mass movement from the grassroots which brought about a seismic shift in the political landscape. It. aimed not just to replace one set of leaders with another but to transform the way our national democratic revolution is being led … This was a rebellion by the representatives of millions of workers, the unemployed and the poor against their exclusion from the economic boom they kept hearing about for the past five years. They were sick of being told that we were all getting richer, when they knew from their own lives that only a tiny minority was benefiting - and benefiting massively -from economic growth, while the majority remained stuck in poverty and despair. The delegates spoke for those who had been raising their concerns … They knew that their criticisms of government's pro-business and pro-rich policies were right and wanted a new leadership to bring about a change of policy (Cosatu, 2008:1).
Three nodes of Zuma support emerge from the data. The first reveals an ethnic dimension that the Cosatu new year message missed entirely. The second revolves around actual material deprivation coupled with a sense of poverty, and a third around trade union membership coupled with a notion of exploitative inequality. Each of these seems to oper-
ate quite separately of the others and none is overarching, implying that Zuma represented different things to different people. Finally, women who supported him were less likely to hold conservative attitudes about marriage than other women - so they supported him despite the attitudes he displayed in his rape trial - and they had, on average, been on strike more recently than other women surveyed, independently of whether they were trade union members.
There was a distinctly proletarian flavour to other aspects of Mbeki's defeat. I'll discuss later the township outbursts that began his demise. An ANC member who attended the Polokwane conference assured me, in informal discussion, that Cosatu was instrumental in revitalising ANC branches in the run up to the conference. This deserves investigation but there is no doubt in most minds that Zuma owes a debt to organised labour. The Sunday Independent, for example, reported that Zuma's
use of key phrases such as ‘decent work opportunities’, ‘casualisation of labour’ and ‘the widening income gap between the poor and the rich’ in his first speech since becoming president reflects the vocabulary of the left (Sunday Independent, 2008).
On the other hand, a cursory glance at the class contours of the new leadership around Zuma calls into question how the political landscape has really shifted. The sense of momentous change apparent after Polokwane is mixed with a hefty dash of déjà vu. In one way, Cosatu and SACP leaders are seeing Mbeki's defeat as a great big restoration to the way things were before Mbeki rather than an altogether new direction:
'In particular this conference should open the way to the re-emergence of the Tripartite Alliance as a central player in the political process,’ reads Cosatu's New Year Message (2008:1).
Anyone who follows South African politics knows how frequently rumours of the alliance's death turn out to be greatly exaggerated. The above statements are remarkable only because such talk faded in the three years before Polokwane. It quickly became clear that a fault-line had opened up through the middle of the ANC rather than between the ANC and its alliance partners. Nevertheless it appeared to be taking class dimensions. In the months before Zuma's election was certain, the estrangement between the cabinet and other sections of the tripartite alliance was cast as a widening class chasm by the union and party leaders. Take this public exchange during the ANC policy conference in June 2007. Joel Netshitenzhe, based in Mbeki's policy unit, defended a proposed economic policy by saying ‘our revolution is multi-class’ and should not become a ‘hostage to narrow sectoral interests.’ Vavi replied that ‘as the majority, the working class cannot be dismissed as pursuing narrow sectoral interests.’ The ANC Youth League also replied to the document,
we have the problem of capital and labour being treated as equal partners of the developmental state … There is an absence of characterising monopoly capital as an enemy in the unfolding democratic revolution (Mail & Guardian, 2007a).
Polokwane certainly isolated Mbeki but it by no means drove the capitalist element out of the ANC. Before Polokwane, Zuma travelled to London to reassure investment bankers that he was ‘no monster’. Tokyo Sexwale and Cyril Ramphosa, both emerged black capitalists, were elected by the congress onto its National Executive Committee. Blade Nzimande is on the NWC but so is Max Sisulu, another businessman, Jeff Radebe, who was nicknamed minister of privatisation when he was part of Mbeki's cabinet, and Tony Yengeni, convicted of corruption. The composition of the NWC, then, seems set up to deliver a return an old style NDR based on a coalition of class forces, as easily as it might deliver the more working-class NDR suggested in the run up to the congress, with a dash of open opportunism thrown in.
How Zuma Emerged as the Alternative to Mbeki
Cosatu's characterisation of Zuma's victory does not explain how the ‘rebellion of the millions’ was transmitted into the ANC itself and therefore it cannot grasp how that rebellion was both encouraged and distorted in the process. To understand how Zuma in particular emerged as the alternative to Mbeki we must understand the interaction of three key pressures: the economy, mass action and the strategies of the labour and communist party leaders.
Mbeki's economic policies which set him on a collision course with Cosatu and the electorate, yielded a one-sided success. By 2006, South African economists were announcing an economic turnaround: productivity was steady, business confidence was up and several companies announced bumper profits that year and in 2005. But the cost to the ANC's own constituency had been enormous. At least a quarter of working age people remain unemployed by the government's own conservative figures, and Cosatu puts that at 40% when discouraged work seekers are included. Meanwhile government spending was too modest to clear the backlog of housing (National Treasury, 2007:5). Extensive electrification was marred by regular cut-offs to recover costs (see for example David McDonald, 2002). And ‘a recent survey by Naledi, Cosatu's research arm, found that between 1998 and 2002 workers’ share of national income dropped from 50% to less than 45%. By contrast, company profits rose from just less than 27% to 32%,’ reported the Mail & Guardian (2007b). Company executives were rejecting wage demands of 9% while, as the Naledi survey says:
Studies have shown that, between 2005 and 2006 alone, executive pay rose by as much as 34%. Research conducted by independent analysts, the Labour Research Service, and trade union Solidarity demonstrates that executives in South Africa enjoy the bulk of company wealth, while the gap between remuneration of CEOs and that of workers runs by a factor of over 50:1. In other words, remuneration for the average CEO is more than 50 times that of the average worker in the country (Mail & Guardian, 2007b).
The delivery protests precipitated a crisis in the 2005 ANC national general council. Any ANC member could see that their blank election cheque was reaching expiry. Additionally, local councillors and branch activists directly felt the heat of the growing discontent with the government. Mbeki only increased his circle of enemies when he responded to the protests by passing the blame to local councillors who he had previously called to justify neo-liberalism. Another element was disgruntled at the narrowness of black economic empowerment. This meeting rejected two proposals associated with Mbeki, but stopped there. Those who opposed Mbeki felt that they could simply wait for Mbeki to be replaced by his deputy Zuma just as Mbeki succeeded Mandela.
Why had Mbeki never tried to bring his organisation on board? Before he became president he was instrumental in drafting the government's neo-liberal economic policy which was never tabled in the ANC, most likely because those in government presumed themselves to be in charge. Mbeki claimed the next general election – which made him president – was a countrywide endorsement of the economic policy. He was no doubt even less inclined to expose economic policy to the cold winds of criticism in 2005 just as it seemed to be bearing fruit. Perhaps he felt a firm hand was needed to see things through. He thus alienated significant sections of the ANC but his appeal to the public was too little, too late.
The third challenge to Mbeki's policies came from the unions and the workplaces that same year. The unions did not like Mbeki's economic direction from the start but their strategy rested on the belief that they would be able to persuade him to change direction through the political meetings of the three-way alliance. Thus strikes and protests were limited to one-day shows of strength. But tensions were growing.
In 2005, a public spat broke out, as had happened before, between Mbeki and Vavi. Vavi believed the government should change course to more interventionist policies to save jobs; Mbeki insisted on a steady course and reminded Vavi, none too sweetly, that Cosatu wasn't the government. Unions were feeling the jobs crisis and de facto wage restraint at all levels. Many unions had lost thousands of members to retrenchments and casualisation. And the burden of unemployment weighed heavily on the employed, as government grants are all tied to disability or child care.
This time, the spat did not subside after a few days of trading insults. On 27 June, the turn out for one of several scheduled strikes over jobs surprised everyone. Around two million people countrywide supported the stayaway, and about 30,000 crammed into the centre of Johannesburg. This no doubt encouraged Vavi as much as his militancy encouraged the marchers. The old talk of robust disagreement in the alliance was replaced by much more confrontational language. That same week at a strike rally of municipal workers, Vavi said
'workers have little reason to celebrate the gains of democracy as the rich have become richer and the poor poorer’ and warned that the strike was ‘the first of many’ (Mail & Guardian, 2005).
Zuma's credentials as a worker leader were thin. He later visited several union congresses and a gathering of striking security guards while he was on trial but he was at best diplomatic about their demands. When asked on national TV at a union congress if the public sector strike was justified, he replied that he could not answer (e.tv, 7 p.m. news broadcast, 12 June 2007). But he did have a reputation for listening to all sides; his previous claim to fame was that he brokered the peace deal between Inkatha and the ANC in KwaZulu Natal. To Vavi, who aimed to advance the workers’ cause through reasoned argument with the government, Zuma's suspension appeared as a declaration of war on his whole project.
There was little evidence at the march on the 27 June of a groundswell of support for Jacob Zuma who was then just another part of Mbeki's distant cabinet in the popular eye. But when Vavi spoke in support of Zuma there, presenting him as yet another of Mbeki's victims, Zuma's name became linked with the imagery of resistance to inequality. The battle between Zuma and Mbeki had become the battle between the working class and Mbeki's pro-capitalist policies.
This had the contradictory effect of further encouraging the revolt, in that it sent a signal that it was acceptable to directly confront Mbeki. For the first time in a decade, union members began to feel their unions were ready to back a fight. That helped to unleash a wave of strikes, including the bitter three month strike of security workers and two month strikes of cleaners and shop workers in 2006, and a massive, very politicised public sector strike in 2007 which pushed the number of strike days to its highest level since 1996. Delivery protests not only continued but now started to attract greater numbers. In one case, residents in Kliptown squatter settlement in Soweto battled the police until the police ran out of rubber bullets and teargas.
Vavi and Nzimande talk of contesting the state in favour of the working class, but the concept of NDR, which dominates the party and Cosatu, limited their replies to the crisis. Within the NDR frame, the state can only be contested by contesting nationalist organisation -hence Zuma, rather than a clear labour candidate such as Vavi or Nzimande.
Zuma was the ‘natural’ choice for what was essentially a grassroots revolt against neo-liberalism only from the point of view of a strategy that could not imagine fundamentally new ways of influencing government policy even while they were helping to call up something quite new on the ground. The unfolding logic of that strategy presented Zuma as the best hope to restore a voice in government because of his broad appeal, and therefore they turned a blind eye to his tribalism and sexism.
Finally, we must explain how Zuma was accepted on the ground. Conversations with Cosatu members during a march in January 2008 suggest their support is based centrally on expectations of Zuma concerning unemployment and inequality and seldom on accepting Zuma's negative qualities which are rationalised away in many ways such as ‘we all make mistakes’ and ‘I know he is corrupt but all politicians are corrupt anyway’. For many, the line must seem very fine between Zuma's financial favours and the way prominent politicians like Ramaphosa were catapulted to wealth in the early black empowerment deals. At least one marcher unhappily accepted Zuma as the only alternative on offer, but expected that Zuma would be replaced by a third candidate after the corruption trial.
It would however be a mistake to dismiss Zuma as a blank instrument of left social forces. Zuma has his own political ambitions, and by linking Zuma to a yearning for justice, Vavi and Nzimande have greatly increased the legitimacy of Zuma's ethnicism and sexism, a danger that may only become apparent if the new leadership also disappoints and people cast around for other options.
What Does this Mean for the Future of South Africa?
Polokwane has nevertheless reintro-duced an element of unpredictability to South African politics–old strategies persist in new conditions. What points of friction and lubrication are foreshadowed?
We must understand first that what is expected of Zuma by those who built him is to take their advice as Mbeki did not. How things unfold will probably owe as much to the very mixed bag that is the NWC than Zuma alone. This may become a new test for the notions of class compromise at the heart of the NDR, and certainly for the unity of purpose of the forces aligned against Mbeki.
An issue reported to be creating tension(City Press, 2008) is what will happen if Zuma does go to trial and is convicted. An attempt to manoeuvre Kgalema Mothlante, who was mooted as a compromise candidate before Polokwane, onto cabinet as a co-deputy president has been taken as a signal that he is being seen as a replacement for Zuma.
What about the key interface between a Zuma presidency-in-waiting and the movements on the ground that have positioned him to become president of the country? Despite confidence from Mbeki's defeat, much of the impetus to take to the streets may be defused by the expectation that powerful people are acting on one's behalf. However, the fact that the Zuma camp does owe such a big part of their victory to the militancy of the past three years puts pressures on the new leadership right away. And those like Vavi and Nzimande who see this as a chance to, at last, influence policy are keen to make their mark quickly.
However, Mbeki insists the ANC should not micro-manage the economy and may resist the calls to implement resolutions such as free education, which could create flashpoints despite the new leadership's attempts to downplay divisions post-Polokwane and their inclusion of Mbeki in the ANC's highest meetings.
Will the new guard call their supporters onto the street over such conflicts, thus cementing Mbeki's defeat? Or will they subsume everything else to the battle to disband the special unit, the Scorpions, that collected the evidence against Zuma? In the near future, moments of truth for the Zuma support base are likely to be delayed although the frictions outlined may yet conjure up fragmentary outbursts which test the limits of the Cosatu/ SACP strategy
Just how left would the new leadership be in government? There is no real sign of impending capital flight, either because of the brief press hysteria about a communist takeover or on account of the allegations of corruption. Mbeki's unpopularity was not, despite appearances, a mere fact of his personality but stemmed from conforming to certain economic pressures, such as the crisis of profitability. The new leadership will remain sensitive to such pressures but the pressures have changed. For one thing, social instability and high crime associated with massive unemployment is bad for business. Capital might be ready to briefly tolerate the costs of a slightly wider social welfare system. In any case, what is on the cards is not full scale social welfarism. The Polokwane resolutions are much more detailed on interventionist industrial policy The ability of such policies to meet the demands from below will be hostage to the vagaries of a bigger economy.
