[Marxism] More South African left views on Zuma

[glparramatta <glparramatta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some more commentaries from the South African left on the rise of Zuma and the 
likely nature of a Zuma-led regime. It is useful to read them in conjunction 
with Dale McKinley's and Patrick Bond's articles, published in Links and other 
places ( http://www.dsp.org.au/links/node/232 & 
http://www.dsp.org.au/links/node/243 )
Norm.

*************

The left and Zuma: be careful what you wish for

Mazibuko Jara: POLOKWANE BRIEFING

02 December 2007 11:59

In SACP and Cosatu parlance we are now on the verge of dislodging the

1996 class project represented by Thabo Mbeki.

Or are we?

This is an opportune time for the left to confront some hard questions

-- and they should start with interrogating the allegedly progressive,

democratic and transformative policy credentials of a Jacob Zuma-led ANC.

Without a doubt the succession battle has created conditions for a more

democratic ANC. But how deep is this process, how long will it last and

just how progressive is it? Is political space being sought only for a

new elite of alliance leaders, or for people at the grassroots?

Stephen Friedman has observed that it is normal for changes in the

Presidency to be limited to the next level of the political elite. As

the SACP and Cosatu, we must demonstrate how our anti-Mbeki, pro-Zuma

project will prove to be different. Have democratic and pluralistic

practice flowered or suffered in the SACP and Cosatu during the pro-Zuma

mobilisation?

The fact is, despite its ïdemocraticï colouring, the anti-Mbeki

challenge has not been consistently driven by a progressive politics.

The left needs to reinvigorate the traditions and practices of popular

democracy and mobilisation that can truncate anti-democratic capitalist

relations. We need pluralities of democratic power: if the Presidency or

Parliament fail, our hopes and aspirations must not collapse alongside them.

Going beyond personality-driven drama, holding political office needs to

be thought of as a revolutionary task in a wider, transformative process

of social and economic change that champions popular interests.

Yet to a large degree the anti-Mbeki challenge has been about what

Jeremy Cronin critiqued last year as a ïcounter-politics of

demagogically glued-together grievances, and of ï messiahsï.

The politics of grievance inevitably spirals up to plots,

counter-ïconspiracies, hype and sensation, all driven by the need to

deliver the next blow against the other side. The end result of such a

detour is systematic political demobilisation, loss of democratic values

and undermining democratic impulses in broader society. Politics becomes

a kind of theatre in which the people are disempowered spectators with

the periodic illusion of choices: which show to watch, when to applaud,

failing which they can grumble in protest or fall asleep.

This story line foretells the death of progressive democratic politics.

Progressive politics demands that the SACP and Cosatu should be held

politically, organisationally and ideologically accountable by the

constituency we claim to represent. In this way, we can test the popular

applicability of our strategic and tactical choices, including whether

we have a radical programme to confront a socially and ecologically

disastrous economic system. Only in this sense -- and not through

insider trading -- can we really shift policies.

This brings us to the hard and patient task of rebuilding a political

and organisational base to contest power relations on the basis of what

we are for, not merely what we are against. Could the neoliberal project

not have been more sustainably challenged on this principled basis? Why

on a questionable Zuma horse?

What difference will a Zuma presidency make? How can Zuma overcome the

structural constraints imposed by the liberal democratic framework on

the sweeping economic and social transformation that South Africa

requires? That is, of course, assuming he wants to embark on such a

course -- an assertion for which there is no evidence. In his current

seduction of business Zuma is clearly affirming the continuity of the

1996 class project. It is therefore doubtful whether a Zuma-led ANC can

rupture the axis between the state and capital.

The succession race has been marked by claims of an ANC shift to the

left since the June policy ïconference. But what evidence is there for

this assertion where it counts the most -- in the daily lives of the

majority? How will the resolutions address structural unemployment,

water cut-offs, the housing crisis, the failing public health system,

the crisis of public education, and the completely absent public

transport system? How different will the state be from the current

neoliberal model?

The draft resolutions seem consistent with a capitalist developmental

state. In the interests of its own preservation, such a state recognises

increasing socioeconomic inequality and political dissatisfaction among

the poor. So we have seen greater infrastructural spending, slight

increases in social grants, incremental increases in public-sector

salaries and some rhetorical critique of the ïfree marketï by Mbeki

himself. Yet in the absence of evidence of a substantive shift, the

alliance left has to demonstrate what policy differences will emerge

under a Zuma-led ANC.

South Africa also requires leadership to challenge the anti-democratic

impulses in our socially conservative society -- to mobilise against

sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, racism and ethnicity. We have to face up

to the reality that a Zuma-led ANC holds the prospect of reinforcing

much of this backwardness.

Our current strategy strongly suggests a serious drive to rebuild a

radical, democratic and left-oriented ANC. This is advanced as the only

possible strategy. But ironically, it was not just the 1996 class

project that isolated socialist struggles. Our own strategy must share a

portion of the blame.

Whatever happens in Polokwane, our strategy opens us to the risk of

co-option (deliberate or not) into what may be a better ANC, but one

that merely aspires to reform, not revolution.

Mazibuko Jara, a member of the SACP Cape Town district committee and

co-managing editor of Amandla Publishers, writes in his personal capacity

****************

ON POLITICS AND ECONOMICS: Cosatu and the ANC national conference

Can Limpopo be another Morogoro?

Dinga Sikwebu, SA Labour Bulletin, Vol 31 Number 4 September/October 2007

Cosatu emerged from the June ANC policy conference optimistic that the ANC 
remained a party with a bias towards the working class. Dinga Sikwebu questions 
this assumption and argues that Cosatu needs to deepen its understanding in 
order to better comprehend what drives ANC policy.

When 1 500 African National Congress (ANC) delegates filled a hall at Kempton 
Parkâs Gallagher Estate for a policy conference in June 2007, large parts of 
Johannesburg were under snow. If everything goes according to the Congress of 
South African of Trade Unionsâ (Cosatu) plans, when the ANC holds its 
national conference in December, the snow will have melted and political 
temperatures will be at boiling point. This is not about Limpopoâs summer 
temperatures but concerns the fierce contest which Cosatu hopes to mount. If 
the song popular in Cosatu meetings, SodibanâeLimpopo is anything to go by, 
the die is cast for Polokwane. Since its national congress in September 2006, 
the countryâs biggest union federation has been active in a campaign to 
influence the outcome of the ANC December conference. After noting the ANCâs 
shift âfrom earlier working-class bias as adopted in its Morogoro Congress in 
1969â, Cosatuâs Congress resolved that âthe forthcoming ANC national 
conference presents another opportunity for the working class to assert its 
leadership of the NDR (National Democratic Revolution).â What are the 
prospects for this succeeding? Can Cosatu influence and shift the ANC 
leftwards? How probable is an ANC return to its Morogoro stance?

COSATU UPS THE STAKES

Having identified the importance of the ANC conference, Cosatuâs Congress 
adopted two tasks. First, Cosatu had to develop a programme aimed at uniting 
the liberation movement. Second, it must identify ANC leadership which could 
best pursue a programme in the interests of the working class. The call to 
identify leaders to drive âthe liberation movement programmeâ marked a 
departure from earlier Cosatu approaches where the question of who leads the 
ANC was regarded as the latterâs business.

After the Congress, Cosatu developed a framework and criteria for election of 
ANC leaders. The federation was also active around the ANC policy conference. 
It produced detailed responses to ANC draft policy documents and dispatched 
these to membership with the hope that this would assist members active in ANC 
branches. The paper on ANC leadership summarises Cosatuâs bottomline. This 
includes a commitment by the ANC to:

 Undergo transformation and implementation of the Freedom Charter including 
its call for nationalisation, redistribution of wealth, land reform and free 
and compulsory education. This commitment to the Charter, an end to commodified 
service delivery, and abolition of anti-worker legislation will measure whether 
the ANC is shifting leftwards.

 Turn the second decade of democracy into a decade of the working class and 
poor through implementation of programmes aimed at ending unemployment and 
poverty.

 View the ANC-Cosatu-South African Communist Party (SACP) Alliance as the 
driver of transformation in society and the state. A political centre made up 
of the three organisations should be established with the task to determine 
policy and deployment to government and the state.

The August 2007 Cosatu Central Committee had on its agenda the finalisation of 
the federationâs position on the ANC leadership race as well as formulation 
of a framework for a pact that will reconfigure the ANC-Cosatu-SACP alliance.

WILL THE STRATEGY DELIVER?

According to the federationâs leadership, the strategy to influence the ANC 
is yielding results. A Cosatu press statement issued after the ANC policy 
conference optimistically declared that âthe ANC remains first and foremost a 
liberation movement with a bias towards the working classâ. This assessment 
resulted from Cosatuâs reading of conference outcomes. There is a similar 
tone in the political report tabled at Cosatuâs September Central Committee. 
The report calls âfor an active state-led industrial strategy; developmental 
fiscal and monetary policy; free and compulsory education; a comprehensive 
social security system etcâ, as confirmation that the ANC remains a working 
class-biased movement.

But another reading of the ANC conference can lead to a less-optimistic 
assessment. Firstly, nowhere in ANC resolutions is there enthusiasm for 
reconfiguring the tripartite alliance. The resolution on organisational renewal 
notes the call from Cosatu for a pact and the debate within the SACP on 
electoral options for the party, but dismissively states that the âANC 
respects the right of individual Alliance partners to discuss and arrive at 
their own decisions on how they seek to pursue their strategic objectives. 
Consistent with this principle, the ANC will continue to determine, in its own 
structures and processes, on how best to advance its own strategic 
objectivesâ. Issues such as the establishment of a state-owned bank, mining, 
steel, energy, information and communication parastatals, which Cosatu lists as 
indicators of a shift, have been sent back to branches â as were issues such 
as a rural development strategy, land reform and the debate on the 
appropriateness of running a surplus as an element of fiscal policy.

The second notable thing about the ANC conference is how bland some of the 
resolutions are. What does a call on the state to âensure proper management 
and exploitation of strategic mineral and energy resourcesâ mean? Cosatu 
celebrates this as an âinterventionist approach to the use of mineral 
resourcesâ. Does a reference to a ânew and more equitable growth pathâ 
warrant a celebration when there are no details on what that path entails? 
Itâs clear that Cosatu is now using a different measuring stick from the one 
at its Congress last year. The federationâs congress identified 
implementation of Freedom Charter provisions, abolition of legislation that 
leads to casualisation and an end to privatisation and commodified service 
delivery, as criteria to assess whether the ANC is moving leftwards. None of 
these is in the conferenceâs outcome.

Thirdly, a different reading of ANC resolutions will reveal that notions like 
the developmental state and industrial strategy are not new ANC and government 
policies. A survey of ANC documents from the 1990s shows how the two concepts 
have been part of the organisationâs policy arsenal. The resolution for a 
national health insurance also goes back to the 1997 ANC national conference in 
Mafikeng. The Stellenbosch ANC conference in 2002 called on the government 
âto continue with plans towards a comprehensive social security systemâ. So 
was its identification of the use of monetary policy âin a flexible manner, 
consistent with broad aims of the ANC economic policy, including job creation, 
investment and poverty eradicationâ. Instead of heralding hese policies as 
shifts, the question Cosatu should ask is: what is it that makes the ANC unable 
to translate these into government policies?

It appears that the political strategy to contest the ANCâs direction 
predisposes Cosatu to seeing shifts where none exist or where their qualitative 
impact on the working class and the poor is uncertain. As ANC economic 
transformation coordinator Michael Sachs says: âIt is becoming predictable 
that whenever the ANC meets, Cosatu will declare a shift leftwards. This is 
what the federation said when the ANC had its National General Council (NGC) in 
Port Elizabeth in 2000. Cosatu also referred to a shift after the Stellenbosch 
national conference in 2002. Similar pronouncements were made when we had 
another NGC in 2005â. For Sachs, developments in the ANC since 2000 is a 
âprocess of policy development in which as the ANC gains experience, it fine 
tunes and adapts its policiesâ.

MYTHOLOGY AROUND MOROGORO

One reason why Cosatu is predisposed to seeing shifts where there are none is 
the mythology around the 1969 ANC consultative conference held in Tanzaniaâs 
Morogoro. According to the federation, it was at this conference that the ANC 
affirmed its working class bias. It refers to clauses in the Strategy and 
Tactics document adopted at the conference that asserted that victory against 
apartheid âmust embrace more than formal democracyâ and accorded a special 
role to the working class in the struggle for emancipation. At the core of 
Cosatuâs current political strategy is a Morogoro Number Two.

While it is correct that positions affirming the leading role of the working 
class were adopted, what is missing is the context in which the Morogoro 
conference took place.

The conference sat during the Cold War when the struggle for influence between 
the US and the Soviet Union was at its height. Also, the international 
situation in 1969 saw the intensification of anticolonial and anti-imperialist 
struggles. So it is not an accident that the Morogoro document opens with the 
statement that the struggle in South Africa takes âplace within an 
international context of transition to the socialist system, of the breakdown 
of the colonial systemââ Ascendant anti-imperialist forces played no small 
role in pushing the ANC leftwards.

Another factor absent in accounts of Morogoro is how it took place when the ANC 
was at its lowest in terms of morale and organisation. Luli Callinicosâ book 
on Oliver Tambo and Ben Turokâs autobiography reveal how the conference was 
more occupied with questions such as the functioning of the NEC, accountability 
of leaders and pursuance of armed struggle than matters of class leadership and 
strategy.

The third point around Morogoro is how some problems that the conference meant 
to address persisted long after the gathering. Referring to struggles around 
decisions reached, Callinicos describes how resolutions âresulted in 
considerable disquiet: the answers they provided generated new problems, 
exposing fault lines along the way forwardâ.

Comparison between the 1960s and now show how different the periods are and how 
improbable it would be for the ANC to return to Morogoro positions. In 1969 the 
ANC was an illegal movement while today it manages the state.

Also important for the debate on whether the ANC can be pushed back to previous 
policy stances is to distinguish between formal adoption and actual 
implementation. Despite references to a âspecial role of the working classâ 
in Strategy and Tactics, when the Durban strikes erupted in 1973 and the new 
black unions appeared, the ANCâs reaction was according to Roger Southall in 
his Imperialism or Solidarity âcharacterised by confusion, inconsistency and 
ambivalenceâ. Having characterised apartheid as fascist, the ANC-South 
African Congress of Trade Unions-SACP alliance had little confidence in the 
development of new worker organisations.

An unsanitised version of Morogoro, shows how it is possible for the ANC to 
adopt left-leaning resolutions at its December conference without these 
becoming government policies and programmes. A chasm between resolutions and 
implementation is always possible.

NO THEORY OF PARTIES

It is not only the mythology of Morogoro that motivates Cosatuâs improbable 
mission of winning back the ANC. There exists no systematic analyses of such 
change or a theory of the role of political parties.

Cosatu has not developed an understanding of partiesâ role in 
post-independence situations. A discussion document in the run-up to Congress 
spoke about how the ANC âoperates as an adjunct to, rather than the driver of 
the stateâ. It talks about how to some the ANC is a âladder to power and 
resourcesâ and how the social composition of the organisation is changing. 
Congress resolutions adopted the same issues and spoke about the class 
contradictions within the ANC. They spoke of leadership being increasingly 
drawn from middle and capitalist classes and the dominance of the organisation 
by capital.

These are important observations, but do not constitute a theory on the role of 
parties. Although the document said the ANC was an adjunct of the state, it did 
not explain how this came about and was maintained.The document did not discuss 
how public funding of political parties, the list system and floor crossing 
produces a certain kind of ANC.

The Cosatu document is also silent on how ANC decisions such as the move to 
branch boundaries coinciding with ward demarcation, have contributed to the 
fusion of the ANC and the state. Although points are made about class 
contradictions within the ANC, there is little explanation of how these 
tensions express themselves.

There is also no attempt to understand how the dominance of capital comes 
about. Besides an assertion that the black working class remains the historical 
constituency of the ANC, Cosatu does not unpack this by identifying the 
sections that form this constituency or tease out whether there is a 
distinction between those who are members of branches and those who vote for 
the ANC. These are important questions if one considers the results of a 
National Labour and Economic Development Institute (Naledi) survey conducted 
for Cosatu in 2005. The survey states that only 35% of Cosatu leadership at its 
2006 congress. Cosatu members in the study are active in ANC branches. Only 20% 
of other unions and only 17% of nonunion members, belong to the ANC.

In an article on political parties, Blyth and Kazt identify four organisational 
types of parties that have appeared in Western democracies. These are elite 
parties, mass parties, catch-all parties and cartel parties.

Cartel parties arise when parties buy into neo-liberal policies such as 
export-led industrialisation, liberalisation of domestic markets and a 
dependence on foreign rather than domestic investment. In this context, space 
for policy competition becomes less, members and constituencies become 
irrelevant except in times of elections and public relations (PR) replaces 
campaigns. Dependence on PR leads to a reliance on public and corporate 
funding. Cartel parties have a twofold role â management of voter 
expectations and externalisation of policy commitments by passing policy-making 
to regulatory bodies insulated from the electorate.

The description of cartel parties resembles the ANC. Interestingly, the July 
conference did little to reverse these tendencies. Although the conference 
recommended that powers to appoint mayors and provincial premiers should revert 
to ANC constitutional structures instead of being vested in the president, 
little is said in resolutions about empowering voters. The conference resolved 
that the system of proportional representation âshould be maintained and 
strengthenedâ despite proposals from Cosatu and SACP for an electoral system 
that mixes list and constituency representation. Delegates were also divided on 
floor-crossing. A significant section trumpeted the value of laws that allow 
elected representatives to move to other parties without losing their seats.

Conference also supported state funding of political parties without any word 
on regulation of private donations. Resolutions were mum on the opening of 
policy spaces. The resolution on legislatures and governance contains no 
proposal on how to strengthen legislative arms of government in their oversight 
roles, something that Cosatu has raised in numerous submissions. There was also 
no discussion on how institutions such as the Reserve Bank should be subjected 
to mass pressure.

How Cosatu hopes to win back the ANC is a mystery. The integration of the ANC 
into state structures as well as the articulation between the party and 
capitalist networks seems to have gone unchallenged at the policy conference.

Sikwebu is a former education officer for the SA Metalworkers Union and a 
part-time lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of 
Witwatersrand.

************

ZUMA Victory a Call for the Left to Vuka
Brian Ashley

An earthquake has hit the ANC. A new leadership has wiped out the Mbeki regime 
in the ANC leadership race. This is comparable to a landslide victory for an 
opposition party in a general election. Except in this case the opposition 
party was a broad coalition of disgruntled elements within the ANC. A period of 
political instability awaits. The âdreadedâ two centres of power has 
materialised and gives rise to a lame duck President.

ANC delegates to its 52nd Conference voted for a slate rather than for 
individuals and this is likely to be carried forward into the election for the 
80 strong National Executive Committee. A chasm exists between the new ANC 
leadership and the Cabinet and the bitterness between the two âcampsâ will 
ensure that this is not going to be overcome easily, any time soon. This 
bitterness can be traced back to the split of Mbeki and his coterie from the 
SACP in 1990.

Zumaâs victory, which sees the Chairperson of the South African Communist 
Party become the General Secretary of the ANC, gives the sense that the 
militant version of the National Democratic Revolution and the 1980s Alliance 
of the ANC and Communist Party has been restored.

However, this is just perception. The reality is different. Already new Deputy 
President of the ANC, Kgalema Motlanthe â possible next President of the 
country should Zuma be successfully charged with corruption â has made clear 
that there will be no change in economic policy.

And this is where the similarities with the 80s balance of forces in the ANC 
and Tripartite Alliance gives way to current realities. Most of those elected 
to the leadership of the ANC accept the logic that political and economic 
stability requires no confrontation with capital, the need to have policies 
that attract foreign investment, and thus, like in general elections in most 
parts of the world in the era of capitalist globalisation, the new party in 
power follows, in the main, the policies of the vanquished, only style and 
image change. The form may change but the content of class power will remain. 
Capital, over the last 13 years has consolidated its class rule winning 
legitimacy for the market, the protection of private property and of course 
existing property relations. The freedom of capital, its mobility, penetration 
into new areas, such as services, its influence on the state, profitability and 
its ability to co-opt leading sections of the former national liberation 
movement are all important elements of its consolidated position. And it is 
important to highlight that a considerable component of the Zuma coalition are 
aspirant members of the black young bourgeois anxious to widen access to the 
spoils of power, i.e. tenders, contracts and BEE deals. What has been playing 
itself out in the ANC over the last couple of years is an inter-class and 
inter-organisational fight for primitive accumulation.

The Zumaites were able to put themselves at the head of the digruntlement that 
emerged in the ANC â which itself was only a reflection of wider anger and 
disappointment of working class and poor people in the broader society.

This has important implications for the left in South Africa; and the absence 
of independent political working class formations with a mass base is once 
again going to be a critical factor. Just as the victory of the ANC in the 1994 
elections presented opportunities for shifting SAâs political economy to the 
left through militant mass campaigns, strikes, occupations and demonstrations 
around the expectations of a radical break with apartheid and its accumulation 
path, this earthquake that has struck the ANC presents opportunities to stake 
radical claims.

However, an analogy with the immediate years following the â94 elections 
gives a clue what is likely to transpire. The SACP leadership, which now has a 
considerable stake in the ANC leadership, will most likely caution against any 
act that undermines the ANC under its new leadership. Rather than depending on 
independent mass mobilisation, the road to radical transformation will be 
subordinated to the internal dynamics within the ANC.  Criticisms of the ANC 
will be muted and the mass movement will be asked to exercise patience as âwe 
gradually dismantle the Mbeki projectâ. The probable co-option of leading 
SACP and COSATU members into the Zuma team will convey a new era of hope for 
the Tripartite Alliance.

While this is most probable, it does not have to be inevitable. If Zuma could 
tap into the anger of neoliberal class rule and manipulate it to his ends â 
within the ANC that is - the left can also mobilise this anger as well as the 
expectation that things will change under Zuma. However, this will require 
unprecedented unity in action amongst left forces in SA. The left needs to 
respond very quickly and put itself at the head of mass campaigns that can 
mobilise hundreds of thousands of people while appealing to militant sections 
of the ANC, SACP and COSATU. For example, a national campaign against Eskomâs 
proposed tariff increases, imagined along the lines of the late 1980s Anti LRA 
(Labour Relations Act) which built unprecedented unity of the mass movement and 
led to the 1989 Workers Summit involving both COSATU and NACTU, would be a good 
starting point.

All the hated policies of the Mbeki government should be targeted. A largely 
symbolic campaign âGEAR must goâ should be initiated alongside âbread and 
butter campaignsâ for jobs, a decent supply of free water, electricity, 
housing, etc. where pressure is put on the âZUMA Allianceâ to show their 
difference to Mbeki by rejecting GEAR and indicating their alternative policy 
choices. In other words the strategy of the left should be, through mass 
campaigns and mobilisation to drive a wedge between COSATU, other components of 
the mass movement and the new leadership of the ANC under Zuma. In addition, a 
strong message should be sent to Zuma and co. the oppressed want change.

An underground pamphlet in the 1980s issued as part of the campaign to reject 
the Tricameral Parliament and was influencial in the formation of the United 
Democratic Front issued a clarion call even more relevant today: âLet us 
unite in the year of the United Frontâ. Lets make 2008 the year of the United 
Front and use the space that the divisions in the ANC has opened up to build a 
militant non-sectarian left.

****

Terri Barnes
Associate professor of history at UWC
Just a âgood olâ boyâ from Nkandla

In December 2000, I stayed up every night watching CNN as the challenges 
to George Bushâs election never quite achieved tidal-wave proportions. 
They ebbed away when Al Gore finally quit. In South Africa people shook 
their heads: âDo the Americans understand what they have done?â

Now the shoe is on the other foot. In December 2007, people around the 
world are asking the same thing about South Africans. How on Earth has 
the ANC elected Jacob Zuma its president?

Zuma is not a blathering idiot like Dubya, but there are many 
similarities between them. Americans elected Bush in a reaction to the 
(weak) social democracy of Bill Clinton and in revulsion against his 
liberal personal habits. Bushâs election represented a clear turn to the 
right, and Bush himself was only a talking head for the forces to which 
he was indebted and dedicated: the silent American machine of big 
business, the old boysâ club and old money.

Bush, however, appealed to âthe average Americanâ because he was, in 
American slang, a âgood olâ boyâ. Thatâs a phrase from American South 
and it means he is one of us. Heâs a white guy who knows that the 
victory of the North in the Civil War was a travesty, and he values the 
same things we do: Mom, pecan pie and the National Rifle Association (NRA).

The fact that George Bush comes from old, old money and is as firm an 
establishment figure as they come didnât bother his support base. Who 
cares about all that? Heâs someone to whom we can relate!

As Bush did with Clinton, Zuma has benefited from a popular personal 
revulsion with Mbeki: his distance, his imperiousness, his sterility. 
Zuma, on the other hand, incessantly displays manly traits: possession 
of women, possession of children, that belly and the deep lovely singing 
voice raised in constant defence of the local version of the NRA. Heâs a 
manâs man! And he has drawn the wool over peopleâs eyes with the same 
kind of evasive, fake folksiness that Bush deployed with such success in 
America.

Zuma isnât even a populist. Heâs a good olâ boy from Nkandla who will be 
the front man for a set of business interests from which the public will 
avert its eyes. People starved for respect and friends wonât want to 
know, and the media are too inept to notice. The old white-tradition 
media will go on narrowly about Zumaâs lack of education and his rape 
and corruption problems. What they seemingly will never understand is 
that a large percentage of the population â the very same percentage 
that they trampled on happily and refused to educate during apartheid; 
what a coincidence â doesnât care about any of that. Do they care about 
Winnieâs transgressions? Zumaâs alleged transgressions? No. Not a damn. 
Who cares about all that â they are people to whom we can relate. And 
they seem actually to like us (unlike the white establishment, which 
generally still dips itself in disinfectant after every encounter).

The defining characteristic of American life is total amnesia. Itâs a 
nation (with exceptions, to be sure) of people who live in the present 
maxing out their credit cards. The movie where Drew Barrymore loses her 
memory every night and wakes up every morning to Adam Sandlerâs cue 
cards reminding her who she is: a potent symbol of modern American life.

Under the impact of an unrelenting dose of 13 years of genuine and 
wannabe American TV blasting into every South African home that has 
achieved electricity, one sees the blank fog of amnesia rolling thickly 
over the Mzansi brain as well. Is there any other way to explain how the 
national media can call Zuma a left candidate when one of his happiest 
Johnny-come-latelys was the Grand Poobah of the local version of The 
Apprentice a few years back? Money, money, money, money? Money!

The Bush-Zuma comparison is made complete by Gore and Mbeki â two highly 
intelligent, bloodless, stiff men. The camera is not their friend. We 
can thank our lucky stars that the Mbeki camp didnât roll out a long, 
passionate smooch for the president with Mrs Mbeki on national TV as a 
way of trying to prove his latent sexiness, the way the Democrats tried 
and failed with Al and Tipper. Wouldnât that have been something.

To conclude: Jacob Zuma is a big step to the right for South Africa. His 
allies in Cosatu and the SACP have by definition also taken a big step 
to the right. Zuma and his camp: that is what the real right in South 
Africa looks like. To non-aligned people hoping to now get themselves 
and their children out of the sand, out of the mud, out of the rain, out 
of the public hospital queues, out of the sewage â donât hold your 
breath. To the Yengenis and Agliottis of South Africa, on the other 
hand: roll right up to the trough in your 4Ã4s.

********





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