ANC heads towards turning point
South Africa’s ruling party on verge of an irreparable split
per cent. Then things got worse. From 2014-2016, growth fell to 1.1 per cent.
Not surprisingly, the average number of violent public protests climbed from 21 per year during the good times (2004-2008) to 164 per year in recent years (2014-2016). There are nearly 20 million South Africans aged between 15 and 35, and just 6.2 million of them have jobs. Youth unemployment is double the rate for adults, and it’s nearly four times higher for black youth (40 per cent) than white youth (11 per cent).
The Government’s promises to turn things around don’t have much credibility. Zuma has survived nearly 800 separate charges of fraud, money-laundering, and graft, a court ruling that he violated the country’s constitution, multiple votes of noconfidence, and a rape trial. South Africa’s Central Bank governor has now called for a public investigation into ties between Zuma, business leaders, and a family of Indian businessmen known as the Guptas.
To rally his followers, Zuma and his allies have abandoned the sound macroeconomic policymaking of the early years of independence in favour of a fist-shaking, left-wing populism that deflects blame for worsening economic conditions onto domestic rivals and foreign powers. The state uses high tariffs and subsidies to protect state-owned companies and state-dominated sectors from competition. Protections for union workers make it harder for the unemployed to get jobs. The state battles unemployment by spending money it doesn’t have to hire more workers into government jobs. Corruption has triggered violence. There have been dozens of recent politically motivated murders in Zuma’s home state of Kwazulu-Natal.
There is a faction within the ANC that wants to return the party to a more sustainable path, and it is preparing for a faceoff at December’s ANC party conference. Zuma will work to ensure that his successor is Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, his ex-wife and former head of the African Union Commission, presumably because she can protect him from prosecution when he is no longer president following elections in 2019.
Cyril Ramaphosa, a senior ANC leader who first rose to prominence as the party’s lead negotiator during the transition from apartheid to democracy, poses the strongest challenge to this plan. If Ramaphosa loses in December, he will likely lead a faction out of the ANC and could join a coalition led by the centrist Democratic Alliance, as well as leftwing parties and organisations that want an end to Zuma’s era of corruption.
Tensions are clearly on the rise. An ANC meeting in Eastern Cape province on October 1 was disrupted by brawling, chair-throwing party activists. “We are going through difficult moments as ANC. The December conference stands out as the beacon of hope where we will renew the ANC and unite the ANC,” Ramaphosa reportedly told the crowd after order was restored.
Party leaders should remember that there is an entire generation of South Africans who know the ANC not as the party of liberation but as the party of power. It is increasingly likely that, whatever happens at the showdown in December, at the next election, the ANC will lose that power. What happens next will, for better or for worse, set South Africa on a path towards its future.