Zuma: From unifier to divider
ANC conference resolutions on building alliance unity, the relationship with Cosatu, the SACP and the South African National Civic Organisation has “broken down completely”, an SACP central committee member said. The SACP fielded its own candidates against the ANC in the recent Metsimaholo by-election in the Free State.
The Zumafication of the ANC saw Cosatu lose its long-standing general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, after he became critical of the “hyenas” in the Zuma project, who were feeding off the state.
Cosatu itself split. Its biggest affiliate, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, with some 400 000 members, was expelled. Others followed to form the South African Federation of Trade Unions, now led by Vavi.
Zuma’s two terms have led to the transformation of the ANC national executive committee (NEC) from a collective of national leaders to a coalition of regional mafias. The existence of the “premier league” and Zuma’s influence in the party’s youth and women’s leagues has, to a great extent, ensured the NEC’s inability to act against the president or rein in his self-interest.
Zuma has, since the state capture scandal broke, survived two votes of no confidence in the NEC. Those who led the charge against him — Pravin Gordhan, Derek Hanekom and Blade Nzimande — have been removed from his Cabinet.
These decisions were, according to Mantashe and ANC treasurer Zweli Mkhize, taken without consulting party leaders or its deployment committee. This is despite the 2007 resolution that the ANC must strengthen collective decision-making and consultation on deploying cadres to senior positions of authority.
In deploying cronies, Zuma’s administration has been characterised by stasis and ineptitude — best demonstrated by the South African Social Security Agency meltdown and the distribution of grants caused by women’s league president and Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini.
The National Development Plan appears stillborn despite the resolution to strengthen economic planning and implementation across government spheres.
The 2007 ANC conference resolved to strengthen state-owned enterprises and ensure they remain “financially viable”, in line with the ANC’s policy and transformation objectives. Under Zuma’s watch, parastatals have mainly transformed the bank balances of his family and closest friends.
The Zuma government has failed miserably on the land question. Ten years after the ANC reaffirmed a resolution on a land audit and undertook to complete it “within the next 18 months”, it has still not been done. The state still does not know who — including itself — owns what land, and what it is being used for, if at all.
Land reform moves more slowly than Zuma trudging towards his “day in court”. Post-settlement support is inadequate, despite promises to review it. The state’s right to expropriate land for public interest, its promises to fast-track the use of unused state land for public housing and to “review the principle of willing seller, willing buyer” are used for populist sloganeering and little more.
Rather than implement the resolution that the “allocation of customary land be democratised and should not only be the preserve of the traditional leaders”, a traditionalist Zuma has worked to achieve the opposite.
Electorally, two terms of Zuma’s presidency have hurt the ANC. New parties have been birthed from within the ANC, and opposition parties have grown. The ANC lost key metro councils — Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay — as well as rural councils, and could lose Gauteng and the Eastern Cape to the opposition in the 2019 national elections.
The decade under Daddy has been a disaster for both the ANC and the country.