Sharp reminder of the damage losers do

FOR an object lesson in why ANC MPs support President Jacob Zuma no matter how absurd the issue, look no further than the two main political parties in the UK after that country’s historic vote on June 23 to exit the EU.

The Conservative Party and the opposition Labour Party were immediately pitched into brutal leadership battles after the surprise decision in the referendum. Leaders in each have become devious, brawling children in a playground and the result is a leadership vacuum so serious it threatens to become an existential threat to Britain’s place in the world.

Perhaps it is age. Perhaps they have forgotten what the ANC still knows — in politics, party unity is paramount. No matter how bad the leader, no matter how miserable the public, you stick together until opportunity allows you not to.

In politics, that opportunity almost always comes with some success.

By way of illustration, take the tripartite alliance of the ANC, Cosatu and the SACP. They cling to each other not out of some revolutionary zeal, but because they are each afraid in their own way of what might happen if they let go and went their separate ways.

In the case of the alliance, I doubt it could survive 6% GDP growth intact. We all know they despise one another but it is only economic success that could break them up. The revolution is afraid of prosperity. Anxiety is its glue.

In the ANC, opinion polls ahead of the August 3 local government elections have the same effect. They show the ANC losing ground (I have to say, though, that I’ll believe it when I see it) in Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay and Tshwane. As a result the ANC closes ranks around Zuma even though most party leaders know he has failed as a leader. If that sounds counter-intuitive, think about what would happen to the party on August 3 if the Top Six began openly to fight among themselves.

It is not fear of Zuma, but fear of the wider consequences that makes ANC leaders like Cyril Ramaphosa and Zweli Mkhize stand by and allow Zuma’s swivel-eyed lickspittle at the SABC, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, to run the place like it was North Korea. They’re embarrassed, but they can’t speak. You protect the party first. Repeat that. Party first. Zuma has said it often enough himself and he is quite right — politically.

Expecting them to speak, as most of us do, is naïve, and the spectacle of British politics today shows us the reason why.

It is a sad fact that the worse the Zuma ANC does on August 3, the more he will close our society down — NGOs and the rest of the media are next on the list — and the less the ANC in parliament will do to stand in his way. That’s the way losers behave. Invading armies always hurt societies and civilians more in retreat than they do on the advance.

It is amazing that the ANC, for all its bravado, its 22 years in power and the immense reserves of legitimacy built up during the struggle against apartheid, still cannot act with confidence. A confident government would not care to keep silly secrets, to float grotesque theories about Western powers trying to effect regime change, or to restrict NGOs from doing their work — there’s a lot to do in South Africa and they’re trying to help.

A confident government would not sit back and allow its public broadcaster to defile and deform its mission the way Motsoeneng is doing now. It would be a joke if seven million fellow South Africans had any choice about what to listen to or to watch. But they don’t. They are trapped.

I recently drove from Johannesburg to Cape Town and for long stretches the only signal I could get was SAfm. I could not believe what I was hearing. It wasn’t what was said but what was, I could easily tell, being ignored by the news department. It was nauseating.

It was censorship parading as a service. The lickspittle will get away with it for a while longer, sadly, but I think I’d rather live with that (I don’t actually have to, I have a choice) than with the kind of electoral success that might ease Zuma’s chronic foreboding. Hell, he might even credit the SABC for winning and then we’d all be in real trouble.

The worse the Zuma ANC does on August 3, the more he will close our society down