‘Zuma just a convenient whipping boy’
Blame the ANC — and business for allowing its policies to go unchallenged — for SA’s economic woes
THE biggest danger to the country is not President Jacob Zuma, says economist and political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki. It is the ANC.
“Zuma is not the only one destroying the country,” he says. “The ANC is destroying the country.”
The strategy of those demanding the recall of Zuma is to keep the ANC in power by heaping all the blame for what has gone wrong on his head and downplaying the role of the ANC. This is dangerously misleading and creates the false hope that without Zuma the country’s problems will be over.
Senior ANC veterans began calling for Zuma’s recall after Nkandla. But they’re ignoring the ANC’s role in that scandal.
“The ANC as a whole voted not to implement the public protector’s report on Nkandla. If you remove Zuma, those people who are protecting the privileged elite will continue to bring down the country,” he says.
And the reasons given by the ratings agencies for downgrading South Africa are not about Zuma.
“Their reasons are primarily that the civil service is hugely overpaid, and that the combined amounts of civil service salaries and social grants are forcing South Africa to borrow more money — loans it will not be able to service,” says Mbeki.
“Whether Zuma is president or not, that is ANC policy.”
ANC policy has caused the mismanagement of state-owned enterprises. Removing Zuma will not change the policy underlying their collapse.
“Eskom was hugely mismanaged long before Zuma became president. We ran out of power in 2008. Zuma was not president. ANC policies led to this catastrophe. Not Zuma.”
The same goes for other parastatals like SAA, which was losing billions of rands long before Zuma became president and made his close friend Dudu Myeni chairwoman.
“The notion that our problems are caused by Zuma is a red herring. ANC policies are causing the crisis in our economy. The way [the government] manages the education system, transport system, power generation system, taxation expenditure, the budget and huge government borrowing — these are all ANC policies — not Zuma’s policies.”
If the ANC recalls Zuma then whoever it appoints in his place, be it ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa or someone else, will continue with the same ANC policies.
“Where will he get the power to continue with other policies than the ones leading to the very same crisis we’re in?”
AngloGold Ashanti chairman Sipho Pityana used the funeral of ANC stalwart Arnold Stofile in August to call for Zuma’s removal, and he received a standing ovation from CEOs and fund managers when he repeated his call at a mining indaba this week.
But what Mbeki calls “the Sipho Pityana scenario” is only to protect the ANC from being held accountable for its shortcomings by pretending that one individual is responsible for the country’s plight.
“The whole party is responsible for the crisis that the country is in. Which is why the electorate in the metropolitan areas are starting to reject the ANC.”
He says Pityana’s call is not about saving the country but about saving the ANC by making Zuma the scapegoat for its disastrous performance.
“It’s the ANC that is responsible for the downgrading we are faced with. ANC policies, not Zuma’s private policies.
“This is a strategy to keep the ANC in power, not a strategy to change its destructive policies. To absolve the ANC of responsibility for the downgrading, for the crisis in our universities and so on.”
But wasn’t it Zuma who fired former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene?
Mbeki points out that the ANC’s top six leaders told a press conference afterwards that Zuma had consulted them about his decision to fire Nene and replace him with the unknown David van Rooyen, and they agreed to it.
“Now people are trying to say they should go unpunished when they were part of that destabilising of the country’s economy. They’re saying the ANC shouldn’t be punished, only one individual should be used as a scapegoat and then everything can carry on as usual.”
What South Africa needs is not Zuma’s recall but real political competition to the ANC. And this competition is now emerging, says Mbeki.
“Showing Zuma as a scapegoat to the people and saying, ‘now be happy the problems are solved’, while leaving the structural issues that are driving the threat of downgrade is a wrong, wrong approach.”
Even if Zuma’s recall saves South Africa from being downgraded to junk status?
“The point is not to satisfy the ratings agencies, the point is for our country to be managed properly. The downgrade we are facing is because of the mismanagement of the economy by the ANC government.”
Mbeki, who recently wrote a book called A Manifesto for Social Change: How to Save South Africa, says business leaders who joined the government in the so-called CEO Initiative to save South Africa from a downgrade are opportunists.
“They’re thinking of their own government licences and other things.”
He feels their intervention is late, superficial and convenient.
If they were sincere about saving the country rather than just protecting their own interests they would have acted much earlier.
“They should have been involved in fighting for better policies. Then we wouldn’t be sitting on the edge of the cliff right now. South Africa has been warned many times over the years that this was coming.
“These business leaders who are running to New York [for the SA Tomorrow investor conference this week] should have asked themselves long ago, ‘How do we mobilise to make sure these warnings don’t come to pass? How do we work together with other South Africans to put pressure on the government to manage the fiscus properly?’”
They were too scared to stick their necks out, he says.
“Now they’re running all over the place for opportunistic reasons because this is totally riskfree and, who knows, they might get some favours from the government.
“These are opportunists. Because we all knew, not from ratings agencies but South Africa’s own experts and media, that the way the government was managing its finances was going to lead to a fiscal cliff.
“These business leaders should have demanded that the ANC government manage the economy properly.”
Did they have enough clout to do that?
“Where do you get clout from in a democracy? You get clout from mobilising the electorate. If business leaders had talked to the electorate and said, ‘We have been warned that this is the consequence, and you are going to suffer, your social grants are going to be worthless, and you students, your university funding is going to be in danger’, and so on, we wouldn’t be sitting where we are now.
“But these guys were not prepared to risk doing what is normal in any democracy and lobby against bad policies. You don’t lobby against bad policies just by talking to the politicians behind closed doors, you also talk to the voters, the electorate.”
They could have done this through the media or church groups or used any number of other platforms.
He says the biggest fear of business when the ANC took over was the nationalisation clause of the Freedom Charter. The primary concern was to make sure that didn’t happen.
“From then on there’s been a live and let live attitude by business — to leave the government to do its own thing.”
But the government has started diverging from this mutually convenient arrangement. The issue of confiscation is back on the agenda.
“Now business is waking up and saying, ‘What should we do?’ ”
In spite of his acerbic assessment of the failure of business to hold the ANC government to account Mbeki does not support the view that business was any better at speaking truth to power under apartheid.
It collaborated with the apartheid regime until its interests were directly threatened by the regime’s policies.
Anglo American boss Gavin Relly led a delegation to meet the ANC in exile in 1985. Mbeki says this was only because business had realised by then that the game was up.
“The country was burning, the US banks had imposed financial sanctions and refused to roll over its loans and Congress had begun imposing sanctions.”
It took a belated appreciation of the chasm yawning beneath them to concentrate their minds, says Mbeki.
Pretty much like now.
We ran out of power in 2008. Zuma was not president. ANC policies led to this catastrophe The whole party is responsible for the crisis South Africa is in Business was not prepared to risk doing what is normal in any democracy and lobby against bad policies