Risks of post-Zuma era

It is what comes after Jacob Zuma that should concern us as much as whether he will be removed from power. A conspiracy within the ANC’s national executive committee that extends to the parliamentary caucus is the most likely way by which he can be removed. This could happen within a month, or Zuma may survive (as ANC leader, at least) to exert an influence over SA for the rest of his life.

However, were he to lose his formal positions of power a number of risks arise.

One is that he has put in place an infrastructure that allows him to direct the activities of the party and the government by remote control.

A second is that this very infrastructure turns on him, casts him out, but continues to govern in precisely the same way he did — while basking in the adulation of having solved the Zuma problem.

A third is that his communist and leftist adversaries in the tripartite alliance and civil society play a leading role in removing him, only to go on and drive SA into a socialist-inspired recession. We have written in this newspaper before that SA may, cruelly, be better off under Zuma than under many of his leading critics.

The fourth is that the ANC unites behind a deal to secure Zuma’s retirement. But in trying to unite communists with economic reformers and the corrupt with the not-corrupt, the ANC would be so paralysed that it could not introduce structural reforms to trade, labour, empowerment or property rights policy.

Only if the administration that follows that of Zuma’s introduces such reforms will economic and social circumstances in the country show marked improvement.

Frans Cronje

CEO, Institute of Race Relations