Presidential term limit has anchored democracy in SA
If we could travel back in time to when the constitution was being written and asked the drafters which clauses they thought would come to matter most, what might they say?
I would guess each would have pointed to a clause in the Bill of Rights. The clauses giving access to housing or health care, perhaps, or the famous equality clause, the first on the planet to protect people on the grounds of sexual orientation. Or, if they were fearful of the majority’s intent, the clause protecting property rights.
I’d bet none of those drafters would have offered presidential term limits as the single most consequential clause in the constitution. But there is a strong argument to be made that more than any other clause it has shaped the past 25 years.
We are not very far into the democratic era and already two presidents have wanted desperately to serve more than their two prescribed terms. Thabo Mbeki believed the country would fall apart under another president, and Jacob Zuma feared he would go to jail if he lost power.
But neither could realistically contemplate a third term for it was simply not allowed. And so each contrived to put a friendly face in power, Mbeki so that he could keep governing by proxy as party leader, Zuma so that he would never be prosecuted.
Both failed, in part because it was thought they were trying to circumvent, if not in letter then certainly in spirit, the limitations on power demanded by the constitution.
It is a much more extraordinary story than first meets the eye. In the depths of SA’s many political cultures, there is no legacy demanding term limits. Apartheid’s prime ministers and presidents ruled until they grew old or were stabbed to death or had strokes or were felled by corruption scandals. Or, in FW de Klerk’s special case, negotiated themselves out of power. On the other side of the divide, Oliver Tambo ran the ANC for more than 20 years. And lesser men and quislings such as Lucas Mangope and Kaiser Matanzima ruled until they were thrown out.
The idea of term limits arrived deus ex machina; the constitution said it and so it would be. SA’s political culture took to it at once and made it sacred. It should never be forgotten what a pivotal role Nelson Mandela played in this regard. In a stroke of brilliance, he spoke of his presidency’s termination at its very beginning, in his inaugural address.
It goes to show, in a land which we often despair of as lawless, the law can be immensely powerful; it can in a very short time take root in all of our hearts, across racial, economic and many other divides. And it shows that a principle does not have to be old to be strong, for it feels as though term limits have always been sacred to us, even though they are really quite new.
The story becomes more striking still when we compare ourselves with others. Russia has term limits, but there Vladimir Putin circumvented them without raising a sweat; with a nod and a wink he sat out a term and then carried on as before. And in Rwanda, Paul Kagame rewrote the clause on presidential term limits, put the change to a vote and won in a landslide. Initially permitted to rule until 2017, he can now be in charge until 2034.
Something special happened in SA when we put term limits in our constitution. We decided that they were sacrosanct; there would be no nods and no winks, no constitutional amendments to be put to a vote. This simple clause resonated deeply with our scepticism about power and our fear of its abuse; we decided to treat a few drab words as a biblical text.
Counterfactuals are always tricky. It is impossible to say how the first quarter century of democracy would have worked out in the absence of those words. But we can be sure that it would not have been pretty.