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Tuesday March 19, 2024

New beginning, old baggage

By Khalid Bhatti
February 24, 2018

Last week, South Africa’s Jacob Zuma lost the internal struggle within his party and was forced out of the presidency. Cyril Ramaphosa led a successful factional fight to oust Zuma and become the country’s president and the leader of the African National Congress (ANC).

With Zuma’s resignation, another freedom fighter and leading political figure of the ANC has departed disgracefully. It appears that history has repeated itself in South Africa. Zuma has become a victim of the same process that he had led nearly a decade ago to prevent Thabo Mbeki from completing his term.

Thabo Mbeki remained the country’s president for eight months after Zuma’s triumph at the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007. Zuma, on the other hand, held the presidential slot for less than two months after the wave of opposition against him. He initially showed defiance towards his opponents and refused to resign. But Zuma was left with no other option after he realised that his opponents had outplayed him. He surrendered the presidency as meekly as he had assumed public office nine years ago.

For the second time in 10 years, the ANC has humiliated its president by not permitting him to complete his term. Two months after Ramaphosa was elected as the ANC’s president at the party’s December 2017 national conference, he has been appointed to the coveted post of the country’s president. It appears that Nelson Mandela was the only ANC leader whose exit was honourable.

Zuma was exceedingly popular when he led the ANC and assumed the presidency nearly a decade ago. He was respected as a veteran fighter who fought against the apartheid regime under the leadership of Nelson Mandela. However, the deteriorating economic situation during his tenure made him increasingly unpopular while the endless corruption charges and allegations that were levelled against him tarnished his image. Corruption has become a major issue in South Africa as the ruling class has been amassing wealth through illicit means at the expense of the people.

The former president found himself mired in corruption charges throughout his presidency and survived eight no-confidence votes in parliament. But this time around, his colleagues in the ANC threw their weight behind the Economic Freedom Fighters. This party was led by Julius Malema, who tabled another vote of no-confidence in parliament against Zuma. Malema, who was once a popular left-wing leader of the ANC, was forced out by Zuma in 2012 because he was a potential challenger to the former president’s leadership in the ANC.

Zuma assumed public office when the country was at the cusp of a revolt against the neo-liberal Growth Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy that Mbeki had imposed in the country in 1996 without consulting the ANC structures. The contentious policy led to the rapid polarisation of classes. These divisions were reflected in the service delivery protests that started in 2004 when the working class communities revolted against poor service delivery and corruption. This was the largest public sector strike in South Africa’s history at the time.

These events led to the creation of what was later referred to as the ‘coalition of the wounded’. The coalition comprised victims of Mbeki’s marginalisation and ‘witch-hunt’ as well as those who had opposed the policies he enforced on the ANC and its Tripartite Alliance partners – the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu), the SA Communist Party (SACP) and the Malema-led ANC Youth League.

Under Zuma’s watch, the wave of poverty, which began during Mbeki’s regime, started to accelerate. Around 55 percent of the population lived in poverty while nine million people remained unemployed. During his tenure, the economy has experienced two recessions and was downgraded by a major credit rating agency.

The ANC has witnessed two major splits under Zuma’s regime: the creation of the Congress of the People in 2008 and the Economic Freedom Fighters in 2012. During his tenure, the Tripartite Alliance has also lost all credibility. The Cosatu has done away with the 340,000-strong National Union of Metal Workers after its decision to withdraw support for the ANC in the 2014 elections. The political bankruptcy of the Cosatu and SACP can be gauged from the fact that they “cling on for dear life” to the Tripartite Alliance. These parties have actively campaigned for Ramaphosa, who is known as the “butcher of the Marikana mineworkers”.

Ramaphosa victory has been largely welcomed by most people in the country, including the working class population in the country. There is some semblance of hope among them that Ramaphosa will fulfil his promise to root out corruption, improve the economy, create employment, eliminate poverty and raise the standard of living.

Under Zuma, the ANC’s electoral support has dwindled and the party has had to relinquish control in three major metros – Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela.

The political crisis has now pushed the ANC towards a deep crisis and has impacted the class struggle in South Africa. The ANC, which had been the party of a majority of black South Africans for decades, came into power through a revolutionary movement that threatened to do away with South African capitalism. However, the ANC’s attempts to govern the country on a capitalist basis and pursue neo-liberal economic policies have exposed the party to the consequences of operating within a capitalist system. Over the same period, the lives of a vast majority of blacks have been affected.

This crisis within the capitalist system had made the class contradictions within the party all the more pronounced. The ANC’s top leaders have joined the ranks of the ruling elite while the plight of the black majority has heightened over time. At this stage, we are only witnessing the political expression of the crisis within the capitalist system along with increased fragmentation in the party. This is a process that has persisted for years and is now having a strong impact on South African society and the extent of class consciousness.

The writer is a freelance journalist.