Best Wishes, and a Warning, to COPE

Last week, en route to a speech at New York University, I chanced upon a mural in Greenwich Village. It depicted Barack Obama as a white man and John McCain as a black. Underneath this arresting transposition was the legend:”Let the issues be the issue”.

The artist got his wish in the United States on November 4 when the Tsunami of economic woes and popular discontent with the presidency of George W Bush swept Barack Obama to power, and drowned any lingering attachments in the United States to racial politics.
South Africa’s sclerotic race-based politics, where every election since democracy could in various ways be predetermined on the basis of an ethnic census, is set for a shake-up with the formalisation of the Congress of the People (COPE) next Tuesday in Bloemfontein. Might South Africans hope that this most significant breakaway from the ruling ANC since the formation of the PAC nearly 50 years ago, leads to a localised version of “letting the issues be the issue”?
Having enjoyed (the verb endured might be more apt) the title of longest-serving leader of the official opposition in Parliament since 1994, perhaps I can offer some (unsolicited) advice to the late-joiners to the opposition patch.

First, in a mechanical sense at least, any worthwhile democrat in South Africa will welcome an addition to the scattered ranks of the country’s opposition forces. One of the reasons why our democracy has not fulfilled its early promise and the high expectations so many of us had for it ,is reflected in the last general election results. More than 50-points separated the ANC and the principal opposition that I then led. This allowed the governing party to ignore dissenting voices, sideline alternative views, however meritorious, and suck most of the oxygen out of the democratic space which the constitution, in theory, created for a multiplicity of players. Any reduction in that gap must be welcomed.

Second, it is commendable that COPE has clothed its somewhat threadbare policies in a robust defence of the constitution – our founding democratic settlement. Recent polls suggest that South Africans, retain an overwhelming faith in it, despite their misgivings about current politics and failing institutions. At this time of deep political uncertainty in South Africa and huge economic upheaval around the world, it is worth recalling the words of America’s investor sage, and its wealthiest man, Warren Buffett. He is fond of remarking in business, “it’s only when the tide goes out that you discover who’s swimming naked.” The same yardstick should measure political leaders.

It is therefore perfectly fair, to ask whether the leadership of COPE are the best guardians of our constitution and worthy stewards for its future protection. This inquiry yields a far from reassuring answer, despite the excitement at the prospect of a new challenger to ANC hegemony.

Brian Pottinger, in his excellent new work “The Mbeki Legacy” got it exactly right. He described the difference between the ascendant forces aligned to Jacob Zuma and the vanquished acolytes of Thabo Mbeki as being the difference between “ANC Classic” and “ANC Lite”. One should never underestimate the potency of the politics of resentment: that heady cocktail of hurt egos, withering resentments and loss of power. Indeed, it is difficult to discern any gulf of principle which separates the ANC from COPE. They both claim to be fighting for the real core, and the lost soul, of the governing party.

Ostensibly, the formation of COPE is not about getting even or bringing back the spirit of Thabo Mbeki through the back door. It is about the creation of an alternative based on principle. When I delivered my lecture at New York University, Breyten Breytenbach was in the audience. He gave me a copy of his recently published excoriation of the current South Africa in the latest edition of Harper’s magazine. It is subtitled “Notes of South Africa’s Failed Revolution”. As exhibit A of his deconstruction he presents the Marie Antoinette quote of Smuts Ngonyama “I didn’t struggle to be poor”. The words are entirely accurate, being the risible defence which Mr. Ngonyama [provided when asked to justify the R50 million he pocketed for his membership of a consortium that received a huge payola from the Telkom listing – in his case a result of “know-who” rather than “know how”. Breytenbach, however, inaccurately cites Ngonyama as “spokesman for the African National C0ongress”. Today, of course, he is Head of Policy for COPE. It is not his undeserved millions which concerns me. But in his new incarnation, is he still the staunch defender that he once was of the cadre policy and deployment strategy of the ANC? In 1999 when I revealed this document which stated that the accountability of all ANC cadres lay to the Party high command and not to the institutions in which they were serving, Ngonyama described me as “a childish but confused individual”. In fact, as events over the past decade have made manifest, the ANC’s decision to place its officials in every key post in every institution, especially those requiring robust independence, has led to the corrosion of the constitution which COPE has now vowed to protect.

Last week ,the New York Times highlighted on its front page a recent Harvard University study which pinned the needless death of more than 300000 South Africans on then President Mbeki’s refusal to accept the scientific consensus on AIDS and his promotion of crank remedies drawn from AIDS dissidents. When in 2000, the Democratic Alliance rolled out the provision of antiretrovirals in the Western Cape, and offered to extend the treatment in its municipalities, Ngonyama accused us of peddling “apartheid-era biological warfare”. His other colleague in COPE, Mbhazima Shilowa was at the time Premier of Gauteng. But that province resisted and fought the constitutional court case in July 2002 which the TAC launched to force birthing facilities to provide antiretrovirals to HIV-positive mothers and babies.

Thirdly, nothing has divided South Africa’s opposition forces more than questions of unity. It is therefore reassuring to note that COPE leader Mosiuoa Lekota has pledged to work with other opposition parties, including my own, on the question of creating provincial governments where the opposition commands a majority. I have warm regard for Lekota, not least because of the very kind remarks he made when I stood down as leader of the opposition. But I also remember the entirely destructive role he played in 2001, in decimating opposition forces by luring Marthinus van Skalkvyk into the ANC in an attempt to monopolise all power in the hands of the ruling party. At one level, that’s politics. At another, it brings to mind the rueful remark of a famous British politician who said, “When you want to protect a principle, don’t look for protection from among the tramplers.”

My enduring hope for the new opposition party is that it will be staunch and resolute in its attachment to constitutional principles and practice: the very ideals its key leaders undermined when they occupied the seats of power.

* Written for Independent Newspapers in South Africa- publishing date: Sunday, 14 December 2008.

A Healthy Schism in South Africa*

In 1990, when Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years' imprisonment in South Africa, he noted in his first speech to a waiting world: "I am a loyal and disciplined member of the African National Congress. I am therefore in full agreement with all of its objectives, strategies and tactics." His iconic status helped sustain the ANC over the next decade and a half as it transformed itself from a liberation movement into an electorally unassailable democratic government.

That unity unraveled last week. In short order, the party membership of former national chairman Mosiuoa Lekota was suspended after he claimed that the ANC had moved away from its founding principles. Mbhazima Shilowa, the former premier of South Africa's wealthiest province, Gauteng, resigned from the party. Both said they would call a national convention early next month with a view toward forming a new opposition party. This dramatic rupture in South Africa's ruling behemoth, which won nearly 70 percent of the vote in the 2004 election and governs the country's nine provinces and all but one of its major cities, creates hope that my country's somewhat sclerotic political system will be rejuvenated.

The seeds of this discontent can be traced to December, when the arrogant Thabo Mbeki was ousted as party president by the populist but ethically challenged Jacob Zuma, and even earlier to Zuma's 2005 ouster as deputy president of South Africa after he was implicated in a corruption case. The democratic defenestration of the once all-powerful Mbeki and his ejection from the country's presidency last month have unleashed waves of disaffection that could lead to a reconfiguration of South Africa's largely one-party politics. Both Lekota and Shilowa are key Mbeki allies, and while Mbeki has not yet signaled his support for the incipient party, other ANC grandees who exited the government in solidarity with Mbeki may pitch their tents alongside them.

I was a close observer of the ANC in power, having led the largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, in parliamentary elections in 1999 and 2004. Despite my movement's strong anti-apartheid origins, pro-poor policies and liberal political program, the ANC branded us "the white party" in particular reference to my skin color. That did wonders for the Democratic Alliance in minority communities, but it excluded us from any meaningful share of the majority-black vote. Race mobilization helped the ANC secure its overwhelming majorities. By invoking ethnic solidarity and the struggle against apartheid, Mbeki kept restive and increasingly contradictory constituencies -- from black billionaires to rural peasants -- under one tent.

At least if a new party is formed, this "race card" will be ineffective against it. In addition to claiming credit for defeating apartheid, each party would attempt to outdo the other in loyalty to the "real core" of the ANC. Unlike previous schisms in the ANC's nearly 100-year history, this split is neither purely ideological nor tribal. Shilowa, for example, has strayed far from his trade union roots, and he and his powerful wife have amassed a fortune under government-directed "black empowerment" deals. Zuma and those who remain in the ANC government are surrounded by rich businessmen, including former politicians such as Tokyo Sexwale and Cyril Ramaphosa, who both ran afoul of Mbeki. And with the ethnic factor largely absent, both sides will have support across tribal lines. More worrisome is the attitude of some activists and dissidents. Some of Zuma's supporters, especially his allies in the ANC Youth League, have announced that they would "kill for Zuma." The ANC secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, has described members of the judiciary as "counter-revolutionary." Others feel humiliated by the brutal ousting of Mbeki and his supporters and resent their exclusion from power.

It is good that they wish to regain influence via the polls. But South African soil has remained stony to newcomers to the opposition. Still, this could be the country's most significant post-apartheid political division and could make the outcome of April's election less predictable. In some combination or coalition, the old and new opposition forces could easily win control of the three most significant provinces: Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. Significant growth in the number of opposition members of parliament is also likely. The ANC's overwhelming majority in South Africa's past three elections has allowed it to retain the trappings of multiparty democracy while depriving parliament of any meaningful role. In many respects, South Africa has begun to resemble a one-party state where major decisions are made by the party executive, not the national assembly. A larger and more racially diverse combination of opposition forces could significantly help to restore meaning and content to South Africa's vital but somewhat hobbled democracy.

*Published 23 October 2008 in the Washington Post