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Abstract
The rules of South African politics have been changed by the succession struggle in the African National Congress (ANC). Once again there is open leadership contest in the ANC, the left‐wing has shifted the balance of power in the organisation away from the centre, and respect for authority is no longer as strong. Through a close examination of the history of Jacob Zuma’s rise to power from 1973 to the present, the paper demonstrates how once cordial relations between Zuma and Mbeki deteriorated into rivalry by 2000, and then into open conflict leading up to Polokwane. These events are explained in terms of (i) the confluence of personalities, (ii) increasingly centralised organisational practices in the ANC, alliance and government, and (iii) an emergent, more radical, activist demographic in the ANC, frustrated at the conservative policies of Mbeki’s governance. Indeed the rise of Zuma does not represent a clear ideological victory for the left, nor the rise of patrimonial Africanism, nor even a fundamental split in ANC support, so much as a new competitive pluralism in the party. If correct, this makes long‐term ANC dominance in South Africa even more unlikely.
Notes
1. Thabo Mbeki told his biographer, Mark Gevisser, that the offer of the deputy presidency to Chief Buthelezi was conditional on the IFP conceding to the ANC the provincial premiership, a condition insisted upon by Jacob Zuma who knew it would be unacceptable to the Chief (Gevisser Citation2007: 629).
2. Philip Dexter, former SACP treasurer, was removed from office for supposedly abusing his position by personally acquiring company shares. Dexter, who received no salary from the SACP, did hold share options in a company in which he was employed, as do many other trade union officials and Communist Party members. On leaving the company he sold the shares.
3. Statistics South Africa’s Labour Force Survey, conducted in September Citation2007 found that unemployment decreased from 25.5% in 2006 to 23% (Statistics South Africa Citation2007).
4. The South African Presidency in October Citation2008 released a report, Towards a Fifteen Year Synthesis Review which claimed that the proportions of the population living under the poverty lines had declined between 1995 and 2005, from 53% to 48% if the poverty line was estimated at R322 per person per month (South African Presidency Citation2008).
5. Alec Erwin, Minister of Public Enterprises, quoted in Southall (Citation2007: 210).
6. For evidence drawn from fieldwork conducted around Johannesburg and Polokwane in two separate research projects see Darracq (Citation2008: 604–5) and Lodge (Citation2004: 193–7).
7. This is a fascinating exploration of the expectations about political leadership held by COSATU rank and file at a power station in Mpumalanga and their motivations in supporting the ‘comradely’ Zuma against an ‘arrogant’ Mbeki. I am very grateful to Alexander Beresford for letting me read this important paper before its publication and I have drawn upon his argument in this paragraph.
8. Youth Leaguers broke up a Congress meeting in Verulam, KwaZulu‐Natal in November 2008 after the ANC’s provincial secretary announced that the ANC would ‘crush’ any Congress meetings. In March this year, a Congress supporter was stabbed in Khayelitsha, Cape Town and subsequently the police arrested 28 ANC members.
9. For Jeff Radebe as ANC policy head on the ‘issue of tax’ as a ‘concern’ that might prompt the ANC to ‘temper its promises’ (see Musgrove Citation2008).