SA Politics #1

I have never quite understood Indian politics. To begin with, there are too many histories and its been way too long since independence to chart out all the power narratives since then. SA, on the other hand, claims to have a shorter reference period. Everything is looked at post-1994 when the country attained a fresh lease of life. However, most relationships between those in power now were formed prior to that, primarily in prison cells. The ANC as we know today consists mostly of larger than life individuals who were integral to the struggle in various ways. Mandela, Oliver Tambo.  The two individuals who are currently occupying the limelight are Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, the outgoing president and his strongest contender. Interestingly, both these individuals have projected themselves as being intimate. As Behind the Rainbow, a recent documentary by Jihan El-Tahri tells us, they spent a month in the same prison cell and have been photographed together ever since.

However, though such images portray them to be grave and always sitting close to Mandela, there are noticeable differences. Mbeki is almost always with a pipe and a tweed jacket and Zuma often sports a traditional costume. Mbeki had spent a lot of time in London, learning the ways of governance. Zuma spent his time in various parts of SA with the ANC underground movement before Mbeki joined him. The first temptation would be to classify Mbeki as a technocrat and Zuma as the new radical democrat. This temptation appears to be shared by a large number of the SA population and had been exploited by Zuma at an ANC conference at Polokwani.

Zuma has been charged of corruption in an arms deal, had been accused of rape under suspicious circumstances. However, a huge section of the ANC and SA viewed Zuma as a victim by the largely white judiciary and also by Mbeki and the support for him grew with each misfortune. Mbeki, on the other hand, has become the face of elitism of post-Apartheid SA responsible for failing to provide water, electricity and health care. Undoubtedly, under Mbeki’s presidency, there has been an allegiance to liberalization but what interests me most is that Zuma was the vice-president for the same government and there have not been any recorded difference of opinion. To this day, Zuma has not expressed any desired policy changes. At Polokwani for instance, while Mbeki bored people to death by reading out his proposed economic policies, Zuma sang two songs and floored the gathering. All I am trying to say is that if politics is about the image of the leader- his preferences, trials and tribulations, then SA appears to be an apt case study.

My brush with politics commenced in the course of my work when I attempted to understand the energy industry. Governing SA electricity is certainly not an easy task. Zuma has been accused of/applauded for raising old issues to promote his candidacy, which may not be entirely a bad thing because Mandela’s temporary successes and Mbeki’s high growth rate may just be a window dressing. This becomes evident from the electricity industry. The single provider, Eskom, a State-Owned Entity (SOE) with a colourful past, had post-1994 miraculously supplied millions of homes with electricity, boasted of providing the cheapest industrial electricity in the world but is now being forced to increase tariff, had caused sustained blackouts early this year and due to its reliance on coal, makes the SA carbon emissions rather scary.

However, allowing new private distributors to shoulder the costs of renewable energy may not be feasible. Thus, as expected, there are problems in adopting a market system or a protectionist system dictating energy policy. Further, the people in a position to make an influence now are the provincial governments, far far removed from national image rivalry. The central government came out with an Energy Act which is not worth the paper it is written on.

Thus, the settling of issues such as water and energy could do well without pandering to any technocracy/innate development sentiments as it would only split the ANC. As earlier democracies have shown us, splits cannot be avoided. So can’t individual narcissism. But when ANC supported SOEs continue to be monolitihic, it would be helpful if the ANC turned its attention to more important, and hence more boring things.