The+need+for+an+open+succession,+Dominic+Tweedie


 * Note.**

The article below was written after I sent a letter to the Business Day and got a reply from the Editor himself, Peter Bruce. My letter was a complaint against the firing of the columnist David Gleason. Bruce very decently said he would publish my letter (and he did) and after an exchange of messages, asked me for 1000 words on the need for an open succession.

When Peter Bruce got my article he was annoyed with the mention of Gleason, which he wrote was “dishonest”. He said he would publish my article if I agreed to the excision of the bits mentioning Gleason. I agreed because they are minimal. I had anticipated that they might have to come out.

Up to now the article has not appeared. Events have moved on, and I guess the Editor has satisfied himself that the question of the openness of the succession is not so important to him after all.

Today there is a pot-boiling “interview the usual ‘independent analysts’” type of article called “Why SA’s left is loath to go it alone” by the staff journalist Karima Brown. Brown’s article looks suspiciously like a re-spin of the material I had dealt with, plus a few plain untruths. Especially wicked is the sentence: “By its own admission the SACP chose not to become an opposition party when it decided against going it alone in the coming municipal elections”. This is a travesty of the decision of the SACP Special National Congress, which said nothing of the kind. But that’s another story.


 * Dominic Tweedie, 29th June 2005**

=The need for an open succession=

//**Dominic Tweedie, June 22nd, 2005. (See note above) The abiding significance of the Zuma case will be its effect on the presidential succession.

The case has become a stalking horse for ambitious “crews” of rich men. David Gleason was the first to coin the term “crews” in print. He helped dramatise the mechanics of presidential succession in South Africa and he named names.

The succession question is not abstract. It is specific to South Africa’s peculiar circumstances. We have a two-term limit on the presidency. As a result the succession was already in play during President Mbeki’s first term. The appointment of his second-term deputy was seen as a ticket to the presidency.

Over half of South Africa's 46 million people are indigent (according to the department of provincial and local government in Parliament last Tuesday), so the African National Congress has pursued a policy of uniting as many interests as can reasonably be combined for the purpose of developing the country.

This policy of unity in action, or government of the whole people, has enormous public approval. It resulted in a 70% ANC majority at the last general election. All the components of the Alliance are unequivocally dedicated to maintaining and consolidating it.

The national strike on Monday the 27th of June, for example, will not affect the cohesion of the Alliance in the slightest degree. Nor have the township flare-ups around the country, which may well have been led in part by Alliance cadres. These events are not signs of the Alliance cracking, but are on the contrary basically healthy signs of the Alliance’s continued ability to express itself, and also to restrain itself.

All of this is to the good. But when it comes to the matter of the succession problem forced by the two-term rule, the ANC faces difficulties that its history of unity has not prepared it for. ANC “deployments”, especially those to the highest positions, are not usually hazarded in open contest. Neither President Mbeki nor his predecessor Nelson Mandela was required to face an opponent before being elected president of the ANC (and by extension, of the country).

Seeing this, those with ambition to become president or to become “kingmakers” for a president must move very early to secure a position as close as possible to that of Thabo Mbeki under President Mandela - “Crown Prince”. And if someone like Zuma should be occupying that position, he would have to be removed.

This is not a comment on the rights or wrongs of the charges now at last laid against Jacob Zuma. It is only to say that the fate of Zuma is connected to the fate of the presidency itself. Both are in play.

As I write the country awaits an announcement of the appointment by President Mbeki of a new Deputy President. She or he will inevitably be cast into the position of impediment to one or another of the ambitious “crews”, but will at least be personally visible as a candidate.

An open candidate may be openly approached, and will take care to become familiar to all the interests that form the Alliance and in wider circles.

Jacob Zuma did take that trouble and gained the confidence of the country in the process. The communists knew he was not a communist, and the trade unionists knew that he would continue to encourage the bosses. Yet they were confident of a good basis, with Zuma, for a continuing government of the whole people. A lot of the hard work that has to be done to sustain unity in action had already been done with Zuma.

At the same time here is no doubt that there were opponents who wished for Zuma’s downfall, regardless of whether he was corrupt or not. The evidence for this was plain to see throughout the public prints. Political insiders also had their own private evidence of it.

The half-hidden kingmaking “crews” appear as a deadly danger to the Alliance. They are not sounding out the interests of its component parts. They are importunate. Their interests threaten to be imposed unilaterally, as a dictatorship. Labour in particular fears its historic international enemy – reaction. The Argentinian reaction of 1976 to 1983 “disappeared” 30,000 leftists and trade unionists, for example.

The immediate threat to labour is not, fortunately, outright slaughter. It is the reversal of labour’s gains since 1994, as called for in the ANC discussion document on “Development and Underdevelopment” which goes before the ANC’s National General Council next week. This document contains a blueprint for the legitimation and institutionalisation of the “enclave” economy, which would leave South Africa’s 29 million (the figure given in Parliament on Tuesday by deputy director-general Patrick Flusk) indigents out in the cold as permanent second-class citizens.

These are high stakes by any standards

Political ambition cannot altogether be discouraged. It is a necessary part of political procreation. But it must surely be exposed to the light of day. A secretive stalking of the presidency amounts to a slow-motion coup d’etat. With so much at stake for so many, such a coup could easily become a disaster for South Africa.

The public revelation of peoples’ actions and intentions in politics is the first line of defence against such a coup. This is where journalists and editors can be helpful to democracy. They must be brave enough to print what they know, or think they know. If Gleason is not to be allowed to do this in the Business Day, then who will be?

By opening the process to the public gaze and proper interrogation journalists can help to remedy the bind that the great success of the ANC has caught us in, whereby the presidential succession has become the occasion for dangerous intrigue.

The press can serve to keep dialogue open. Without dialogue South Africa is not going to be able to cope with its prodigious problems. The last thing we need is a moneyed arriviste jumping into the presidency and junking all the carefully built relationships that have kept the peace here since 1994.


 * Ends