Business+and+President+Zuma,+Karima+Brown,+Business+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, 13 June 2006
=Should business be afraid of a president Zuma?=


 * Karima Brown**

HISTORICALLY, business in SA has learnt the valuable lesson of keeping its options open to secure its place at the political table.

It worked well with the apartheid state until apartheid became too expensive to be profitable. It worked with the African National Congress (ANC) after 1994 to bring the party around to business’s view of the world. So what then does one make of business “concerns” about the succession debate raging in the ruling party?

According to the Financial Mail last month, business is concerned, even worried, about the prospect of a Jacob Zuma presidency in 2009. No doubt Zuma’s enthusiastic endorsement by individual leaders in the tripartite alliance has caused some jitters in boardrooms across the country. Some worry about the kind of payback the ANC’s left allies will exact from a Zuma presidency for their support should he succeed President Thabo Mbeki as party head in 2007 and go on to become president of SA in 2009.

It is difficult to speak about “business” as one homogenous group. SA’s business sector is still largely divided along the racial and cultural fissures of the past. There is big (white) capital, Afrikaner business, a new black managerial class, and a small section of black business owners closely aligned to the state and the ruling party. Among and even within these groups, there are various subgroups that may welcome the prospect of Zuma as president, in part perhaps because of their own proximity to Zuma and the promise of state largesse post-2009.

Zuma may well end up in prison before 2009, depending on the outcome of his pending corruption trial, in which case many column centimetres will have been wasted. But should he escape jail and prevail in the succession race, it is unlikely that large-scale local and foreign disinvestment will follow. So why do people in business think that 2009 will not be “business as usual”, irrespective of the president? It seems almost certain that SA will not be in line for a major shift in policy emphasis, such as it was in 1999.

Most neutral observers remain unconvinced that a Zuma presidential ticket would catalyse a revision of the Mbeki-ite conservative consensus on economic policy. Zuma is not a candidate of the “left”, the poor, and those who have been excluded from the “age of hope” we have allegedly entered. While deputy president of SA, Zuma, together with Mbeki, pursued conservative economic policies that earned Mbeki’s government praise from global markets and business leaders, and the animosity of the ANC’s left allies.

Despite the enthusiastic backing of Zuma from some on the left, he has yet to denounce Mbeki’s economics, nor even hint at alternatives that promise a better deal for the poor. On the contrary, he has on occasion sounded like an Mbeki clone on economic and social policy issues.

Analyst Steven Friedman’s description of Zuma as a “candidate of the disaffected” tells us more about the Zuma phenomenon than we can glean from watching his charm offensive on the unions and the communist party.

Zuma is viewed as a “way out” by an array of interests that are aggrieved at being excluded from the charmed circle that is today’s in-vogue elite. These “disaffected” people include large sections of business and other power elites — who are not close enough to the ruling clique to enjoy greater patronage — as well as the representatives of the poor. A Zuma presidency would simply not signal the triumph of policies favoured by the unions and communists — a fact the ANC’s allies would do well to remember.

Some in the business sector have muttered about the pall of corruption that surrounds Zuma, in the light of his pending trial. I’ll suspend my cynicism about the moral concerns of businesspeople about corruption in SA.

SA faces a serious challenge with corruption, one which often extends to the highest levels of state. This moral cancer threatens to erode the fledgling institutions of our democracy. It is wrong to associate this with Zuma only. Just as it is wrong to assume the situation will worsen only in the event that Zuma becomes president.

There is one factor that seems unlikely to change whatever happens in 2009 — the nexus of influence and power built between the ANC, business and government over the past 12 years. Whatever groups within business are in favour at any given time, the ANC maintains an overall alliance with business — and black business in particular — which the ruling party has concluded is historically necessary for its “transformation” project.

Despite its many divisions, there is economic policy consistency from the ANC that has held since 1996, and which is unlikely to change. It is unlikely to unravel the day of the inauguration of a president Jacob Zuma.


 * Brown is political editor.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A215125**

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