2005-11-17,+SA+needs+Mbeki+to+be+strong,+Sparks,+Star

= SA needs Mbeki to be strong = The public needs reassurance that our judiciary and Constitution are free from power struggles in the ANC

The Star, Johannesburg, November 16, 2005 By AllisterSparks

South Africa is suffering from a leadership vacuum in this moment of need. There is a disconcerting silence from the top as the power struggle in the ANC alliance descends into the gutter to the detriment of the country's international reputation and its self-image.

Allegations of dirty tricks, smear tactics and disinformation campaigns are polluting our news columns. The president is accused of heading a conspiracy to smear his former deputy; the president's allies say that the accusation is a campaign to smear him.

The former deputy president is accused of rape and his allies say that is part of the smear campaign against him.

An eminent ANC businessman complains that the National Intelligence Agency is spying on him illegally, which the minister in charge of the NIA says is part of an e-mail campaign to smear the president's supporters as political smearers. So he suspends the smearing spook responsible, who is now going to court saying he has been smeared.

Meanwhile the former deputy president may go to court to sue the paper that smeared him by accusing him of being accused of rape.

Just who is smearing whom in all this is hard to tell. Are these really smear campaigns, or are the smear campaigns themselves attempts to smear the alleged perpetrators as dirty players?

If the public finds it all bewildering – and demoralising – small wonder.

A few short months ago we were being hailed as a country which had undergone a political miracle and were beginning to undergo an economic one as well.

Now suddenly we are looking and sounding like a banana republic.

The worst of it is that nobody is doing anything about it. The country cries out for leadership, for some reassurance that things are not going to spin out of control, but none is forthcoming.

This is partly because the principal leaders are themselves involved in the power struggle, or otherwise incapacitated.

President Thabo Mbeki and former Deputy President Jacob Zuma are the principal players in the drama, while the number three in the ANC, Defence Minister Mosioua Lekota, has just had a heart attack, and the new Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, is in a hopeless position, rather like a bridesmaid at a messy divorce.

But it is also because this is being treated as a party, not a national, crisis. It is being left to the ruling party's structures, and particularly the ANC's secretary-general, Kgalema Motlanthe, to sort out. Not surprisingly they cannot do so, for the differences between prosecuting Zuma and not prosecuting him do not lend themselves easily to compromise.

Either Zuma's trial goes ahead with its attendant risk that he may be found guilty and removed from the succession race for the presidency of the country, or the case against him is abandoned and he moves seamlessly into that job regardless of possible unproven guilt.

Either all are equal before the law or they are not. Either we respect the rule of law or we don't. And either we respect our judiciary and trust it to give Zuma a fair trial, or we don't – in which case we might as well scrap both the judiciary and the Constitution.

How can anyone expect Mbeki and Zuma to reach compromises on such bedrock issues? And when they fail, how can anyone ask Motlanthe or the whole ANC National Executive Committee to do so?

The point is that the differences within the ANC alliance are now so acrimonious that it would be in the national interest for the alliance to split and for there to be a general election to enable the national electorate to deliver its verdict.

But that won't happen. The image of the ANC is too embedded in the psyche of black South Africans for anyone to risk breaking away to fight it at the polls. The ANC is the vehicle that can carry whoever controls it to power, so the struggle continues within the organisation for control of it.

This is unhealthy, but it is reality.

That being so, it falls to Mbeki to provide the national leadership that is lacking in this crisis. Yes, he is a principal figure in the party struggle, but he is also president of the country – and his country needs him to steady the ship.

In part, his silence stems from a personal distaste for confrontation. He prefers to deal with problems in a subtle and indirect way – which is one of the underlying factors that have given rise to this crisis.

But his silence is also strategic. Mbeki is a shrewd politician who understands the pattern of political campaigns. He knows that it is difficult to sustain an atmosphere of high political enthusiasm over long periods, which is why all political campaigns have their peaks and then go into decline.

So Mbeki has kept his powder dry, avoiding the mouth-to-mouth political brawling and trying to preserve what he can of his presidential dignity, while counting on Zuma's campaign peaking far too soon. There are signs that it has already done so.

Zuma's supporters boasted that 10 000 people would attend last Friday's all-night vigil before his second appearance in the Durban Magistrate's Court, and that 30 000 would be there on Saturday. In fact only about 1 000 attended the vigil and no more than 4 000 were there on Saturday – fewer than the October 11 crowd, which was on a working weekday.

Nor was it just that the crowd was smaller, it was also less animated. The atmosphere was much more subdued than the October 11 jamboree, indicating to this observer, at least, that some of the steam is already going out of the Zuma campaign – two years before the ANC's national conference in late 2007. There will be a brief revival when the High Court case begins in eight months time, but that, too, will fade as the case drags on.

Meantime, I believe the president should step forward to give leadership to the country in his national rather than his party capacity. He should claim time on national television to set out the issues at stake as objectively as possible, to appeal to the nation – not just members of the ANC – to keep calm and have faith in the Constitution and the judiciary's integrity, and for all to accept the outcome when it is delivered.

Above all, to let South Africans see the president, and see him looking and sounding presidential, that they may be assured we still have firm leadership in the country and that things are not about to fall apart.

Oh, and while he is about it, let Mbeki also do something he should have done years ago. Let him begin having regular meetings with the leaders of his alliance partners, to hear their grievances and assure them that henceforth they will have better insider access to the decision-making processes of government. Because that is what this damaging row is really all about.

From: http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Politics/0,,2-7-12_1834712,00.html