Cloud+of+unknowing,+Steven+Friedman,+Business+Day



=**A need to acknowledge the cloud of unknowing**=

Steven Friedman, Business Day, Johannesburg, 14 December 2007
Beware! Resemblances between what you read or hear about the African National Congress (ANC) presidential succession and the real thing may be entirely accidental.

The succession battle places media and commentators in a difficult position. We are meant to know who is going to win. But we don’t even know yet who the voters or candidates will be — or whether there will be an election at all. And many of those charged with telling their public how the race is developing lack detailed knowledge of the ANC’s workings and ways of doing things.

All of which may explain why many claims about the succession race are based on misunderstandings of how the process works — or a mistaken belief that the issues that are important to people in newsrooms or academic gatherings also matter to ANC delegates. On the first score, public opinion polls have purported to tell us who is winning the race. The polls are often of dubious quality — one claimed to have found huge support for Jacob Zuma in Soweto by, it turns out, simply not asking people how they felt about Thabo Mbeki. But even if they were spot on, the public doesn’t decide who becomes ANC president and we do not know whether public opinion and that of ANC delegates coincide.

On the second, many in the media seem to assume that the events that make an impression on them equally affect ANC delegates — even when logic suggests they do not. One recent example was the suggestion that Mbeki’s support for the World Cup-winning Springboks made his re-election more likely. But why ANC delegates would base their support in perhaps its most important battle for power yet on who supports a sports team most do not follow (and which at least some associate with apartheid) has not been explained.

A current example is the claim that Zuma’s presidential aspirations will end if he is again charged with corruption. But this would merely take us back to where we were a little over a year ago, when he was both facing corruption charges and a strong candidate for the ANC presidency. If important sections of the ANC supported him then, why not now? It also ignores the fact that Zuma’s supporters believe he is the victim of a conspiracy — and that this is an important part of their pitch to others in the ANC.

If he is recharged, they are likely to believe this with even greater fervour and to redouble their efforts to win him the ANC presidency. If the race is indeed decided by a vote, a fresh set of charges may even help Zuma by seeming to confirm the strength of the conspiracy.

These are not the only examples of ways in which the ANC succession race is viewed through a prism which probably distorts what is happening. The ANC must bear some responsibility for this — the more closed to public view the contest is, the more likely is it that those whose bread and butter depends on interpreting it will confuse their preoccupations with those of the ANC. But that does not relieve all of us who report and comment of the need to reflect the real succession race, not the one happening in our heads.

One way to do this is to concentrate on what we know is happening — by, for example, looking at who branches are nominating — rather than the latest gossip or speculation. Another is to admit what we cannot know. The most obvious gap in our knowledge is how delegates will vote. They are meant to reflect the wishes of their branches but the ballot is secret and they can vote any way they like. So, even if we do know who branches are nominating, we cannot know whether their delegates will vote the same way.

An equally important gap is that we do not know which bargains are being struck behind the scenes. The ANC does not have to have a contested presidential election and much of the contest we are seeing may prove to be a decoy, distracting our attention from the real horse trading.

About the only thing that is certain about this contest is that we will all emerge from it knowing more about how the ANC works today than we did. Until then, we best serve the public by trying to understand what is actually happening — and by admitting our limits when that is simply not possible.


 * Dr Friedman is a research associate at Idasa and visiting professor of politics at Rhodes University.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A612432**

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