With+Richard+Calland+in+the+SA+parlours+of+power,+Sunday+Times

Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 29 October 2006
=SA’s new parlours of power pull in unlikeliest bedfellows=


 * Richard Calland**

IF THERE is one image that, more than any other, captures the essence — and confusion — of power in South Africa today it is the photograph of murdered businessman Brett Kebble’s coffin being carried into the memorial service at St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town.

Kebble, a white man, carried by eight well-dressed black men, the majority of whom are leading members of the ANC Youth League: the image potently represents a congealing of elites, with a defiant crony-capitalist agenda.

President Thabo Mbeki did not attend the funeral service, but he did send one of his most trusted and senior lieutenants, Essop Pahad — a striking statement of Kebble’s value and influence within the political elite.

The attendance list of the more than 1 000 people packed into St George’s Cathedral would make interesting reading — not a comprehensive “who’s who” by any means, but certainly a vivid sample of the eclectic mix that constitutes South Africa’s contemporary establishment. Prominent ANC businessmen such as Saki Macozoma and Tokyo Sexwale were there, alongside the minister in the Presidency, Essop Pahad, and Zuma’s close confidant, former spy Mo Shaik, the brother of convicted fraudster Schabir Shaik.

There was old money and there was new money. Kebble bridged the two. He was a businessman who speculated in politics. He also covered his bets. As noted above, he curried favour with Mbeki. He also backed Zuma. It has subsequently emerged that he was funding the Democratic Alliance as well.

Among Kebble’s pallbearers were Andile Nkuhlu. Nkuhlu, who is also a member of the ANC national executive committee, is a former chief director of the department of public enterprises, responsible for state restructuring, who resigned in mid-2002 after revelations that he had failed to disclose various gifts from Zama Resources, a company that had recently won a slice of the government’s restructured forestry assets.

Over the years, Nkuhlu and Kebble had become close friends as well as business associates. After Kebble’s death, Nkuhlu described him as a “great South African ... In a country where what is black is still suspect, marginal and less credible, having Brett on your side made the world of difference.”

Black empowerment is the new frontier for South African business. The May 2006 SA Communist Party discussion paper Bua Komanisi argues that “since we are living in a capitalist society”, and since we “need growth for development”, then those who “control capital” will constitute, for better or worse, a “central part of the advance-guard of the revolution”. The discussion document offers this view without any apparent sense of irony.

The analysis in Bua Komanisi that follows is crucial to understanding the relationship of the new, younger, black capitalist class with both the State and with “old money” in contemporary South Africa and, therefore, the curious interlocking elite interests that have formed since 1994. At the time of democratisation in 1994, South Africa had a well-developed capitalist class. Economic sanctions and internal liberation movement pressure had squeezed it to the point where it was ready to push for political change, but it remained largely intact. Unlike other societies, there was little space into which a new capitalist class could move. It has had to develop on the back of the existing, established business class, developing entry points through people like Kebble and via the largely contrived opportunities created by government policy (such as tendering rules requiring BEE quotas and the like).

Naturally, this situation creates complex overlaps between public and private power. As the Bua Komanisi document asserts, a major pillar of Mbekism (my use of the word, not theirs) is a “powerful presidential centre ... in which the leading cadre is made up of a new political elite and a new generation of black private sector BEE managers/capitalists”.

Many members of the political class are also capitalists in the sense that they either own or control capital. Many members of the ANC’s NEC are in this boat — which has created a problem that it has had to recognise for itself. Often more than one hat is worn. The Bua Komanisi document goes on to speak of the entanglement of the two groups. It is the right word — a watchword, a central motif, for what constitutes a new establishment for the new South Africa, underwritten by a new network of influence.

Such networks are, by definition, amorphous. There is no list, no membership application form. Nor can one say that there is a formulaic list of characteristics; it is not a dating agency. Most of the network are black, but not exclusively so. Most are liberal democrats, though some are social democrats and a few are democratic socialists.

There are many very curious bedfellows. John Hlophe, the first black Judge President of the Cape High Court, is in business with Braam Lategan, a former member of the bench with one of the worst records for hanging during the apartheid era.

Unlike, say, the British Establishment, which Anthony Sampson described in the original Anatomy of Britain, there is no unifying ideology. Most are wealthy, but some are professionals with a middle-class income. Some are important because they hold important positions, but not all do. Yet all are influential by virtue of membership of the network.

The network ranges “from the chief justice to Bobby Godsell”, in the words of Zackie Achmat, and has rapidly replaced the dominant network of the liberal whites during the transition period. “As a group, it is the old Afrikaans men who have lost the most power,” concludes Achmat, though as the case of Lategan suggests, some have been resourceful as well as pragmatic in creating new opportunities alongside members of a new elite.

Godsell, the chairman and CEO of AngloGold, could easily be described as a member of the liberal white group, but he has survived, principally because, unlike someone such as Anglo American CEO Tony Trahar, he not only is genuinely empathetic with the new political order but he knows how to engage it and does so.

Others have been eclipsed, although they still enjoy access to power, if not direct influence. I recall in mid-1999 discussing with the head of corporate affairs at the mining giant Billiton their need to jack up their lobbying capacity. Having conceded that Billiton was not properly up to speed with what was happening in Parliament, the man then delivered a telling caveat: “You know, the thing is, if we want real access to power, then our CEO [then, Brian Gilbertson] will simply call the President. And you know what? The President always takes the call.”

The new establishment has powerful vested interests in the current trajectory of politics and the economy. But, in response, new networks of power and new social movements in civil society will emerge and compete with them. These movements represent an excluded poor majority, with an increasingly angry determination to challenge the new order.

Set within the elegant superstructure of a much-admired and much-vaunted new constitutional order, the most important institutions — Parliament, Nedlac and the Constitutional Court — will be the sites of a massive tussle for influence and power.

The outcome cannot be predicted for the following reasons: the lines are not yet clearly drawn and there is a complex array of crossovers, creating intermingling interests and agendas. Some of the members of the new elite remain committed to social transformation — a new euphemism, in some quarters at least, for socialism. The most powerful capitalists — new and old — are installed within the new establishment and, although they are dominant, they are not yet hegemonic.

There is a new anatomy of power in South Africa, and decisively so. Whether it is an anatomy that befits the new South Africa and serves the majority is equally a matter of debate. Its roots are shallow and its physiology largely untested. The power play has barely started. The battle for conclusive control of power has just begun; the new anatomy is anything but settled.

This is an edited extract from Calland’s new book: Anatomy of South Africa


 * From: http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/articles/article-business.aspx?ID=ST6A214861**

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