Traditions+used,+not+followed,+Mde+and+Brown,+B+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, 11 July 2005
=Traditions used, not followed=


 * Vukani Mde and Karima Brown, political correspondents.**

The ironies of politics never cease to amaze. Often they also offend. “The African National Congress (ANC) should not deal with (the succession race) ahead of 2007. It’s completely unnecessary. It would be exceedingly unwise, and I would most certainly discourage it very firmly.”

With these words, President Thabo Mbeki attempted to put the succession genie back in the lamp following the ANC’s national general council meeting last week.

In the same breath, however, Mbeki also hinted at his own candidacy for the ANC’s presidency in 2007.

Should the ordinary members of the ANC “ask” him to stay on as president, well, he would consider it very carefully. Presumably these would be the ANC members who have previously called on him to do just that.

One imagines the nomination would come from KwaZulu-Natal premier S’bu Ndebele, who as a prominent Mbeki lieutenant has often batted for a third Mbeki term in the ANC.

We should cast our minds back to how the present manifestation of the great ANC leadership tussle caught the public’s attention. When the party’s Gauteng structures tabled the matter of the succession last year on the eve of their conference, the province broke an unwritten ANC rule that succession matters not be dealt with in public.

They also freed Ndebele to voice his desire to see his master rule the party in perpetuity. One result of that episode was that the party leadership clamped down on its provincial and league structures. The national executive subsequently had to scramble to keep the youth and women’s leagues from each other’s throats.

What the national executive never did, however, was call on Ndebele to explain himself. This left the impression that ANC members and structures were not to discuss the succession, unless they were rooting for the incumbent.

Further, ANC Today, Mbeki’s personal online periodical, pointedly reminded everyone last year that the ANC constitution imposed no term limits on its president.

What these examples demonstrate is that there is a consistent pattern in the behaviour of Mbeki and the small clique of ANC leaders closest to him. The issue of the 2007 succession cannot be openly debated, unless the debate is framed by predetermined parameters.

The subtext of the argument that Mbeki should continue is that he is the only candidate who can lead the ANC, if not SA, for the foreseeable future. Another leader, let alone a Jacob Zuma-style populist, would undo the work done to set the economy on the right footing.

There are two things wrong with this view. First, it denies that the ANC has capable leaders beyond Mbeki.

Second, Mbeki has said he is against the “professionalisation of power” and will never consider being president of the republic beyond 2009.

Why, then, is he even considering being ANC president beyond his present term? Is the professionalisation of power in the ANC less objectionable?

It is a contradiction to crow about upholding the checks and balances contained in the constitution, and then indirectly to undermine that constitution from afar. If Mbeki were to relinquish the country’s presidency, but remain ANC president, it would be tantamount to upholding the letter of the constitution, but trampling on its spirit. Constitutional term limits are there to prevent the perpetual exercise of power, rather than to set strict time limits mechanically.

Various African leaders have tried the route that Mbeki now appears to be proposing for himself — with disastrous consequences. In Malawi and in Zambia, attempts to “manage” succession and determine successors have backfired on retiring leaders.

What the present succession debate also seems to have done is demonstrate how malleable the notion of “ANC tradition” can be.

Party insiders are fond of pointing out how the traditions of the movement will determine who will next lead it. Mbeki himself has advanced this argument, saying: “I don’t think we should groom anybody. When the time comes, people will say, ‘We trust this one to succeed’. The ANC has never ‘groomed’ anybody.”

Zuma factions point out that ANC deputy presidents “naturally” assume the presidency. The youth league has all but suggested that Zuma should be president by virtue of this “tradition” alone.

The history of the ANC suggests that both sides are economical with the truth. There are various examples of the ANC choosing its leaders in any number of ways. These are usually determined by factional power balances, considerations of ethnic balance, the security situation, and generational raptures.

One example was the creation at the 1991 Durban conference of the position of party chairman. The position was created to allow the ailing Oliver Tambo, who led the ANC throughout its years of banning and exile, a smooth exit. Nelson Mandela, who had been chosen to lead the party during the transition, took over unopposed as ANC president. At the same conference, Walter Sisulu stood as deputy president to avert a divisive contest between Mbeki and Chris Hani, the leading candidates to succeed Mandela.

What these examples illustrate is that the ANC has often subverted its “traditions” and even created ones to serve new circumstances. Sisulu never intended succeeding Mandela as ANC president. This makes nonsense of the youth league’s invocation of “tradition” to press Zuma’s claims to the ANC presidency. However, there was no “natural” successor either, emerging by virtue of the institutional wisdom of the movement and its members, as Mbeki has suggested. Elite power brokers struck compromises between contending factions. In this regard there is nothing exceptional attached to ANC succession processes.

Another example Mbeki might do well to remember is that of Dr AB Xuma, who was unceremoniously dumped as ANC president in 1949 by a restless youth league led by Mandela. In fact, Mandela has engineered the removal of no less than two presidents. Though his minders claim he is “retired”, is it out of the bounds of possibility to find him at the centre of a third palace coup in 2007?

The best way out of the ANC succession impasse is to reach back to the only consistent tradition it has — debate and open contest.

One paradox of our new order is that whereas the oppressive conditions of underground produced a relatively open and democratic ANC, this ANC has morphed into today’s intolerant monolith, battling to come to terms with internal democracy.

The ANC leadership, and Mbeki in particular, should draw the obvious lesson from the recent council revolt.

The ANC of old is alive still — and ready to assert itself and its proudest tradition.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A66569