By Abdul Tejan Cole
Today – May 8 – South Africans are going to the polls for the sixth time since apartheid ended in 1994. In the dominant one party state that is South Africa, the African National Congress will again win the elections. It has won every general election since 1994. The only uncertainty regarding this election is the margin of victory. In 1994, it won 62.7%, resoundingly beating the apartheid National Party which came second with 20.4%. In 1999, it won 66.4%; 69.7% in 2004; and in 2009 it got 65.9%. It earned its lowest percentage in the last elections in 2014 (62.15%) but was still over the 60% mark. If the ANC leader and South Africa’s fifth President, Cyril Ramaphosa, is to keep to his Trumpian pledge to “make South Africa great again”, he needs to have an emphatic victory in his first elections as leader.
Ramaphosa’s main challengers are two 38-years-olds – Mmusi Maimane of the Democratic Alliance (DA) Party and the firebrand leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), Julius Sello “Juju’ Malema. In 2014, the DA managed a respectable 22.23% of the votes, polling just over four million votes. Malema’s brand new party barely a year old then finished a distant third with 6.35%. Although the DA claims it is bigger and stronger than ever before, more diverse than ever before and governs in more places than ever before, they have never been able to shrug off the pigeonhole heaped on them by former president Nelson Mandela who labelled them a party of "white bosses and black stooges, which only cared for black voters on the eve of the election.”
The DA, a merger of several parties including the New National Party – the successor to the apartheid National Party of PW Botha and FW de Klerk – gets its support mainly from predominantly white, Indian and colored people. Even though it elected a black leader, it has failed to attract much black vote as many blacks still see Maimane as a “black stooge”, a “hired native” who was "parachuted" undeservedly into the top job because of his race rather than his abilities, and whose perceived naivety will make him serve the interests of his ‘puppet masters’ within the DA.
Malema, who was an ANC youth leader, was expelled from the party in 2012 for expressing views which portrayed the ANC government and its then leadership under President Zuma in a negative light. He became a thorn in Zuma’s flesh when the latter was president. His populist radical leftwing Economic Freedom Fighters party, which stands a chance of doubling the votes it won in 2014, has made the controversial issue of land expropriation without compensation the center point of its electoral campaign. Although Ramaphosa was head of the ANC’s national disciplinary committee of appeals that dismissed Malema’s appeal against his expulsion from the ANC, the South African President has on several occasions since his ascension, called on Malema to return to the ANC. This plea has so far fallen on deaf ears.
In its 2019 election manifesto, the ANC admits “we made mistakes and veered off course”. It concedes that “(O)ur economy has not been fundamentally transformed to serve all people. Unemployment remains high, particularly among the youth. The land question has not been fully addressed. The country has obscene levels of income and wealth inequality. Gender-based violence has reached crisis proportions and drugs, violent crimes and gangsterism are wreaking havoc in many communities.”
It goes on: “Corruption continues to raise its ugly head, threatening the very moral and ethical basis of our young democracy. Our education, training and health systems still need radical improvement. As a nation, we have learned the harsh impact of corruption on society and the economy. We have witnessed the loss of integrity in some of the institutions of state, business and political and other organisations. We have learned hard lessons about the vigilance needed to stop lawlessness, greed and selfishness from taking root.”
This perhaps is one of the most damning admissions of any party seeking reelection anywhere in the world. It is easy to dump most of the blame on former President Jacob Zuma. During his tenure, Guptagate and State Capture were the order of the day – the Gupta brothers Ajay, Atul, and Rajesh, used their close relationship with President Zuma to capture the state and launch a wholesale plunder of public resources.
Unemployment was and remains officially in excess of 25%. Endless corruption and mismanagement ensured that several state-owned entities, including South African Airways (SAA), were made technically bankrupt. A tsunami of corruption, interference and intimidation crippled the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and brought it closer to financial collapse. Sheer incompetence and corruption left the electricity public utility company, Eskom, ailing and it had to turn to the government for an emergency bailout in order to meet salary demands and diesel costs and had to ask the Chinese for a loan.
A lack of accountability, poor human resource practices, inadequate procurement practices and a lack of leadership have ensured that the South African Public Service has failed to deliver essential services. Asked the question “Is South Africa regularly denying children their rights to access education and health care on the grounds either of petty bureaucracy or by a misinterpretation of the country’s laws and international obligations?”, Magnus Killander, a law Professor at the University of Pretoria emphatically answered “yes”, noting that the country wasn’t living up to international obligations.
According to a number of reports including from Nedbank Ltd., South Africa’s fourth-largest lender, “corruption, maladministration and bad policies shaved 470 billion rand ($32 billion) off the nation’s gross domestic product during Zuma’s final four years in office.”
The challenge for Ramaphosa in the next five years is gigantic. True, millions of people have gained access to electricity, potable water and housing, and almost a third of the population of 57.7 million receive welfare grants. Although black economic empowerment mostly failed, there is a growing middle class, working for government, the nonprofit sector, in the corporate sector or running their own businesses.
As its manifesto states the ANC will need to “transform the economy so it serves all the people, advance social transformation that continues to make education and health our priorities to radically improve access and quality, building more homes, a modern, integrated, affordable, accessible and reliable public transport system, and working towards a comprehensive social security system to protect the well-being of the people and society.”
Most of all it needs is to step up the fight against corruption and safeguard the integrity of the state and ethical leadership. If it can succeed in doing this then it can truly demonstrate to South Africans that the ANC has “the capacity to self-correct where mistakes have been committed” and it will ensure that the liberation movement continues to lead South Africa after its 30th year in office in 2024.
© 2019 Politico Online
