Power struggle paralyzes South Africa’s ruling ANC party

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Political analyst Mark Gevisser described South African President Jacob Zuma’s term in one word: “Disastrous.”

He’s “the worst leader the ANC has ever had. He’s a lost cause. He merely fights to save his own skin and to stay out of jail,” another analyst, Justice Malala, wrote in October.

The South African president is under such vitriolic attack within and without his African National Congress party that the Communist Party in his home province called for a law to protect his “dignity” and restrain his critics.

The ANC, a century-old party that defeated apartheid, transformed South Africa and gave the world Nelson Mandela, is paralyzed by a to-the-death leadership fight that will decide Zuma’s future at a party vote this month.

The ANC once held itself above other African freedom fighters who metamorphosed from liberators to exploiters. But Zuma’s critics say the party has begun to resemble them. Dogged by corruption scandals, it has become a web of patronage for powerful insiders who cheat on government contracts and use law enforcement agencies to taint their political enemies, according to analysts.

Zuma’s scandalous $30-million, government-paid renovations to his sprawling private residence in Nkandla (a controversy known locally as Nkandlagate) have so damaged him in the ANC leadership contest that one loyal minister said critics of the expenditures didn’t understand African values and lifestyles. The president’s spokesman, Mac Maharaj, said the opposition’s references to the walled presidential residence as a compound were racist.

“Racism? Is this what the ANC has been reduced to?” wrote analyst Malala in response. “When looting takes place in front of our eyes, the only argument the presidential spokesman can make is that this is racism?”

The government said the renovations were done to upgrade security, citing an apartheid-era law classifying Zuma’s private home as a “national key point” covered by security legislation and, as a result, not subject to public scrutiny.

Zuma is also under attack for his current defiance of a Supreme Court order that his lawyers hand over secret intelligence tapes that led prosecutors to drop about 700 corruption and fraud charges against him just weeks before 2009 elections.

Unease over his leadership within the ANC and among the public has deepened since strikes that resulted in 34 protesting miners being killed by police in August.

Zuma also came under criticism when authorities failed to distribute textbooks in Limpopo province until well past the midway mark of the school year. Education activists had to go to court to force the government to distribute the books.

Zuma has always been a controversial leader. He was accused of rape in 2005 by the daughter of a senior ANC colleague; he was acquitted in 2006. Corruption charges, dropped in 2009, continue to hover in the background, with the possibility that if his enemies succeed in ousting him in December — or sometime in the future — he could be put back on trial.

Zuma has compared the ANC to Jesus, and he once told supporters at a rally that in his youth, he would have knocked down any gay men he met.

The illiterate son of a poor Durban housemaid, Zuma rose through the party ranks to join its military wing during the armed struggle against apartheid. He was arrested on conspiracy charges and jailed for 10 years in 1963. He served his term with leaders such as Mandela on Robben Island, where he learned to read.

During his rise to party leader in 2007, his trademark song was “Bring Me My Machine Gun.” As president, he reads prepared texts woodenly but projects more warmth and charisma than his aloof and cool predecessor, Thabo Mbeki.

Yet Zuma hasn’t been able to translate that warmer personality into mass popularity: Antigovernment protests in South Africa over lack of services or evictions occur almost daily.

Presidents here aren’t elected by the people, but by the members of Parliament who belong to the majority party. In the ANC, the presidency is decided by about 4,500 branch party delegates who gather every five years to elect a leader, who is then rubber-stamped as president by ANC lawmakers.

Economic analyst Azar Jammine says seven more years of Zuma as president would damage South Africa’s economy, already rattled by the miner strikes, which cut gold and platinum production and growth. South Africa’s debt and currency ratings were recently downgraded by Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, with both agencies citing poor leadership.

Another Zuma term “would imply another five years of suboptimal performance, muddling along,” Jammine said. “He is unable to choose which way to go. He’d rather keep the peace than decide what to do.”

“He’s been a disastrous president because he has not exhibited either the managerial or the political capacity to govern decisively,” Gevisser, an Open Society fellow based in Paris, said during a recent visit to South Africa.

He said the ANC’s leadership wrangling, under both Mbeki and Zuma, had paralyzed the party for months.

Zuma’s opponents in the ANC have coalesced around Kgalema Motlanthe, Zuma’s deputy who served as president for several months after the party toppled Mbeki as president in 2008.

Motlanthe hasn’t said whether he will run against Zuma. But opposition factions — one is dubbed the Anyone but Zuma group by South African media — are engaged in a furious, last-minute struggle over this leadership vote.

Gevisser said Zuma came to power with the support of a coalition of diffuse ANC interests united only by their hatred of Mbeki. That alliance fractured as soon as Zuma took over.

“So his priority has been to keep the party together instead of governing,” Gevisser said, adding that political instability and labor unrest are “a major disincentive for investment.”

“I think he’s demonstrated he’s not up to the job,” he said.

The current leadership battle has been dirtier and more brutal than the 2007 conference that ousted Mbeki as party leader. There are accusations of blatant fraud and ghost members in ANC branches, with Zuma’s stronghold of KwaZulu-Natal province gaining about 100,000 members in the space of 30 days, according to a party audit.

Branch meetings to nominate leadership candidates have seen chairs and punches thrown, guns pulled, people shot and branches threatening to take party leaders to court.

Meanwhile, analyst William Gumede said, even some of the president’s supporters have realized that if Zuma hangs on, it will probably damage the ANC’s chances in 2014 national elections.

According to Gumede, sections of the pro-Zuma faction have sought a compromise deal that would see him stay on as party president, stepping aside for Motlanthe or another senior figure, such as businessman Cyril Ramaphosa, who would become the country’s president after the 2014 elections. Secret negotiations for a deal have been reported in South African media.

“What the Zuma camp has understood is that Zuma may be an electoral liability going forward,” Gumede said. “He may control the inner structures of the ANC, but they fear the ANC may drop heavily in the 2014 election.”

Zuma’s bottom line, Gumede said, is protecting himself, ensuring that the corruption charges, over a 1999 weapons deal, aren’t reinstated and guarding his family’s sprawling business empire, which has rapidly expanded since he took office.

Critics outside the ANC often grumble that the 4,500 ANC delegates who in effect vote in the country’s leader aren’t democratically representative of all South Africans. But according to Gumede, the branch delegates, who tend to be mayors, council members or powerful local businessmen dependent on government contracts for their wealth, aren’t even representative of ordinary branch members, many of whom are poor or unemployed.

“Instinctively the [national conference] delegates will tend to vote for the incumbent, fearing that if they vote for the anti-Zuma candidate, they may not get reelected as local councilor or they may not get local business. If you are an ordinary branch member and you’re unhappy with Zuma, it’s very hard, through this branch system, to change the leader,” he said, adding that the ANC’s internal democratic failings would eventually impact its popular vote.

Despite that, analysts predict the ANC will continue to command a majority for years to come.

Most analysts are predicting that Zuma will retain the leadership at the ANC conference. But some observers question whether Motlanthe would turn things around should he run for the leadership and manage to become South Africa’s president.

The Limpopo textbooks crisis, for instance, became a media symbol for government failure after Zuma and his government did nothing for months. Yet Motlanthe implied that the public had to take a share of the blame because it didn’t make enough of a fuss.

In an August speech, he said the textbook crisis was “indicative of a passive citizenry whose silence is complicit in the commission of such a tragic folly.”

Analyst Malala said in a newspaper column that Motlanthe appeared “as much of a failure” as Zuma.

“We are led by men who are in office, but not in power, men who are interested in enjoying the fruits of being in office, but … do not know how to become agents of change,” he wrote.

“They are nothing men. They have achieved nothing and will achieve nothing. Our children are the victims of these men’s failure to be agents of change.”

robyn.dixon@latimes.com