Share this
Mister Wong
Digg
Del.icio.us
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Googlize this
Blinklist
Facebook
Wikio
Hear this text
Print
E-mail
Tags
Governments family fight turning ugly
The marriage between the partners in the governing ANC-alliance seems to be heading for the rocks with an ugly divorce becoming increasingly more likely. While the fight over the assets created by and for the partners over a more than 15-year union steeped in a system of patronage can be expected to turn it into a drawn-out and messy affair, results of local government by-elections last week seem to suggest that the “children have noticed.” Dangerous times seem to lie ahead for the South African family.
The political temperature in the stressed was likely to be turned up a few notches at the meeting of the central executive committee (CEC) of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) from 1 to 3 March. It also serves as preparation for the next meeting of alliance leaders later in the month.
The meeting comes against a backdrop of renewed tensions triggered by the provocative utterances of ANC Youth League (ANCYL) leader Julius Malema, Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan’s budget, President Jacob Zuma’s personal and leadership issues, and various squabbles.
If anything, it is clear that the honeymoon between an ANC led by Zuma, and the left represented by COSATU and the South African Communist Party (SACP) is over and that alliance relations are once again moving in the direction of being as strained as they were in the Mbeki era or even much worse. These tensions are also duplicated within the ANC itself.
Zuma – between a rock and hard place
The alliance is not likely to break up just yet as some may be predicting, but the glue holding it all together is certainly wearing thin. While COSATU has been angered by a number of issues, the core issues of discontent revolve around economic policies and a perception of Zuma not sticking to agreed political programmes. The left is also growing increasingly disillusioned over its perception that Zuma is not providing leadership. He has been accused by COSATU president S’dumo Dlamini of wanting to please “everyone”, while COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has warned of “anger” in the unions showing “everywhere now”.
The tensions in the alliance have lately also served to show the vulnerability of Zuma being a president without a secure own powerbase on which he can rely as COSATU and the SACP were two of his main backers in his rise to power. The ANCYL, as led by Malema, is the third major powerbase and still supports him.
But this support is reliant on the patronage system of jobs and opportunities which is under attack from COSATU and the SACP. There is also a growing faction within the ANCYL working to topple Malema and his closest cronies.
It should not come as any surprise that Zuma has expressed himself against lifestyle audits of senior politicians as he is now almost wholly dependent on the patronage system to stay in power. The patronage system of dispensing jobs, favours and business opportunities is what props him up as he commands no effective control or influence over the disparate groups that brought him to power.
But all of this and the roles played by various actors on the political stage are only symptoms of a much more fundamental process.
These groups are now in a potentially devastating (for the ANC and the alliance) struggle for political and economic supremacy.
Air of inevitability
This where the rub lies for the alliance-marriage: The partners adhere to different and often competing core values.
In the case of the SACP is has mostly to do with economic ideology, while COSATU by its very nature is a factional power representing a particular interest group in society.
In the case of the SACP it is becoming increasingly clear that fundamental economic choices cannot be postponed forever. The intensification of what presents itself as factional fights and/or succession battles are but symptoms of the fact that the moment of truth where fundamental choices on the economic front have to be made is drawing ever closer.
In the case of COSATU it represents the interest of the employed workers in the country, which is permanently in competition and often in conflict with other economic and business formations in the society. Harmonising the interests of various groups in society in a complicated network of checks and balances is the very raison d’etre for the modern democratic state.
As was the case with the trade unions in post-Second World War Britain a point will come where a marriage of convenience between political party and trade unions becomes untenable. It would appear as if that point is fast approaching in South Africa. Exact predictions, however are not possible.
During the days when the so-called verlig-verkramp battle in the then ruling National Party was at its height in the early 1980s the issue that would eventually change the course of events in the country was a choice between the acceptability or not of “power sharing” across racial lines.
What exactly will confront the alliance with its final choice remains to be seen, but that it is increasingly taking on the air of inevitability is clear.
In the meantime information is constantly coming to the fore of the business interests of constituent organisations of the alliance, including some trade unions and the ANC as head of the household. This often goes hand in hand with the comfortable and even lavish lifestyles of key individuals.
This factor is increasingly showing all the signs of turning the divorce into a particularly messy affair.
