Looking for answers in the Manyi-Manuel race clash

The racial blow-up between government spokesman Jimmy Manyi and ANC minister Trevor Manuel caught most people by surprise. This past week saw a variety of analysts and commentators – many of them leading coloured intellectuals – trying to make sense of the debacle.  Yet no-one really seems to be any the wiser as to what lies behind it all.

However, a number of possible motives, specific issues, potential consequences, and other developments do stand out in what has been perhaps the ugliest – and even potentially the most dangerous - racial confrontation in South Africa since 1994.

What seems to be quite obvious for now is that the ANC and the government are busy with some serious damage control. Contradictory positions have been “leaked” to the media that both Manyi and Manuel had been rapped over the knuckles, only to be interspersed with “leaks” that both respectively enjoy the backing of the government and the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC). Officially, however, it is only Manyi who so far has received backing.

And government spin doctors from various departments met last week to discuss how best to defend Manyi and deal with the issue.

Secondly, the controversial proposed amendments to employment equity (affirmative action) legislation relating to racial quotas to be applied by companies when employing people and which would impact negatively on coloureds and Indians, are likely to be scrapped. Government has all but officially said so as part of its damage control. It was this draft legislation that in the first place triggered the entire debacle.

Although the Cabinet has already twice approved the dreaded draft legislation, Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant ;ast week told the National Assembly it is back with the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac), after which it will come back to the Cabinet “which will decide not to proceed with it”. Her words were translated from the original Zulu, but it is unlikely that she said anything else.

The outburst around Manyi’s controversial remarks in an old TV interview -- dug up by the trade union Solidarity to scupper the racial labour legislation and highlight their fight against the way affirmative action unfairly discriminates against some groups --  has also again shown up the weakness in the ANC’s armour when trying to live up to its dictum of being a broad political church for all South Africans. For in the ensuing battle the lines were often drawn between black nationalists and Africanists on one side, and non-racialists and ethnic/racial minorities on the other side.

These divisions are also reflected in the contradictory way in which the ANC seems to have been responding to the affair. Judging by both the “leaks” and the official statements made by various senior ANC and government officials, there appears to be a concerted effort to placate different groups with different messages.

The affair also served to show that if not in its official policy, then perhaps in everyday practice the ANC has taken a step or two away from its non-racial roots under President Jacob Zuma’s tenure, one that has been marked by the ascendency of Zulu ethnicity with a strong nationalist bent.

Meanwhile, one leading coloured columnist of a Sunday newspaper offers the rather unlikely theory that the entire verbal war was engineered by the Western Cape ANC in order that they can blame it for the party’s self-anticipated defeat in this province in the May 18 municipal elections. It is the majority coloured vote in this province that has shifted power here from the ANC to the Democratic Alliance (DA).

However, this does not gel with the Western Cape ANC-led Alliance’s latest election move – after the Manyi-Manuel blow-up - to win the elusive coloured vote by announcing that the popular coloured leader of the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) in the province, Tony Ehrenreich, is its Cape Town mayoral candidate. The majority of Cosatu’s Western Cape members are coloureds who have their labour home in the ANC-aligned Cosatu, but have sought their political home in the Democratic Alliance  and its ally, the Independent Democrats (ID) till now.

For several years now the ANC has struggled to find popularly appealing coloured leaders to head its campaigns in the province. Ehrenreich might just provide the right kind of spark. After all, he was one of the first in the Alliance to condemn the proposed labour legislation, taking the same view as the DA, ID, Solidarity and others - with whom he usually differs strongly – that it will cost coloureds their jobs. He also came out strongly against Manyi’s views on coloureds. And he is a working-class leader who speaks the language of the Cape Flats.

Nonetheless, the same columnist may be closer to the mark with her assertion that Solidarity timed its attack on the proposed labour legislation and its digging up of the more than a year-old Manyi TV interview so that coloureds will not vote for the ANC.

Solidarity is a largely white trade union that may have designs on recruiting more coloured members. It has also for several years conducted a fight against the way affirmative action is defined and applied by the government, frequently bringing coloureds into the picture as being on the same receiving end of affirmative action as whites. A few years ago Solidarity also gained much publicity when it took up the case of one of its coloured members whom it said Eskom had deemed to be “too white” to benefit from the company’s affirmative action programme. At that time it sharpened its campaign that affirmative action was as detrimental for coloureds as for whites.

Far less of a conspiracy theorist is Prof Jakes Gerwel – another Sunday columnist, veteran ANC member and Nelson Mandela confidante - who is perplexed by Manuel’s motive to take Manyi on in an open letter over what he compares to Verwoerdian racism. Gerwel hopes that Manuel’s response to Manyi will finally lead to a much-promised and long overdue national debate on race, racism and non-racialism.

But it is Gerwel’s suggestion that Manuel may be willing to sacrifice his position in the ANC and government that cuts close to the bone. Manuel’s actions seem to bear every hallmark of someone preparing to leave the political stage on which he has served his entire adult life.

Ever since the Jacob Zuma faction of the ANC unceremoniously kicked former President Thabo Mbeki out of office to make way for Zuma, Manuel as the key architect of Mbeki’s internationally praised and successful economic policies seemed to be living an uncomfortable life within the ANC and government, with Zuma never really affording him much support...at least not in the public eye.

In fact after Mbeki was removed, Manuel resigned from his job as Finance Minister along with several other ministers, but later withdrew his resignation to take up the job of National Planning Minister in the Presidency under Zuma.

Since then he has had to contend with frequent – and often personal – attacks from the Alliance left wing, while having to watch a political hooligan without struggle credentials like ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema rise to prominence, backed by ANC nationalists, while doing great harm to the economy with his nationalisation talk. Manuel’s own National Planning proposals were also frequently frustrated from within the Alliance’s left wing.

Having now also to contend - as a coloured in the ANC - with racial attacks from black nationalists closely linked to Zuma’s ethnic inner circle and rising ethnic nationalism in the ANC, may have been the last straw for him. Ironically, when Zuma rather ambiguously fobbed off the labour legislation issue as a storm in a tea cup saying it was never intended to and will not harm coloureds and Indians, he did not say a single word about Manuel’s attack on Manyi or the latter’s racists remarks about coloureds and Indians. Manuel has to date received no official backing from Zuma or the Presidency on this one, while Manyi has been backed by the Presidency and ANC headquarters.

Manuel’s position may have been further affected by revelations of his condemnation of a R9-billion BEE deal benefiting the controversial Gupta family and a son of President Zuma in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Manyi, on the other hand, won a previous fight with another minister – the ousted Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana – to move right into the inner fold of government as Zuma’s official government spokesman.

For Manuel to go as far as he did in his attack on Manyi, something more than meets the eye must be afoot within the government and the ANC. For Manuel is, as Gerwel also points out, a man totally committed to the organisation, always following correct procedure, and very disciplined. And he never allows himself to be bracketed in terms of race or group – indeed he said he was confronting Manyi not as a coloured but as a non-racist.

And what is more, Manuel also stated that he had “a sense” that Manyi’s racism “had infiltrated into the highest echelons of government”, thereby attacking also the very government of which he himself is a senior member. So what happened to make him act outside of party structures and discipline and go to battle with Manyi - and his own government by implication - over a “coloured issue”?

Finally, Manuel must have been party to the Cabinet decision on two occasions to okay the proposed changes to the affirmative action legislation before shooting it down in his letter to Manyi. The question is: did he initially offer a minority vote against it in those Cabinet meetings, but was outvoted? Or did he not recognise the potential consequences of the proposed changes immediately? Or did he simply go along with it until other, later developments made him renege?

Whatever lies behind Manuel’s actions, it seems very likely that he will not remain a member of the current ANC government for much longer.