Publication: Mail and Guardian Issued: Date: 2005-10-28 Reporter: Editorial

The Awful State of the Nation

 

Publication 

Mail and Guardian
Date

2005-10-28

Reporter

Editorial

Web Link

www.mg.co.za

 

The Cabinet is divided, the civil service is paralysed, Jacob Zuma’s ground offensive is rolling ahead without meaningful opposition. And apparently the spy agencies, whose job it is to protect us, are so embroiled in the open warfare between President Thabo Mbeki and his erstwhile deputy that they risk becoming a threat to our welfare.

The African National Congress is at war, and its battleground is as broad as the country. In exile, the party was afflicted at times by paranoia, factionalism and bouts of viciousness, but that was understandable. It was an organisation under siege, deeply infiltrated by apartheid intelligence operatives, and caught up in a slow-motion conflict with no end in sight.

Those tendencies look rather different when they take over the political life of a moderately important democracy, as they now threaten to.

Readers from across the political and geographical spectrum have complained about our admission that the prospect of a Zuma presidency frightens us. Recent events have done little to allay our concerns about the state of the nation. It is surely not beyond Zuma’s abilities to realise that the moment demands that he puts the country before his ambition. Surely, the right thing to do now is to let the trial run its course. But Mbeki must also take responsibility for the crisis in the ANC, and in the country -- after all, he is the leader of both.

Instead, the president is doing a fine impersonation of Nero and his fiddle, going about his set agenda of African peacekeeping and economic re-engineering while the country smoulders.

Yet the moment demands that he take a hard look at the structural deficiencies in the democracy that have brought us to where we are. He must take a harder look at the leadership style that has left him so isolated even as he tries to walk a constitutional and modernising path.

The government, since he took office, has pursued the policy of deploying party cadres into senior civil service jobs, business and the security agencies with unrelenting vigour. Sometimes deployment is a way to manage internal tensions, sometimes it is a reward for services rendered. But mostly, it is a mechanism for controlling the levers of power.

There is an argument to be made that an understanding of the big political questions is essential to doing the work of delivery at this stage in our history. But what we seeing at the moment -- most obviously in the saga of Billy Masetlha but more subtly throughout the government -- is how that policy has replicated that party’s internal divisions across large sectors of the state.

During the Khampepe commission inquiry, the paralysis was made public by the intra-cabinet and civil service divisions it revealed. The consequences for the battle against HIV and Aids have literally been fatal.

At the same time the corruption crisis has been allowed to deepen, initially because the party closed ranks around its members, and now because accusations of political motivation dog every clean-up effort.

Parliament has suffered too. Despite its overwhelming majority, Mbeki’s ANC has lacked the confidence to let the legislature really do its job. The quashing of the arms deal investigation is the most egregious example. If Parliament’s public accounts committee had been allowed robustly to deal with allegations of bribery and influence peddling, if Mbeki and others in the party had spoken out strongly against it at the time, the ground would have been prepared for the move against Zuma when it came.

The closing down of space for open, robust, debate within the ANC more generally not just on the left -- has driven too many in the party, and the alliance, into Zuma’s demagogic arms.

It is a profound failure of moral and political imagination on the part of leaders such as Blade Nzimande and Zwelinzima Vavi that they feel they have no alternative but to back Zuma. But it is also a consequence of Mbeki’s actions.

Mbeki wants to build a modern, technocratic state, with the capacity to direct the proceeds of a sustained economic revival toward a broad developmental programme. But he has yoked that agenda to a deeply problematic deployment policy and he has allowed the necessary policy of empowerment to too quickly emulate the crony capitalist model that is debasing clean politics.

We have had just one year of Mbeki’s second term and it is still two years ahead of the crucial ANC conference where the party will elect its president. All the independent indicators are set fair. The economy is growing strongly, the government has more resources than ever at its disposal, and some of the tough political choices of the last decade have paid off. We should be celebrating. *1

Instead we are drifting, rudderless and leaderless, while thugs, pretenders and the spineless define the terms of our future.

We would like to think there is another way -- another person who can move us past the false choice between Mbeki and Zuma, but no one is sticking their head above the parapet.

A cliché it may be, but it really is time for men and women of goodwill to speak up. The national executive committee of the ANC is filled with extraordinary people who have braved far worse than the skirmishes of an internal succession battle.

It is time for them to reach down into their reserves of courage to find the leadership talents the moment requires. It is the only way out of the mess.

With acknowledgement to the Mail and Guardian.