Zuma exits, but South Africa’s rooted governance problems won’t go away

Former South African President Jacob Zuma delivering a speech at the South African Parliament in Cape Town on May 5, 2016. PHOTO | FILE | AFP

What you need to know:

  • African National Congress' habit of giving marching orders to sitting State presidents whenever it has its own change of leadership is unhealthy.
  • The transition from a liberation movement to a political party in a multi-party space has not been easy for the ANC.
  • There was even a savage rumour started by the South African Communist Party which claimed Zuma would fire his successor-in-waiting, Cyril Ramaphosa.

Watching the drama of Jacob Zuma’s last days in office was to watch a power struggle within an all-powerful political party that reduced the State to a bystander.

In some respects, this was a good and bad thing. On the good side, the institutional strength of the African National Congress shone through as a model for all of Africa’s proto-parties.

Zuma could have taken off in a huff with his supporters in tow, form a new outfit, with his parting shot to the split ANC being that it had become “undemocratic and dictatorial”. He did not do that.

His departure was nonetheless anything but graceful. Zuma behaved like a spouse you have decided to kick out but she refuses to go. She has brought disrepute to the family with her scandalous ways.

She has also messed up the family finances through her shoddy management and uncontrolled expenditures. You try everything, even calling together a full family council. Yet she is adamant, demanding a three-to-six-month grace period before the divorce is settled. She relents only when she is sternly read the riot act.

Yet South Africa’s problems are not just those of a wayward spouse. The distinction between the State president and ANC party leader must never remain ambiguous, even as the sheer electoral heft of the party means the levers of government are necessarily in the hands of the ANC.

MARCHING ORDERS

Furthermore, the party’s habit of giving marching orders to sitting State presidents whenever it has its own change of leadership is unhealthy.

It also needlessly humiliates incumbents. Zuma himself is guilty of having started this trend with respect to Thabo Mbeki. Constitutional timelines set for such transitions should be respected. Next year when national elections are due was not too far off to wait before seeing Zuma off. Constitutionally, he was not going to run again anyway.

There is a cautionary tale to all this. The omnipotence of a political party in a democratic setting can be self-defeating. The ANC is nowhere like the Communist Party of China, which operates on very different rules. The general secretary of that party is indisputably the most powerful official in that country, to whom even the presidency and the army is subordinate.

The party oversees the government, in practice and in law. In most other countries it is the reverse. (President Xi Jinping draws his supreme power in China as general secretary of the Communist Party). In South Africa, the constitution gives primacy to the State ahead of the ruling party, a point Zuma correctly alluded to in his resignation speech.

The transition from a liberation movement to a political party in a multi-party space has not been easy for the ANC.

COMPLICATED CONSTITUTION

The situations and the way decisions are arrived at are different. Worse, South Africa has to navigate a complicated constitution – which Kenya virtually copy-pasted – whose demands can overwhelm a country where understanding of this kind of free-wheeling democratic practice is superficial.

That is why there is so much turbulence across the body politic in both South Africa and Kenya. Institution-building and overall governance becomes problematic when the government, the judiciary and the Opposition revert to working at cross-purposes from their simplistic reading of the constitution.

Zuma, to some extent, was a victim of snobbery. He was seen as a bit of an oaf with little formal education yet with a feisty drive that got him to the top. He charms the ladies alright, but failed to do so with the rest of the country as the media turned him into a caricature.

INEQUALITY

There was even a savage rumour started by the South African Communist Party which claimed Zuma would fire his successor-in-waiting, Cyril Ramaphosa, as deputy president of State and replace him with Nkosazana Dlamini, Zuma’s ex-wife. His enemies stopped at nothing.

The expectations on Ramaphosa to turn things around are impossibly high. Personally, my fear is that his talents are overrated. South Africa’s overriding problem is inequality, where his voice is much weaker than – yes – Zuma’s.

Warigi is a socio-political commentator [email protected]