SAIRR Today: Take charge Mr President - 5th February 2009
By the end of 2007 it had become clear that Jacob Zuma would become South Africa’s president. It appeared at the time that one of his stronger attributes as president would be his leadership ability. This was an ability he had demonstrated on a number of occasions in political spheres ranging from post-1994 KwaZulu-Natal to peace negotiations in central Africa. However with every passing week he seems to be less and less able to exercise effective leadership over his party and his government.
Mr Zuma assumed the presidency on the back of an impressive track
record of political leadership. His performance for the ANC in
KwaZulu-Natal in the late 1990s helped to secure permanent peace in
that province. More importantly, for the ANC, he weaned most of the
province’s voters off the IFP and effectively won the province for the
ANC. With the history of political conflict in that province this was a
considerable political achievement. It was probably the single most
important political achievement in paving Mr Zuma’s career to the
presidency of both the ANC and the country.
In peace negotiations in central
Africa Mr Zuma scored significant successes. These stood in strong
contrast to the failed efforts of Thabo Mbeki in other parts of the
continent. While Mr Zuma won the confidence of warring parties in the
Great Lakes region, Mr Mbeki was sent packing in Ivory Coast after both
warring parties in that country came to see him as a dishonest broker.
The joke was that the only thing that rebel and government forces in
Ivory Coast could agree on was that they did not want Mr Mbeki to
mediate their conflict!
Let us not forget either that Mr Zuma
took control of the ANC from his position in the political wilderness
and on the back of both rape and corruption charges . This after Mr
Mbeki had fired him as deputy president and engineered his banishment
from government. This episode alone must rate as one of the greatest
political comeback stories in any modern democratic society.
So while there may have been some
concern expressed at Mr Zuma’s integrity when he became president,
there was little concern expressed at his political leadership ability.
It was punted that under his leadership he would unite the fractured
ANC and return policy certainty to government. It now seems that the
opposite has happened.
To start with, Mr Zuma does not seem
to exercise any great degree of influence over his cabinet. Almost a
year into their jobs most cabinet ministers seem to have settled into
an unproductive routine of planning how they intend to plan for their
departments. In critical fields like health and education not much
seems to be happening other than hand wringing about poor education
results while the health authorities have conceived a scheme to
effectively nationalize private healthcare funding. This scheme, which
the government at one stage said would be introduced as a matter of
urgency, seems very far from being implemented. While in this case the
scheme may be a poorly thought out one it nonetheless goes to show just
how ineffective the Zuma regime appears to be.
Equally, very few people in the
cabinet or the broader ruling alliance seem to pay much attention to
what Mr Zuma says. You can rest assured that within a week of Mr Zuma,
or one of his senior lieutenants, calling for order in the party some
cabinet minister or the youth league leader will again make a statement
in the media insulting a cabinet or alliance colleague. You can be as
certain that that colleague will respond in an equally infantile manner
and that the press will have a field week covering the latest
‘crisis in the alliance’. Take for example the ANC’s recent instruction
that its politicians must stop disrupting schooling by using schools as
campaign platforms. No sooner had the instruction gone out that the ANC
Youth League rolls into another school, during school hours, and with
journalists in tow this time to hand over a donation to the
school.
In many cases the victim of the
mudslinging and the ill-discipline is Mr Zuma himself. When trade
unions accuse Mr Trevor Manuel of being a ‘shop steward for business’
they by association insult Mr Zuma who appointed Mr Manuel and at whose
pleasure Mr Manuel continues to serve. When the ANC’s youth league
accuses the mining minister of lying to a conference of mining
investors where she said that mines will not be nationalised they do
the same. In this particular case the youth league of the ANC even went
further to say that the mining minister privately shares their plans to
nationalise mines and has told them as much! This sort of thing
reflects badly on the honesty and integrity of Mr Zuma’s
government.
The issue of mining is a useful one
to look more deeply at the failure of leadership by Mr Zuma. Mr Zuma
appointed close on ten ministers and deputy ministers responsible for
the economy through the portfolios of economic planning, economic
development, mining, trade and industry, finance, and public
enterprises. Yet it is the ANC youth league which articulates future
economic and mining policy for South Africa through their ‘policy
documents’. Their views come to dominate much international financial
reporting on South Africa. The youth league is also left to loudly and
directly contradict statements put out by cabinet ministers and at
times even threaten those same ministers who disagree with the league’s
‘policy documents’.
It is incredible that Mr Zuma allows
this ‘farce’, as it was described by yesterday’s Sowetan, to go
on. In so doing he undermines his cabinet and weakens the authority of
cabinet ministers. Many cabinet ministers and senior ANC officials now
appear to be so scared of talking about economic or mining policy that
they seem to have gone into hiding where they busy themselves planning
how they are one day going to plan policy. Where the ANC’s leadership
does try and explain who is in charge they make fools of themselves as
happened to Gwede Mantashe in his attempt to explain the ANC’s position
on nationalisation to Chris Barron in last week’s Sunday
Times.
Mr Zuma might laugh and smile and
tell us that this is all just a big debate. His spokespeople will say
that all this debate is very democratic but with every passing week of
his presidency this explanation becomes less convincing. For leadership
is not an antithesis to democracy or healthy debate. What we are now
seeing in the ANC is less about democratic debate than it is about
policy anarchy and paralysis. It would be very welcome to see Mr Zuma
take charge to articulate government policy and take action against his
youth league, which is doing great damage to South Africa’s standing as
an investment destination.
-
Frans Cronje
SAIRR Today: Warning bells for South Africa - 18th March 2010
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