South African Discomfort

We can pretty much guess what will happen in South Africa's election. What we don’t know is how this young democracy will handle its growing pains.

I recently went to the venerable old Market Theater in an increasingly populated downtown Johannesburg. It had been all but abandoned after the end of apartheid. Now the city is coming back, and white people are coming back, and they (along with a healthy number of blacks) are coming back to the Market Theater. But that’s not the point.

I went to the Market Theater to see MacBeki, a new play written by a South African comedian as venerable as the theater in which the play is now running. Pieter-Dirk Uys, according to one pretty accurate write-up, “has taken his main inspiration from Shakespeare's MacBeth and structured a satirical play around it, with the focus on a familiar political setting …. Unlike Shakespeare, Pieter-Dirk Uys does not spill blood in his play. He spills the beans. He makes us laugh at the transparency of the ruling elite who lie to protect themselves at all cost.”

The title, clearly a take-off on former president Thabo Mbeki, a great quoter of Shakespeare, who, in the minds of some, was murdered—politically that is—by Jacob Zuma, a rival who all the polls predict will be the next president of South Africa.

From where I sat, most of those in the mixed-race, mixed-age audience didn’t seem to know quite what to make of this work that hits close to the bone of South Africa’s current politics. What I heard was a lot of “hmmms” and “I need to think about this a bit.” There were some who thought it was “humor without facts—very disturbing” as one prominent celebrity in the audience told me later.

The reaction in the theater was so complex that I was happy when I rolled over and turned on my radio the next morning to find an extended call-in discussion moderated by Tshepiso Makwetla, whom I had spotted with knitted brow at the performance. Her show, The After Eight Debate, included Pieter-Dirk Uys (pronounced Ace, sorta), who was calling in from his home in a place called Darling and the actors who played two of the characters from the play—with the interesting names of MacTrevor (the minister of finance in reality is Trevor Manuel) and the other MacZum. (Is there any doubt who he is modeled after?)

The discussion, ostensibly, was about the play but involved even more about the current state of politics in the country.

Uys, who is widely known for his political satire, especially when dressed as a woman known as Evita Bezuidenhout, won a lot of praise in the discussion, but he also took a lot of heat. He was accused of having a hidden agenda (a lot of that is going around these days). But he seemed to be loving every minute of it and was the one who came closest to summing up the prevailing mood in the country: “Discomfort is where we are right now.”

Hello, Understatement!

South Africa is in the midst of a political campaign that is set to make history. Not that we don’t pretty much know the main outcome. The ruling African National Congress will continue to rule, but for the first time since the end of apartheid, it has a serious challenger, and the challenge is from within.

Late last year, a group of ANC members, disgruntled over the party’s unceremonious dismissal of Mbeki as president with only six months left in final term, split and formed a new party—Congress of the People (COPE). In a very short time, the new kid on the political block has garnered support from a wide range of South Africans who say they were more disgruntled with the ANC, itself, than its punitive actions against Mbeki.

Among their charges against the ANC:

· Hasn’t delivered on its promise of a better life for all.

· Has attempted to undermine the judiciary.

· Hasn’t been inclusive.

· Has strayed from its original noble goals etc., etc., etc.

And some who have joined COPE just don’t like the probable next president, Jacob Zuma, because they think he’s a crook, but more on that later.

Some see COPE gaining on the ANC and winning enough votes to cut into the ANC’s two-thirds majority in the parliament, a margin which effectively gives the government carte blanche over everything. Even among the un-disgruntled there is a sense that kind of majority is not good for the political health of a young democracy.

The campaign has not been all that rough considering what has happened in other young democracies on the continent (or even the violence that accompanied the run-up to what I call the Nelson Mandela election in 2004, when hundreds were killed.) While there has been some violence, relatively speaking, it hasn’t been significant—though it has added to the level of discomfort.

Instead, what has taken the normal cacophony of political voices to a piercing decibel level is a ruling by the National Prosecuting Authority, which dropped 16 charges of conspiracy, racketeering, money laundering and bribery against Jacob Zuma, head of the ruling ANC. The National Prosecuting Authority has insisted since 2005 that it had solid evidence that Zuma was guilty of the charges, and indeed, his business associate was sent to jail for 15 years for soliciting a bribe on Zuma’s behalf from a French arms dealer. The scandal also cost Zuma his job as deputy president when he was fired by Mbeki.

But what goes around comes around. Zuma defeated Mbeki for the presidency of the ANC back in December, the same day the news broke that Zuma was going to be recharged with even more charges. Shortly thereafter, Mbeki was forced by the ANC to step down as president. This followed a judge’s ruling that the charges against Zuma were politically motivated, as he had insisted all along.

To cut short a long story that is not yet over, the National Prosecuting Authority’s airtight case against Zuma was dismissed last week because of what the acting chief prosecutor called “abuse of the process.” The ammunition for this ruling came in the form of audio tapes revealing conversations that involved an Mbeki loyalist and former chief investigator. The conversations revolved around the timing of the announcement that Zuma was going to be recharged (after three years) on more corruption counts based on new evidence.

We are now being told that the tapes prove what Zuma had been saying all along—that there was a political conspiracy aimed at derailing his ANC candidacy to boost Mbeki’s. So far, Mbeki’s name is not mentioned in the tapes—at least the ones made public. We are still waiting for the full transcript, wherever it is.

But now, charges of political interference are being leveled at the Zuma forces. Opposition parties cried foul when the National Prosecuting Authority dropped the charges against Zuma; given that it was two weeks before the election, that is essentially a referendum on the ANC and Jacob Zuma. In South Africa’s parliamentary system, the party that wins the most seats gets to choose the president; COPE is objecting, urging changes that would allow for direct election of the president by the voters.

So where does that leave things? In the words of Uys, “Discomfort is where we are right now.”

Zuma is claiming vindication, and the opposition is showing irritation. Everybody involved is now talking about taking everybody else to court; the now-reclusive Mbeki has spoken out, questioning how the tapes got into private hands and once again proclaimed his innocence. But the ANC’s alliance partners called for the arrest of Mbeki and the two figures involved in the taped phone conversations.

Zuma insists that, even though he has not been acquitted, his conscience is clear and that there is no cloud over his head. (Although cartoonists continue to draw a shower head over his head in mockery of his assertion that he protected himself from AIDS by taking a shower after having unprotected sex with an HIV positive woman. He did go to court on rape charges in that case and was acquitted.)

But even if, as Zuma insists, there are no clouds over his head, there are plenty hanging over South Africa and the political process as a whole. The election, despite the high level of certainty about certain outcomes, will provide a major test for this still young democracy. Discomfort is the operative word right now. But stay tuned.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is a Johannesburg-based journalist and author of New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance.