Africa News blog

100 years and going strong; But has the ANC-led government done enough for its people?

By Isaac Esipisu

Although the role of political parties in Africa has changed dramatically since the sweeping reintroduction of multi-party politics in the early 1990s, Africa’s political parties remain deficient in many ways, particularly their organizational capacity, programmatic profiles and inner-party democracy.

The third wave of democratization that hit the shores of Africa 20 years ago has undoubtedly produced mixed results as regards to the democratic quality of the over 48 countries south of the Sahara. However, one finding can hardly be denied: the role of political parties has evidently changed dramatically.

Notwithstanding few exceptions such as Eritrea , Swaziland and Somalia , in almost all sub-Saharan countries, governments legally allow multi-party politics. This is in stark contrast to the single-party regimes and military oligarchies that prevailed before 1990.

After years of marginalization during autocratic rule, many African political parties have regained their key role in democratic politics by mediating between politics and society. Multi-partyism paved the way for genuine parliamentary opposition and the strengthening of parliaments in decision-making. However, several shortcomings still remain: many African political parties suffer from low organizational capacity and a lack of internal democracy.

Dominated by individual leaders, often times lifelong chairpersons and “Big Men”, youth and women remain marginalized within party structures.

Was South Africa right to deny Dalai Lama a visa?

By Isaac Esipisu

Given that China is South Africa’s biggest trading partner and given the close relationship between Beijing and the ruling African National Congress, it didn’t come as a huge surprise that South Africa was in no hurry to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama.

Tibet’s spiritual leader will end up missing the 80th birthday party of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a fellow Nobel peace prize winner. He said his application for a visa had not come through on time despite having been made to Pretoria several weeks earlier. (Although South Africa’s government said a visa hadn’t actually been denied, the Dalai Lama’s office said it appeared to find the prospect inconvenient). Desmond Tutu said the government’s action was a national disgrace and warned the President and ruling party that one day he will start praying for the defeat of the ANC government.

It’s the second time the Dalai Lama has been unable to honour an invitation to South Africa by Tutu after failing to make it to a meeting in 2010.

South Africa will certainly win more plaudits in Beijing, which last week agreed to $2.5 billion in investment projects with during a visit by South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe.

But pro-Tibet activists say South Africa is undermining its credentials as a country of freedom and democracy, established after the end of white minority rule a generation ago.

Searching for it — not quite feeling it — in Polokwane

The soccer fan fest sounded like a wild party with the vuvuzela horns booming through the empty streets of Polokwane town, one of the smallest of 10 venues for the first World Cup on African soil.

Everyone must be there, we thought as there was little happening on a Saturday night in the northern South African town centre.

But on closer inspection the soccer fan fest — loud as it was — was also pretty deserted. Soccer fever had yet to reach Polokwane.

A sleepy town of just 500,000 people, it was hard to imagine Polokwane, which means place of safety, would host its first World Cup soccer match in less than 24 hours. In Johannesburg or Cape Town you could definitely “feel it”. Here we weren’t so sure.

Driving through the town’s eerily deserted streets searching for a restaurant where we could eat and watch the soccer, we discovered that was not an easy find. Even the local Nandos restaurant on the main street shut by 8 p.m.

It was also hard to imagine what long-term benefit the town would see from being a host city. While for the four matches to be played in Polokwane the few hotels on offer for tourists were full, otherwise there were plenty of rooms at the inn.

No team was staying there which would bring with it the adoring fans or news-hungry media and the associated business. Those playing were flown in for pre-match training, again the day of the match and ferried back straight after.

“Kill the Boer”: History or hate speech?

The African National Congress has defended the singing of an apartheid-era song with the words “Kill the Farmer, Kill the Boer”, saying it is no incitement to violence but a way of ensuring a history of oppression is not forgotten.

That does little to assuage the concerns of the white minority, however, in a country branded the “Rainbow Nation” after the relatively peaceful end to apartheid 16 years ago and the government’s message of “unity in diversity”.

The singing of the song by the ANC’s firebrand youth leader Julius Malema recently has strained race relations. Afrikaner farmers feel particular offence, pointing out that 3,000 white farmers have been killed since the first democratic elections in 1994.

A regional high court ruled last week that the song amounted to hate speech.

The concerns of minorities were further fuelled by fact that students at two of South Africa’s top universities enthusiastically joined in singing the song with Malema. ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe said he had sung the song at rugby matches.

Malema articulates the anger of many in the black majority at the relative prosperity of most whites and their influence over the economy while millions of black South Africans are marginalised and live in poverty.

South Africa prides itself on having one of the most progressive constitutions in the world and entrenches free speech which was barred under apartheid. But it also depends on harmony between its various groups.

Support slumps for rival to South Africa’s ANC

It would be hard for the leaders of South Africa’s COPE party to put a positive spin on its latest poll rating of just over 2 percent. If the breakaway group from the African National Congress gave the ANC a bit of a jolt before elections in April, the ruling party doesn’t seem to have much to worry about from that quarter now.

In terms of electoral success, it hasn’t been a good year for parties trying to challenge the former liberation movements that run most of southern Africa.

In Namibia, a breakaway group from the ruling SWAPO party emerged as the main opposition, but still only won just over 11 percent of the vote and complained of foul play. In Mozambique, Frelimo won another resounding victory, beating both old rival Renamo and the new MDM – which complained at the barring of some of its candidates.

Angola’s President Jose Eduardo dos Santos signalled to his MPLA party that he would wait another three years before a presidential election he is almost certain to win.

The picture is somewhat different in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe was forced into a power sharing deal with rival Morgan Tsvangirai, a former union leader, but even there the one-time guerrilla told his ZANU-PF recently to stop bickering and mobilise to win ‘uncontested victory’ in the next election.

There is a big difference between South Africa and some of its neighbours in that nobody is challenging the fairness of the electoral system.

But the same question arises here as elsewhere as to when, if ever, opposition parties might be able to seriously challenge the hold of the movements that came to power through their victories over colonial or minority rule.

What is COSATU fighting for?

South Africa’s largest trade union federation was quick to break into stirring songs of class struggle during its recent congress and COSATU members showed an impressive ability to sign along in unison.

But the question of what it is fighting for these days and its role in the ruling tripartite alliance with the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party has never been under such great scrutiny as it has since President Jacob Zuma took office in May.

Zuma’s struggle for power would have been much harder to win – perhaps even impossible – without the support of the unions and he was happy to take centre stage at the COSATU conference in a bright red Mao-style suit.

But while ever ready to promise support for fighting poverty, Zuma has shown scant sign of agreeing to union demands for everything from big increases in spending to the nationalisation of the central bank.

Unions are now preparing to do battle over the fate of Trevor Manuel, who won the respect of markets as finance minister for policies that unions see as too pro-business and who now heads a planning commission in the presidency.

As well having little love for Manuel, unions feel his role is undermining one of their own in the government – Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel.

But the argument highlights the difficulty for COSATU of being both within a broad government it helped bring to power and trying to then pressure that government for changes in the name of a working class struggle.

Was it right to grant refugee status to white South African?

Canada’s decision to grant refugee status to white South African Brandon Huntley has drawn anger from the ruling African National Congress, which described it as racist, and has again stirred the race debate in South Africa 14 years after the end of apartheid.

Huntley had cited persecution by black South Africans as the reason why he could not return to the country of his birth. The chair of the Canadian panel that granted his request said he had shown evidence “of indifference and inability or unwillingness” of South Africa’s government to protect white South Africans from “persecution by African South Africans”.

“I find that the claimant would stand out like a ‘sore thumb’ due to his colour in any part of the country,” the chair of the tribunal panel, William Davis, was quoted as saying.

In his application for asylum, Huntley said he had been a victim of multiple crimes by black South Africans and added that white South Africans were a target.

He pointed at the country’s Black Economic Empowerment policies as institutionalised reverse racism that has ensured that he has no opportunities.

The Ottawa Sun described how Huntley first came to Canada to work as a carnival attendant on a six-month work permit in 2004, came back in 2005 and then stayed on illegally until he made a refugee claim in 2008.

Anyone visiting South Africa will certainly see plenty of evidence of white South Africans doing extremely well and generally having a higher standard of living than the majority of black South Africans. White South Africans head many top firms while the highest crime rates are not in the suburbs of the affluent, but in the poor black townships.

South African fury at sex test for track star

Eighteen-year-old Mokgadi ‘Caster’ Semenya is being celebrated as a national hero in South Africa after winning the 800 metres at the World Athletics Championships, but the decision by international athletics officials to order a gender verification test has stirred deep anger – and brought accusations of prejudice against the country and the continent.

Many in South Africa feel a victory by their talented young athlete is being tarnished by bad losers and a world all too  ready to mock. Sensitivities to prejudice are never far from the surface in the country where apartheid white minority rule ended just 15 years ago.

South Africans point out that headlines such as “Is she really a HE?”, in Britain’s Daily Mail, and the question of gender verification only surfaced when Semenya started to do much better than her peers.

“It shows that these imperialist countries can’t afford to accept the talent that Africa as a continent has,” the South African Football Players Union said in a message of congratulation to Semenya.

Politicians stepped in too.

“The ANC YL condemns with contempt those who are questioning her gender,” said the ever vocal Youth League of the Ruling African National Congress.

Some even drew parallels between Semenya and an unpleasant episode from the colonial era – Sarah Baartman, a South African woman, was taken from her rural homeland in 1810 and paraded to the world as a freak because of her unusual physical features. Her remains were finally brought back to South Africa in 2002 and laid to rest.

Zuma’s balancing act

South African President Jacob Zuma has a tough balancing act to perform as he begins his term in office.

 On the one hand, Zuma is anxious to assure investors that there will be continuity in the economic policies that have secured the country’s status as the regional powerhouse.

On the other, he has to address the increasingly vocal demands of his allies in the labour movement, whose support propelled him first to the leadership of the ruling ANC and then to the country’s top government job after April 22 elections.

But what the unions want – increased social spending to cushion their members against the ravages to the global recession that has now also landed in South Africa – would mean veering away from the prudent fiscal stance that has ironically cushioned the country from the worst of the world crisis.

Investors are also keen to see whether Zuma bows to pressure not to renew the contract of central bank Governor Tito Mboweni, loved by financial markets but vilified by unions that say a pre-occupation with inflation targeting has seen the Reserve Bank maintain a tight monetary policy at the expense of economic growth, impoverishing millions.

Sovereign risk in South Africa

Recent events in South Africa have sent some conflicting signals to investors about sovereign risks. On the one hand there was some regulatory flip-flopping over the Vodacom listing given objections from the union organisation COSATU, which raised questions about the influence of unions in Jacob Zuma’s administration. On the other hand the sovereign issuing some $1.5 billion was highly successful and oversubscribed.

With Zuma recently elected on a platform of change for his domestic audience and continuation of old policies when speaking to investors, there is a raft of new ministers and new ministries and quite a bit of policy uncertainty. No foreign investor will deny South Africa’s need to address serious social problems of inequality, housing, jobs and education through a more developmental state agenda.

However investors I speak to simply want to see that this is not at the expense of the productive sectors of the economy. This agenda will naturally involve the ANC’s allies: COSATU and SACP (communist party).  As such, the process of governing will be a noisy affair for investors. I put the Vodacom incident down to such noise.

However I believe the new Zuma administration will find itself heavily constrained by the need to raise funds for its agenda and so keep investors onside as the government’s borrowing requirement balloons. Add state owned enterprises engaging in very necessary investment, and a current account deficit and you arrive at a funding requirement north of  500 billion rand for the next two years.

This will act as a strong rationalising influence though a backup overdraft in the form of an IMF flexible credit lending facility would be a benefit.  It also should not be forgotten that there is still a strong business influence in the cabinet and the ANC from the likes of Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale.  Most investors buy the case of policy not shifting sharply to the left, though a lot of questions have been planted in the minds of investors.

Keeping the different factions in his cabinet in line will be key for Zuma’s success, especially with two new hurdles looming: the Bharti/MTN and the Xstrata/Anglo American mergers. Both are sensitive and likely to be jumped on by unions.  The inflation-targeting debate is also being reopened locally — a topic foreign investors love to discuss.

It is now up to Zuma and his team to deliver on prudent macro-policy as well as his developmental state priorities in order to sustain the current goodwill from investors.  It is still early days for his administration. We hope not to be disappointed — for South Africa’s sake as much as anyone elses.