More of the Same in South Africa as ANC Re-elects Zuma

Mike Hutchings / Reuters

South Africa's President Jacob Zuma celebrates his re-election as Party President at the National Conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in Bloemfontein on Dec. 18, 2012.

In a normal democracy, a crushing victory at the polls by the incumbent generally means an overwhelming popular desire for more of the same. Tuesday?s triumph by South African President Jacob Zuma in a?contest to lead the African National Congress (A.N.C.) reveals something quite different: how removed Africa?s most famous liberation movement now is from the people it would represent.

With the A.N.C.?s two thirds electoral majority ? a legacy of its glorious, revolutionary past under Nelson Mandela ? Zuma?s re-election to the presidency of the party all but guarantees him re-election as national President, keeping him in power until 2019, when he would be 77. But to confuse his popularity among the 4,000 party delegates assembled at Mangaung, a township on the outskirts of Bloemfontein where the party conference was held, with wider popular support would be a mistake.

(MORE: Social inequality threatens to undo the South African miracle.)

Zuma came to power in 2009 under a cloud. For years he had faced charges of corruption, racketeering, money laundering and fraud, only for them to be dropped weeks before he took power. Today he faces another scandal: the state spending of what the South African press say is $28 million on security upgrades at his private residence in his home province of Kwazulu-Natal (KZN). Those allegations ? and hundreds of other accusations of corruption and criminality by A.N.C. ministers and councillors ? fixate the media. But it is the A.N.C.?s failure to lift its natural constituency ? the half of the country, according to the government?s own figures, that 18 years after the end of apartheid still live below the poverty line ? which this year stirred violent and angry mass protests against the party. The state?s brutal opposition to those demonstrations, which included the shooting to death by police of 34 striking miners at a platinum mine at Marikana in the north of the country in August, both shocked in the manner it evoked the violence of apartheid and underscored the distance that now exists between South Africa?s poor and the party that promised to liberate them.

The election of Cyril Ramaphosa with a similar margin as Zuma?s deputy on Tuesday is testament to how blind the A.N.C. now is to popular sentiment. Ramaphosa was a target of particular fury at Marikana: he is a former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers who went on to use his political connections to become one of South Africa?s richest men, in part due to his stake in Marikana?s owners, Lonmin. An official inquiry into the massacre heard how the day before the shooting, Ramaphosa wrote to Lonmin?s chief commercial officer saying: ?The terrible events that have unfolded cannot be described as a labor dispute. They are plainly dastardly criminal and must be characterized as such ? there needs to be concomitant action to address this situation.?

(MORE: The disastrous handling of the Marikana mine incident.)

It?s hard to avoid the conclusion that in re-electing the tainted Zuma and super-rich Ramaphosa, the A.N.C. has added further cement to South Africa?s central problem: the yawning divide between the elite, now both white and A.N.C.-connected black, that has actually widened since the end of apartheid. The lives of millions of South Africans are still?defined by violent crime, unemployment of 25-40% and the world?s biggest HIV/AIDS population. Many still live in the same shacks in the same townships. Once, led by the A.N.C. and others, South Africans fought such unfairness and brought down a regime. Tuesday?s elections show how the A.N.C. is ignoring the message of this year?s protests: they could do so again.

Source: http://world.time.com/2012/12/18/more-of-the-same-in-south-africa-as-anc-re-elects-zuma/

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