IN HIS ADDRESS to the South African
Council of Business (Sacob) on October 24, President Mbeki finally gave
the business community and the markets the reassurance that they have
been waiting for since the farm invasions in Zimbabwe began in late
February. Land redistribution in South Africa will occur within the
law, he stated. The president was endorsing what Reserve Bank governor
Tito Mboweni had felt compelled to say two weeks earlier when the Rand
fell following deputy president Jacob Zuma's sympathetic remarks about
land reform policy in Zimbabwe.
One's first reaction to the president's Sacob speech is appreciation
that he has recommitted his government to pursue its land
redistribution programme with respect for property rights and the
principle of compensation. Land and agriculture minister Thoko Didiza
had at times appeared to use the Zimbabwe land issue to warn South
Africa's commercial farmers that the willing-seller, willing-buyer
principle would not necessarily always apply in dealings over land
redistribution.
But the relief in the marketplace has discouraged the exceedingly
cautious business and agricultural establishments from asking the
obvious question - why did it take so long for Mbeki to issue what
should have been a simple reassurance founded on the principles
embodied in the new Constitution? The answer is, I believe, bound up
with the president's overall strategy for his government and his
party.
Hardly a week goes by without negative commentary on Mbeki's latest
statement or policy stance: whether on Zimbabwe, international drug
companies, conspiracy theories involving the CIA, playing the race card
against the white Opposition parties, or his unconventional views on
HIV/Aids. The press that Mbeki has been getting is dramatically at odds
with the almost seamless political correctness of most of South
Africa's prominent newspapers.
Their basic criticisms are both understandable and correct. South
Africa cannot afford the luxury of complex debate about what causes
Aids when the HIV infection rate is growing daily. The government
cannot afford to allow its neighbour - and largest trading partner on
the continent - to commit economic suicide. Nor can South Africa's head
of state be perceived to be remotely sympathetic to the self-seeking
and manipulative rule that has all but destroyed investor confidence in
much of sub-Saharan Africa. Attacks on the drug companies ignore the
realities of globalisation, while the renewed obsession with race will
carry a heavy price, just as it did in the past.
The weakness of most commentary on Mbeki's alleged idiosyncratic
behaviour is not that it exaggerates the consequences of that behaviour
but that so few writers have considered the motives that lie behind it.
Many of their conclusions are prefaced with polite references to
Mbeki's intellect, but they do not go on to ask why so obviously
intelligent a man should behave in the way he does. Dubbing him the
"Velcro president" to whom any mistake sticks may be catchy but
explains nothing. Between the lines they imply that the president is
"weird", over-stressed or worse.
The editor of Focus, R.W. Johnson, is one of the exceptions. Writing
in the British weekly The Spectator (August 26), he risked the
historical fate of messengers when he not only pointed out what
influential opinion-formers abroad were saying, but also offered four
possible explanations for Mbeki's "problem". One is that he is
vulnerable to attack from the left and uses "Africanism" as a shield.
Another is that the manipulative character of all exile politics has
left him uncomfortable with opposition criticism in a democracy. The
third is that he is over-stressed by the difficulties he faces in
living up to the expectations of his constituency in a limping economy
and the fourth is that he feels he has to play the race card to justify
setbacks in delivery.
The last explanation suggests a shrewd anticipation of real challenges
ahead and is worth further exploration. By emphasising the struggle
against racism and accusing his white political opponents of being
racist, Mbeki is preparing the rationale for actions that may be needed
to defend his own position and the hegemony of his party. He is drawing
the lines in the sand for a battle of survival. He will not have missed
the early warning signs.
The latest Idasa national opinion poll conducted by Research Surveys
suggests a dramatic fall in Mbeki's popularity from around 70 per cent
early in the year to 50 per cent in October. It also records rising
levels of dissatisfaction with government performance and a fall in
identification with the ANC among the mass electorate. At the same
time, however, voters say they support the ANC at much the same level
as in the past. This survey, which was limited to metropolitan areas,
may be overstating a trend. (If "quota" sampling was used the results
may over-represent the more articulate people in each category.)
However other surveys by Markinor and MarkData confirm the Idasa
findings.
The latest Markinor poll shows the same pattern - high levels of
dissatisfaction with delivery of services but, at the same time, high
levels of support for the ANC. Recent MarkData surveys show that
overall support for the ANC, both committed and nominal, has been
increasing in recent months. In November 1993, just before the first
open election, the ANC was the choice of 54 per cent of all South
African voters. This fell slightly to around 52 per cent in late 1999,
but rose to 59 per cent - the highest level yet - by June/July this
year.
We are seeing an increasing disjunction, or strain, between party
support, on the one hand, and the popularity of and commitment to the
party and the president on the other. Support for the ANC and
frustrations over its performance in government are peaking
simultaneously.
This is not as odd as it may look. It is over-simple to assume that
political parties are supported only because of the benefits that they
achieve for their constituencies. A party may also be supported on
ethnic, ideological, habitual, symbolic and historical grounds. The
ANC's efforts to label the largest Opposition parties as "racist" may
be succeeding in bolstering the support base of the ANC by erecting a
symbolic barrier between parties. While the Democratic and New National
Parties, now merged as the Democratic Alliance (DA), have a non-racial
ticket, the accusations of racism against them may have aroused
sufficient doubt in the minds of black voters to block any potential
shift of black support towards the DA at this stage.
Voting behaviour is often a reconciliation of material satisfaction
and the other factors that bind voters to a party. Voters can temper
their dissatisfactions with hope and the expectation that their
circumstances will improve. A 1997 study by the Human Sciences Research
Council in KwaZulu-Natal made it clear that where delivery of services
was perceived as poor, the rank-and-file citizens compensated by
expressing high levels of hope for future improvement. In other words,
a political party that is not meeting immediate expectations can take
out a political "overdraft" by making promises and keeping hope
alive.
But living on the political credit of hope and promises is inevitably
a temporary strategy. Hope unfulfilled eventually turns into apathy or
cynicism. The rise in dissatisfaction that the Idasa poll reflects
could be the first stage in a gradual weakening of electoral support
for the ANC. The gap between tangible rewards and the other bases of
party support widens and eventually the strands of commitment that hold
the support base together begin to snap. Only then will the voters
begin to consider other parties.
It is thus too early to expect the Opposition to benefit from rising
popular dissatisfaction. What will happen first, as in Zimbabwe some
ten years after independence, is that the motivation of ANC supporters
to cast their vote will decline. Lower turnouts at election time will
be the early warning of an eventual shift in support. Focus went to
press before the results of the December 5 local government elections
were available, but the turnout figures will indicate whether this
process has begun.
The ANC does its own research and must be well aware of the dangers.
But its political overdraft can still be extended for a while. Given
the size of the party's majority, the ANC and the government probably
have five to ten years' grace. However, in much of Africa losing
majority support usually means losing all influence for a long time,
and a mere five or more years of grace is scant comfort. As a
consummate strategist Mbeki knows he has to address that long-range
challenge without delay.
As an economist he knows that, in the short-term, the country is
unlikely to achieve the economic growth rates which would deliver
significantly more jobs and larger tax revenues. The benefits of
greater international competitiveness and improved export performance
are possible medium-term rewards, but their effects will take time to
filter down to the ANC's constituency. By then unemployment and
Aids-related damage to the economy could be irreversible. Furthermore,
Mbeki's problems with organised labour are chronic and the capacity of
the state machinery to plan and implement programmes of service
implementation will get worse before they eventually get better.
Turning round the dismal records on crime and educational output will
also take at least ten years.
Mbeki's strategy is to deflect attention from delivery and establish
alternative criteria by which the success of his administration should
be judged. He will not be the first or last politician to realise that
he needs scapegoats to denounce at rallies and take the blame for his
own failures. Nelson Mandela's benign vision of reconciliation will not
do for this purpose. The former president left his successor without a
source of effective scapegoats and as a result Mbeki may have felt that
he had no alternative but to engineer - with the help of the Human
Rights Commission - the crisis of racism. The racism that is alleged to
exist is not merely the inevitable residue of the crude and direct
discrimination of the past, which is serious but limited in scope. It
is presented as a pervasive web of institutional, structural and even
subliminal attitudes that is defined by the victims and therefore
cannot be disproved.
In this vision the victims - of apartheid, colonialism or exploitation
- are absolutely distinct from the beneficiaries of the apartheid
state. While no one can deny that there were victims of apartheid and
that many of the baneful consequences of former policies are still
present, it is a nevertheless a complex field of cause and effect. Some
former Bantu education schools barely achieve 10 per cent matriculation
pass rates while others that suffered the same historical disadvantages
excel with pass rates of nearly 100 per cent. Historical disadvantage
can be an excuse for lack of discipline and opportunism, but such
complexities have been glossed over in absolute, and by now "official",
distinction between former victims and beneficiaries of
apartheid.
This basic moral distinction is used to justify the entire edifice of
transformation and empowerment policy. The most politically incorrect
thing that anyone can do is to blame the disadvantaged classes for any
aspect of their condition or to question their virtue in their
suffering. In general this distinction has been accepted by the
corporate sector, albeit hypocritically, and by Western aid donors. For
strategic purposes the principle of virtuous and deserving "victims" is
precious - a political resource of almost limitless
possibilities.
The only issue that fails to fit the framework is HIV/Aids. While few
people would say so publicly, at base the epidemic is driven by sexual
behaviour hardly congruent with the image of the "victim". The many
women who are infected as a result of sexual abuse and rape are
certainly victims, but for others its consequences are rather more
self-inflicted. Well-intentioned liberals and social democrats abroad
are brimful of sympathy for the victims of the former apartheid system,
but are distinctly uneasy about HIV/Aids. Aside from its appalling
consequences, the disease suggests a population that has lost control
of itself, which can easily tarnish the image of the "deserving
society" that the government wants to project. Any good politician
knows intuitively that the image of his constituency is paramount.
HIV/Aids is a dire threat to South Africa's image, both as an
investment and tourist destination. Aids is an issue of acute
embarrassment in circles that count. Something had to be done to limit
the damage.
At great cost to his own reputation Mbeki acted, and acted decisively.
He blamed Aids on poverty and on the debilitating effect of other
poverty-related diseases in Africa. His general strategy is to
cultivate moral leverage on the rich nations, in search of debt relief
and increased financial aid. If Aids is primarily a consequence of
poverty then western and white people's greed can be blamed for the
epidemic.
The strategy was at least understandable and consistent with Mbeki's
general approach to development in Africa. The real problem was the way
he chose to do it. His espousal of the flawed hypotheses of maverick
scientists was a public relations disaster. Had he relied on (or been
able to rely on) subtle and highly skilled propagandists, he could have
pulled it off. A carefully crafted theory of how deep poverty and
hopelessness causes self-destructive hedonistic tendencies, coupled
with claims of the destruction of African family authority by
apartheid, could have won the day among sympathetic audiences. For some
reason to be found in the dynamics of the president's office, the
opportunity was missed.
In the wake of this misjudgement some of his other strategies have
received a rather more hostile reception than they would otherwise have
done. Mbeki may, however, recover from these setbacks and resume the
programme of shifting the blame for setbacks in the effectiveness of
his administration onto forces of victimisation. He may even extend the
ANC's political "overdraft". Hence Mbeki is not "weird" - from the
point of view of his party and his challenges, he is remarkably
far-sighted.
But if the government survives on this basis the consequences could be
dire. His supporters will increasingly believe him and blame white
racists, white farmers, white business and the rich countries for their
woes. Pressure will be successfully deflected from the performance of
his own administration but at the cost of alienating limited sources of
technical and managerial skill and domestic and foreign investment. At
worst, if Mbeki sticks to his strategy of emphasising and exploiting
"race victimisation" rather than reconciliation, he could risk what
investors here and abroad fear most - a racial conflagration. In which
case his political overdraft will most certainly break the bank.