africa-confidential.com

Despite the doubters, President Zuma’s government is set to hold a successful World Cup but will face demands for action on jobs and services

In his New Year address, President Jacob Zuma likened 2010 to 1994, when South Africa became a democracy. To the outside world, the only big event happening in South Africa this year is the FIFA World Cup and if Zuma has his way, that is how matters will stay until the tournament is over.

The first major test will be on 8 January, the day when Zuma addresses the nation at a big rally, setting out his political stall for the year ahead. This year, the rally will be in Kimberley and attention will be focused not just on Zuma, but on how the crowd treats the bigwigs of the South African Communist Party. Zuma will have to do more peace-brokering in the African National Congress this year. Late last year, ANC Youth League (ANCYL) President Julius ‘Juju’ Malema was booed at an SACP Conference in Polokwane, Limpopo Province. He stormed out, complaining to Zuma and sending SACP Deputy Secretary General Jeremy Cronin, who is also the Deputy Transport Secretary, a text message reading, ‘If you thought you have taught me a lesson, wait until you see what is coming your direction.’

Last year, the government gave the ANCYL’s call for the nationalisation of the mines short shrift but the League remains defiant, promising it will not allow anyone in the party who does not endorse this position to take the presidency in 2012. The ANCYL has said that by late January it will present a discussion document on nationalisation, informed by a multi-country study tour, taking in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Brazil, Chile and China. ANC officials are unable to explain who is paying for this trip and financing the comfortable lifestyles of some ANCYL officials.

In contrast, unemployment and its social consequences will remain a dominant issue. On taking office, Zuma promised to create 500,000 jobs by the end of 2009, yet the unemployment rate rose to 24.5% from 23.2% a year earlier. Close to a million jobs may have been lost in 2009 amid the global financial crisis. The pace of the losses is reinforcing concern, says Mike Schüssler, at the Johannesburg-based Economists consultants: ‘Between 1990 and 2003, about 2.5 million formal sector jobs were lost, but never one million in one year.’ Manufacturing, the priority area for expansion, lost 179,000 jobs in the year to September. More losses are expected when construction related to the World Cup ends in July.

Uncoordinated and inadequate
In the third quarter of 2009, after three consecutive quarters of contraction, South Africa enjoyed gross domestic product growth of 0.9%. Trades unions struck in almost every sector, demanding state protection. Unions and civil groups have criticised the government’s slow response. Zuma announced the outline of a recovery plan in August but his team’s reaction has been uncoordinated and inadequate, although by October the Industrial Development Corporation had spent nearly 1 billion rand (US$134 mn.) to assist 17 distressed companies, hoping to save 5,400 jobs.

Zuma and the ANC government want the World Cup to help unify the racially divided population, to market the country and the continent as a good news story and to boost the economy. Danny Jordaan, Chief Executive of the Cup Organising Committee, pushed up the hyperbole by claiming that it represents one of the greatest and grandest nation-building initiatives undertaken since the death of apartheid. He urged the public to show ‘more enthusiasm’. Local ticket sales have been sluggish.

Most of the stadiums are ready but the government is struggling to bring down crime levels. On 30 December, the National Police Commissioner, Bheki Cele, personally chased a ‘suspect’ in Durban’s Albert Park, while on walkabout to assess security with senior colleagues. The person’s permit turned out to be in order. Zuma appointed Cele, a close ally from KZN, whose muscular approach allows his men to ‘shoot to kill’ suspects and ask questions later. Civil and opposition groups say this is wrong, and one three-year-old boy has already been killed in error.

Cele says he will appoint sports stars, including Lucas Radebe, former Captain of Bafana Bafana, the national soccer team, and retired world boxing champion ‘Baby’ Jake Matlala, to spruce up fat and unfit policemen. To raise the morale of the army, on standby to help keep order, Zuma has announced a pay rise for the troops but only after they had staged heavy protests. In August 2009, nearly 3,000 soldiers clashed with the police in Pretoria during demonstrations over pay and conditions.

All eyes in 2010 will be on whether Zuma pardons his former financial advisor, Schabir Shaik. He was released on medical parole in April 2009, said to be terminally ill, but was photographed in December looking healthy at the wheel of a new luxury vehicle. In 2005, he was sentenced to 15 years in gaol for fraud and corruption; the trial revealed that he had tried to solicit a R500,000 a year bribe for Zuma from a French arms company and gave Zuma R4 mn. to secure his support for black economic empowerment deals.

We hear that Shaik has formally applied for a presidential pardon, arguing that he was victim of a conspiracy to thwart Zuma’s ambitions and that his co-accused, Zuma and arms manufacturer Thint, were not prosecuted. The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has asked a court to order a review of the dropping of Zuma’s corruption charges by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA)’s former head, Mokotedi Mpshe – a move that enabled Zuma to become President.

The corruption charges will not go away. Britain’s Serious Fraud Office wants to prosecute BAE Systems for its links to grand corruption in South Africa’s $6 bn. arms procurement deal. German anti-corruption agencies are probing the Siemens deal and French activists are demanding prosecution of Thales-Thompson CSF for its role (with which Zuma and Schabir Shaik are linked) in the South African deal. In 2009, Zuma appointed loyalists to all the key security portfolios; his detractors say this was to prevent his prosecution.

Judge Sandile Ngcobo is the new Chief Justice; the opposition had wanted the Deputy Chief Justice, Dikgang Moseneke, who had criticised Zuma and the ANC.

Moe Shaik, Schabir Shaik’s brother, was appointed Director of the South African Secret Service.

Gibson Njenje, suspended by ex-President Thabo Mbeki for illegally spying on political rivals, is head of the National Intelligence Agency.

Jeff Maqetuka is Director General of the State Security Agency and Menzi Simelane of the NPA. A commission of inquiry found that Simelane, while Director General of the Justice Department, had interfered in the NPA’s work in order to protect allies; one of those thus protected appears to have been the former National Police Commissioner, Jackie Selebi.

The DA has filed papers at the Pretoria High Court opposing Simelane’s appointment. The case will be heard in April. Selebi’s corruption trial will restart on 1 February, having been delayed by arguments about compelling the former National Intelligence Coordinator, Barry Gilder, to testify; State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele, a close ally of Zuma, says his testimony could ‘compromise state security’.

Former President Mbeki’s remaining supporters are in retreat. In 2008, some left the ANC to form the Congress of the People (COPE), but with little political impact. Zuma has coopted some, but his leftist and populist allies demand a wholesale purge of Mbeki’s allies in the ANC, government and parastatals. Instead, Zuma offers an olive branch.

On the ANC’s left flank, a new group (with an old idea) plans to break away in March and form a party of the ‘democratic Left’. Most are from the SACP, with a few trades unionists. The coalition that lifted Zuma into the presidency, united mainly by its members’ dislike of Mbeki, included the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the SACP plus traditionalists, African nationalists and populists, including the ANCYL. The leftist coalition’s components now differ on policy, strategy and direction.