Charles Molele
Two of South Africa’s most influential leaders – divided along ideological and partisan lines – hit the elections campaign trail on opposite ends this past week, after almost a decade in the ‘political wilderness’.
Thabo Mbeki, a struggle stalwart and the former president of the ANC and the republic, made a surprise appearance at the ANC’s pavilion to sign a pledge to vote for his party on 8 May at the general elections.
A few kilometres away in Eldorado Park, Tony Leon, a blue-blood liberal and the former president of the Democratic Alliance, joined the party’s leaders on a door-to-door campaign. His characteristic bluster, anger and virulent criticism against the ANC’s programme of the National Democratic Revolution including its policies of black economic empowerment, affirmative action and the government’s tendering system was fiery as usual.
The deployment of the two party veterans like Mbeki and Leon by their respective parties shows once again that 2019 is the year of the most important national general elections since 1994.
Mbeki and Leon know very well that politics is about engaging people, listening to them, understanding what motivates them or angers them.
While the ANC and the DA are politically and ideologically polarized in how they engaged with the politically disengaged, they understand the anger South Africans are feeling right now, and how corruption has damaged the economy and hurt investor confidence.
In their respective corners, they raised the election campaign from the dead and brought robust debate to a campaign filled with big and competing personalities, devoid of logical content and policy coherence.
Both Mbeki and Leon would facilitate and court the professional class, especially in Gauteng and the Western Cape.
The professional class of the electorate has been conspicuously staying out of both the 2009 and 2014 general elections, leading to dire outcomes for the ANC in Gauteng. The DA has been phenomenally growing under Zille in Gauteng, but that’s because she appealed to the professional class.
Political observers say Mbeki was brought back by the ANC to appeal to the black middle class who deserted the party after his unceremonious removal in 2008 by former President Jacob Zuma’s faction.
Research shows that during the 2019 general elections, the black middle class – the mainstay of ANC supporters who became millionaires under Mbeki’s administration – could ditch the party as a result of the poor state of the economy, load-shedding and rampant corruption in government.
Mbeki, ever clear on policy matters, cautioned about the nationalization of the Reserve Bank by government.
“The South African Reserve Bank has about 2,000 shareholders. By law, you can’t buy SARB shares as you wish. The bank is run by the Board, majority of whom are appointed by Government, including the Governor. When people say they want to nationalize SARB, to gain what,” Mbeki said.
It is also worth mentioning that while his macroeconomic policy of GEAR failed to create jobs, it did however stimulate the economy and was well received internationally.
While GEAR was strongly criticised by the left of the ANC, COSATU and the SA Communist Party, Mbeki maintains that the programme ensured that South Africa did not fall into a debt trap that would have forced the country to ask for help from the International Monetary Fund.
Mbeki also came out of retirement due to his support of president Cyril Ramaphosa and his determination to renew the party and fight corruption.
He said he decided for the first time to publicly endorse the governing party because the ANC has admitted even its elections manifesto that it had veered off course in the past decade under disastrous Zuma years.
Mbeki also told the media at a press briefing that he was also encouraged by the recommendations of the party’s Integrity Commission to remove controversial figures on the list of candidates for Parliament and provincial legislatures.
According to political observers, Leon, on the other hand, was brought by the Democratic Alliance to appeal to mainly white liberal voters who are currently disgruntled with the direction of the party in the past few years under Mmusi Maimane. These white voters are faced with difficult choice – to vote for the DA or opt for the ANC, Vryheidsheidfront Plus or Daniel Lotter’s Front Nasionaal, a secessionist group calling for the self-determination of white people, particularly Afrikaners.
The Leon family has been part of the South African political history for a long time; his late father, Ramon, sentenced MK operative Andrew Zondo to death for his role in a blast that killed three adults and two children in an Amanzimtoti centre in 1985.
Leon, a forthright politician, remains opposed to ANC’s policies of BEE, affirmative action and the radical economic transformation.
It is the same liberal ideology and racially polarized message he advocated almost 10 years ago, thanks to his disastrous Fight Back Strategy.
Unfortunately, his message is stuck in the past and shows that the DA itself has no workable alternatives or solutions to ANC’s radical policies for change, and to create a united and non-racial South Africa.
Leon’s message seems to be directed to maintain the status quo and will possibly resonate with traditional DA supporters who feel threatened by the ANC’s radical policies, such as land expropriation without compensation, BEE and the nationalization of the Reserve Bank, among others.
Political observers also claim that Leon was brought on this election campaign trail to appease whites within the party spooked by Maimane’s comments last year that ‘white privilege and black poverty’ must be confronted head on.
It was reported that the DA’s Deputy Chief Whip Mike Waters, Chief Whip John Steenhuisen and MP Natasha Mazzone allegedly took Maimane on. The three are said to be frightened of alienating white voters during the general election, after which the party wants to take control of Gauteng.
Their argument was that Maimane’s comments will alienate the DA’s traditional voter support base and lead to a haemorrhaging of votes in the 2019 general elections.
In an interview with talk-show host Eusebius McKaiser on Radio 702 this week, Leon told listeners that the DA was the best choice for voters because of its good record in terms of governance and service delivery.
“Last week the think-tank Good Governance Africa produced a table, an index based on 213 municipalities in South Africa judged on administration, economic development and service delivery. And they ranked them from best to worst. Of the 20 top-performing municipalities, 15 were run by the DA, either alone or in coalition, and in the bottom 20 there wasn’t one DA administration,” Leon said proudly.
“This is really an argument about government, and the DA can show it has governed certain parts of South Africa. The [DA-run province of] the Western Cape was the only province that produced an 83% clean audit sheet. No other province got near that. It’s the only province that produced 75% of the net new jobs in the last year. Those statistics prove that DA governance actually delivers in a reasonably corruption free and effective manner.”
ANC Gauteng Premier David Makhura, on the other hand, assured Mbeki that the provincial government has done very well in the past, creating 172,000 jobs last year alone and spending billions of rands to support the township businesses.
It’s tempting to imagine that rising political polarization during the elections is just a temporary blip and South Africa will soon return to a calmer, friendlier political atmosphere. Don’t bank on it though.
It is going to get a lot worse before it starts getting better.
