So Jacob Zuma has officially won the ANC leadership contest, deposing former ANC head, and current South African President, Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki has been President of SA since 1999, and President of the ANC since late 1997. Zuma’s victory is widely seen as a lead-up to a run for SA President. Winning with 60.75% of the vote, Zuma’s support apparently comes largely from the South African Communist Party and COSATU, both formerly affiliated with the ANC, as well as the ANC youth wing. He is identified with the party’s left-wing, although the SACP endorsement and the ANC’s history as Marxist does not necessarily mean he is interested in taking the ANC or the country on a radical-left path. He has made efforts to ‘reassure investors’ and the like, and as Lenin points out,
He is in all probability an opportunist who has harnessed a unique chance based on the unrest. However, the fact that he has successfully channelled the energy of this revolt into a leadership bid which may lead to him taking power in the ANC (but not the country) is itself significant.
In this article Claire Ceruti quotes Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of COSATU, as saying the SACP have latched onto Zuma in an effort to “consolidate, retain and deepen [the ANC's] progressive posture and working class leadership under the current conditions of intense contestation”. I agree with Claire’s general position that the 11 million strike days recorded in the first half of 2007, along with other factors (both theoretical and immediate) indicate the latent and growing strength of the worker’s movements in SA, although a fetishistic connection to the ANC (understandable due to their historical prevalence in the anti-apartheid struggles) prevents it from becoming developed.
My personal analysis of leadership contests for broad organizations such as the ANC is that they are a useful indicator of popular sentiment, a sort of ’snap poll’ of the electorate, and largely useless in-and-of themselves. A parallel (although I’m sure many would disagree) would be of the 2005 Canadian Labour Congress election, where Carol Wall ran against incumbent Ken Georgetti. I don’t mean to argue Zuma is equivalent to Wall (or that the CLC is analogous to the ANC, for pity’s sake) but instead that the Wall campaign was less about getting someone elected (although anyone other than Georgetti would be a improvement) and more about the dissenters in the CLC using it as a chance to make their presence known. The question is whether participation in a broad-tent (or, more accurately, multi-class) party is the best option for the left.
(Edited to properly attribute the quotation from Claire Ceruti’s article.-Jan 30)
