PERSPECTIVE A Fresh Start for South Africa? XOLELA MANGCU 194 I n my book The Arrogance of Power: South Af- rica’s Leadership Meltdown, published four years ago, I argued that the crisis of leadership in the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), ran deeper than President Jacob Zuma’s corruption. Too easily we forget how con- troversial Zuma’s predecessor Thabo Mbeki was, especially over his denial that HIV is the cause of AIDS. Criminal charges recently reinstated against Zuma after his resignation under pressure this February have their origins in an infamously cor- rupt arms deal that was concluded during the presidency of Nelson Mandela in a process over- seen by Mbeki. In that deal, the South African gov- ernment purchased arms the country did not need for billions of rands in order to line the pockets of the party’s senior officials. Since Mandela’s departure from office in 1999, his successors have slowly been eating away at South Africans’ trust and goodwill. This resulted in a decline in the ANC’s electoral majority from 70 percent at the height of Mbeki’s popularity in 2004 to 62 percent under Zuma in 2014. In the 2016 local government elections, the ANC lost control of the major cities, including the country’s eco- nomic engine, Johannesburg. It was almost a fore- gone conclusion that the party would sink even lower in the polls if it went into the 2019 general election with Zuma at the head of its ticket. The ANC’s action to replace Zuma as president before his term was up reflected those fears. The question now is whether the new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, can restore the people’s trust in the party after the damage of the Zuma years. This question is complicated by the fact that the ANC’s rank and file voted to surround Ramaphosa with some of Zuma’s staunchest backers—including the controversial strongman of Mpumalanga prov- ince, David Mabuza, as deputy president and Ace Magashule, premier of Free State province, in the powerful position of the party’s secretary-general. Magashule was accused of graft after the Free State government granted an allegedly corrupt contract to one of the sprawling businesses of the Guptas— an Indian-born family that allegedly had Zuma in their pocket to the extent that their influence was often described as “state capture.” The presence of these individuals on the ANC’s new leadership team has sent all the wrong sig- nals to an already jaded electorate. Also, the party may yet be punished for failing to elect an Afri- can woman to any of its highest leadership po- sitions, the so-called top six. The posts of party president, deputy president, chairman, secretary- general, and treasurer are all held by African men. The only woman among them, Jessie Duarte, who is colored (of mixed race), holds the position of deputy secretary-general and is a strong Zuma ally. Meanwhile, the opposition parties, especially the radical Economic Freedom Front, continue to draw attention to Ramaphosa’s role in the August 2012 shooting of striking miners in Marikana, at a mine run by the Lonmin company. As a share- holder in Lonmin, Ramaphosa had called the min- ister of police asking for an intervention to end what he considered to be criminal conduct by the miners. When the police opened fire, 34 miners were killed. But South Africans know that Ramaphosa did not call the police to demand that they shoot at the miners—otherwise he would not even have been elected president of the ANC. He is still a very popular figure, thanks to his years as lead- er of the biggest trade union in the country, the National Union of Mineworkers, in the 1980s and the role he played in the negotiations to end apartheid, working side by side with Nelson Mandela. By all accounts, Mandela preferred Ra- maphosa as his successor over Thabo Mbeki, but was overruled by the leadership of the party and by leaders of other African countries. No one is likely to fill Mandela’s shoes any time soon, but Ramaphosa is heralded as an approximation of Mandela’s celebrated era—the period before Mbeki and Zuma. XOLELA MANGCU is a professor of sociology at the University of Cape Town and currently is a fellow at the Wilson Center’s Africa Program. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/117/799/194/391698/curh_117_799_194.pdf by guest on 10 September 2020