The battle for control of state power and resources is the politics of private gain for individuals and groups, and both anti- and pro-JZ groups are capitalist elites, writes Dumisani Hlophe.
The latest instalment in the series of motions on Jacob Zuma’s leadership highlights that South African politics is dominated by elite power struggles!
These struggles are for the control of state power for access to and distribution of economic resources. This is the politics of private gain for individuals and groups. These political class struggles, with their commercial alliance partners, manifest in the contests within and across political parties.
The internal party class struggles are mostly visible in the ANC because of its ruling party status. At a lower level, class struggles manifest in assassinations around the time of local government elections. At a slightly higher level, they manifest in legal, political litigation after elective conferences.
The KwaZulu-Natal ANC right now is a crystal-clear example of elite class battles within the ANC.
The new leadership was quick to dismiss former premier Senzo Mchunu and other MECs. Now there is a legal challenge by one ANC group against the leadership grouping of the KZN ANC.
The arguments mooted for Zuma to step down, both inside and outside the ANC, do not advance the following among the reasons given: slow pace of land restoration; high levels of unemployment, currently at 27 percent; the dream deferred of free and quality education; high inequality levels largely based on race; and that employment statistics still show overwhelming white male dominance in the private-sector workplace.
Similarly, within the ANC those who argue for Zuma’s retention as president are not advancing evidence for how his leadership has reversed apartheid structural socio-economic patterns. They mainly argue that Zuma should only be removed through ANC internal structures and processes. Lately they have added regime-change conspiracy theories as the justification for Zuma to continue as president.
Neither side can base their stance on changing the structural socio-economic disposition of apartheid as neither side has an agenda to undo the capitalist system and its outcome of inequality. They have become part of the capitalist elite at various levels of the bourgeoisie.
Some have ascended to the elite class through holding political positions in the organisation and the state. Others have been bought by monopoly capital institutions based on their perceived political influence in ruling party circles.
These are the political elite battlelines in the ANC. They are motivated by both individual and group economic self-advancement.
"Elite classes are only loyal to their pockets"
Quite often it is erroneously assumed that only those who support Zuma within the ANC are motivated by self-preservation and self-advancement. They are frequently accused of "singing for their supper".
While that may be true, they are not alone. Even those seeking to dethrone Zuma are building their own nests. They are positioning themselves to move from the periphery into the centre of political power so they can control economic resources.
The elite classes are only loyal to their pockets, hence they are always forging new alliances to maximise their material well-being.
For example, the political elite class that carried Zuma to Polokwane has since disintegrated and reformed into new alliances. Some, such as Zwelinzima Vavi and Julius Malema, are now Zuma’s harshest critics.
None of this absolves Zuma from his leadership and governance blunders. These have been mainly personal blunders that have compromised the ANC as an organisation and the state.
Strategically, Zuma’s personal blunders are useful for the elite power blocks contesting for political power and control of resources. It has enabled them to propagate the impression that the sum total of South Africa’s problems begin and end with Zuma. Thus, in a country still steeped in poverty and inequality predominantly along racial lines with black children dropping out of education, high unemployment, homelessness and many other socio-economic ills, these issues do not dominate public discourse; personality politics does.
"Former ministers and former public-sector senior managers are sitting pretty in monopoly capital institutions"
Public discourse on these socio-economic ills is suppressed because it would threaten the capitalist structure that the political class and elite have assimilated into.
The fact that since 1994 a range of companies have relocated their bases to London and other overseas countries is not regarded as economic sabotage.
Moreover, the fact that most private conglomerates are sitting on huge capital reserves and avoiding investing domestically is not regarded as counter-productive corporate citizenship.
The elite classes battling for political power in the ANC will not raise these issues because they are increasingly part of the liberal establishment.
Some former ministers and former public-sector senior managers are sitting pretty in monopoly capital institutions. They have risen into prominent positions in capitalist institutions through holding positions of political leadership.
It’s in their best interests to play a role in determining the political direction to sustain their post-liberation commercial interests.
In the midst of all the ANC internal elite class struggles, the majority and the poor are demilitarised and marginalised.
Neither those who punt for Zuma to resign, nor those who defend him place the well-being of the masses at the centre of their motions and counter-motions.
"Zuma must be held accountable on ethical and responsible leadership standards"
This is nothing new, though, as even at Codesa, despite the presence of communists and socialists, these ideologies were never placed on the agenda for a possible post-1994 South Africa.
So in the elite class power struggles within the ANC, communists and socialists are now embedded within the liberal agenda. Rather than playing a vanguard role and advancing the interests of the masses, they have become useful to the liberal agenda to demobilise the masses.
They have become a buffer between the capitalist establishment and the poor masses. Without fighting the system, they give the masses false hope, while entrenching themselves within the dominant capitalist elite class.
In the final analysis, leadership, both individually and collectively, must be held accountable and responsible for both its actions and omissions.
By all means, Zuma must be held accountable on ethical and responsible leadership standards.
But the narrative that lumps the sum total of South Africa’s socio-economic challenges on the poverty of Zuma’s leadership amounts to mischievously concealing the basis of South Africa’s poverty and inequality, which is the continued racist capitalist structure. It is propaganda!
Expect the new liberation liberals to continue engaging in internal ANC class struggles!
* Hlophe is governance specialist at the Unisa School of Governance. He writes in his personal capacity.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent