By Krista Mahr, Johannesburg, August 7, 2017<\/p>\n
South Africa\u2019s Teflon president has survived six attempts on his political life. Even if he survives a seventh, the damage to Africa\u2019s most storied liberation movement is done.<\/p>\n
JOHANNESBURG \u2014 President Jacob Zuma sat with crossed arms under a tent in Bloemfontein, one of South Africa\u2019s three national capitals, waiting for the crowd to settle down and let him speak.<\/p>\n
The crowd never did.<\/p>\n
For more than an hour, a jeering throng of trade unionists refused to let the president get on stage to make his annual May Day speech on May 1, instead raising their fists and shouting, \u201cZuma must go!\u201d Leaders of the country\u2019s largest federation of trade unions, COSATU, which has been allied with Zuma\u2019s ruling African National Congress (ANC) since 1990, pleaded with their rank and file to let the rally continue. Eventually, Zuma stood up, smiled and shook a few hands, and then left the grounds in his shiny motorcade.<\/p>\n
So it goes these days in South Africa, where the scandal-plagued Zuma is dragging Africa\u2019s most storied liberation movement to historic depths. The Teflon president has survived six attempts by the opposition to oust him from office, even as fresh allegations of corruption and cronyism pile up against him. But the ANC has not been so lucky, having sustained what may be lasting damage every time it is forced to stand behind its increasingly unpopular leader. Now, with 2019 elections looming large, the party must grapple with a previously inconceivable notion: being voted out of power by the country\u2019s black majority<\/span>.<\/p>\n On Aug. 8, Zuma, who is 75, will run the gantlet again, when lawmakers vote on yet another motion of no confidence that could cost him his job. As he has done time and again, most analysts expect Zuma to survive on the back of the ANC\u2019s parliamentary majority. (The ANC holds nearly 250 of the National Assembly\u2019s 400 seats while the Democratic Alliance, the next largest party and the one that tabled the motion, has only 89.)<\/p>\n But there is at least a small chance that this time could be different. The ANC\u2019s famously united front has begun to fracture in recent months. Infighting between the party\u2019s pro- and anti-Zuma factions erupted publicly in March, after Zuma sacked his respected finance minister, a move that caused the country\u2019s credit rating to be downgraded to junk.<\/p>\n More recently, as emails leaked<\/a> to the local press have implicated Zuma and his allies in an influence-peddling scandal involving the wealthy Gupta family<\/a>, more ANC members have publicly distanced themselves from the president, the latest being Mondli Gungubele, who in late July said he planned to vote against Zuma on Aug. 8. The party slammed<\/a> him for being out of order, calling his decision to speak to the press \u201cthe most extreme form of ill-discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps most importantly, the vote will be conducted by secret ballot, instead of the usual open electronic voting system, which will shield ANC parliamentarians from party retribution if they turn on their leader. The opposition had been campaigning hard for a secret ballot, and in a surprise decision Monday, National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete announced the procedural change.<\/p>\n But even with the cloak of anonymity, there is no guarantee that a critical mass of ANC parliamentarians will break rank. ANC members who vote against Zuma face losing their jobs no matter what, according to Aubrey Matshiqi, an independent political analyst in Johannesburg. \u201cThey are defending their own personal interests\u201d by supporting Zuma, he said, since a leadership shake-up could end up costing members of the rank and file their seats when the party\u2019s list of candidates \u2014 the order of which determines seat allocations in South Africa\u2019s list system of proportional representation \u2014 is compiled afresh by the new leaders. \u201cIf leaders are replaced, they are replaced by party processes,\u201d said Steven Friedman, a professor of politics at the University of Johannesburg.<\/p>\n Even if Zuma survives yet again, the damage to the ANC may already be done. No-confidence motions are terrific political theater, and they force the ruling party to defend the wildly unpopular Zuma on center stage. (Sixty-five percent of respondents in a May poll<\/a> by eNCA\/Ipsos said he should resign.)<\/p>\n \u201cThe disrespect for the current ANC as it has become is really pretty widespread,\u201d said Susan Booysen, a politics professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. \u201cThe ANC is really in an existential crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Electoral numbers tell a similar story. The ANC\u2019s support has dropped from nearly 70 percent in 2004 national polls to just over 62 percent in 2014. In the last local elections, in August 2016, the party had its worst-ever showing, losing control of the key cities of Johannesburg and Tshwane and the longtime ANC stronghold of Nelson Mandela Bay. The rejoinder to the party\u2019s dwindling popularity in cities has been that its rural support base is stronger, but when two-thirds of South Africans live in cities, the overall trend lines don\u2019t bode well for the party.<\/p>\n Much of the electoral damage has been done by Zuma himself. \u201cHis image crisis has caused collateral damage to the image of the party,\u201d Matshiqi said. \u201cThe factions that support him have become a metaphor for everything venal and corrupt in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n Zuma is due to step down as party leader in December, although he could stay on as head of state until 2019. But the ANC is likely to feel the effects of his embattled tenure for many years after that. In the last few months, there have been rumblings of a potential political earthquake: COSATU and the South African Communist Party (SACP), both of which have backed the ANC for the last 27 years, have signaled that their allegiance to the party of Nelson Mandela is not unconditional. Both have called on Zuma to step down, and the SACP recently said it will contest future elections on its own, instead of running candidates under the ANC banner as it has done since 1994. COSATU plans to formally consult its members in order to decide whether or not the alliance should continue.<\/p>\n \u201cDo we keep the alliance, or do we accept that it has failed?\u201d said Sizwe Pamla, COSATU\u2019s national spokesman. \u201cThat will be up to the workers.\u201d<\/p>\n With 1.7 million members, most of whom support the ANC, the loss of COSATU\u2019s support is no small matter in a country where 26.3 million people were registered to vote in 2016. Zuma has been \u201creckless,\u201d Pamla said. \u201cHis family has been looting, his friends have been looting, and in the process he has weakened the state, divided the ANC, divided the alliance. We continue to deal with the mess, and it will take a long time to clean up<\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n The ANC\u2019s official reaction to dissension within its ranks has only left it looking more divided. In recent weeks, party leaders have been slugging it out in the local press with ANC parliamentarians who are speaking out against Zuma. On Mandela\u2019s birthday on July 18, ANC parliamentarian Makhosi Khoza from KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma\u2019s home area, lashed out<\/a> at Zuma and the party, calling on the president to step aside and saying she was trying to \u201crescue the little that is left, if any, in my organization\u2019s moral conscience.\u201d The KwaZulu-Natal chapter of the ANC\u2019s women\u2019s league noted<\/a> with \u201cdisgust\u201d Khoza\u2019s \u201cunscrupulous behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n But the ANC\u2019s declining fortunes are not the doing of one man. Zuma may have become a symbol of all that\u2019s wrong with South Africa, but he is not the cause of all that is wrong with it. Twenty-three years after the country\u2019s first free elections, the majority of South Africans are still effectively excluded from the economy. Official unemployment hovers just below 30 percent, and the nation is ranked among the most unequal societies in the world. The failure of the ANC to address these problems in more than two decades in power has inflicted longer-lasting damage on the party than any one president could inflict. \u201cZuma is simply a symptom of that\u201d broader failure, Friedman said. \u201cIt\u2019s not him<\/em>. It\u2019s them<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n