The counter-revolution is in full swing. The African National Congress (ANC) is, in the words of our deputy president, at war with itself. The Cabinet too. The tight coterie around President Jacob Zuma is blatantly corrupt. One left-wing deputy minister denounces “forces bent on looting the state” while radio hosts openly refer to President Zuma as “the looter and liar in chief”. Counter-revolution, though, is the wrong term. For despite the militant rhetoric there hasn’t been any revolution. The change of power in 1994 was an elite compromise, fashioned to avoid a civil war. White business interests and white citizens generally kept their economic privileges in return for the ANC accepting the trappings of power. The result is another kind of civil war: within the liberation movement itself.
A better description of what is happening might be that, two decades after our first democratic election, a second anti-apartheid struggle has opened up. The first was to dismantle the bureaucratic apparatus of legislated white supremacy. The second is more subtle, a psychological tussle. On the one hand, among many whites there is a lingering sense of superiority. Last week it came to light that several previously all-white schools enforce a “hair code”, especially for girls, that prohibits natural African hair, insisting that all styles be “straight and short”. The fact that most of those who defend such rules are astonished that this should be considered discriminatory tells us how unreformed many white South Africans remain.
In contrast, there are black politicians and bureaucrats who clearly take the attitude that, because in the past the whites gobbled everything for themselves in a corrupt system, it’s our turn to eat. Jacob Zuma stands at the apex of this system. After the recent elections in which the ANC lost Johannesburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth (having previously lost Cape Town, where their vote imploded) everyone wondered how the party, in particular Zuma, would respond to this humiliation. Officially, the party talked about “introspection”.
And Zuma? With his power waning fast he probably hasn’t got long at the top. One commentator, to explain the apparent recent surge in the feeding frenzy, gave the analogy: “It’s like those adverts for hamburger joints – if you come between one and two o’ clock on this date you can – in that hour and for the price of one burger – eat as much as you can.” As a result, about to leave South Africa for two months, I wonder what kind of country I will return to. We are, I think, in an interregnum: poised precariously between a racial transition (1994 and the election of Mandela) and the potential, eventually, for a real popular revolt.
The French Revolution, for example, didn’t start in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille. That was a constitutional transition, with the king still in place. There are several similarities which have struck me lately. First, the French crisis was brought on because their treasury was bankrupt, leading to a haemorrhage of confidence among creditors. That is now a danger which stares us in the face with the threat of rating agencies to reduce South Africa to “junk status” by the end of the year. Secondly, Louis XVI vacillated in the face of that economic and social crisis. He appointed, fired, then again appointed the cautious and liberal-minded banker Jacques Necker. Zuma does the same with our prudent and respected Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, first firing him, then being forced to bring him back, but still intent on crassly undermining him – because Gordhan stands squarely between Zuma’s gang and open access to the Treasury.
Des van Rooyen, the man Zuma had appointed for four chaotic days until billions were wiped off the stock exchange, is now Minister of Cooperative Governance. This mediocre hack recently made a speech to the Umkhonto veterans association denouncing Gordhan, his successor as Finance Minister. Van Rooyen was apparently decked out in bizarre military-style camouflage gear: revolution, in short, as comic opera. Meanwhile the president of the military veterans association is Kebby Maphatsoe, who lost an arm during the struggle. Not in a heroic fight against apartheid troops, however. Kebby was a cook in an ANC military camp but ran away and was shot by Ugandan soldiers as they attempted to recapture the deserter. Comrade Kebby is now Deputy Minister of Defence. Thus, thoroughly compromised, he serves as a handy stooge to denounce the President’s adversaries – mostly genuine struggle heroes – as counter-revolutionary CIA agents.
In France the pre-revolutionary epoch is referred to as the ancien régime, a term which originally meant “previous” rather than “archaic”. Already the Zuma era has that queasy free-for-all feeling of an imploding but dangerously cornered ancien régime.