South Africa's election

 Jacob Zuma, Africa's next Big Man

From The Economist print edition

If Jacob Zuma avoids becoming a caricature of African leadership, he could change the whole continent for the better

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WITHIN weeks, Jacob Zuma is set to become the most powerful man in Africa, a continent of a billion souls that is still the poorest and, despite recent improvements, the worst governed on the planet. South Africa provides more than a third of the 48 sub-Saharan economies’ total GDP. It is Africa’s sole member of the G20 group of influential countries and packs a punch in global diplomacy. Its emergence from the gruesome era of apartheid is a miracle of reconciliation. Africans across the continent and oppressed peoples elsewhere still look to South Africa’s leader as a beacon of hope.

The country’s president is to be elected by Parliament after a general election on April 22nd which the dominant African National Congress (ANC) is sure to win again. As the party’s candidate, Mr Zuma is unquestionably Africa’s next “Big Man”. But it is a phrase that goes to the heart of the continent’s troubles. Too many African countries have been ruined by political chiefs for whom government is the accumulation of personal power and the dispensation of favours. That the revered Nelson Mandela’s rainbow nation is now turning to a man of Mr Zuma’s stamp may sharpen prejudices about Africa. It is for Mr Zuma to prove these doubters wrong.

He is undoubtedly a man of remarkable qualities (seearticle). In contrast to his dour predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, Mr Zuma can charm the birds out of the trees. Unlike the racially twitchy Mr Mbeki, he feels good in his skin, happy to acknowledge, even celebrate, his modest background. He properly educated himself only during his ten years as a prisoner on Robben Island, alongside Mr Mandela. Mr Zuma is charismatic and canny, as you would expect of a guerrilla who rose to be head of intelligence for the now-ruling ANC. He has been a wily negotiator, who magisterially ended the strife between his fellow Zulus in the early post-apartheid era. He connects easily with black slum-dwellers and white tycoons alike.

Big man, big problems

But his flaws are just as patent. He has been entangled for years in a thicket of embarrassing legal cases from which he has only recently been extricated—on a technicality. His financial adviser was sentenced to 15 years in prison for soliciting bribes for Mr Zuma. He has also been tried, and acquitted, on a rape charge. At the least, he has sailed perilously close to the wind. To put the kindest interpretation on his financial dealings, he has been naive and sloppy, not the best qualities for looking after Africa’s biggest economy. During his trial for the rape of an HIV-infected family friend, at the height of the AIDS plague in a country which has the world’s highest recorded rate of rapes, he showed gross chauvinism and staggering ignorance, notoriously explaining that after having sex he had showered to stave off the disease. He is an illiberal populist, sneering at gays and hinting at bringing back the death penalty.

When it comes to policy, Mr Zuma travels light. In the wake of Mr Mbeki’s shameful and lethal denial of the link between HIV and AIDS, he has overseen the appointment of a sensible new health minister. He seems to want the awful Robert Mugabe ousted in Zimbabwe, though his pronouncements have varied. Once a member of the South African Communist Party, which used to fawn on the Kremlin, he shamelessly switched to capitalism after his predecessors, Mr Mandela and Mr Mbeki, had persuaded the ANC to somersault away from socialism. These days he tells the hungry black majority that he has their interests at heart, while reassuring businessmen that he will not switch to high-tax redistribution. No one is sure in which direction he will push the economy, now wobbling after years of steady, commodity-fuelled growth.

As with all the other Big Men, the principal worries revolve around a fatal conflation of party and state. Given South Africa’s racial and tribal mix, robustly independent bodies are vital, from Parliament and the judiciary to human-rights monitors, medical institutions and free media, but the ANC has stuffed all of them with party loyalists to entrench its hegemony. Candidate Zuma has seemed to rate loyalty to the ANC above all else, even the admirable constitution that the party itself was largely responsible for writing. It is not certain he believes in the need to separate powers, letting his fans hurl abuse at judges when they ruled against him.

Confound us all

President Zuma must grab his early chances to reassure the worriers. He should state unequivocally that he will not propose a law to render the head of state immune from criminal prosecution. He needs to resist the temptation to elevate some of his dodgier friends to high judicial posts. Parliament needs more bite to nip the heels of the executive; the present system of election by party lists shrivels the independence of members and needs reform. To curb cronyism, all MPs, ministers and board members of state-funded institutions should register their and their families’ assets. He should also keep the sound Trevor Manuel as finance minister. Finally, Mr Zuma should ask his government to revise, perhaps even phase out, the policy of “black economic empowerment”. This may have been necessary 15 years ago to put a chunk of the economy into black hands. But its main beneficiaries now are a coterie of ANC-linked people, not the poor masses.

Hardest of all for Mr Zuma to accept is that, in the longer run, South African democracy needs a sturdier opposition. The liberal Democratic Alliance, led by a brave white woman, Helen Zille, has good ideas but has failed to expand its appeal beyond a white core. The new Congress of the People, a black-led breakaway from the ANC, has able leaders, yet several are tainted by association with Mr Mbeki. With luck the opposition parties may stop the ANC from getting the two-thirds of parliamentary seats that would let it override the constitution.

Mr Zuma could yet prove to be the right sort of Big Man: big enough to hold his party back from creating something akin to a one-party state, big enough to accept that no one, himself included, is above the law. If that is how he chooses to spend his five years in power, South Africa would indeed serve as a model for the whole continent. But will he?

Source:The Economist