Great Decisions Analysis: South Africa's Magnificent Catastrophe Derek Catsam* | Foreign Policy Association | 04 January 2008
http://www.fpa.org/topics_info2414/topics_info_show.htm?doc_id=637958 A heavily contested election in a still-new democracy. An irascible, dogmatic, brilliant, flawed, abrasive, talented, condescending sitting president. Hand wringing over what the contentiousness might mean for the future of the state. Increasing factionalism. I am writing, of course, about the United States in 1800. Historical analogies are a fraught endeavor, and those brought to bear across a transom of more than 200 years in time, not to mention worlds of differences in geography and context, should be at best suggestive. Yet even as I have been writing extensively about South Africa's current contested political climate I have been absorbing Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Larson's fine new book about the 1800 US election, A Magnificent Catastrophe. The 1800 election pitted a grumpy, contentious, and brilliant President John Adams against not just another of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, but also Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. In many ways the 1800 election introduced American politics to partisan strife, and while many worried that the divisions that the election revealed would cause the American democratic experiment to die aborning, the country survived the "Revolution of 1800" and indeed thrived. The differences in context are clear between South Africa in 2007 and the United States two centuries ago. Yet one cannot help but think of Nelson Mandela when reminded of George Washington's willingness to step down from power which he likely could have held to his death had he so chosen. And while Thabo Mbeki is much more suave, graceful, and attractive than John Adams, both men suffered for their vanity and paled in comparison to the man who preceded each of them. It also appears that in South Africa, as in the United States in 1800, the effort to supplant the successor to the country's heroic founding president will go a long way in determining the very character of the fragile democracy for which so many fought for so long. One of the key legacies of 1800 is that it effectively established a partisan tradition in the United States. The Founders professed to oppose factionalism, but it took only a dozen or so years for those same Founders to determine that parties made for an effective way for people of similar ideological and political leanings to mobilize for power. This partisanship, coupled with some bizarre (and in some cases, still unresolved) quirks in the American system, fueled a two- party structure that may be unloved in many quarters, but that has endured over the generations. For better or worse, many of the characteristics of American democracy as we know it stem from the election that made Thomas Jefferson president. The South African circumstance is different. And yet one can speculate as to whether or not the events that effectively began in Polokwane at the end of 2007 and will carry forward through 2009 will have a similarly significant effect on South African democracy. In terms of acrimony and intrigue, the Americans of 1800 carried no advantage over what happened in Limpopo province when the African National Congress (ANC) gathered to elect a new party president, among other things. Two years ago Jacob Zuma's political fortunes appeared bankrupt. Accused of rape and of multiple counts of corruption, Zuma, once Thabo Mbeki's trusted deputy and vice president and cherished ally, looked to need luck to hold on to his freedom, never mind even the remotest chance of political viability. But as Thabo Mbeki's popularity plummeted, and as Zuma managed to avoid legal peril (though it appears that he will face re-instated corruption charges that might still undercut his political future), he emerged from the ashes. Suddenly a large plurality the ANC's fiercely loyal cadres found that Zuma represented them. He took on the mantel of man of the people, even if that title emerged as much from who he was not namely Thabo Mbeki as who he is, which has always been a fairly centrist ANC loyalist. There is a reason, after all, that he was once so close to Mbeki. Zuma is no radical, though he is opportunistic enough to be able to cater his message to the party's left flank. It is from the left that the break in South African politics is going to occur. The ANC's tripartite alliance consists of the ANC proper, but also the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), both of which stand significantly to the left of the ANC's center. Unlike in the United States in 1800, South Africa has many political parties, some quite negligible but all free to operate in the democratic structures embedded in the country's constitution. But every other party combined pales when placed next to the strength of the ANC. The country's main liberation party still holds the loyalty of South Africa's masses, and despite wide ideological fissures amidst the party, COSATU and SACP have always known that access to power, to both political effectiveness and political spoils, comes from within the ANC. But one has to wonder whether the conflicting forces being brought to bear on the ANC's numerous constituencies won't prove to be too much and ultimately tear the party apart. A viable challenge to the ANC will not come externally from the right. It will come, rather, from within and from the left. In time, we shall see if 2007 marks a crucial moment in fomenting a division that many observers see as being inevitable, even as one of the chief concerns of the party's many factions in Polokwane, other than victory, was maintaining party unity. At some point the desire to present a unified front will give way to ideological differences too wide to bridge. Jacob Zuma appears poised from the vantage point of December 2007 to be the country's next president. But keep in mind how much has changed since December 2006. And consider what is likely to come in the next twelve months and beyond. There is much that will happen in the two years ahead of South Africa's presidential election. A corruption conviction for Zuma would change everything. Thabo Mbeki has more than his share of the Phoenix in him, and his ability to ride choppy seas to calm waters have over the years proven indispensable. The ANC presidency has only been linked with the country's presidency for a very brief period of time. Perhaps something or someone (Cyril Ramaphosa? Tokyo Sexwale?) will decide to challenge Zuma, especially if the corruption charges weaken the party standard bearer irrevocably. Democratic transitions are alarmingly rare in Subsaharan Africa. Unless Thabo Mbeki attempts and succeeds at doing both the unlikely and the extreme in challenging the constitution and pursuing another term, South Africa is going to make another peaceful democratic transition in 2009. The process by which that transition happens will likely shape South African politics for a generation. South Africans need not look to the United States to see the triumph of democracy. But if they choose to do so anyway the American election of 1800 and the political machinations and outcomes that accompanied it might not be a bad place to start. Perhaps South Africans are witnessing their own magnificent catastrophe as they suffer some of the growing pains of their still nascent democracy. *Derek Catsam teaches American and African history at the University of the Permian Basin. He is the blogger on South African issues for the Foreign Policy Association and is at work on a book on bus boycotts in the United States and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s.
