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Playing the race card every time

For once Cosatu, the ANC and others were pointing out the madness of playing the race card every time things do not go someone's way and jointly criticised the ANCYL and BMF for doing so, thereby obscuring the real ongoing struggle against racism where it still exists.

Again there was deafening silence on the part of Zuma and his government, which is beginning to remind one of the Mbeki era. Same old problem, new players? Not quite. But that brings one to the other major fault line that threatens to derail governance in South Africa: the lack of clear and decisive leadership.

The ANC's style of governance has moved from one extreme ? Thabo Mbeki's singular, centralised decision-making ? to another extreme: Jacob Zuma's all-appeasing, consensus-style collective decision-making. On the one hand, too little collective input, on the other ? too much.

The respected veteran political commentator and journalist Alistair Sparks, writing in Business Day, puts it as follows: "Our country badly needs clear leadership. The silence at the top while cacophony rages in the ranks below is causing confusion and uncertainty. There is a sense of drift in the air.

Lack of clear leadership

"One can understand why President Jacob Zuma is so hesitant to spell out his own vision of the road ahead. He is presiding over a fractious coalition that is at war with itself, and to choose any side too clearly in that power struggle is to risk alienating the other and suffering the fate of the departed Thabo Mbeki.

"So he prevaricates, hoping that by lending an attentive ear to everyone without explicitly siding with any, he can keep all sufficiently unruffled to stay in the big alliance tent."

What is being witnessed seems to be the death of the ANC and the Alliance as we know it. While many of the schisms and cracks are being caused by various factions wanting their pound of flesh for helping to put Zuma in power since Polokwane 2007, the major onslaught is coming from the Left.

Having supported the ANCYL to elevate Zuma into power, the SACP and Cosatu are now making their move to try and seize control over particularly economic policy in an attempt to further their agenda by taking the country from the first-phase "national democratic revolution" (the ANC democratically coming to power) to the second phase of "socialist revolution".

Death of the alliance?

While the ANC has always acted as a strong leader of a political alliance that it dominated, that picture has been changing rapidly since Polokwane. A wounded and weakened ANC, itself fractious and used by many purely as a self-enriching, career-advancing stepping stone, opened up new possibilities of advancement for the Left.

That has led to the SACP and Cosatu ensuring that their ministerial nominees be included in key government positions. It motivated the attack on National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel and his department?s national planning Green Paper, with the Left openly campaigning for Manuel?s removal and the placing of economic policy under control of the leftist Economic Development minister, Patel, among more recent developments.

The important meeting of the alliance parties this past weekend may have misled many into believing that the ANC put its left-wing allies in their place regarding the acceptance of Manual heading the National Planning Commission (NPC). However, these are no more than temporary, tactical developments, subjected to much behind-the-scenes horse-trading. The fact is that the NPC which Manuel will be heading, will be considerably weakened, and will not give Manuel any special say over other ministries ? which is exactly what the Left had been fighting against.

These battles are far from over

The trade-off came when the ANC, for its part, had to make the concession to the Left that the mandate of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and its inflation-monitoring role would be reviewed and could lead to changes in that area ? something for which the Left has long been fighting.

These battles and tensions are far from over. This was also aptly demonstrated over the weekend when the SACP and Cosatu attempted to strip the ANC of its leading role in the Alliance, making the Alliance the new "centre of political power".

Ironically, it was Julius Malema and his ANCYL ? close allies of the Left in several previous issues, particularly in bringing Zuma to power ? who offered the strongest resistance to the Left's plans in this regard.

Article courtesy of Leadership Magazine.