ANTHONY BUTLER: Does a rational centre exist anywhere in SA?

The empirical evidence has not been very promising, so far

First published in BusinessLive

5 MARCH 2021

It has been a confusing week for observers of the DA. The party has been in the doldrums since 2019, when the managed leadership transition from federal leader Mmusi Maimane to John Steenhuisen generated unexpected fallout.

The membership’s recent endorsement of core liberal principles and internal organisational reforms to enhance campaign effectiveness, suggested the party was on the road to partial recovery.

However, last weekend the Sunday Times published a controversial interview with Steenhuisen, which suggested the new leader would support President Cyril Ramaphosa in any vote of no confidence in the National Assembly, and that Steenhuisen would be open to a coalition with a Ramaphosa-led ANC in 2024 should national elections result in a hung parliament. The DA would not, however, join forces with deputy president David Mabuza or ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule.

Steenhuisen based his analysis on familiar DA narratives about an impending “realignment around the political centre”. These are not in themselves controversial or new. In 2016, for example, former leader Maimane stated that ANC reformers would soon jump ship to the DA.

Why, then, did an agitated Steenhuisen accuse the Sunday Times of misrepresenting his position, and issue a lengthy “clarification” on Wednesday? Unlike Sunday’s Steenhuisen, Wednesday’s version was adamant that there is no “good ANC”. He was, moreover, no longer soft on Ramaphosa, who “talks reform but walks socialism, either because he truly is a socialist at heart, or because it is the only way to keep the ANC united”.

In a video podcast called Inside Track, released later that day, Steenhuisen was joined by DA federal council chair Helen Zille to impart an “official version” to apparently concerned activists. 

The optics were not ideal from the ostensible party leader’s point of view. Steenhuisen delivered a few short remarks before Zille stood up, produced a whiteboard and marker pens, and delivered a lecture on party realignment. This seemed to be addressed to Steenhuisen as much as to the viewers.

The two leaders of the DA were at least in agreement about one thing: that there is a “rational centre” in SA politics, to which the DA can appeal, located not just in the parliamentary caucuses of the main political parties but also in the wider electorate. This phrase originated from ANC policy guru Joel Netshitenzhe, who used it to explain the resilience of the liberation movement in the face of its own self-destructive tendencies.

Whether such a rational centre actually exists — within the ANC, the DA, parliament, or the wider society — remains a matter for conjecture. The empirical evidence is not promising, so far, in any of these settings. More usefully, the DA has recognised the importance of “principles” in the building of coalitions. The two leaders insisted the party will be “the core” of an impending party realignment, and the “anchor tenant” in any coalitions it builds.

Principle, not expediency, will be their guide. Every coalition agreement will set out core objectives and “red lines”, including noninterference in appointments and tenders. All of which leaves a couple of big questions hanging for the 2021 and 2024 elections. How will the DA respond this year if plausible local government coalition partners refuse to commit to the written agreements it proposes, or sign them in evident bad faith?

Perhaps more importantly, Steenhuisen has rejected national deal-making with Magashule or Mabuza in 2024. But these are yesterday’s men, who are never going to become ANC president. Journalists and activists may soon ask the party’s leaders whether the DA is willing to work with more credible Ramaphosa successors, notably Paul Mashatile and Zweli Mkhize. And who exactly in the DA leadership will decide, Zille or Steenhuisen?

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

ANTHONY BUTLER: Too much tea can make Covid-19 worse

Use of various kinds, smoked or drunk, might increase spin or disinformation

BL PREMIUM 18 FEBRUARY 2021

Covid-19 is messing with the minds of many good citizens. We should not make this problem worse by experimenting with illicit drugs.

Research published in the Lancet late in 2020 reported that one in five of those infected with the coronavirus develop depression, anxiety or dementia within three months of diagnosis. The ripples of psychic distress spread outwards to families enduring illness or bereavement.

Meanwhile, lockdowns and economic disruption result in isolation and fear, which trigger or worsen existing or underlying mental health conditions.

Insomnia, anxiety and excessive drug and alcohol use are widespread even among families not directly affected by the virus. Now media reports from the Johannesburg suburb of Melville suggest cigarette and alcohol bans during lockdown have resulted in experimental smoking of illicit materials that may become enduring.ADVERTISING

One Melville smoker told reporters his “Freshpak Rooibos” tasted “a little like a forest fire … It burns surprisingly well, like an actual cigarette would, but it’s quite difficult to roll because the tea is so dry.”

Another leaf-dependent social pathology, tea-drinking, has also become endemic. Former president Jacob Zuma and President Cyril Ramaphosa, both notorious Rooibos drinkers for decades, have allegedly enticed others to join their circle of sin.

Little more than a year ago, in October 2019, EFF commander-in-chief Julius Malema was invited to “Tea with Helen” by a then unemployed treasure of the nation, Helen Zille.

The event was much anticipated. Who could not look forward to the antics of a backstreet bruiser, throwing out foul-mouthed obscenities and threatening physical violence to a cowering adversary? And Malema might also have been worth watching.

The EFF leader sensibly chickened out. In our new covidian condition of perpetual intoxication, however, a tea invitation from Zuma proved irresistible to the middle-aged, formerly youthful, former youth league leader.

As was the case with the original Boston Tea Party in 1773, the main issue under discussion at Nkandla was probably “liberty”. In other words, various rich people do not want to pay taxes to the colonial revenue service.

They are “patriots” who will no longer stand by while colonial laws, such as the Tea Act of 1773 and the Public Finance Management Act of 1999, are used to oppress ordinary rich folk. These “heroes” especially do not want to go to prison.

This is not really complicated. However, many remunerated intellectuals and reporters inhabit trendy suburbs such as Melville, where our woozy and ill-focused consciousness leaves us vulnerable to spin and disinformation.

Some of us put down our tea pipes, roused ourselves from our dreamlike states and tried to discern a “deeper meaning” to the tea party. What did it mean when these leaders were delivered by great birds in the sky? What did Vuyani Pambo, an unoccupied mind of the EFF, imply when he said the tea was warm and sugary?

Does it matter that the streets of Nkandla now boast a wobbly-kneed detachment of military zombies from the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans’ Association, proclaiming their loyalty to Zuma and threatening to bite those who oppose him? Will ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule become president of the ANC in December 2022?

We are all anxious and confused, but the smoke is clearing. The machinery of the criminal justice system is not moving fast but it is moving. We do not have to fear undead corporeal revenants such as Zuma, Malema or Magashule. Our real problem is the fresh waves of political zombies lined up in their many ranks behind them.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

ANTHONY BUTLER: ANC plan to align three spheres could save it from electoral disaster

The ‘district development model’ could make local government defer to national authorities

First published in BusinessLive and Business Day

4 FEBRUARY 2021

The ANC’s recently concluded national executive committee (NEC) lekgotla was filled with virtual excitement. It addressed Covid-19, expropriation without compensation, the Zondo commission and many other hot issues. It was easy to overlook the body’s endorsement of the tedious-sounding district development model.

Yet district development is rare in that it is personally endorsed by our policy-reticent president, Cyril Ramaphosa. Importantly, it has also been championed by his erstwhile rival, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, now co-operative governance & traditional affairs minister.

Early in his presidency Ramaphosa set out his vision of “synchronised planning” by all three spheres of government. He hoped the district development model might help municipalities enhance the reach of national investment programmes, co-ordinate economic development and job creation schemes, and improve household service delivery.

The co-operative governance department catchily summarised the model as, “One District, One Plan and One Budget”. Local, district and metropolitan spheres of governance would together produce “a single strategically focused One Plan for each of the 44 districts and eight metropolitan geographic spaces in the country”.ADVERTISING

This policy sailed through cabinet subcommittees, traditional leaders’ forums, the president’s co-ordinating council and cabinet in the space of just seven months. Pilots were implemented in the OR Tambo district, eThekwini metro and Waterberg district in late 2019.

Sceptics brushed aside the importance of the initiative. After all, previous iterations of a co-ordination model have included the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme, the Urban Renewal Programme and the Integrated Urban Development Framework — none of these has transformed our society.

Moreover, the idea that national, provincial and local government representatives would sit together with traditional leaders, churchmen, local business people and labour representatives to agree 54 spatially targeted budgets simply defied belief.

However, Covid-19 has brought fresh impetus to the project. In mid-2020, when national leaders fanned out to the hardest-hit provinces to assist local authorities, this deployment of “ministerial talent” was attributed to the new model.

Dlamini-Zuma claimed national government had profiled all 52 districts and metros and deployed ministers to “contribute to vertical and horizontal integration of government planning and implementation”. (Thank goodness.) Enthusiasts claimed such deployments, co-ordinated by the national coronavirus command council, might provide a model for a post-pandemic national planning system.

A few months later, the spectre of local government elections has made this approach even more attractive to some of our leaders. After all, the ANC knows it will have many dreadful candidates and it may be heading for an electoral disaster.

The flexible concept of the district development model could help the ANC in any one of three ways. First, as the chair of the ANC’s legislature & governance subcommittee — and notorious patronage baron — Phumulo Masualle has recently argued, the model can be used to justify a change to municipal architecture. “Do we really need all of them [municipalities] as they are? The answer is certainly not.” The “urgent need” Masualle sees for municipal rationalisation might yet be used to try to scupper the elections.

Second, the development model proposes that the three spheres of government “operate like a single unit” in relation to “developmental objectives and outcomes in district and metropolitan spaces over a multiyear period and over multi-term electoral cycles”. This means losing local elections will no longer matter so much for the ANC — so long as it controls national and provincial governments.

Finally, the model addresses the ANC’s greatest fear: that pandemic procurement scandals in ANC metros — where the “Good ANC” rather than the “Bad ANC” has supposedly been in charge — have destroyed public trust.

It is not clear why metros fall under the district development model regime at all. But while they do, the ANC may hope it cannot fully lose control of them.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

ANTHONY BUTLER: Election unlikely to be postponed unless Malema gets his way

 BL PREMIUM

21 JANUARY 2021

Since the middle of 2020 some members of the ANC have been peddling specious arguments to justify a possible postponement of the scheduled 2021 local government elections.

SA has a constitutionally prescribed five-year term for municipal councils, and a requirement that elections are held within 90 days of the expiry of current terms. This means elections must be held between August 4 and November 1 2021.

At first sight, there is little reason to change this schedule. The Municipal Demarcation Board has to finalise a few minor ward boundary changes. Voter address records, as always, remain incomplete. A new “voter management device” to deter fraud has yet to be rolled out. Covid also makes registration hard. But by-elections were held successfully last year, and well-ventilated and socially distanced voter stations are not beyond the capabilities of the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC).

Yet some ANC MPs, and the EFF, have shifted focus to the campaign. The EFF argues campaigning is incompatible with social distancing, and that elections are “super-spreader events”. The IEC is now wavering, recently proposing that only “level 1” Covid restrictions are compatible with a “free and fair” election.

Such arguments, if sincere, might justify adjusting the election date within its current window, or perhaps pushing it back by weeks. They certainly cannot justify postponing the elections for three years, or combining them with national polls in 2024.

The ANC still lacks a credible case. In July, ANC-friendly electoral commissioner Janet Love guided the home affairs portfolio committee that it should prepare a list of the “pros and cons” of merging local elections with national and provincial polls.

Falling back on the intellectual resources of the committee, however, has not gone well. The cogitation of the ANC, combined with the superior logic of the EFF, has resulted in only one concrete argument: the R1.6bn cost of each election is prohibitive in these times of scarce resources.

This is laughable in the context of overall government spending. A parastatal bailout that provides jobs, contracts and free flights for the elite is apparently more worthy of funds than a democratic election.

If a policy decision is taken to merge elections nonetheless, the alignment of time frames will require a constitutional amendment. After all, either councillors will remain in office to 2024, or a newly elected 2021 cohort will have to leave office at the same date. To accomplish this, it would seem an informal pact has been struck to the perceived mutual advantage of the EFF and a faction of the ANC.

Both parties are rightly suffering from popularity slumps. On the EFF side, in addition, party leader Julius Malema’s yearning to strike a deal with the ANC in exchange for personal power is becoming urgent, as middle age and the boredom of opposition increasingly weigh on his ego. The ANC is likely to drop below 50% in 2024, and this provides a point of maximum leverage for a “necessary coalition partner”.

Inside the ANC, the debate is more nuanced. The liberation movement has long been debilitated by the need to run candidate selection processes twice every five years. ANC incumbents in many municipalities meanwhile fear for their jobs, and for their immediate financial wellbeing. Some provincial barons believe money is to be made from further disarray in the metros: a suspension of local elections will collapse the legitimacy of many councils, engender chaos and so provide grounds for ANC scavengers to put them under administration.

Much will turn on President Cyril Ramaphosa. He surely fears that disastrous local election results could allow treasurer-general Paul Mashatile to remove him from the ANC presidency, in a relatively quiet putsch, in December 2022. He is more likely, however, to veto a postponement of elections as a matter of principle.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

ANTHONY BUTLER: Poor Subordinate Clauses, bereft of Santa’s crafty leadership

First published in Business Day and Business Live

 18 DECEMBER 2020

Ho ho ho! After a few trials and tribulations, we have finally arrived at the time of year when the little boys and girls across the land begin to gather outside their local bottle stores — at least from Monday to Thursday — to access their holiday spirits.

Those little children who can still dream are dreaming of the arrival of a dangerously overweight man dressed in a garish red suit and bearing seasonal gifts. Could this be minister “Hazenile” Mantashe, who has promised to bring a sack of magical materials down a specially widened chimney? Or perhaps Mark “Delivery” Barnes, who it transpires is still the CEO of the SA Post Office, because he erroneously sent his resignation letter to the board by “Fast Mail” in August 2019?

No, let us not be Claus-trophobic at this Happy Time. After all, the jolly old man is now “Matamela”, he who evokes speechless wonderment. 

Santa Cyril has a very tough job. Luckily he has a Special Book to help him, called The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus (also known to the goblins as The Strategy and Tactics of Father Christmas).

Santa runs a complex operation. He has to choose a reindeer cabinet, manage the workshop and the elves who work there, and deliver millions of gifts inside tight deadlines.

Sadly, all of the smartest of Santa’s reindeer, such as Ebrahim “pointy ears” Patel, can’t help steering relentlessly left, which is taking the sled round and round in circles.

But there is good news for elves and children, says Pravin the Good Goblin, because we possess “a great fleet of metallic birds” which can be used to deliver presents to the poor. “Everyone can have free flights,” he proclaimed, “perhaps starting with MPs, for now.”

“Doc” Mkhize likewise says we can still afford National Elf Insurance. But how can we pay for presents for all the little children when we are driving the sled over the edge of the fiscal cliff?

“Never fear,” the little imps “Doc” Gilad, “Dotty” Duma, and “Noisy” Neil, all piped up together. “It’s not a real cliff, it’s only mystical. We can print toy money and go shopping for gifts at Eastgate Mall, close to the bubbling waters of Bruma Lake from whence we like to drink!”

Santa Cyril says we must submit to the rule of law, especially when it comes up with the right answer. “Yay!”, he observed recently, “the magical court says we don’t have to pay the elves after all!”

“Sanity prevails,” agreed Judge Dredd, also known as the dreadful judge, “although not necessarily for me.”

“Lord God almighty,” he judiciously requested, “send your angels, send even your angel of the media, send all the angels of fire, the angel of judgment, the angel of the wings of the Lord, to enforce your will.” (He really did.)

Cyril, at least, is sane, for which the little girls and boys should be grateful. He is not a Lost Claus, and he is not a lame duck Santa like his predecessor, Jacob “Christmas Quacker” Zuma.

The year ahead will reveal whether he is Mbokodo, a stone that slowly grinds, or simply a slow-moving Santa, who will be mown down by the delivery vans of history. Today’s Subordinate Clauses, such as DD, Doc Zweli and Gauteng’s Sainted Paul, are finding out that no matter how hard they work the guy in the Santa suit tends to get all the credit.

Nonetheless, Leadership Secrets reminds us that an ANC Santa exists only because the little children believe he does. If Santa lets them down, boys and girls across the land will stop believing in him, and the mystical movement he leads will vanish into thin air.

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

Beleaguered Treasury needs to be bolstered by Ramaphosa

BusinessLive

03 DECEMBER 2020

President Cyril Ramaphosa recently highlighted the need to address the shortcomings of the public service. But where to start?

Maths teachers, health workers and civil engineers are scarce. Tenders have spawned rampant corruption. The poorest third of municipalities are close to collapse.

Lines of accountability between senior politicians and officials are contested, and appointments are routinely made on the basis of politics rather than expertise.

However, amid the hand-wringing little attention has been paid to the greatest emergency in the state: a vortex of decline that threatens the National Treasury.ADVERTISING

The Treasury implements rules about how public monies can be spent, and applies rudimentary quality control to the spending fantasies of government ministers.

It has not been a perfect machine, and it has been through inevitable conflicts with more interventionist and “strategic” departments. Its role in the budget process has predictably left it vulnerable to sloganeering about “neoliberalism”.

The Treasury has also faced many of the same challenges as other parts of the state in finding capable and reasonably impartial personnel. Unlike other departments, it has avoided what the Public Service Commission calls “reckless cadre deployment”.

Today, however, we see two convergent trends that threaten to destroy the capacity of the Treasury, just when it is most sorely needed.

The first trend is that the number and depth of capable officials is depleting. Key staff — many of them former ANC-aligned exiles or activists — have retired quite naturally. Others have moved to the SA Reserve Bank, most notably the bank’s governor and one of the deputy governors.

The state-capture debacle saw the departure of director-general Lungisa Fuzile and budget office head Michael Sachs. However, resignations in 2020 included a new generation of recruits. These include far younger chief directors of financial markets and stability, and of macroeconomic policy. Other key positions, such as chief procurement officer and accountant-general, have passed long periods with “acting” incumbents.

The second trend concerns growing pressure on the Treasury. As the fiscal crisis has deepened the Treasury’s role as the budgetary “no-man” has fuelled resentment across the state. In the past expenditure freezes have been pushed down to different tiers of government or to departmental managers. However, the deeper cuts necessitated by the Covid crisis are prompting open rebellion against the rectitude demanded by the centre.

The Treasury has to be at the top of its game to steer government along (roughly) the projected fiscal path the finance minister set out in the medium term budget policy statement. Many of the potential pitfalls it then highlighted — a Covid second wave, further ratings downgrades, municipal debacles, contingent liabilities to Eskom and the Road Accident Fund, and bailouts to other state owned enterprises — have already been realised. And who would now bet on the government’s ability to restrain public sector pay rises?

As these two trajectories — declining capacity and growing demands — increasingly collide, crisis mismanagement and declining credibility are ensuing: a delayed medium-term budget policy statement, a fiasco over SAA, confusion about the public sector wage freeze, and botched exchange control relaxations.

And this is just the beginning. The probability of an enhanced growth path is steadily receding and the likelihood of debt default is equally steadily growing. What the Treasury has to do, and the human capacities it has to cope, will further diverge in the months ahead.

Ramaphosa’s government needs to take action right now to retain, bolster and restore the Treasury capacities we need to steer the country through this crisis.

Otherwise, it is people who are not South Africans at all, but rather officials of international banks and financial institutions, who will be in charge of the next set of key decisions about how resources should be allocated by the SA government.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

ANTHONY BUTLER: It’s a conspiracy theory, but it might just be true

First published in BL PREMIUM

19 NOVEMBER 2020

It is tempting to laugh at the QAnon conspiracy theory. Millions of advocates of this fairy-tale, mostly in the US, believe that Satan-worshipping elites — including liberal Hollywood actors, paedophile Democratic Party politicians, and blood-sucking business tycoons — run a ruthless global child sex-trafficking ring.

It is likewise hard to stifle amusement at the surprisingly widely held notion that a flesh-eating extraterrestrial elite is trying to enslave the human race to access a ready supply of human blood. The most prominent member of this race of lizards is apparently Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.

However, we really shouldn’t mock others. After all, SA is a world leader when it comes to conspiracy theories.

The enemies within — conspirators who allegedly threaten to tear us apart — have frequently been subjected to death by fire over the past three or four decades in our townships and villages. Sometimes they have been called witches or informers; other times they have just been foreigners.

Two postapartheid presidents, Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, once believed that HIV/Aids was an invention of global capital, designed primarily to benefit multinational drug companies. (I haven’t noticed them admitting they were wrong.)

A deputy defence minister, Kebby Maphatsoe, memorably suggested in 2014 that public protector Thuli Madonsela was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency. This warrior chief’s revelation was built on an ANC principle much beloved of Jacob Zuma: any competent cadre must be a spy — how else can they be so much more capable than us?

Even today, a very large proportion of the active membership of the EFF and the ANC believe “white monopoly capital” lies behind all the key decisions of government.

Such projections of an elusive but powerful enemy are common among the purveyors of conspiracy theories everywhere.

It is not clear what can be done to deal with this problem. The human mind embraces theories that create connections between events that are unrelated, because this helps us to impose meaning or order on a bewildering world. One example is Marxism. Another slightly different case concerns the doctrines of the Enlightened Christian Gathering of Shepherd Bushiri.

We need to pay attention to our theories, to the sources of our beliefs, and to the robustness of the evidence that supports them. But it is a mistake to let the cry “conspiracy theorist” deter us from questioning conventional wisdom.

After all, the outlandish claim that President Richard Nixon’s administration broke into the Democratic National Party’s Washington offices in 1972, bugged political opponents, ordered unwarranted investigations of political activists, told federal officials to deflect investigations, and tried to cover up all of the above, was once dubbed a ridiculous conspiracy theory. Now it is called investigative journalism.

The “Me Too” and “Black Lives Matter” movements, whose claims were once labelled illusory, have exposed widespread conspiracies of silence and denial. Sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church have shown that conspiracy theories about the abuse of power are far from always based on delusion.

What can we do? It would seem to be a good starting point to act in good faith, and not to circulate or perpetuate conspiracy theories that we most certainly do not believe to be true.

When it comes to other matters — selective prosecutions for corruption, the appointment of justices to presidential commissions of inquiry, the existence of God, or the activity of “rogue units” in government agencies — we should keep an open mind, and simply keep on interrogating the evidence. To adapt a justly famous saying about paranoia, just because it is a conspiracy theory, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

ANTHONY BUTLER: ANC internal democracy at stake as cadres mull authoritarian rule

Group suggests that since the ANC is going to lose next year’s municipal elections, it should prevent the poll from taking place

First published BL PREMIUM 05 NOVEMBER 2020 – ANTHONY BUTLER

US President Donald Trump’s proposal on Wednesday was brilliant in its simplicity. Observing his lead eroding as the votes were tallied, he suggested the supreme court should simply suspend the count.

This idea is also popular in parts of the ANC. A self-styled “ANC Cadres” group, led by retired defence intelligence head Maomela “Mojo” Motau, has circulated a document grandly entitled “ANC Turnaround Strategy 2025: Changing the Course of History”. 

Peering ahead to next year’s municipal elections, the cadres observe that the outcome might be “much more humiliating than we think. The battering can actually spell the end of the ANC as a major political party.” They recommend the Trumpian remedy. Since the ANC is going to lose, it should prevent the elections from taking place. Democracy should be replaced by rule through the diktat of unelected committees.

The authors also want “closer ties” to China, Russia and Southern African liberation movements. In other words, they want authoritarian foreign regimes to help them run SA, because they have no idea how to do it themselves. The group is perhaps not drawn from the more intellectually gifted ranks of the ANC. Threatening to ditch elections is not a good strategy, unless you can make it permanent.ADVERTISING

It is true SA citizens are a bit fed up with democracy. Fewer than half of eligible electors voted in 2019. A 2018 Afrobarometer survey found that more than two-thirds of young people were willing to give up elections for a government that could provide jobs, housing and security.

In reality, however, the cadres’ proposed form of authoritarian rule would not work. It depends on ruthlessly efficient committees of ANC activists running government affairs. Control enforced by the defence force would stand little chance if taxi bosses or Cape Flats gangs took up arms and even ADT, also known as the military wing of the DA, enjoys logistical superiority over the state.

The fact that the ANC is even entertaining the cadres’ anti-democratic proposals could buoy opposition parties, which are already far better placed than most observers recognise. The DA has cut its losses after its experiment in accelerating black leadership. This will cap, but not much reduce, its vote share. The EFF will be boosted by the likely criminal prosecution of some of the current leadership. 

Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA is now a real contender in the three metros in the north of the country. This party, seriously underestimated by our complacent incumbent cartel, is targeting education policy. President Cyril Ramaphosa is hamstrung by the SA Democratic Teachers Union, and the DA is mesmerised by former model-C schools. Yet there are 9-million children in dysfunctional public schools, creating a huge voter pool on which Mashaba can draw.

ActionSA also wants to “clamp down on the influx of undocumented migrants through our porous borders”. According to Afrobarometer data from 2018, about half of SA citizens oppose political asylum, believe foreigners should not be allowed to work in the country, and favour placing refugees in internment camps. Covid-related economic impacts are likely to deepen these vote-drawing, if reprehensible, sentiments.

The ANC cadres are not really threatening that ageing major generals and rear admirals will invade the Union Buildings, perhaps propelled by Zimmer frames or armoured wheelchairs. It is also hard to imagine that the curiously youthful “culinary detachment” of the Umkhonto we Sizwe veterans will engage in such a dashing military manoeuvre.

No, the democracy the ageing ANC Cadres really want to hijack is the residual internal democracy of the liberation movement. If the ANC’s legitimate leadership cannot firmly put down these tin-pot internal rebels, the real electors outside will notice. It will be another nail in the electoral coffin of the liberation movement the cadres falsely claim to represent.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

ANTHONY BUTLER: Carcerophobia epidemic may lead to Ramaphosa’s downfall

 Business Day and BusinessLive

23 OCTOBER 2020

Will President Cyril Ramaphosa serve a second term as ANC leader? It is hard to evict an incumbent ANC president after just five years. Indeed the problem, as the careers of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma demonstrate, is that it is hard to get rid of them even after 10 years.

To remove an entire incumbent faction requires a nationwide coalition and financial and political resources. But what if the challenge comes from within the ANC’s dominant faction itself? There are circumstances in which party leaders might be tempted to replace their president with a younger, less tarnished version who seems more decisive.

SA’s epidemic of carcerophobia — fear of prison — may also play a role. Prosecutions of a few corrupt ANC leaders are essential if electors are to regain faith in the party before 2021’s local government elections. But a small number of scapegoats — such as ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and former minerals minister Mosebenzi Zwane — may not suffice.

However, if arrests go too far, and especially if they target provincial and regional leaders, the power brokers who manipulate conference votes may start looking for a more sympathetic president. Meanwhile, painful fallout from the Covid-19 crisis, and the failure of economic reform programmes launched by Ramaphosa, could easily drain the leader’s credibility.

If this results in a local election disaster next year, activists could be tempted to blame Ramaphosa and to look for a fresh start before national and provincial elections. It is here where ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile steps into the picture. So far he has done a poor job of denying leadership ambitions.

When the Sunday Times recently asked him if he was plotting with deputy president David Mabuza to oust Ramaphosa, he replied: “We will see when the time comes.” ANC observers accustomed to more circumlocutory comments will take that as a “yes”. Mashatile also ventured rather impertinently that Ramaphosa “has never said to me he wants a second term”.

Mashatile might appear a logical choice. His long-term political ally and friend David Mabuza, the obvious alternative, has been in general ill-health, suffering in particular from the incurable medical condition of moral attention deficit disorder. As a former provincial chair, the treasurer-general is sympathetic to how the ANC actually functions on the ground, and he is correspondingly forgiving of corruption.

Mashatile has reached out to trade unions in recent years, and appealed to the “radical economic transformation” crowd by advocating the diversion of public sector pension funds into parastatals. Best of all, he has the same broad power base as Ramaphosa and even served as co-chair of the president’s campaign committee in advance of the Nasrec party elections. Without disturbing their common political coalition, the decisive, younger and more appealing Mashatile could simply jump into Ramaphosa’s shoes.

That’s what his supporters say, in any event, though others have their doubts. He has not performed well as treasurer-general, in which role he has clumsily proposed that the state should pick up the tab for funding parties. He has also reversed his position on prescribed assets in recent weeks, and back-tracked on the idea that the SA Reserve Bank should be nationalised.

Dubbed the “don of the Alex mafia” by the media more than a decade ago, Mashatile’s history as a provincial chair leaves him vulnerable to renewed media scrutiny. The biggest obstacle to the presidential hopeful’s ambitions is startlingly basic. Mashatile and Mabuza together were the great victors at Nasrec, each securing far stronger support from conference delegates than Ramaphosa.

However, the two allies who worked together so effectively are now after the same job. They cannot both be president. This almost certainly means neither of them will be.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

ANTHONY BUTLER: Paranoia in the cabinet signals a reshuffle is on the cards

With ministers resorting to self-promotion and backstabbing, Cyril Ramaphosa needs to enrol competent recruits

 First published in BusinessLive

08 OCTOBER 2020

A cabinet reshuffle is an important political instrument for any national leader. In a fully presidential system the head of state is constrained by the need to secure ratification from the legislature. In a parliamentary system like ours, in contrast, the president has a pretty free hand in removing and installing ministers.

Shuffles allow a leader to change the public image of the government, to kick out the insolent or incompetent, and to reward political allies. But a leader is also obliged to balance factions, ideological blocs, age and gender profiles and regional interests. Such multidimensional reconfiguration puzzles do not have one correct resolution: a president’s political judgment is key.

Former president Thabo Mbeki mostly opted for continuity, even when his ministers were physically unwell or psychologically unhinged. He instead used loyalist deputy ministers and sympathetic directors-general to help him centralise power.

Jacob Zuma, by contrast, used frequent cabinet reshuffles to disorient his enemies and secure personal advantage. He even made Malusi Gigaba finance minister, an appointment memorably described by Julius Malema as “placing a rat in charge of the cheese”.

Ramaphosa’s approach is closer to Mbeki’s than Zuma’s. In 2019 he kicked out Gigaba, Bathabile Dlamini and Nomvula Mokonyane but retained ideological diversity in senior portfolios such as finance, public enterprises, and trade & industry.

Events are pushing Ramaphosa towards a fresh reconfiguration. Heavyweight ministers such as Tito Mboweni and Pravin Gordhan have signalled a desire to step down. When such senior ministers go the vacancies cascade down the cabinet system as lesser souls are promoted.

Meanwhile, Gwede Mantashe, who has not flourished at mineral resources & energy — perhaps primarily as a result of being too close to vested interests — may be obliged to return to Luthuli House when the current secretary-general’s duties are reallocated.

Ramaphosa faces unprecedented challenges in managing the economic fallout from Covid-19. A patronage cabinet that merely placates diverse constituencies will result quite rapidly in a fiscal crisis, intervention by international financial institutions and a loss of national economic sovereignty.

Any successful recovery plan will require a reallocation of resources, and so unavoidable cuts to big programmes. These will be met by consolidated resistance from politically powerful actors as diverse as teachers, social grant recipients and beneficiaries of the Eskom coal supply chain.

Ramaphosa’s cabinet will therefore need to be committed to serving a reform programme — once there is one — rather than powerful interest groups in the ANC and the wider society.

This means further centralisation of power in the presidency. It also requires more ministerial focus on collective goals, and nothing motivates career politicians better than fear of dismissal.

One sign that a reshuffle is on the way is a recent upsurge in mutual ministerial back-stabbing. Politicians who have received a slap on the wrist for relatively minor indiscretions, such as social development minister Lindiwe Zulu or defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula have been chalked up as impending casualties.

But the clearest indicator that a reshuffle is coming is an uptick in self-promotion by the incompetent. At a press conference on Tuesday communications & digital technologies minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams launched an extended defence of her record in office. (Nobody was asking.) She insisted that allegations of her interference in the management of the Post Office and other entities had been “baseless, unfounded and devoid of any truth … I am Ndabeni-Abrahams at the end of the day. I’ve always been challenged and attacked.”

Such victimology and paranoia suggest that fears of a shake-up are building. How the next reshuffle unfolds will provide a major insight into Ramaphosa’s determination to chart a distinctive course for the country’s future.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.