Proud legacy of top­less dancers and theme parks

An­thony But­ler

Business Day, 30 August, 2013

THE of­fi­cial Zim­bab­wean news agency, New Ziana, re­ported this week that Zimbabwe is plan­ning to con­struct a “Dis­ney­land in Africa” close to Vic­to­ria Falls. The $300m de­vel­op­ment will boast ho­tels and con­ven­tion cen­tres, casi­nos, shop­ping malls and banks.

Some lo­cal scep­tics doubt the plan can be fi­nanced. Oth­ers point to Tourism Min­is­ter Wal­ter Mzembi’s de­scrip­tion of “a free zone” where “peo­ple who do not nec­es­sar­ily live in Zimbabwe can open bank ac­counts”. Such a con­cept, they ob­serve, will at­tract money laun­der­ers rather than for­eign tourists.

But South Africans would be wrong to pour scorn on the pro­posed de­vel­op­ment. Its in­spi­ra­tion, af­ter all, comes from Zimbabwe’s south­ern neigh­bour.

In the be­gin­ning, there was Sun City. We tend to for­get that the park, opened by ho­tel mag­nate Sol Kerzner in 1979, got off to a rocky start. El­ton John, Julio Igle­sias, and Cliff Richard, for ex­am­ple, were in­ad­ver­tently al­lowed to per­form in the Sun City Su­per­bowl to live hu­man au­di­ences. Nev­er­the­less, the re­sort even­tu­ally be­came cel­e­brated for its croc­o­dile-in­fested golf course (de­signed by Gary Player) and for its top­less danc­ing, an ac­tiv­ity that was il­le­gal in SA un­til the African National Congress un­clipped, and threw aside, the con­strain­ing bra of moral­is­tic apartheid-era leg­is­la­tion. South African en­trepreneurs also in­vented the “African cul­tural vil­lage”. In­spired by colo­nial an­thro­pol­o­gists, th­ese theme parks have be­come fa­mous for leopard-skin out­fits and mul­ti­coloured beads. They in­cor­po­rate the “top­less woman” con­cept to which the coun­try’s tourism lead­ers are so de­voted.

Os­ten­si­ble cul­tural her­itage also lies at the cen­tre of the Ora­nia theme park in the North­ern Cape. In re­cent years, this com­mu­nity has de­vel­oped a healthy tourist in­dus­try and now boasts a lux­ury river spa, a bou­tique ho­tel com­plex, and dozens of guest houses. Vis­i­tors are ap­par­ently at­tracted by its re­al­i­sa­tion of the con­cept of eth­nic “self-re­liance”— by the un­usual spec­ta­cle of white peo­ple ac­tu­ally do­ing work.

In the posh sub­urb of Sax­on­wold in Jo­han­nes­burg, an In­dia-themed fan­tasy park called Gupta World has re­cently been con­structed. The park boasts its own 24-hour news chan­nel, African News Net­work 7. Cit­i­zens will be aware that hi­lar­i­ous high­lights from this chan­nel, re­moved from YouTube, can re­gret­tably still be ac­cessed on the ne­far­i­ous live­leaks.com site.

Dain­fern theme park near Sand­ton has pi­o­neered the idea of a “per­ma­nent hol­i­day” from so­ci­ety. Rather than pass­ing two crowded weeks in a re­sort, va­ca­tion­ers stay for the rest of their lives. Shop­ping, ed­u­ca­tional, and leisure fa­cil­i­ties are all on hand, in­clud­ing the oblig­a­tory golf course by Gary Player.

Now the Ekurhu­leni Metropoli­tan Mu­nic­i­pal­ity has an­nounced its in­ten­tion of cre­at­ing a theme park for the 21st cen­tury. Rather than hav­ing to travel from an air­port to a re­sort, tourists will be en­cour­aged to stay in an “aerotropo­lis” im­me­di­ately around OR Tambo In­ter­na­tional Air­port.

The aerotropo­lis will bring to­gether such lux­ury Kemp­ton Park brands as South African Air­ways (SAA) and Air­ports Com­pany SA. Ac­cord­ing to top con­sul­tants pro­mot­ing the con­cept, air­ports at­tract “time-sen­si­tive” busi­nesses, lo­gis­tics and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions en­ter­prises, ho­tels, retailers, whole­salers, and en­ter­tain­ment com­plexes. The megade­vel­op­ment will al­low tourists and busi­ness trav­ellers to work, shop, sleep, and be en­ter­tained, with­out ever los­ing sight of the ma­jes­tic ter­mi­nal build­ings.

Short-sighted crit­ics com­plain that the aerotropo­lis no­tion is be­com­ing re­dun­dant in an era of en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges and high fuel prices. Few goods and ser­vices, they claim, are gen­uinely time­sen­si­tive, and most South African man­u­fac­tures are too heavy or bulky to travel by air.

Con­sul­tants, how­ever, are be­lieved to have in­cor­po­rated a Gary Player de­signed Pitch-and-Putt course (nine holes only) into the aerotropo­lis plans. In ad­di­tion, they in­tend to draw upon the hu­man cap­i­tal re­sources al­ready in Kemp­ton Park: sex work­ers, drug smug­glers, lug­gage pil­fer­ers, hu­man traf­fick­ers and SAA cus­tomer-ser­vice man­agers. There will also, most prob­a­bly, be top­less dancers.

But­ler teaches pol­i­tics at the Univer­sity of Cape Town.

Ramaphosa en­gi­neered his own come­back

Business Day, 8 Mar 2013

An­thony But­ler

IT IS now more than 16 years since Nel­son Man­dela told the na­tion that Cyril Ramaphosa would be leav­ing Par­lia­ment. The would-be pres­i­dent’s po­lit­i­cal prospects seemed to di­min­ish with ev­ery elec­tion cy­cle there­after. For this rea­son, Ramaphosa’s elec­tion as deputy pres­i­dent of the African Na­tional Congress (ANC) at its na­tional con­fer­ence in Man­gaung has some­times been greeted as “op­por­tunis­tic”.

Ramaphosa’s ad­dress to 500 con­gre­gants at the Pen­te­costal Ho­li­ness Church in Rusten­burg last week­end is a re­minder that we should not take neg­a­tive prog­noses for Ramaphosa’s po­lit­i­cal fu­ture at face value. “We as Chris­tians”, he some­what im­plau­si­bly be­gan, “need to be­come the mo­ral con­science of our coun­try”.

Ramaphosa’s ad­dress to 500 con­gre­gants at the Pen­te­costal Ho­li­ness Church in Rusten­burg last week­end is a re­minder that we should not take neg­a­tive prog­noses for Ramaphosa’s po­lit­i­cal fu­ture at face value. “We as Chris­tians”, he some­what im­plau­si­bly be­gan, “need to be­come the mo­ral con­science of our coun­try”.

Ramaphosa even gave a plug for the Na­tional Devel­op­ment Plan, en­cour­ag­ing the con­gre­ga­tion to read it and to as­sist in its im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Such a bravura per­for­mance, de­liv­ered with a straight face, is a re­minder that Ramaphosa is a mul­ti­fac­eted cam­paigner with the flair to cul­ti­vate di­verse con­stituen­cies.

He can talk to busi­ness, labour, the churches and the ur­ban youth. Like Pres­i­dent Ja­cob Zuma, but un­like al­most all of his peers, he can even cam­paign suc­cess­fully in deep ru­ral ar­eas.

He can talk to busi­ness, labour, the churches and the ur­ban youth. Like Pres­i­dent Ja­cob Zuma, but un­like al­most all of his peers, he can even cam­paign suc­cess­fully in deep ru­ral ar­eas.

There are four rea­sons to be­lieve that Ramaphosa’s re­turn was the prod­uct of his own ac­tions. First, he learnt from his rout­ing by Thabo Mbeki that he needed to em­brace ANC con­ven­tions in or­der to suc­ceed. Since 1996, he has con­sis­tently de­nied any lead­er­ship am­bi­tions. A one­time out­sider in an ex­ile-dom­i­nated lead­er­ship he has slowly trans­formed him­self into an in­sider.

Sec­ond, his po­lit­i­cal re­birth did not be­gin at Man­gaung but at Polok­wane. When Mbeki’s at­tempt to se­cure the life pres­i­dency of the ANC was de­feated, Ramaphosa im­me­di­ately se­cured chair­man­ship of the na­tional dis­ci­plinary com­mit­tee of ap­peals.

Sec­ond, his po­lit­i­cal re­birth did not be­gin at Man­gaung but at Polok­wane. When Mbeki’s at­tempt to se­cure the life pres­i­dency of the ANC was de­feated, Ramaphosa im­me­di­ately se­cured chair­man­ship of the na­tional dis­ci­plinary com­mit­tee of ap­peals.

Third, when Zuma be­came state pres­i­dent in May 2009, Ramaphosa’s de­ci­sion not to be­come a min­is­ter was well judged (as the tra­vails of Hu­man Set­tle­ments Min­is­ter Tokyo Sexwale have demon­strated) and not a sign of marginal­i­sa­tion.

Ramaphosa in­stead agreed in 2010 to be­come deputy chair­man of the re­cently es­tab­lished Na­tional Plan­ning Com­mis­sion, which of­fered him an al­most per­fect van­tage point from which to ob­serve the many in­ter­re­lated chal­lenges con­fronting SA — and so to pre­pare for a role in the government. It could also al­low for his man­aged en­try into a min­istry in the Pres­i­dency if cir­cum­stances dic­tate a need for this.

Ramaphosa in­stead agreed in 2010 to be­come deputy chair­man of the re­cently es­tab­lished Na­tional Plan­ning Com­mis­sion, which of­fered him an al­most per­fect van­tage point from which to ob­serve the many in­ter­re­lated chal­lenges con­fronting SA — and so to pre­pare for a role in the government. It could also al­low for his man­aged en­try into a min­istry in the Pres­i­dency if cir­cum­stances dic­tate a need for this.

Fourth, Ramaphosa’s ac­tions sug­gested he took a Zuma sec­ond term for granted, or con­sid­ered the cost of de­feat­ing him too great for the ANC to bear. Rather than build­ing un­easy al­liances with his Gaut­eng con­tem­po­raries, Sexwale and Mathews Phosa, he sup­ported a sec­ond term for Zuma, but also for his own pro­tege, Gwede Man­tashe.

Malema’s sec­ond show trial was presided over by Ramaphosa. Zuma’s bat­tle for trade union sup­port was won only when the Na­tional Union of Minework­ers, the union Ramaphosa cre­ated in the early 1980s, ral­lied be­hind Zuma.

Busi­ness success proved to be an as­set rather than the hand­i­cap many of Ramaphosa’s en­e­mies pre­dicted. His con­sis­tent sup­port for black eco­nomic em­pow­er­ment was po­lit­i­cally pro­duc­tive. And his for­tune, es­ti­mated at $675m by Forbes mag­a­zine last year, brought au­ton­omy from money bro­kers.

Busi­ness success proved to be an as­set rather than the hand­i­cap many of Ramaphosa’s en­e­mies pre­dicted. His con­sis­tent sup­port for black eco­nomic em­pow­er­ment was po­lit­i­cally pro­duc­tive. And his for­tune, es­ti­mated at $675m by Forbes mag­a­zine last year, brought au­ton­omy from money bro­kers.

Zuma has needed above all to re­store con­fi­dence among busi­ness­peo­ple and in­vestors. He al­most begged Tito Mboweni to re­turn to pol­i­tics; but to have Ramaphosa on his ticket was the ul­ti­mate prize.

Ramaphosa’s plan­ning and tac­ti­cal aware­ness en­sured he was on pro­vi­sional Zuma-camp slates in 2011. When nominations for­mally opened in Novem­ber last year, a deep reser­voir of per­sonal cred­i­bil­ity was also re­vealed. Ramaphosa needed some luck to re­turn from the po­lit­i­cal grave. But he has, through his own ac­tions, be­come the last man stand­ing from the gen­er­a­tion that falls be­tween Zuma and Mbeki and young chal­lengers from the prov­inces, such as Zweli Mkhize and Paul Mashatile.

Ramaphosa’s plan­ning and tac­ti­cal aware­ness en­sured he was on pro­vi­sional Zuma-camp slates in 2011. When nominations for­mally opened in Novem­ber last year, a deep reser­voir of per­sonal cred­i­bil­ity was also re­vealed. Ramaphosa needed some luck to re­turn from the po­lit­i­cal grave. But he has, through his own ac­tions, be­come the last man stand­ing from the gen­er­a­tion that falls be­tween Zuma and Mbeki and young chal­lengers from the prov­inces, such as Zweli Mkhize and Paul Mashatile.

But­ler teaches pol­i­tics at the Univer­sity of Cape Town.

ANC needs lead­ers who un­der­stand busi­ness

Business Day, 26 Oct 2012, An­thony But­ler

CYRIL Ramaphosa has come un­der fire from many direc­tions since the Marikana mas­sacre. For­mer and cur­rent lead­ers of the African Na­tional Congress (ANC) Youth League have con­demned him for fail­ing to pro­tect the in­ter­ests of work­ers. Such at­tacks be­gan when Ramaphosa chaired dis­ci­plinary pro­ceed­ings against Julius Malema that re­sulted in his ex­pul­sion from the ANC. An­i­mos­ity was fu­elled by Ramaphosa’s emer­gence as a po­ten­tial ANC deputy pres­i­dent on Ja­cob Zuma’s Man­gaung slate, a de­vel­op­ment that threat­ened to de­rail the league’s cam­paign for Kgalema Motlanthe and Tokyo Sexwale to seize the ANC’s most se­nior of­fices.

Ad­vo­cate Dali Mpofu claimed at the Far­lam com­mis­sion of in­quiry into Marikana ear­lier this week that Ramaphosa has been at the heart of a “toxic col­lu­sion” be­tween the state and busi­ness. Scep­tics have ob­served that the e-mail cor­re­spon­dence that Mpofu flour­ished in sup­port of this claim does not, on the face of it, in­di­cate such col­lu­sion. In­stead, it sug­gests Ramaphosa was pre­oc­cu­pied with the an­tiu­nion vi­o­lence and killings that had al­ready oc­curred at the mine, and that he was will­ing to use his re­la­tion­ships with union and gov­ern­ment lead­ers to ad­vance a res­o­lu­tion.

Mpofu seemed to dis­cern some sin­is­ter mean­ing in the phrase “con­comi­tant ac­tion”. (It is pos­si­ble he con­fused it with “ter­mi­na­tion with ex­treme prej­u­dice”, which he may have heard at the movies.) A dic­tio­nary con­sul­ta­tion sug­gests that the word “con­comi­tant” sim­ply means some­thing that hap­pens at the same time as some other thing, while be­ing in some way con­nected with it.

The lawyer’s cred­i­bil­ity was al­ready ques­tion­able as a re­sult of his in­volve­ment in the change fac­tion in the ANC and his work as Malema’s le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive. His per­sonal hos­til­ity to Ramaphosa ap­par­ently dates back more than 20 years to the union leader’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Man­dela Cri­sis Com­mit­tee that tried to rein in the ex­cesses of Mpofu’s then lover, Win­nie Man­dela.

Mpofu’s in­ter­ven­tion may have re­minded some older ANC ac­tivists that Ramaphosa stead­fastly faces down bul­lies such as Malema rather than, like Sexwale and Motlanthe, ac­com­mo­dat­ing them.

Un­for­tu­nately for Ramaphosa, po­ten­tially far more dam­ag­ing claims have now been made: that he has be­come a heart­less cap­i­tal­ist. One prom­i­nent pro­po­nent of this po­si­tion, Adam Habib, is a deputy vice-chan­cel­lor at the Univer­sity of Johannesburg who has spo­ken out pas­sion­ately on so­cial is­sues in re­cent years. His moral author­ity in soft left cir­cles is such that many aca­demics at Wits Univer­sity sup­port his quiet cam­paign for their soon-to-be-va­cant vicechan­cel­lor­ship.

Habib re­port­edly de­scribed Ramaphosa ear­lier this week as a per­son who “mean­ing­fully con­trib­uted” to the end of apartheid but is now trapped in a po­si­tion of priv­i­lege and power. It is true that such a criticism (ex­cept for the part about a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion) could be di­rected at many other South African lead­ers — in­clud­ing Habib him­self, whose own salary pack­age is only marginally less gen­er­ous than Pres­i­dent Ja­cob Zuma’s. But what Habib in­sight­fully ob­serves is that par­tic­i­pa­tion in busi­ness has turned many cel­e­brated strug­gle icons into sym­bols of so­cial division.

If Habib is right, the as­so­ci­a­tion of Ramaphosa with eco­nomic priv­i­lege will make his as­cent to the high­est of­fice in the ANC all but im­pos­si­ble.

The ANC, how­ever, has a col­lec­tive lead­er­ship. The move­ment’s pres­i­dency might be re­served for a man of the peo­ple, such as Zuma or Motlanthe, who en­joys sim­ple plea­sures (al­beit, in the case of Zuma, sim­ple plea­sures that are enor­mously ex­pen­sive). There might be a pref­er­ence for an or­ganic in­tel­lec­tual such as Gwede Man­tashe to oc­cupy the sec­re­tary-gen­eral’s of­fice. But there is also, and per­haps more ur­gently than ever be­fore, a need in the “top six” for a leader such as Sexwale or Ramaphosa who fully un­der­stands the chal­lenges con­fronting South African busi­ness. It is still far from im­pos­si­ble Ramaphosa will emerge in that role at Man­gaung.

But­ler teaches pol­i­tics at the Univer­sity of Cape Town.

How to turn a mas­sacre into a mere tragedy

Business Day, 14 Sep 2012, An­thony But­ler

IT HAS be­come hard to rec­ol­lect that there was a mas­sacre as well as a tragedy at Marikana. More than 30 min­ers were shot dead by poorly trained and in­ap­pro­pri­ately armed po­lice. Many of the killings ap­pear to have been in cold blood. Su­san Sha­bangu may have been an ex­cel­lent Min­eral Re­sources Min­is­ter. As deputy min­is­ter of safety and se­cu­rity, how­ever, she fa­mously en­joined of­fi­cers to “kill the bas­tards if they threaten you or the community” — the bas­tards, here, be­ing un­con­victed fel­low cit­i­zens sus­pected of crim­i­nal of­fences.

Such state­ments are not con­sis­tent with the con­sti­tu­tional pro­tec­tion of the right to life, or with leg­is­la­tion that gov­erns the con­duct of po­lice of­fi­cers. In the af­ter­math of the Marikana shoot­ings (in which “il­le­gal strik­ers” car­ry­ing “il­le­gal weapons” at an “il­le­gal gath­er­ing” were shot dead) it is not ap­pro­pri­ate for her to re­main in her cur­rent of­fice. Po­lice Min­is­ter Nathi Mthethwa is also in an un­ten­able po­si­tion. The res­ig­na­tion of min­is­ters in such cir­cum­stances is not merely a quaint tradition. It re­moves in­ter­ested par­ties from rel­e­vant po­si­tions of power so that for­mal in­ves­ti­ga­tions have a greater prospect of un­cov­er­ing the truth.

Char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally, Pres­i­dent Ja­cob Zuma has reached for his own time­honoured mech­a­nism of crowd con­trol: the com­mis­sion of in­quiry. The os­ten­si­ble pur­pose of such an in­quiry is to un­der­take a non­par­ti­san in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Com­mis­sions are prop­erly used where cul­pa­ble pub­lic of­fi­cials can pro­tect them­selves from in­ves­ti­ga­tion by sub­orn­ing the very in­sti­tu­tions that might in­ter­ro­gate them. They can also as­sist when in­ves­ti­ga­tions must ex­tend be­yond the term of a sin­gle gov­ern­ment.

Such com­mis­sions, how­ever, can also serve ne­far­i­ous pur­poses. They are for­mally un­der­taken at the be­hest of the head of state and they are there­fore im­bued with an un­earned aura of ob­jec­tiv­ity. Their quasi-ju­di­cial pro­ce­dures bol­ster the cred­i­bil­ity of for­mal po­lice state­ments and de­value the find­ings of in­de­pen­dent ex­perts. Com­mis­sions move slug­gishly, which re­sults in the re­lease of their find­ings only af­ter pub­lic dis­quiet and emo­tion has died down (and lead­er­ship elec­tions have been ne­go­ti­ated). In­volved par­ties can, mean­while, refuse to an­swer le­git­i­mate pub­lic ques­tions about their ac­tions on the grounds that this would pre-empt the in­quiry’s find­ings.

Zuma can now re­tain the ser­vices of trusted min­is­ters in the run-up to Man­gaung. The po­lice es­tab­lish­ment has plenty of time to cover its tracks. And bod­ies such as the South African Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sion can be dis­cour­aged from col­lect­ing ev­i­dence on the grounds that it will pre-empt the for­mal in­quiry.

The min­ing in­dus­try, mean­while, ap­pears to have del­e­gated the man­age­ment of the Marikana fall­out to its po­lit­i­cal al­lies. The mine in­dus­try’s ten­ta­cles are deeply spread in Zuma’s camp. One re­cent top-six slate touted by Zuma sup­port­ers in­cluded four mem­bers (Zuma, Mthethwa, Naledi Pan­dor and Cyril Ramaphosa) who are di­rectly in­volved in Marikana or have close rel­a­tives in the plat­inum busi­ness.

Even the work­ers’ al­leged cham­pi­ons seem hos­tile to the vic­tims. The Na­tional Union of Minework­ers is a tac­ti­cal ally of Zuma and its fad­ing ap­peal has been im­pli­cated in the Marikana killings. The Congress of South African Trade Unions has par­roted gov­ern­ment’s mantra that “now is not the time to go into a de­tailed as­sess­ment or to play the blame game. We must await the find­ings of the com­mis­sion of in­quiry.” A state­ment last week from the tri­par­tite al­liance even com­plained that ef­forts to in­ves­ti­gate gov­ern­ment or union cul­pa­bil­ity were tan­ta­mount to “dele­git­imis­ing” the lib­er­a­tion move­ment.

The terms of ref­er­ence of the com­mis­sion of in­quiry em­power it to in­ves­ti­gate very widely and deeply in­deed into the ori­gins of vi­o­lence on the mines. It will no doubt pro­duce il­lu­mi­nat­ing and im­por­tant so­ci­o­log­i­cal find­ings.

Such an ap­proach, how­ever, will pre­dis­pose it to dis­perse rather than to at­tribute re­spon­si­bil­ity for the killings. If so, and per­haps as in­tended, it will com­plete the trans­for­ma­tion of Marikana from a mas­sacre into sim­ply a tragedy.

But­ler teaches pol­i­tics at the Univer­sity of Cape Town.

Jet size will al­ways be a big is­sue for wizard of id

Business Day, 6 Jul 2012

THE mi­nor­ity of un­pa­tri­otic cit­i­zens who have ques­tioned the pro­posed pur­chase of a R2bn Boe­ing 777 jet for Pres­i­dent Ja­cob Zuma ap­pear to have been led astray by the na­tional news me­dia. First, de­spite me­dia claims, for­mer de­fence min­is­ter Lindiwe Sisulu’s of­fi­cials ap­par­ently ap­plied for Trea­sury ap­proval to de­vi­ate from nor­mal pro­cure­ment prac­tices a whole week be­fore for­mally ac­cept­ing Boe­ing’s gen­er­ous $200m terms. How long do Trea­sury bu­reau­crats need?

Sec­ond, the spec­i­fied price for the plane of $155m (R1,26bn) is a steal. The 12 000km range brings key des­ti­na­tions such as Nkandla within easy reach. The take-off ca­pac­ity of 322 000kg can ac­com­mo­date the African Na­tional Congress (ANC) top six and al­most all of Zuma’s neph­ews. The over­all pack­age in­cludes a Global Ex­press 600 for Deputy Pres­i­dent Kgalema Mot­lanthe that serves as a re­minder that the pres­i­dent’s air­craft should be big­ger than his deputy’s. Third, the deal gen­er­ously in­cludes “re­con­fig­ur­ing the jet to pres­i­den­tial needs” for just an­other $80m.

Some com­men­ta­tors sug­gest it might best rep­re­sent Zuma’s pres­i­dency if it makes “a lot of noise without ever get­ting off the ground”. Oth­ers claim it might veer re­lent­lessly to the right, de­spite tri­par­tite al­liance copi­lots’ ef­forts to pull their “joy-stick” to the left.

In re­al­ity, the mod­i­fi­ca­tions prob­a­bly amount to lit­tle more than a mod­est cat­tle kraal fa­cil­ity and ad­di­tional fuel tanks so pres­i­den­tial ad­vis­ers can fly direct to Dis­ney­land with their fam­i­lies.

Costly dy­namic sta­bilis­ers may be re­quired to neu­tralise lon­gi­tu­di­nal in­sta­bil­ity when the ANC sec­re­tary-gen­eral hur­ries to­wards the rest-rooms. Aerial gy­ro­scopes will be needed to pre­vent Pro­gres­sive Busi­ness Move­ment head Re­nier Schoe­man from send­ing the air­craft into a “spi­ral di­ver­gence” or “Dutch roll” that could cause it to wag its po­lit­i­cal tail from left to right.

Ob­sessed with their anti-zuma witch hunt, jour­nal­ists have over­looked the pos­si­bil­ity that the ANC’S “sec­ond tran­si­tion” might be­come a unique “un­con­scious phase” of pub­lic pol­icy in­no­va­tion. The un­con­scious is a realm in which Zuma has emerged defini­tively as a global leader.

The fa­ther of psy­cho­anal­y­sis, Sig­mund Freud, claimed that even hard-up pa­tients ben­e­fit from pay­ing con­sul­ta­tion fees. Schooled on ob­so­lete the­o­ries of pub­lic fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, com­men­ta­tors fail to recog­nise the cor­re­spond­ing “ther­a­peu­tic” value for poor cit­i­zens of pay­ing road tolls.

Univer­sity of Ari­zona pro­fes­sor David Gibbs ar­gues that gov­ern­ment bu­reau­cra­cies can func­tion like Freudian minds. They un­know­ingly “re­press” in­for­ma­tion and ideas that might em­bar­rass of­fi­cials. Zuma has taken this insight and built upon it.

Freud, more­over, posited a ra­tio­nal “ego” in ev­ery hu­man psy­che (a tiny Pravin Gord­han for­ever telling hu­man be­ings to stop en­joy­ing them­selves). But the “id”— the un­con­scious home of the plea­sure prin­ci­ple — has been a driv­ing force of Zuma’s pres­i­dency, in­creas­ingly del­ug­ing the fis­cal “no-man” with its he­do­nis­tic de­mands.

We also can­not ig­nore the link­ages that Freud posits be­tween sex­u­al­ity and power. “Mine must be big­ger than yours” is an un­spo­ken im­per­a­tive in pres­i­den­tial jet­liner pro­cure­ment.

The im­por­tance of Freudian anal­y­sis be­came clear in SA in the late 1990s, when econ­omy clus­ter min­is­ter Alec Er­win be­gan his cam­paign for erot­i­cally charged in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment. Pro­pos­als for large hol­low ob­jects such as sci­ence park ware­houses, iron-ore smelters and nu­clear re­ac­tors, are, if Freudi­ans are to be be­lieved, as­so­ci­ated with fe­male gen­i­talia. Rock­ets, min­is­te­rial cars and other en­gorged or elon­gated ob­jects are linked to male re­pro­duc­tive or­gans and per­haps as­so­ci­ated sex­ual patholo­gies.

Freudian trends came to a head, so to speak, in re­cent years when for­mer trans­port min­is­ter Sbu Nde­bele made high-speed rail a part of na­tional trans­port pol­icy. By fir­ing Nde­bele a cou­ple of weeks ago, Zuma sac­ri­ficed his one-time dream of bul­let-shaped trains re­peat­edly en­ter­ing and leav­ing tun­nels. Surely we can let him keep his big jet?

Butler teaches public policy at UCT

Trousers of Zuma must be de­clared a Key Point

Business Day, 25 May, 2012

 An­thony But­ler

FOR­MER pres­i­dent Thabo Mbeki once com­plained in­el­e­gantly but with some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that Euro­peans have con­ceived of Africans as “ram­pant sex­ual beasts … un­able to keep it in our pants”. De­spite this pres­i­den­tial prece­dent, it is dif­fi­cult to be­lieve that Pres­i­dent Ja­cob Zuma was per­son­ally trou­bled by Brett Mur­ray’s depic­tion of him.

Mur­ray’s art­work has now gen­er­ated pro­found re­ac­tions across South African so­ci­ety — but of course it could not have done so sim­ply spon­ta­neously.

How then can we un­der­stand the po­lit­i­cal decision by Zuma’s ad­vis­ers — taken af­ter some days of re­flec­tion — to mo­bilise the deep sen­ti­ments that sur­round con­cep­tions of sex­u­al­ity?

First, Zuma has been un­able to shake off neg­a­tive per­cep­tions about the en­rich­ment of his rel­a­tives, the e-tolling saga, and the lead­er­ship of crime and jus­tice in­sti­tu­tions. The Mur­ray con­tro­versy has pushed these is­sues to the side­lines and po­si­tioned Zuma once again as a vic­tim.

Sec­ond, Zuma’s team has used racial sol­i­dar­ity to trump valid con­cerns about the trib­al­i­sa­tion of the African Na­tional Congress (ANC). Last week Zuma was the head of an in­cum­bent eth­nic fac­tion; to­day he rep­re­sents all Africans in their strug­gle against white de­hu­man­i­sa­tion.

Third, Zuma’s ad­vis­ers are lay­ing down a pat­tern of com­plaint around the pres­i­dent’s “right to privacy”. If Zuma leaves crit­i­cism of his sex­ual be­hav­iour un­chal­lenged, he might be un­able to counter sex-re­lated ex­posés in the days im­me­di­ately be­fore the Man­gaung elec­tive con­fer­ence. Zuma’s team ap­pears es­pe­cially pre­oc­cu­pied with how legally to re­strain the news­pa­per that most promi­nently re­pro­duced the paint­ing.

The ANC has claimed “this dis­taste­ful depic­tion of the pres­i­dent has vi­o­lated his in­di­vid­ual right to dig­nity as con­tained in the con­sti­tu­tion of our coun­try”. Many le­gal com­men­ta­tors ap­pear un­trou­bled by the po­ten­tial im­pli­ca­tions of the right to dig­nity. They in­di­cate that the pres­i­dent is less fully pro­tected by such a right than an or­di­nary man or woman be­cause of his vol­un­tary ex­po­sure to public scru­tiny. Le­gal scholar Conor O’ma­honey, how­ever, has high­lighted con­sti­tu­tional con­fu­sions that can arise where dig­nity is treated both as a prin­ci­ple and as a right.

In most le­gal sys­tems, dig­nity is un­der­stood as a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple that un­der­pins hu­man rights law. Hu­man be­ings pos­sess dig­nity by virtue of their hu­man­ity, and their equal and in­alien­able rights de­rive from this in­her­ent dig­nity.

In the South African con­sti­tu­tion, dig­nity is in­deed un­der­stood in just this way. It is also, how­ever, con­fus­ingly de­scribed on four oc­ca­sions as a right in it­self, and Sec­tion 36 ap­pears to sug­gest that the right to dig­nity can­not be sub­or­di­nated to any other right. Par­lia­ment has al­ready passed an Equal­ity Act that pro­hibits hate speech — so cur­tail­ing the right to free speech — in part it seems to de­fend the right to hu­man dig­nity. It seems pos­si­ble that less gifted judges travers­ing this in­tel­lec­tual mine­field may yet trig­ger un­pre­dictable le­gal ex­plo­sions.

Pop­u­lar af­front at the por­trait has been linked re­peat­edly to Zuma’s po­si­tion as state pres­i­dent. His dig­nity ar­guably em­bod­ies, or at least sym­bol­ises, the dig­nity of other, es­pe­cially black, cit­i­zens. His spokes­men have de­lib­er­ately con­flated the pres­i­dent’s right to dig­nity with the right to dig­nity of the in­di­vid­ual who hap­pens to be pres­i­dent.

A pres­i­dent’s dig­nity is al­ways hard to sep­a­rate from mat­ters of state au­thor­ity. One pri­vate re­ac­tion to Mur­ray’s por­trait was that the pres­i­dent’s trousers should hence­forth be de­clared a strate­gic in­stal­la­tion un­der the 1980 Na­tional Key Points Act. The gar­ment would then be sub­ject to an­nual se­cu­rity com­pli­ance au­dits; pho­to­graphs or draw­ings of the Key Point would be pro­hib­ited; and in­for­ma­tion about “ac­cess and egress” in­ci­dents could be re­vealed by the news me­dia only with the writ­ten per­mis­sion of the min­is­ter of safety and se­cu­rity.

Dig­nity is un­for­tu­nately et­y­mo­log­i­cally as­so­ci­ated with qual­i­ties such as majesty, deco­rum, great­ness, and in­vi­o­la­bil­ity that can eas­ily be con­strued as the in­her­ent at­tributes of ev­ery state pres­i­dent.

But­ler teaches pol­i­tics at Univer­sity of Cape Town.