Toward a foreign policy based on the national interest

ANTHONY BUTLER: Ramaphosa follows Mbeki’s playbook over foreign policy

First published in Business Day and BusinessLive

14 March 2025

Though neither man will appreciate the comparison, President Cyril Ramaphosa has started to resemble his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, at least when it comes to foreign policy.

International relations should be shaped by strategic interests rather than by the president’s personal predilections. Lord Palmerston famously observed that “we have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”.

Nelson Mandela did not accept this view, at least not in the idealistic article entitled “SA’s future foreign policy” that appeared under his name in the prominent journal Foreign Affairs in 1993. It emphasised that human rights would be “the light that guides our foreign affairs” and that democracy would be another touchstone.

Mandela, it transpires, had no involvement in the writing of the article, and Mbeki, who vetted it as the exiled ANC’s most accomplished diplomat, thought the human rights emphasis was dangerous.

Mandela pushed ahead with the idealistic approach, which bolstered his moral stature even as it conflicted with the country’s economic and security interests. His condemnation of human rights abuses in Nigeria, and his push for its suspension from the Commonwealth, soured relationships across the continent.

Meanwhile, Mandela forgot human rights when historical solidarity with Cuba, North Korea and Libya was at stake. When Indonesia’s president Suharto or Taiwan offered big bundles of cash to fill the ANC’s perpetual budget hole, Mandela’s amnesia got even worse.

Mbeki, in contrast, anchored foreign relations more securely in domestic objectives, pursuing a foreign policy of redress and development and seeking to be a predictable partner for the Global North. His focus on South-South co-operation and the African agenda, through initiatives such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and AU, was intended to integrate Africa into the global economy to the benefit of SA citizens. His alliances with Brazil and India amplified the collective voice of emerging democracies.

OR Tambo’s heir also expressed sympathy for liberation movement friends and resisted Western interference. But his most controversial UN votes were undertaken to maintain support for SA’s growing ambitions in global forums, such as the UN Security Council, and so ultimately to advance the national interest and the closely related interests of the African continent.

Mbeki cautioned about the dangers of African countries falling into a colonial relationship with China, noting that exporting raw materials to China while importing Chinese manufactured goods would leave Africa condemned to underdevelopment. He held the banana republic with rockets to the East at arms’ length, and maintained civil relations with the more advanced banana republic to the West.

Jacob Zuma immediately accepted China’s invitation to join the four-member “Bric” (Brazil, Russia, India, China) group of fast-growing (soon to be quite slow-growing) countries. A China-dominated Brics was henceforth prioritised over partners who still accounted for most of SA’s trade and investment, and Russia inexplicably emerged as Zuma’s special friend.

The Gupta family’s use of the department of international relations & co-operation as a travel agent, and the deployment of incompetent and crooked politicians to important diplomatic postings, further undermined the use of foreign policy to serve domestic interests.

Under Cyril Ramaphosa there has been an effort to rebuild SA’s international image, and to deploy diplomacy to address the domestic economic crisis. A neutral stance on the Russia-Ukraine war has finally crystallised, and the case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is now carefully framed in terms of international law and not just emotional solidarity.

For the first time since Mbeki’s departure it is possible to imagine there is an underlying, if implicit, foreign policy strategy at play, based upon the national interest, even if it has not been straightforward in today’s world to realise its objectives.

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

February 28, 2025

SA foreign policy in the time of Trump

ANTHONY BUTLER: SA has chance to rethink foreign policy amid Trump fall out

There is an opportunity to correct the disjuncture between diplomatic priorities and economic interests

First published in BusinessLive and Business Day

28 February 2025

The international relations turmoil wrought by the new Donald Trump administration has brought an opportunity to rethink SA foreign policy.

Trump’s immediate bugbears include SA’s pursuit of the International Court of Justice case against Israel, membership of Brics, anti-Western rhetoric and perceived alignment with Russia, China and Iran. There are also concerns about BEE and expropriation policies, in keeping with the white supremacist leanings of the administration’s intellectual gurus and oligarchs.

SA will probably distance itself from anti-American rhetoric and present its relations with Russia and China in a less adversarial way, but removal from the African Growth & Opportunity Act and diplomatic boycotts are likely whatever steps the country takes. We can also expect frustration from the Financial Action Task Force and international financial institutions in which the US has a voice.

While SA’s curious relationship with Russia is presumably of less long-term concern to the US than its relationship with China — and what the US sees as Beijing’s Brics front — Pretoria has long needed clarity about its longer-term goals. Do we want to overturn the existing international system and establish China at its helm, or merely create a more equitable version of the current global system?

While the naive democracy and human rights idealism of the Mandela period is long gone, the complete abandonment of these values cannot be in SA’s longer-term interests. Since Zuma rose to the Union Buildings, foreign policy has adopted an increasingly binary character.

“Good” states are those that “understand” Western exploitation and the traumas of colonialism, regardless of their human rights record or the character of their political system. “Bad” states, exemplified by the US and the former colonial powers, are defined by their history and lumped together irrespective of their actions. SA now depends on an unthinking enmity with the Global North as a whole, to sustain its sense of stability and its confidence in its own identity.

Trump’s assault on former US allies in Europe includes threats of swingeing tariffs, the collapse of the Nato alliance on which postwar European security has rested, and the promotion of far- right parties in European elections. This week the US refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the UN, instead voting with authoritarian apologists such as North Korea and Belarus.

This presages a sustained assault on the capacity of the EU — the world’s largest trading bloc — to establish global norms around digital competition, AI, privacy and climate regulation that are inconvenient to American corporations.

Conflict between the US and Europe presents an opportunity to rethink SA’s binary model of good and bad states, and to correct the striking disjuncture between SA’s diplomatic priorities and its economic interests. European countries are by far the biggest investors in SA: taken together, the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium account for more than 70% of foreign direct investment stock in SA.

The US accounts for just 5% and China less than 4%. The EU is SA’s biggest trading partner by far, with SA exports to the EU, many of them sophisticated goods and services, more than double exports to the US or to China.

It may not be an easy time to re-engage with European countries, with them being preoccupied with dealing with Russia and likely to sacrifice engagement with the South to the new priority of defence spending. Far-right parties may also continue to strengthen across the continent, bringing more racial populism and hostility to countries in the south.

But this is just a possible future. Europe remains SA’s most important economic partner, shares democratic and human rights values, and remains — when contrasted with the Trump administration at least — a promoter of stability, development and enlightened values.

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

February 14, 2025

Appointing American Ambassadors

ANTHONY BUTLER: SA could get an ideological US envoy

We may get the worst of all worlds: a political appointee who has been appointed on ideological grounds

First published in Business Day

14 February 2025

The nomination of US ambassadors is one of the most entertaining dramas in the world’s most advanced banana republic.

In the early 1970s, then US president Richard Nixon — not always a paragon of virtue — instructed an aide that “anybody who wants to be an ambassador must at least give $250,000 … I’m not going to do it for political friends and all that crap.” This equates to a campaign donation of about $2m in today’s money, quite a sum given that the ambassadorship in question was in Belgium.

About three in 10 US ambassadors have been political appointees rather than career diplomats over the past half century. In Western Europe — and in Caribbean islands with beautiful beaches — this figure rises to seven in 10. This means the US is represented in most big economies by amateurs: a recent article in Foreign Service Journal shows that the total GDP of hosts with professional US ambassadors has shrunk dramatically.

Political donors rarely want a spell in Kabul, and they look askance at shopping and recreational opportunities in Islamabad, Brasilia or Abuja. Postings in such capitals, or those across central Asia, have become the highest positions to which US foreign service professionals — typically almost as clever and charming as their international peers — can realistically aspire.

Thinking Americans have consoled themselves that this is all essentially harmless. The ambassador gets the perks of the job (dodgy canapés, an attractive residence and stories about the natives to tell the buddies back home). Meanwhile, foreign service officials are on hand to meet grubby local elites, write the cables and prepare photo-ready development projects in rural areas for the ambassador to launch.

While political appointees have been frowned on by uptight West European governments, Americans believe this is because they don’t have enough money to appoint shadow officials to do the real work. The US also has the admirable Foreign Service Act of 1980 to deter egregious office buying. However, scrutiny by the Senate committee on foreign relations has always been a low bar over which the least meritorious of wealthy donors can leap with ease.

Donald Trump’s first-term ambassador to SA, Lana Marks, was founder of a leather fashion accessories brand and a long-standing patron of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. To be fair, SA-born Marks attended Clarendon High School for Girls in East London. There she acquired high-level tennis skills and a do-gooder mentality that might — had she not emigrated and been a woman — have led to a successful career at Anglo American Corporation on Main Street in Johannesburg.

The recently departed Reuben E Brigety II was also a political appointee, though he had a PhD in international relations and was briefly dean of Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University. The trouble with amateur diplomats though, even knowledgeable ones, is that they can be dreadfully undiplomatic. At Elliot, Brigety described Trump as a “Nazi sympathiser”. In 2023 he “bet his life” that Pretoria had sent a ship filled with weapons to Russia.

We may look back fondly on Marks and Brigety, not least because they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. The assertive second Trump administration does know what it wants: to force a de-alignment from China and Russia, and cause demonstrable pain for the International Court of Justice case on genocide in Gaza.

Trump’s state department believes professional diplomats spend too much time understanding their hosts, are risk averse, and avoid confrontations that might affect their career prospects. Sadly, there are probably no do-nothing rich donors who want to live in Pretoria. That means we may get the worst of all worlds: a political appointee who has been appointed on ideological grounds.

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

February 1, 2025

Mantashe and Motsoaledi take the bullets for their boss

ANTHONY BUTLER: The space where Gwede Mantashe and Aaron Motsoaledi meet

While they weather the slings and arrows, Ramaphosa lives to fight another day

First published in Business Day and BusinessLive

31 January 2025

On the face of it, health minister Aaron Motsoaledi and mineral & petroleum resources minister Gwede Mantashe have little in common. Motsoaledi was a medical doctor who served in Jacob Zuma’s cabinet as health minister. Mantashe is a former trade unionist and communist party leader, who spent the Zuma years running the ANC as secretary-general.

Motsoaledi oversaw a fourfold expansion of the country’s antiretroviral programme. He declared war on unsaturated fats and lectured his cabinet colleagues on the importance of healthy eating. Mantashe defended Zuma from allegations of corruption and defied the health minister by ingesting fatty acids and concealing them about his person.

However, in 2018 it emerged that the two men had a shared project. Motsoaledi was part of the “CR17” campaign team for the Nasrec conference, while Mantashe was the key Luthuli House insider behind Cyril Ramaphosa’s rise to the presidency. Ramaphosa has since deployed the loyalists to his cabinets.

Mantashe was appointed mineral resources & energy minister in 2019, in the middle of an insurmountable electricity crisis. The route out of the crisis was not blocked by technical obstacles. International concessional finance was available to accelerate coal plant retirement and the wholesale market road map was two decades old. The problems were political: ideological opposition to “privatisation”; coal lobbies dominated by ANC donors; trade unions opposed to renewables; and “just transition” issues in Mpumalanga.

Mantashe became the “fossil fuel dinosaur”, stubborn and immovable, with the low centre of gravity of a brontosaurus. He argued that abundant coal resources could drive growth and that Western envoys could not be trusted. He refused to attend the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, arguing that “many people will be frightened” — he meant of him, rather than of visiting Glasgow.

Mantashe’s theatrics look understandable in retrospect, given developed countries’ failure to honour their commitments and the slowdown in their own fossil fuel decommissioning. He also bought time for investment to adapt the grid for renewables, an important matter that early evangelists had overlooked.

Mantashe kept coal interests and unions on his side, and maintained a theatrical opposition to increases in the licensing threshold until exhaustion and despair with power blackouts reached their peak. Once Ramaphosa lifted the threshold (to great personal acclaim), 4,000MW was added in two years. Wealthy households also bought or rented solar systems at their own expense to further ease the generation gap.

Motsoaledi may well be doing the same job for Ramaphosa in the health sector. The new international consensus about healthcare, signalled in the pro-market Economist magazine in April 2018, is that “universal healthcare, worldwide, is within reach [and] the case for it is a powerful one — including in poor countries”. The trouble is designing sensible reforms and getting them past opposition from vested interests: ideologues, health sector unions, hospital groups, insurance companies and health professionals.

The status quo — unsustainable, inhumane and deeply inefficient — is in nobody’s long-term interests. Long-delayed system reform is needed. But the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act that Ramaphosa signed into law last year has few sincere champions. The ANC’s coalition partners mostly reject it. Four high court challenges from key actors in the sector look watertight, a fact confirmed by the Treasury and other legal advisers long ago.

The idea of universal healthcare is broad and ambiguous, and basic building blocks such as mandatory health insurance remain contested. Moreover, Ramaphosa cannot let NHI become a proxy issue in ANC factional battles. Nonetheless, once the time is right (which had better be soon), he may find a compromise that does not look like a retreat.

Motsoaledi, like Mantashe, will absorb the pain. Ramaphosa and the government of national unity may then live on to fight another day.

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

January 17, 2025

MK Party looks for a national footprint

Opinion / Columnist

ANTHONY BUTLER: Recognition at last for Peter de Villiers

Former Bok coach appears to be in good company at MK party

First published in BusinessLive

17 January 2025

There are some weeks when it is difficult to know which is more exciting: the fact that people are joining Jacob Zuma’s MK party or the fact that other people aren’t.

This week’s notable MK joiner is former Springbok coach Peter de Villiers, a rugby man turned GOOD Party politician who was elected to the Western Cape provincial legislature in May 2023. He didn’t survive long, being expelled from GOOD in March 2024 after disciplinary proceedings related to a sexual misconduct complaint.

Given the seriousness of the matter — it stood in stark contrast to GOOD’s previous expulsion of senior members for quite understandably hosting alcohol-fuelled sex parties when they were meant to be campaigning — it was little surprise to find De Villiers knocking on the door of Zuma’s “allegations of misconduct” party.

Allegations levelled at MK defectors have included “improper interference” in the judiciary (party deputy president John Hlophe); embroilment in “the grand heist of savings of vulnerable depositors” at VBS Mutual Bank (the Siviwe Gwarube of the DA’s reference to Floyd Shivambu); “incompetence and misconduct” (parliament on former public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane); and being an appalling lawyer (pretty much everyone on advocate Dali Mpofu).

When asked what capabilities he would bring to the party, De Villiers said he would use his “coaching skills” to the benefit of MK, a prospect that may or may not excite campaign managers. He emphasised his central mission would be to “restore dignity to the people of the Western Cape”. People don’t want money, he memorably remarked, they don’t want jobs, they want “recognition”.

The pattern of defections suggests MK intends to build a national footprint in advance of the local government elections, a Herculean task given the distribution of party support in last year’s elections.

‘Tribalism’

Social scientists and other experts confirm that “tribalism” is a major problem in SA society. There is a certain group known for its primitive cultural practices, such as dancing in a strange way. These “unthinking masses” always vote as a collective for the same political party, the DA. But the curse of tribalism isn’t limited to whites.

While the good people of KwaZulu-Natal at least allocated their votes to a range of parties in 2024 — the ANC and IFP secured 17% and 18% respectively and MK 45% — few non-Zulu speakers anywhere in the country voted for Zuma’s party. If MK is to survive, it needs a more diverse pool of voters.

This brings us to the politician who has not joined MK this week, EFF ordinary member Mbuyiseni Ndlozi. When the EFF was addressing its own problems of ethnic, regional and gender imbalance in recent elections, Ndlozi was its most prominent campaigner in KwaZulu-Natal and the Cape provinces. He may well be more popular among activists than increasingly humourless and megalomaniacal party leader Julius Malema, who is surely right to see him as a “sleeper” and a potential threat.

MK’s future is also blocked by a great leader who polarises opinion along regional and ethnic lines. The party is nonetheless reaching its tentacles into other communities and parties in anticipation of a major reconfiguration of the party system on Zuma’s departure. Its strategists evidently grasp the importance of coalition building and the unification of “progressive” political parties.

There are many tensions between the potential component parts of a post-Zuma progressive alliance, around issues such as African unity, the role of traditional leaders in society and the politics of gender and sexuality. But De Villiers somehow captured the philosophical essence of the progressive party that may rise out of Zuma’s ashes. There shall be mountains of cash for the leaders and cushy jobs for the activists. As for the ordinary people, henceforth they will be recognised.

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

December 13, 2024

ANC factional consolidation may be slow in 2025

ANTHONY BUTLER: GNU in spotlight as ANC leadership battle heats up

First published in Business Day

13 December 2024

by Anthony Butler

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula joins a protest march in Pretoria, November 29 2024. Picture: FREDDY MAVUNDA/BUSINESS DAY

Observers of the ANC are reaching for a familiar second term playbook to predict party dynamics. According to tradition, initially fluid factions will consolidate around potential successors and proxy issues at the ANC’s national general council scheduled for mid-June 2025.

The ANC’s electoral system produces two credible presidential candidates while facilitating the creation of two broad national factions, though last-minute turbulence can force factions to cohabit.

Candidates are not supposed to campaign openly for office so competition between factions at the national general council will be expressed through proxy issues. The main divide will be whether to continue the coalition with the DA, or transform the government of national unity (GNU) into a broad front that includes Jacob Zuma’s MK party and the EFF.

A two-horse race between two weak but evenly matched candidates — deputy president Paul Mashatile and party secretary-general Fikile Mbalula — has been widely expected. Mashatile, damaged by exposes of his finances, lifestyle and unsavoury friends, has burnt bridges by double-crossing KwaZulu-Natal delegates. Mbalula is better placed to capitalise on Eastern Cape “it’s our turn” sentiment, and has the added advantage of having risen to prominence through the ANC Youth League rather than a single province.

Despite the early signs though, the conventional pattern of two-candidate competition and accelerating factional consolidation may not continue into the national general council next year. First, many ANC regions are in turmoil as they undertake their own elective conferences. Parasitic on state resources in the places they govern, they cannot be disciplined but also cannot reliably make deals. The corralling of delegates into organised factions will be harder than ever, so inherently opaque vote buying is likely to grow in importance. 

Second, the key electoral provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng are in chaos, made worse by the proxy battle between Mbalula, who wants to disband provincial structures, and Mashatile, who loves cadres and wants them to enlist in therapy programmes.

Gauteng chair Panyaza Lesufi is now showing the middle finger to the national ANC, but he is not happy simply to ride on Mashatile’s coat-tails. He will be 70 before his senior has served out two presidential terms, so will stab him in the back now if the opportunity arises.

The rise and prospects of MK remain poorly understood. Will Zuma’s party sweep the board in local elections in KwaZulu-Natal, as Mathews Phosa told the Cape Town Press Club last week? Or is its weak performance in by-elections over the past six months a harbinger of collapse?

Third, much of the ANC remains in denial over the devastating electoral routing at the end of May. Former president Kgalema Motlanthe long ago anticipated that defeat “would be good for the ANC itself … because those elements who are in it for the largesse will quit it, will desert it, and only then would the possibility arise for salvaging whatever is left of it”. Instead, the GNU has allowed the fantasy of ANC hegemony to persist.

The most unpalatable part of this new situation, after a decade of concern about EFF influence in ANC leadership elections, is that the DA now holds many of the cards. If leader John Steenhuisen and his party bosses refuse to countenance a coalition with a leader they view as fundamentally corrupt, the elevation of Mashatile would be a fateful decision indeed.

The ANC expresses itself with much emotion, but it is now driven by money. Denial and political uncertainty make early support for any particular leader or faction highly risky. The 2026 local government elections may have to pass before activists are willing to make a real commitment about their preferred future leadership.

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

November 29, 2024

Scrambled eggs with Zuma

ANTHONY BUTLER: Mathews Phosa’s memoir contrasts innocent’s optimism with reality

First published in Business Day

29 November 2024

Mathews Phosa. Picture: WYNAND VAN DER MERWE

Devotees of Mathews Phosa have described him as the best president SA never had — though the same sentiment was once expressed about Cyril Ramaphosa, so perhaps we should not read too much into it.

Phosa recently launched a memoir, Witness to Power, the title of which suggests an observer of, rather than a participant in, ANC governance. The compelling central narrative of the book concerns the trials that shaped the protagonist’s character and brought about his moral enlightenment.

The Hollywood movie Forrest Gump follows the transition of a simple-minded rural child into a complex, empathetic adult. This book likewise contrasts an innocent’s unwavering optimism and childlike wonder with the harsh realities of the world he encounters. Like the film, the book incorporates some selected aspects of actual historical events.

It is also a tragicomedy in which Phosa makes the reader laugh and cry, albeit sometimes unintentionally. Things just kept happening to Phosa. The exiled ANC leadership wanted him to run a legal practice in Zimbabwe, but he wanted to fight the enemy. So Oliver Tambo sent him for military training in East Germany and soon he was a military commander.

He chatted to a newly freed Nelson Mandela, and was told he would be a key transition negotiator. Then, in 1994, Mandela made him premier of Mpumalanga. The next surprise came, out of the blue, when pesky ANC branches in 1997 nominated him for the deputy presidency. Mandela called him up and told him to withdraw — it was Jacob Zuma’s turn.

Phosa stayed on as Mpumalanga premier, where his trials and tribulations just got worse. He was shocked. “I never for a moment thought that anyone in my administration would see their position as an opportunity for self-enrichment.”

Thabo Mbeki became jealous of Phosa’s friendship with Mandela and used a trumped-up inquiry to vilify him. Here narrative and reality intersect: “I lost my job for resisting those implicated in corruption and criminality.”

Phosa learnt moral lessons of course, notably that “your friend today could be your enemy tomorrow” and that “some leaders attempt to criminalise and discredit their opponents”.

Of course, sympathisers of the Higher Power will counter that Mbeki may have been paranoid, but Phosa, Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale really were trying to bury him.

Events interceded again in 2007, when Phosa was press-ganged by Zweli Mkhize and then Gwede Mantashe to run on Zuma’s Polokwane slate, as secretary-general or treasurer: “They insisted I had to do something. So I agreed to be treasurer.”

Phosa helped legitimise a slate topped by a crooked president, but wanted to do good, trying to dissolve the ANC-Chancellor House link that had helped destroy Eskom, and pushing unsuccessfully for party funding reform.

He also saw exactly what the Guptas were up to and kept clear of personal enrichment. Prudently, he “decided not to burden my fellow members of the top six with the details”.

Every treasurer-general loves a despot doling out petrodollars, and Phosa admits he “played a role” in securing Libyan donations in 2009. But he is mostly concerned to distance himself from billions that allegedly left Libya for SA at the behest of the brother leader and guide of the revolution. This suggests that more may soon come to light.

Phosa’s best advice about taking breakfast with Zuma? Worried about poisoning, he observes that, “when he dished himself scrambled eggs, we did the same”.

There are also many lessons for the rest of us from this exceptional man who tried to combine doing good with political survival. Echoing Mandela, he insists that bitterness is “a poison that we cannot afford”.

Perhaps most intriguingly for members of his own party, Phosa asserts that the “cancer of tribalism” once again “threatens to tear the ANC apart”.

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

November 15, 2024

Trump

ANTHONY BUTLER: Let’s send Zuma to join Musk in helping the Trump administration

SA’s former president was a trailblazer of best practice in ‘apex executive branch management’

First published in Business Day

15 November 2024

by ANTHONY BUTLER

Republican president-elect Donald Trump. Picture: JAY PAUL/REUTERS

SA has already sacrificed our beloved Elon Musk to the Trump administration, but we can do more.

The historian Eric Hobsbawm memorably said more than two decades ago that the US has elected to the presidency “a greater number of ignorant dumbos than any other republic”.

He also observed that the US political system “makes it almost impossible to elect to the presidency persons of visible ability and distinction”.

He offered the reassuring reminder that “the great US ship of state has sailed on as though it made very little difference that the man on the bridge was Andrew Johnson and not Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and not McKinley, Mrs Wilson and not Woodrow Wilson, Truman and not Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and not Kennedy, Ford and not Nixon”.

For Hobsbawm “a strong economy and great power can be politically almost foolproof”.

While Hobsbawm’s assessment of US leadership selection is unfair — Ronald Reagan was arguably a successful foreign policy president, and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were leaders of great ability — his central point about the institutional resilience of the US political system has much merit.

The constitution gives effect to key lessons of western political theory. The separation of powers remains a deep obstacle to personal rule, despite incoming Republican majorities in both national legislatures, and the recent appointment of madness-leaning and dim-witted supreme court justices.

The constitution entrenches federalism: most decisions are reserved to lower levels of government notwithstanding Trump’s threat to punish cities and states that have offended him.

The US is also a complex and diverse society. Who but a bigot would not celebrate that, on November 5, Sarah McBride became the first transgender person to be elected to the US Congress as representative for Delaware?

Trump will no doubt cause harm in domestic affairs. Religious fundamentalism, racism, anti-science gibberish, and misogyny will inform policy-making. Darwin and Harry Potter will be excised from even more school libraries. The revolving doors between federal government and business will spin faster. Undocumented migrants will fall victim to a chaotic “deportation” programme.

These policies will be contested, and reversible, even if the suffering they will cause is not. US presidents, however, have greater power in foreign affairs, where there are few checks on their authority. While Trump subscribes to the “madman” theory of foreign policy — he thinks his bluster secures concessions from other countries — he is relatively easy for foreign leaders and diplomats to read, and flattery and token concessions easily outlast his attention span.

The global clean energy transition is linked to the most irreversible challenge of all, and Trump wants to exit the Paris accord. Renewable energy is so advantageous in terms of jobs and costs, however, that it will still sweep across Asia, Europe, and Trump-supporting states in his own country, such as Iowa and Texas.

There are minor ideological differences between SA’s unity government and the incoming US administration. SA believes in improving human welfare and liberation from oppression around the globe. The US, in contrast, seeks to impose capitalism, accurate vote counting, dental hygiene and an unimaginable level of tax compliance on nominally postcolonial states.

Despite these differences, SA can — for once — offer technical support to a fledgling US administration. While the US is in most respects the world’s most advanced banana republic, former president Jacob Zuma was a trailblazer of international best practice in “apex executive branch management”.

The global trend has been for the office of the president to serve as a hub for power networks that link banks, big businesses, oligarchs, the political system, and regulatory agencies dedicated to legal and tax compliance. In this field, our former president had “visible ability and distinction”. Musk is not enough. We must also send them Zuma.

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

November 1, 2024

Two political streams emerge

ANTHONY BUTLER: Constitutionalists up against populists on way to 2050

First published in Business Day

01 November 2024

by Anthony Butler

MK Party supporters. Picture: SANDILE NDLOVU

It is becoming possible, at least after an alcoholic beverage or two, to discern two broad pathways for SA towards 2050.

Socioeconomic and political conditions will continue to generate widespread discontent with governing parties. Stagnant per capita incomes, decaying infrastructure and the normalisation of corruption are all well established and cannot be significantly reversed for many years.

In the first scenario, a broadly constitutionalist and economically orthodox coalition will continue to govern, albeit with great fluidity in its composition in the run-up to elections. Such a pact will embrace centrist elements from what is now the ANC and representatives of the urban middle class and others represented by the DA.

By contrast, in the second scenario a more populist coalition will capitalise on discontent to secure a fleeting national majority. This quite different pact will bring about a reconfiguration of the constitutional order and engage in hazardous economic experimentation.

While the focus of much analysis has been the fragility of the government of national unity (GNU), we also need to consider the viability of a coalition-building project among groupings outside the frontiers of the unity government, the MK party and the EFF.

Scholars are at loggerheads about the EFF’s policy proposals — is it fascist, proto-fascist, predatory, populist, right wing or left wing? MK has fully grasped the centrality of coalition building, repeatedly urging “the unity and unification of all progressive political parties” to fight against “white minority rule in SA”. The EFF repeats a similar mantra about the people at large battling “white monopoly capital”.

However, there are several reasons why such coalition-building will prove difficult. Opposition parties need to campaign with strong messages to motivate the six out of 10 eligible voters who do not vote. Scholars are at loggerheads about the EFF’s policy proposals — is it fascist, proto-fascist, predatory, populist, right wing or left wing?

Some anthropologists even describe the EFF as amorphous regarding class and identity, or an “intense, confusing amalgam”. The study of MK has set off on a similar path, and scholars may well find another amorphous amalgam.

Yet there are clear messages that cannot easily coexist within a coalition of “progressive forces”. MK seethes with resentment at immigrants, demanding trained locals replace imported skills, stronger border security and “respect for SA African laws”. The EFF is still all hug-a-foreigner.

The red-tops question Western conceptions of democracy, which they believe should be “aligned with” versions ostensibly practised by traditional leaders. MK goes much further, demanding greater authority for tribal monarchs and chiefs, deference to their arbitrary power at national level, and the establishment of constitutional patriarchy.

MK is socially conservative in a way the EFF simply cannot be, as is exemplified by its open determination to repeal same-sex marriage legislation and its slightly less open bigotry.

The two parties share another important feature that divides them: ethnic and regional heartlands. Indeed, the MK party’s vote share in the 2024 elections, concentrated in KwaZulu-Natal, set back the EFF’s efforts to build out of its traditional strongholds.

Where regional or ethnic divisions affect voting, they complicate coalition formation. A big party leader must recruit allies to solicit votes, resulting in coalitions between ethnic and regional blocs. These deals are brokered by leaders who buttress their base by distributing resources to activists and voters. This results in parties dominated by charismatic leaders who ostentatiously distribute the spoils of office to their followers.

Of course, MK and the EFF don’t have many spoils to distribute. Their leaders dominate their parties and seem unlikely — or unable — to concede control over their constituencies to one another. One of them also has a limited life expectancy. All of this means coalition building may prove beyond the capabilities of the leaders of the progressive forces.

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

October 18, 2024December 27, 2024

The second termer’s turn to legacy politics

ANTHONY BUTLER: Second term for presidents is best and worst of times

While finally in command, second-term leaders also know their time is running out

First published in Business Day

18 October 2024

President Cyril Ramaphosa. File photo: GCIS

For a president the start of a second term is the best of times. But it is also the worst of times.

The first termer is on a learning curve. Lacking experience, they are surrounded by the appointees of their predecessor, hemmed in by policy and budget frameworks set by others, and obliged to campaign in a series of elections in which they are a public punchbag.

It is only after re-election by the party, and then 18 months later by the National Assembly, that a president becomes more or less invulnerable to removal. The second-termer is more experienced, surrounded by a chosen team, confident in cabinet and media manipulation, and adroit in deployment of informal institutions.

However, while finally in command at the apex of national power, second-term leaders also know their time is running out. Factions start to consolidate around potential successors. Initially fluid groupings organise around proxy issues and disrupt the government machine.

Media attention is attracted not by the president’s words but by those of the contenders for their office. Newspapers run extended pieces about ANC succession politics, and soon a political journalist declares the president a “lame duck”.

This cycle leads most presidents to become obsessed with their “legacy”. First, they yearn for a “concrete legacy” of tangible accomplishments. In some political systems this is a moment of real danger. Ageing “strongman” leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping conceive invasion or the expansion of empire as their legacy to their countries.

In more democratic societies presidents leave concrete legislative or governance legacies by signing all kinds of well-meaning policy changes. They are always aware though, that a successor can equally easily erase these accomplishments.

A second legacy ambition concerns the control of presidential succession, which offers a chimera of enduring direct power. Authoritarian-minded presidents often decide they should succeed themselves. Even in SA’s constitutional democracy, with its parliamentary system and two-term limit for presidents, Thabo Mbeki and his retinue fantasised in 2007 that they could retain the ANC presidency, install a puppet state president, and continue to run the country from Luthuli House.

An embarrassing — perhaps even pitiful — variant of this legacy ambition arises when the president discovers that their favourite child turns out to be the best person to run the country after they are gone.

A third presidential ambition — we might say the desire for a soft legacy — concerns an intangible and persistent influence that continues to shape politics after the leader has gone.

In SA we tend to think in terms of the “foundations” beloved of our retired political leaders. These purport to pursue particular political philosophies, but in reality serve primarily as tax avoidance vehicles for party veterans.

The less tangible sources of influence that endure even after the leader retires are harder to create but more enduring, because they are based on memories enshrined in the minds of public officials and wider populations.

To take one famous example, US president Franklin Roosevelt introduced programmes in the New Deal that continue to shape debate about entitlement programmes in his country.

Nelson Mandela was an ineffectual president in most respects, but he left behind a set of values and perspectives about the creation of a nation around which contemporary political argument in SA still turns.

The enduring legacy of a political leader resides not in the laws they fashion or in the successors they try to impose. Rather it turns on whether they express more fundamental ideas and arguments that are revisited and reworked by those engaged in politics in future.

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