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.

October 8, 2024

Demonisation in decline in GNU?

ANTHONY BUTLER: GNU shifts boundaries of acceptable partisan conflict

First published in Business Day and BusinessLive

04 October 2024

The national unity government has not yet brought fresh consensus about public policy, but it has already moved the boundaries of acceptable partisan conflict.

Readers who subscribe to a local community WhatsApp or Facebook group intuitively understand the public policy concept of problem framing. This refers to the way issues in our world are presented by the interested parties that describe it.

There are children sleeping in shop doorways on the main street. One group of community members complains about the litter and mess the sleepers leave behind, the local bylaws they are breaking, their alleged pickpocketing, and the damage they are doing to small business.

But other locals describe the same children in quite different terms. These youngsters have been forced to flee their homes, perhaps driven away by broken families, violence or sexual abuse. They are denied their right to basic healthcare and schooling, and they lack the emotional support and life opportunities that any child deserves.

One key aspect of these competing definitions of “the problem” is that each attributes blame and responsibility to different actors, and each contains within it a set of implied prescriptions about how the problem should be addressed.

The law-and-order contingent wants the police or a private security company to move on the lawbreakers, stop them from sleeping on the pavements, and so displace the nuisance from the community. But their opponents point to failures in the wider society, cast the children as victims, and demand interventions to ensure that they have access to support services and schooling.

One group wants a law-and-order crackdown; the other demands the creation of a local welfare state. Things turn sour when the argument goes one step further. One group accuses the other of being callous. In return they are denigrated as soft-headed or idealistic. Pretty soon — this being SA — other dimensions come into play: you disagree because you are white or black, a woman or a man — or just plain stupid. The issue itself — the street children — is lost in a self-indulgent flinging of insults.

Conflicts in national politics can develop similarly, with parties and pressure groups framing problems to build support for remedies that serve their interests. Participants assign blame to individuals or groups for causing harm, accusing them not just of making mistakes but of deliberate and malicious intent. There are three reasons why such national level conflicts can be especially hard to contain.

Problem framing at national level is professionalised. Policy disagreement in the print and social media reproduces strategic messaging designed by public relations specialists to resonate with particular audiences and, if desired, to demonise partisan opponents.

The causal complexity of national policy issues is also overwhelming. This complexity collides with the democratic but misleading modern sentiment that “I know what’s going on” — even though I usually don’t. We simple citizens fall back on childish markers of truth and falsity, with the racialists easily swaying us. The power is off? I blame Matshela Koko and you decry André de Ruyter. Sewage in the streets? I accuse Sputla Ramokgopa and you castigate Cilliers Brink.

Finally, national politics has lacked the face-to-face reality check that contains community conflicts. Local disagreements are the stuff of daily gossip, in shops, trains or on the streets. Argument can sometimes result in violence, but personal interaction tends to soften extremes and build understanding.

Here, perhaps, the unity government has started to make a real difference. Politicians can no longer demonise their political opponents and attribute malevolent intent to them, while sitting next to them at public events. Such disparagement or disrespect, so natural a few months ago, would now appear embarrassing or even ridiculous.

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

September 20, 2024September 23, 2024

Why the GNU is making Ramaphosa happy

ANTHONY BUTLER: Ramaphosa seems to be enjoying the GNU ride

First published in Business Day

20 September 2024

by Anthony Butler

President Cyril Ramaphosa. File photo: ALET PRETORIUS/REUTERS

President Cyril Ramaphosa gives the impression that he is enjoying presidential office for the first time. On the face of it, this is surprising. After all, the ANC has suffered a decline of electoral fortunes under his leadership.

There are perhaps three reasons for Ramaphosa’s seeming contentment. Even his many critics accept that he has played a political blinder since the elections. His post-election speech at the Electoral Commission results centre in Midrand at the start of June proclaimed that “our people expect all parties to work together within the framework of our constitution and address whatever challenges we encounter peacefully and in accordance with the prescripts of our constitution and the rule of law”.

The government of national unity (GNU) conceit unveiled soon afterwards was well understood by senior ANC and IFP politicians who were involved in Nelson Mandela’s GNU. One DA leader had even written an extended analysis of the benefits of this first iteration. While these parties had prepared carefully for GNU, the EFF and MK party evidently had not.

EFF leader Julius Malema’s sartorial conversion in 2024, swapping red T-shirts for tailored business suits, suggests he misread tentative offers of high office emanating from ANC brokers. That he insisted on the removal of Ramaphosa as a precondition for participation in a coalition deal indicates he was disastrously misled. The MK party’s anti-constitutionalist programme likewise ruled it out of the GNU on the terms that Ramaphosa so carefully elaborated.

The president made the GNU palatable to a wider constituency in the ANC in an underhand but also ingenious manner by ignoring the terms of the statement of intent that supposedly governed it. He shamelessly applied non-functional but decorative fig leaves such as Gayton Mackenzie, Patricia de Lille and Bantu Holomisa to cover the embarrassing extremities of the grand coalition.

The second factor behind Ramaphosa’s good cheer may be the simplification of ANC internal management the election has brought. MK and the EFF have attracted politicians with legal difficulties, and spokespeople with complex psychological challenges, each of whom would otherwise be making Ramaphosa’s life difficult inside the ANC. It is arguably better to have Mzwanele Manyi or Carl Niehaus inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in, but it is surely better still to have them on a different campsite altogether.

A third reason for the president’s newly placid demeanour may be a fresh chance to shape policy somewhat freed from vested interests in the ANC’s tripartite alliance. On economic policy, the SACP now looks even more ridiculous than is customary because its general secretary has been berating a GNU in which its own leaders are participating at ministerial level.

The Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill that was recently signed into law may be pitifully inadequate — it ignores performance measurement and union-linked corruption — but it has one consequential element: muddying school governing body control over language policy.

Any fair-minded observer knows there are schools that use language as an instrument of racial exclusion. But we have also seen racial populists such as Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi building political capital by exploiting the predicament of black parents.

Regarding National Health Insurance, in which current symbolic policy reflects the interests of ANC ministers, unions and profiteers, the opposition has prioritised the demands of insurance and hospital companies and a narrow band of private health beneficiaries.

It is not impossible at all that the GNU will bring in pragmatic compromises that improve overall outcomes in both cases, and perhaps — if the coalition survives — in many others besides.

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

September 6, 2024

Dizzying ambition at home affairs

Leon Schreiber deploys his expertise in public sector reform

New home affairs minister is a fan of Sars’ secure and user-friendly digital platform

06 September 2024 – 05:00

by Anthony Butler

Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber. Picture: BRENTON GEACH

Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber is one of the more intriguing appointments to the government of national unity. A member of the National Assembly for just five years, he was previously best known for his dogged campaign for the release of ANC national deployment committee minutes. Before that he was a fierce advocate of the use of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction at his alma mater, Stellenbosch, and the author of a prescient 2018 book Coalition Country.

What makes Schreiber’s rise of special interest is that he is an expert on public sector reform, with a PhD in political science (on social welfare systems) and three years of applied research experience at Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies (ISS) programme.

Addressing the Cape Town Press Club on Tuesday, Schreiber set out his agenda for change at home affairs, one that draws heavily on the ISS’s approach and explicitly calls for policy learning from other developing countries.

Like all incoming ministers, Schreiber is keen to demonstrate that he is making an difference. He has chosen ending slow visa and permit processing — “no backlogs by Christmas” — as his immediate flagship intervention.

Here he hopes to replicate the turnaround initiated by then director-general — and ANC veteran — Mavuso Msimang in the run-up to the 2010 Fifa World Cup. This reform is itself detailed in an ISS paper, “Reforming Without Hiring or Firing: Identity Document Production in SA 2007-2009”.

Long wait times for IDs were caused by poorly designed processes and demoralised staff. Eschewing redundancies and working with trade unions, Msimang’s consultants simplified processes and used informal rather than formal performance measures to encourage teamwork. Waiting periods were reduced to just six weeks.

Msimang credited continuous and positive engagement with front-line workers for his success. Schreiber likewise goes out of his way to praise “honest and dedicated officials” who continued to do their jobs in the face of understaffing and the “institutional vandalism” inflicted by ANC ministers.

The new minister’s longer-term objective is “deep and meaningful” institutional reform driven by the deployment of new technologies. An ISS paper drafted by Schreiber himself in 2019 attributed much of the success of the City of Cape Town in averting a water supply Day Zero to improved data management and judicious technological interventions (though he also credits behaviour-changing communication strategies).

Schreiber is a big fan of the SA Revenue Service (Sars), celebrating various organisational, managerial and technological changes that dramatically increased tax compliance and the pool of taxpayers under (ANC deployee) Pravin Gordhan. One special interest is evidently the revenue service’s digital platform, which verifies the authenticity of documents, provides instantaneous tax assessments to 5-million taxpayers and flags potential irregularities for further investigation. He believes just such a platform, secure and broadly user-friendly, could be created to serve home affairs’ far bigger client base.

This is all dizzyingly ambitious, but Schreiber is evidently fortified by his knowledge that other developing countries have leapfrogged their peers by deploying new technologies effectively. The biggest immediate obstacle to his ambitions is Sita, the state’s own information technology agency, which will need to be circumvented if the new programme is to have any chance of success. Numerous further challenges will inevitably follow.

Schreiber is surely also aware of the fate of previous reformers. Msimang was initiator and driver of the last major home affairs turnaround, but he received almost no credit for his achievements. Instead, ANC grandee Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma was parachuted into the home affairs ministry in 2009. As soon as she arrived she claimed credit for the fruit of years of painstaking reform — and plenty of credulous journalists believed her.

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

August 23, 2024

Are the cults in decline?

ANTHONY BUTLER: Waning personality cults leave leaders in disarray

First published in Business Day

23 AUGUST 2024

The waning of personality cults could well be the political news story of the year.

Across human history, chiefs, emperors and kings have demanded obeisance. Modern democracy partially dissipated such authority by containing leaders within constitutional rules. The power of individuals was for the first time balanced by elected legislatures and powerful judges.

The danger persisted though, and it has recently been resurgent. Mass and social media, quasi-religious spectacles, nationalist emotions and mass rallies allow leaders to project their personalities, and so create modern cults.

This may be changing again. In the world’s most advanced banana republic, former president Donald Trump’s fundamentalists are in retreat. Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, sucks charisma out of the air like a black hole. SA’s own cult leaders are, gratifyingly, also in disarray.

The ANC in exile successfully created a Nelson Mandela legend, but this cult entranced foreigners far more than it captivated locals. The personality of his successor, Thabo Mbeki, corrected any tendency among citizens to treat him with reverence or adoration.

Of course, Jacob Zuma has a certain charm, but he had to portray himself as a victim — a humble Zulu man put upon by others — to rise. His campaign in the May elections was scarcely that of a great national leader.

Cyril Ramaphosa has meanwhile adopted the public persona of a decent man — perhaps slightly out of his depth, and certainly a conciliator rather than an emperor.

The DA has wisely strapped its only potential cult leader, Helen Zille, into a straitjacket. While the party once exhibited classic cult behaviours — including sexual rituals in which spouses were exchanged by middle-ranking politicians and mystical or magical meanings were attributed to concepts such as “liberalism” — the DA has now settled for the amiable John Steenhuisen.

IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa meanwhile kept his face off election posters and adopted the persona of the school principal he once was. These key leaders at the heart of the unity government took up modest ministerial positions.

The big-man hopefuls have fared far less well. The EFF’s Julius Malema was humbled by the voters. Reportedly pursuing the deputy presidency behind the backs of his own negotiators, he divided his party with self-aggrandising behaviour.

The leaders of smaller cults, such as Herman Mashaba, Songezo Zibi, Mmusi Maimane and Patricia de Lille, resembled wandering pastors or out-of-condition yoga instructors rather than charismatic leaders.

The right kind of politics has clearly helped contain the cults. The ANC, DA and IFP all demonstrated the benefits that can flow from reasonably strong institutions, clearly formulated policies, and leaders who are servants of their parties. Their agreement to prioritise the constitution wrong-footed cultists who were spouting antisystem rhetoric and were distracted by the lure of blue-light convoys.

There was also some exceptional leadership. Soon after a herd of credulous journalists followed Zuma around the national results operation centre — while he was bleating nonsense about a stolen election, nogal — Ramaphosa showed up, exuded confidence, backed the electoral commission and thanked electors for the ANC’s trouncing.

Citizens are partly inoculated against cult leadership by the country’s apartheid history. When Malema had himself raised on a platform at the FNB Stadium during his cult’s 10-year anniversary celebrations, many observers saw Oupa Gqozo rather than Fidel Castro.

However, the most reliable defences against big-man cults are institutional. In our parliamentary system the president is elected by the National Assembly — and so by political parties — and not directly by the people.

We cannot always stop the manipulation of emotion by our politicians, but it is far harder to turn a cult figurehead into a strongman in a political system in which the people do not directly elect the leader.

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

August 9, 2024

Less bleating about cabinet bloating

ANTHONY BUTLER: Bigger cabinet could aid coalition politics but strict financial boundaries are vital

The problem with cabinet costs is not so much the number of ministers as the huge waste typified by the ministerial handbook and the absurdities of VIP protection

First published in BusinessLive

09 AUGUST 2024

The first Cabinet Lekgotla of the GNU at Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guest House in Pretoria. Picture: GCIS

Many long-standing critics of a “bloated cabinet” — among them the leaders of the ANC and DA — have gone rather quiet on the issue now that they have formed an extremely large unity government.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has made repeated commitments in the past to reduce the number of cabinet ministers. In May 2019 he actually cut the number of cabinet ministers from 36 to 28.

The DA has a whole 40-page policy document, Vision 2029: Maximising Service Delivery by Minimising cabinet, which argues in favour of a 15-member cabinet.

Today though, only ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba and Build One SA’s Mmusi Maimane still bemoan an unwieldy cabinet and the use of government offices to extend patronage to coalition partners.

The most common complaint about big cabinets is that ministers’ retinues, houses, flights and cars cost money, so there should be fewer of them.

More importantly, some empirical studies have shown there is a statistical relationship between larger cabinets and poorer governance indicators (although it is not clear if bigger cabinets create worse governance or crooked governors tend to appoint large cabinets).

Other research suggests that more ministers — each trying to spend money on their own patronage networks, constituencies, and interest groups — may put upward pressure on overall government budgets.

Finally, there is some reason to believe the co-ordination of action — or simply reaching a decision — becomes harder when the size of the group involved becomes much bigger.

While these may be good reasons to avoid gratuitous expansion, a balanced assessment has to embrace what may be the modest costs — and many potential benefits — that a bigger cabinet can bring.

The problem with cabinet costs is not so much the number of ministers as the enormous waste exemplified by the ministerial handbook and the absurdities of VIP protection. These can be addressed.

Moreover, if patronage forms the basis for government even a small number of ministers will use their offices to provide jobs and services to supporters and party loyalists, and engage in elite corruption and rent-seeking. A larger number of ministers, accompanied by appropriate oversight, a rigorous budget process and a powerful Treasury, will not do so.

It is also true that government stability is a major boon for investment, and ministerial appointments can sometimes promote it. One famous study of 40 African countries over a 30 year period confirmed that more cabinet appointments can extend presidential tenure and discourage military takeover.

Another study used data for 100 countries over two decades to show that large cabinets reduce the likelihood of political assassinations, another indicator of instability.

Coalition politics, something South Africans must now reckon with, often benefits from a bigger cabinet. When many parties become involved and the complexity of negotiation grows, additional portfolios can keep smaller parties in the tent.

Indeed, the problem of cabinet size is secondary to other executive branch challenges the president and his coalition partners face. Some of these challenges were exemplified by the two presidencies of Jacob Zuma: the appointment of poorly qualified and transparently corrupt ministers to key portfolios; and frequent cabinet reshuffles that destabilised departments and made policy consistency impossible.

Other problems have survived Zuma’s departure, or even worsened under his successor, including a proliferation of ministerial task teams, parallel institutional structures with overlapping responsibilities, and a presidency that takes on more and more responsibilities without commensurate increases in its capabilities.

All things considered, a smaller cabinet is probably better than a bigger one. But a large and reasonably stable cabinet, with capable and accountable ministers and respect for constitutional and fiscal boundaries, is a pretty good second best.

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

July 27, 2024

The limitations of Gamson’s Law

ANTHONY BUTLER: Weighing the DA’s slice of the unity government

Some party members are unhappy with GNU balance of power, but a closer breakdown is warranted

First published in Business Day

26 JULY 2024

ANTHONY BUTLER

We all know ANC activists who have noisily condemned the government of national unity (GNU). But DA supporters have more quietly, but equally vehemently, expressed discontent with the grand coalition.

Such scepticism is nothing new. A July 2022 Social Research Foundation poll suggested that two-thirds of ANC voters would “compromise party values … for the sake of creating a stable coalition”. Only four out of 10 DA voters were happy to do so.

Making matters worse is a perception that the ANC has benefited most from the deal. The key evidence presented by DA critics is a lack of proportionality in the allocation of meaningful ministerial positions.

American social scientist William Gamson first suggested in 1961 that parties making coalition deals expect the “payoff” from the deal to be proportional to the “resources” they bring to it. A decade later, European political scientists recast this insight as “Gamson’s Law”: the key resource parties possess — the proportion of seats they hold in the legislature — will closely match the share of ministerial portfolios they secure.

There have not been many laws in political science, and the few that have emerged have eventually turned out to be wrong. It was therefore a happy surprise for proponents of Gamson’s Law that numerous empirical studies of coalition formation, in the years that followed, confirmed that parties reliably secured ministerial positions in proportion to the legislative seats they held.

The absence of this relationship in SA has been a key basis for DA member discontent. The parties in the GNU together hold 287 seats out of the total 400 in the national assembly. The new government includes 34 cabinet ministers and 38 deputy ministers.

The ANC secured 159 seats in the National Assembly, and this translated to 22 cabinet positions and 31 deputy ministerial positions. In percentage terms, 55% of GNU seats led to 65% of cabinet positions and 82% of deputy ministerial positions.

The DA secured 87 seats in parliament but was allocated only six cabinet posts and five deputy ministerial positions. A total of 30% of GNU seats brought just 18% of cabinet portfolios and 13% of deputy ministerial positions. Adding insult to injury, many DA activists believe the party has been deprived of the most powerful and prestigious portfolios, notably in foreign affairs and the economy cluster.

However, there are four considerations DA activists should bear in mind before they condemn their negotiating team. The first is that Gamson’s Law derives from the experiences of parliamentary systems in Western Europe. A landmark study published earlier in 2024 in European Political Science Review demonstrated that it “does not travel especially well” across constitutional types or parts of the world.

Second, the biggest cause of disproportion is deputy ministerial portfolios that are mostly packed with ANC hacks, but these ministers have strictly limited powers. And third, “payoff” must be understood negatively as well as positively. The DA has steered clear of “no-win” departments and “ministerial graveyards”. It has also minimised its exposure to potential coalition collapse by deploying mostly inconsequential leaders to the executive. Four of the six DA cabinet ministers — Siviwe Gwarube, Solly Malatsi, Leon Schreiber and Dean Macpherson — are political toddlers in their 30s.

Finally, payoff isn’t just about bums on seats round the cabinet table. Long-standing demands from the DA and the IFP for devolution of powers to provinces and metropolitan authorities are likely to materialise across several sectors. The broad principle of “sufficient consensus” set out in the GNU’s founding statement of intent meanwhile places an effective policy veto in DA hands.

Sceptical activists doubtless need persuading about the merits of the coalition deal. However, the payoffs from the GNU are not so unbalanced so as to bring any early DA rebellion against it.

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