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Commissions of Inquiry Predictably Impede Prosecutions

ANTHONY BUTLER: Zuma likely to share blame for collapse of state capture prosecutions

Rather than chiding the NPA’s head, the focus should be on former president’s decision about the timing of commission of inquiry

First published in Business Day and BUsinessLive

20 June 2025

SA citizens like to blame the national director of public prosecutions for the collapse of state capture prosecutions. They should rather take on the politicians who deliberately brought about this predictable outcome. 

Critics stridently insist National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) head Shamila Batohi must stop making excuses and immediately prosecute potential miscreants flagged by the Zondo state capture commission. On Tuesday she even had to listen to demands for her resignation from an MK MP, Sibonelo Nomvalo, who called her “incompetent” at a parliamentary justice committee meeting. 

This comes on top of a Centre for Development & Enterprise (CDE) report last week that called for a new NPA appointment mechanism. The CDE’s executive director, Ann Bernstein, pointedly observed that “without the right appointment process … the country risks repeating past mistakes”. 

But rather than castigating the NPA’s head it might be more instructive to focus, as the British media have done this week, on political leaders’ decisions about the timing of statutory commissions of inquiry.

Immediately after scandals involving “grooming gangs” — groups of men who targeted vulnerable children for sexual abuse in Rotherham and other English towns a decade ago — there was a circumscribed independent inquiry (the Alexis Jay Report).

Authorities were concerned that a judicial inquiry would interfere with outstanding or possible prosecutions. Only this week did Prime Minister Keir Starmer — himself a former prosecuting agency head — institute a full public inquiry into the scandal. 

In contrast, former president Jacob Zuma set up a commission to proceed in parallel with ongoing investigations, in full knowledge that statutory inquiries have legal powers that sit uncomfortably with criminal law. Zondo witnesses often received “Section 3(4)” undertakings under the Commissions Act, meaning they could claim privilege against self-incrimination during their testimony. Their compelled answers were generally inadmissible against them in a later criminal trial. 

Zondo’s final report predictably created headaches for prosecutors around what lawyers call derivative use of evidence and tainted investigations. Defence lawyers can argue that prosecutors only discovered evidence because the accused was compelled to testify, which can be challenged as a violation of the constitutional right to a fair trial.

They can also argue that evidence was gathered in a process that would not have satisfied the requirements for criminal investigations, potentially opening the door to constitutional challenges. The Constitutional Court has not yet had an opportunity to clarify when derivative use of inquiry evidence is permissible and under what conditions compelled evidence contaminates a criminal case.

Judicial inquiries can certainly run alongside criminal investigations in a well-resourced justice system. Police and prosecution teams can be embedded alongside commissions, actively involved in separating out evidence safe to use in court. But the NPA had no resources or capacity to do this. 

This means the NPA has to reconstruct criminal cases. Gathering fresh evidence independently of the commission’s work depends on new witness interviews, independent forensic audits, fresh financial records, and lawfully obtained search and seizure material, all of which requires human and financial resources the NPA still lacks.

This all illustrates a well-known “sequencing” finding from comparative law and politics: public inquiries, without strong prosecutorial institutions working in parallel from the start, make successful criminal prosecution harder rather than easier. This is why countries typically avoid running full public inquiries in parallel with criminal investigations.

When Zuma appointed the Zondo commission — albeit under heavy legal and political constraints over its terms of reference — we can assume he was fully aware how events would unfold. After all, he had the best possible legal advice — we were paying for it.

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

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Vulindlela Phase 2

ANTHONY BUTLER: Operation Vulindlela will have to remain lean and mean

First published in Business Day and BusinessLive

09 May 2025

The fanfare that surrounded Wednesday’s launch of the second phase of the hitherto low-key Operation Vulindlela shows how central the project has become to the credibility of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s otherwise faltering reform programme.

Vulindlela was born out of crisis, established in October 2020 as a joint initiative of the presidency and National Treasury to fast-track the delivery of reform in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. It had long been recognised that structural change was crucial to addressing the underlying causes of low economic growth, but Covid-19 broke down political and institutional barriers to change. 

Initially focused on a narrow list of priorities with the greatest impact on growth and employment, Vulindlela aimed to “modernise and transform” — in truth to salvage — network industries including electricity, water, transport and digital communications, and to remake the visa regime to attract skills and promote tourism growth.

While departments and state-owned entities would still implement structural reforms, a dedicated unit bridging the presidency and the Treasury was created to monitor progress, provide “technical support” and generate clear recommendations for political principals to endorse. 

The first phase went pretty well, though slowly, with reforms to enable private operators to access the freight network and participate in container terminal operations, a re-engineered water-use licence application system, auctioned high-demand spectrum, streamlined telecommunications infrastructure regulations and an updated visa system. All this resulted in somewhat cheaper data and fewer needlessly excluded skills, and unlocked investment in several sectors. 

The government’s review of the first phase observed last year that there was “still a long way to go” in the performance of ports and the rail system, an assessment that applies across most of Operation Vulindlela’s areas of focus. Vulindlela will have to drive its existing initiatives — and prevent backsliding — as it moves on to fresh problems in a second phase that presents four key challenges.

  • The issues Ramaphosa has now placed on its plate include broad digital transformation, a technical quagmire that has defeated the most capable reformers in other countries.
  • Operation Vulindlela’s success has always hinged on private capital mobilisation. Without credible, predictable delivery frameworks — and faster impact timelines — economic benefits will remain limited. Sceptics believe bureaucratic delays will continue to undermine investor confidence in sectors like rail, ports, energy and digitalisation.
  • Operation Vulindlela can only be a supportive partner, and it will continue to be hampered by the lack of technical and managerial capacity in the wider civil service, conservative state-owned enterprises, water boards and other government agencies.
  • Finally, the politics will only get rougher as Operation Vulindlela’s scope of activities embraces local government and it becomes generally more politically exposed. Reform threatens entrenched interests and so brings pushback from unions, opposition parties and monopolistic entities resisting competition. Vulindlela may not be able to depend on political protection from the incoming president — or from their senior ministers — after December 2027. 

Fiscal constraints, slow growth and a rising debt burden will continue to hamper Operation Vulindlela. Reforms requiring public financing or major contingent liabilities, including infrastructure investments, water system development and a local government reboot, will be delayed or downscaled.

Politics precludes any major shift from consumption to investment spending, but SA desperately needs to invest in the future. As is so often the case, crisis has made reform possible, but it has denied reformers the resources they need to realise their goals. This means Vulindlela will remain lean and mean, and we should salute its foot soldiers as they venture across new political minefields. 

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

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Keep calm amid the dramas of coalition politics

Theatrics are par for the course in coalition politics


To maintain individual identities, coalition partners often stage public tiffs, even when compromises are being worked out behind the scenes

First published in BDLive

25 April 2025



To prevent future outbreaks of mass hysteria about the supposed demise of the government of national unity (GNU), citizens must embrace the inevitable theatricality of coalition politics.

Coalitions bring together parties with differing ideologies, constituencies and ambitions. To maintain their individual identities they often stage public disagreements, even when compromises are being worked out behind the scenes. It is a way of telling their base they haven’t sold out.

In coalitions, political actors often rely on symbolism and spectacle to assert leverage. Dramatic resignations, open letters or last-minute ultimatums are tactics meant to sway public opinion or pressure coalition partners. The news media spotlight moments of conflict, impassioned speechifying or bizarre alliances, while leadership rivalries, personal ambitions and factional dynamics get aired in public.

Ask the citizens of countries around the world who have lived for decades with coalition politics. In 1997, India’s United Front coalition government collapsed when the Congress Party withdrew support after an assassination scandal. Public attention focused on claims that a former coalition prime minister was obsessed with cows, spending more time at dairy events than in parliament. One Congress leader complained of government “run by cows, for cows, and only for cows”, while others described the coalition as the “bovine bloc”.

When Evo Morales became Bolivia’s president in 2006 he headed a broad coalition embracing leftist intellectuals, indigenous leaders, trade unionists and coca growers. Vice-president Álvaro García Linera, a former guerrilla and mathematician, described coalition meetings as “a zoo with llamas, jaguars and parrots all trying to direct traffic”. Internal disputes played out publicly on state television, sometimes ending in tears.

Meanwhile, after a disputed 2007 election violence had erupted across Kenya. A power-sharing deal was struck between president Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga to restore stability. Odinga accepted the nonexecutive post of prime minister, joking that “I have taken half a loaf instead of going hungry”. The cabinet ballooned to 94 ministers and assistant ministers, one of whom, according to local wags, ran the “ministry of watching the other ministers”. Constant public bickering between Kibaki and Odinga made every cabinet meeting feel like a deranged family reunion.

In the world’s second-most advanced banana republic, the UK, the Liberal Democrats entered into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010, after promising repeatedly not to raise university tuition fees. As Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg toured the country making this pledge, his coalition negotiating team — which included the DA’s current coalition guru, Ryan Coetzee — were making contingency plans to abandon it. By the end of the year, fees had tripled. Clegg later released an apology, quickly rehashed in a spoof autotuned remix entitled “I’m sorry”, that charted on iTunes.

In Romania, a famous “coalition of the commode” exploded in 2021. Led by the National Liberal Party, it promised stability and good governance. Amid fallout from an infrastructure scandal, however, the education minister was accused of spending €350,000 renovating his ministry’s bathrooms, importing custom-made Italian tiles and a jacuzzi. This resulted in parties accusing each other of “bathtub populism” and “toilet-seat corruption”.

Coalition partners prepare for the next election from the moment the last one ends. They cannot help using theatrics to distance themselves from unpopular decisions or to take credit for popular ones, even if both were agreed upon collectively.

Theatricality helps parties signal their values, bargain for influence and manage diverse constituencies, all the while navigating the fragile architecture of shared governance.

  • Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.
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Oh no, it’s Paul again

ANTHONY BUTLER: Egos aplenty in race to succeed Ramaphosa

First published in Business Day and BusinessLive

11 April 2025

Bemused citizens may have been wondering why deputy president Paul Mashatile is trying so hard to destabilise the government of national unity (GNU). The solution to this puzzle lies in ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula’s birthday celebrations on Tuesday. 

There is no credible alternative GNU that excludes the DA. Getting to a bare majority of 201 seats by bringing in minnow parties run by egomaniacs does not provide a necessary voting buffer against absent or rebellious MPs, and guarantees endless blackmail by partners.

A large and fractious alliance in which giant egos jostle for blue-light convoys will also result in electoral wipeout in 2026. Given a deepening global economic crisis and precarious international relations, any coalition with the EFF or Jacob Zuma’s pro-feudalism vehicle is almost inconceivable. 

In contrast, retaining the DA in the GNU requires only modest concessions, mostly already agreed in recent negotiations to end the budget impasse. Without the DA, the KwaZulu-Natal government will probably collapse. Without pro-GNU funders, the ANC will become totally dependent on mafia donors demanding truly unpalatable concessions. The DA has given the ANC an easy ride all year, largely ignoring disproportionate cabinet portfolio allocations and breaches of the initial coalition pact. 

Broad agreement between the parties about the fundamentals of policy is wider and deeper that either likes to admit. Constitutional government (ANC anti-constitutionalists have mostly joined MK or the EFF), strategies to resolve the energy, logistics and water crises, and the expansion of public-private partnerships, are all now common cause. 

The impetus for booting out the DA comes from Mashatile, who has been champing at the bit, desperate for the ANC’s national executive committee to fire the starting pistol in a supposed two-horse race with Mbalula for the ANC presidency. The key proxy issue in the ANC’s latest tiresome succession psychodrama is whether to continue the coalition with the DA, or instead to transform the unity government into a “revolutionary” front that includes the EFF — or indeed anybody but the DA.

The odds on Mashatile have been softening as a result of exposés of his finances and lifestyle, the enduring enmity of KwaZulu-Natal comrades who believe he betrayed them in 2017, and rising competitor Panyaza Lesufi’s expanding ego. Mbalula has meanwhile used the power of the secretary-general’s office to hobble his competitor, reconstituting provincial structures and freezing mobilisation in the regions. 

While the deputy president is a classy sort on his day, he has been out of form recently, finishing well down the field in his last few starts around the national executive committee circuit. The syndicates backing Mashatile are still betting their horse will win by a nose in 2027, but their preference is to bring the meet forward. They believe Ramaphosa has looked leg-weary in recent starts, offering little more than a fading memory of past form. Age has caught up, they claim, and he is now little more than a name on the card. 

The colt Mbalula has serious wheels, flies out of the gate, and makes the others look stationary in early furlongs. But he is barely out of nursery class: on Tuesday he turned just 54. He has not tried to conceal his ambition to be president one day.

However, he probably knows he is not in the race for the ANC presidency in 2027. His goal for that conference will be to secure the deputy presidency as part of a wider slate that brings together the delegate-rich provinces of the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, under a presidential candidate with more years, and more successful executive experience, under his belt.

Mbalula can afford to wait a decade. By then Mashatile will be an old lag. 

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

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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

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.

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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

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.

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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

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.