Eusebius McKaiser
If you don’t speak up when it matters most, then you cannot get full credit for speaking up at all. This is something both the SACP and Cosatu need to realise.
All the major Sunday papers led with stories yesterday that continue to chronicle the disastrous leadership of President Jacob Zuma. These ranged from reports that Zuma didn’t honour the consultative processes that should have been followed before introducing retirement reforms (Sunday Independent); claims about another Zuma friend allegedly benefiting commercially from their friendship (City Press); and alliance partners formally raising concerns about the president’s relationship with the Gupta family (Sunday Times).
But it is the Sunday Times story that got me thinking about Zuma’s alliance partners. Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini is quoted as saying, “We can’t continue to be quiet over this matter”, this being a reference to the sale of Optimum coal mine to a Gupta family member, allegedly after the sales process was interfered with politically, with consequences, claims Dlamini, that are disastrous “because workers are threatened with retrenchments”.
This raises a rather elementary question, I’m afraid, Mr Dlamini: Why have you been quiet all along? We sometimes exaggerate the complexity of choices that leaders have to face. And so, in defence of ANC leaders who find their moral compass in retirement, or alliance leaders suddenly waking up to offer concerns about Zuma, we imagine they have to make complex calculations about when and how to raise concerns they have held for a long time already.
Yet, we have now known for years that there is a toxic relationship between the Gupta family and President Zuma. This isn’t news. The facts about the state of the economy is also not news. For way too long now we have had economic growth levels that are hopelessly too low to realistically enable us to create jobs on a scale that can help us begin to assault poverty and inequality. All of this under the watch of Zuma.
Cosatu knows this. The ANC knows this. Millions of unemployed South Africans know this. And the relationship with the Gupta family, like Nkandlagate, are mere scene-setters in a larger horror story about the economic impact of corrupt and unethical leadership. What’s really going on here is that Cosatu – and, yes, they are politically entitled to punt narrow interests – is simply speaking out as a bargaining move to fight for a few more gains for union members. And that is fine. It is a useful accountability lever inside the alliance.
But the larger truth is that the same alliance partners, and senior ANC members, are responsible for President Zuma’s career persisting. The ultimate form of accountability is to stop someone from having the legal power to be a hot mess, when that legal power is power they enjoy because it is given to them politically. Cosatu, and the ANC, have political agency, and are therefore politically culpable for Zuma’s relationship with the Gupta family ruining us.
Zuma is not politically innocent here, but neither is Cosatu, nor the ANC. And the same, of course, goes for the SACP. Its leader, Solly Mapaila, reportedly referred to the Guptas as the “elephant in the room” at the recent ANC NEC lekgotla. Well, Solly, if we’re honest, that elephant has been stomping all over the room for a very long time. And, as we know, many SACP members serve in the national and provincial cabinets.
The idea of the SACP being some sort of intellectual or moral mentor of the ANC is a non-starter. The post-apartheid story of the SACP remains one of being co-opted into government, and thereby being silenced. Now senior communist leaders have a constitutional duty to take collective responsibility for this government, including the leadership of Zuma, by virtue of them being part of the executive.
It is not that Dlamini or Mapaila are wrong to be concerned about the Guptas’ proximity to the president. We have all been concerned for the longest. But why is this concern not translating into these alliance partners leveraging their alliance better to stop the president in his tracks? The answer is not, as some argue, that one has to be patient and crafty in choosing how to bring about change inside the alliance. That is compelling only when, on balance, more good than harm is coming out of a complex relationship.
In this case, more harm for workers and the poor, than benefits for them, are flowing from the leadership of Zuma. And so the calculus should be simple. The actions of the president could hardly be more misaligned with the very basis of why Cosatu and SACP exist – a pro-worker and pro-poor agenda.
Which leaves one explanation for the inaction of alliance partners. They too enjoy eating at the trough.