Tiro Ramatlhatse

SA needs an open-hearted dialogue confronted prejudice, corruption, ethnic natioanlist arrogance and greed, says the writer.

Gerald Shaw

President Jacob Zuma will deliver his State of the Nation speech at the opening of Parliament in Cape Town tomorrow, at the start of what promises to be a momentous year in South African politics.

The president presides over a fractious ANC riven by a fierce succession contest. His appeals for unity in the organisation’s centenary year have scant hope of success. And now there is the Malema verdict adding to the ferment.

The business community remains positive – yet it is apprehensive about the future. The captains of commerce and industry watch anxiously to see whether the government’s proclaimed clean-up drive succeeds in restoring the dysfunctional provinces and municipalities and some failing state departments to a reasonable condition of order and efficiency.

No doubt the president will say many or most of the right things in his opening address. The country’s needs are desperately obvious.

As former president FW de Klerk suggested last Thursday, on the anniversary of his historic announcement on February 2, 1990, it is time for all South Africans to respond to President Zuma’s call for an inclusive national dialogue to address increasingly urgent needs. It is time the players stopped shouting past each other and began talking across historic lines of division.

And it seems to me that the slide downhill needs to be addressed without delay. As De Klerk has argued, a national dialogue should be as inclusive as possible. All those who can make a meaningful contribution to the debate – the government, business, labour, civil society and religious groups – should be at the table. There should be a real effort to find common ground and to reach agreement on effective solutions.

Such a dialogue would work towards answers to these questions:

l How is South Africa to restore human dignity to the masses of our people who are unemployed, poverty-stricken and badly housed?

l How are we to empower all our children through decent education?

l How are we to ensure rapid and sustained economic growth for the benefit of all our people?

l How are we to promote real equality so that all our people – and not just the 30 or 40 percent of the richest – benefit from our constitutional democracy?

It remains to be seen whether President Zuma has the political will and elbow room to translate his words into action. And can he bring the rather creaky machinery of state to bear effectively to get the country moving in a new direction?

He is preoccupied with the succession contest and appears keen to serve another term. If he wants it he can probably get it, although this may change in an increasingly volatile situation. The outcome will not be decided until the ANC’s December national conference.

Meanwhile, this is a good time to consider where the country stands and the possible trends ahead.

The bad news is that the degradation is far advanced of SA’s institutional structures of state. The good news is that we still have a model constitution, an independent judiciary and freedom of expression. Yet these fundamental pillars of a free society are under threat.

The constitution is not in direct danger of amendment. The threat is indirect and insidious. Some ANC leaders and spokespeople ignore provisions of the constitution in what they say and in what they do. Happily, the FW de Klerk Foundation and other civil society institutions are alerting public opinion to the need to safeguard our constitutional rights and freedoms. The foundation deserves powerful corporate and public support.

Thankfully, the judiciary is holding its own. Yet, an over-hasty process of transformation could become a concern. The danger of political appointments to the Bench looms in the future.

The threat to freedom of expression and freedom of the media – and particularly the print media – is rather more immediate.

The DA parliamentary opposition and civil society are rallying opposition to the Protection of State Information Bill, better known as the secrecy bill. Catholic Archbishop Steven Brislin of Cape Town is giving a timely lead to the churches in speaking out strongly to defend our constitutional rights and freedoms – and in urging the inclusion of a public interest clause.

As it stands, the bill could, and no doubt would, be used to protect corrupt individuals and institutions, sending whistle-blowers and investigative journalists to prison.

In spite of the sustained opposition, this obnoxious measure has already been passed in the House of Assembly. It is now on its way to the National Council of Provinces, where the ANC majority has an opportunity to back down, given the wide outcry of public opinion against the bill, even within the ranks of the ANC itself.

The ANC is split, and Struggle heroes like ex-cabinet ministers Pallo Jordan and Ronnie Kasrils have not been silent. Shortly before his recent death, a courageous member of the Mandela and Mbeki cabinets, Kader Asmal, led the moderate centre of the ANC in speaking out very strongly indeed. And Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe suggested in November that the ANC might yet heed the demand for a public interest defence to be written into the bill. But the National Assembly subsequently went ahead – without such a clause.

Yet there is a chance that the ANC elite may back off, realising how their own material interests will suffer if the bill is adopted without amendment. They will surely grasp that the adoption of such a measure would jolt investor confidence and the economy.

To top it all, the ANC is now reviving the proposal for a statutory media tribunal, arguing that self-regulation of the media is not working and needs to be given teeth. The apartheid regime of unhappy memory pursued the same course, but realised its folly at the last minute and stepped back. SA was on the point of issuing licences to approved journalists, while silencing the rest.

And the succession race? The ANC has a long-established tradition of conducting such affairs behind closed doors. Nobody, whether inside or outside the ANC, can at this stage say how it will pan out. Deputy President Motlanthe has not said in public whether he is throwing his hat into the ring. He is thought to be a strong candidate and he has broad-based support within the ANC, having a trade union background. He is probably the best man in sight.

Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale, with his common touch and business savvy, might also want to get into the race. Cyril Ramaphosa, likewise a former trade unionist, a seasoned businessman and negotiator and widely respected, would be ideal, but he is not likely to stand unless he is assured in advance of the top job. There are others of less account.

And the future? If President Zuma does stand and he is re-elected, we may expect a steady decline, with this congenial and well-liked figure seemingly impotent or unwilling to do what is needed.

South Africa’s best hope remains a realignment of party politics as the ANC squabbles and splits – and the DA moves ahead to present itself credibly as an alternative government.

A change of direction will need to be preceded by an open-hearted national dialogue, confronting the devils of racial prejudice, corruption, ethnic nationalist arrogance and materialist greed.

On the political front at the national level, the formidable DA leader of the opposition, Lindiwe Mazibuko, is establishing her authority firmly, reshuffling her shadow cabinet. She is strong and adroit, well able to deal with inane racist interjections from the ANC benches.

In the Western Cape, DA Premier Helen Zille is running the province smoothly and showing the others how it should be done. Yet Zille and Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille are in need of wiser media and strategy advisers. They have suffered unfortunate public relations reverses, infuriating the powerful environmental lobby over Chapman’s Peak and angering the housing and human rights activists and the broader public in the Rondebosch Common fiasco.

South Africa’s best hope lies in Zille’s prospects of welding together a powerful national coalition which will take in the best elements of the ANC’s social democratic, non-racial centre rather than its fat cat tender-grabbing capitalists and racially-chauvinist black nationalists of the right.

Such a development will probably need to be triggered by a political and economic crisis – as has happened before in South African history – taking the country in a new direction.

South Africa needs strong, principled leadership of unquestioned integrity. When the time is ripe, someone like Zille will build an opposition coalition, we may hope, paving the way for a broad-based government of national unity which will draw in the brightest and best of South African leaders in all communities.

l Shaw is a former assistant editor of the Cape Times.