Guptagate has placed the ANC between a rock and very hard electoral place. How does one sell an incredible story of absolution of South Africa’s political executive, in effect a tragicomedy that mocks revered principles of accountability, sovereignty and integrity of government, to voters, literally on the eve of Election 2014?
Imagine the task… the ANC government side of the Guptagate story embraces the repertoire of self-investigation by the executive, of directors-general investigating their bosses. There are smoking guns that are absolved without the requirement of an explanation.
In pulling together its own election manifesto, the ANC will need to face the fact that its remarkable successes since 1994 do not guarantee continued voter allegiance. Election 2014 will stand as an epoch where scarce probity, lack of good judgement, lapses in liberation movement values, lack of accountability, and indiscriminate luxury through personal enrichment by public means are the other side of the achievements coin.
In structuring its campaign messages, the ANC will be hamstrung by its history in government. It comes with a record of diverting investigations and not quite “coming clean” with their constituents. The arms deal still needs resolution roughly 15 years after the bubble first burst.
The current investigation started because the ANC had to act to remain in control of the terms of reference. Even this investigation appears compromised at times – and has helped raise question marks about judicial investigations. Oilgate was unmasked but ongoing practice does not suggest that lessons were learnt. Nkandlagate continues begging for full disclosure.
The ANC comes with Luthuli House’s crossed lines with Chancellor House, and years of deals to place comrades to help establish the ANC in the yet-to-be-liberated business sector. The deals long preceded the Zuma-ANC’s hegemony. South Africa’s voters have thus far tolerated this tale of the two houses. How well, however, will they tolerate the confluence of personal rather than party beneficiation through the party apparatuses?
Voters are no strangers to their president being ensnared in allegations of self-enrichment and bartering of influence. Thereafter the voters affirmed him in 2009, and in Mangaung the ANC re-elected the candidate who was known for consorting in the Gupta den.
Secretary-general Gwede Mantashe suggested that President Jacob Zuma did not owe the ANC an explanation. Perhaps Mantashe is right – “No 1’s” relationship with the Guptas is well recorded. These include employment and accommodation deals for Zuma children and a Zuma wife; the Gupta threesome of Atul, Ajay and Rajesh on occasion being better informed about top ANC and government moves than core cabinet members; the three throwing their weight around when it came to deals with the government.
There is not much that needs explanation, many voters may reason.
Rather, the ANC government may enlighten the nation on a few of the ground rules of politics and government. If the Guptas drop the Zuma name to get their way with bureaucrats, why disciplinary action for gross misconduct, when according to the directors-general’s report, bureaucrats do just that?
Further basic rules of governance that would help the ANC on the path of (re)constructing credibility would be to acknowledge that officials may very well take decisions (or exercise pressure in order to get the decisions) because they know that it is what the political principal/s want.
There need not be a paper trail. It is how loyal political underlings do their work. Yet the absence of proof of instruction by the executive for the Gupta landing is offered to the not-so-gullible citizens as evidence of innocence. Voters deserve more respect.
The ANC inputs into the parliamentary debate show that the ANC cleverly goes for the opposition jugular, charging that they play election-election when they attack the landing.
The motives of the opposition parties and much of the substance of their attacks are reduced.
“Between now and the elections,” argues Gwede Mantashe, “more and more dirt is going to be dug up on every one of the ANC leaders as part of the campaign.” Thus, he says, to the voting public, chill about Guptagate, it is just electioneering.
Obviously, the opportunistic opposition party brigade is taking advantage.
It is manna from political heaven if the governing party essentially pens your election manifesto.
Perhaps this dissing of the opposition is anchored in ANC voter research, which tells the party-movement not to mind Guptagate; everything is fine in the ANC’s relationship with the people. Perhaps it is a simple gamble – damage control by pre- delegitimation of the criticisms, also through accusations that opposition parties are consumed by Zuma-hate.
This ANC strategy, however, suffers a fatal flaw. It assumes that it is the opposition parties that own and mediate criticisms… rather, critiques raise their heads far and wide and particularly also in ANC circles. The voices have nothing to do with Mbeki and Cope nostalgia and everything with not agreeing with the prevailing epidemic of indiscriminate personalisation of power and privilege at the apex of the organisation.
The voting public are not the same starry-eyed crowd of two decades ago.
Having attended de facto ANC political school for two decades, citizens are more cynical now
But in 2014 it may very well be that a powerful ANC election campaign, driven by stacks of Gupta rands, helps the ANC save Election Day 2014.
- Booysen is professor in the Graduate School of Public & Development Management, Wits University and author of The ANC and the Regeneration of Political Power.