When President Jacob Zuma on Wednesday visited the town of Malamulele in South Africa’s northern Limpopo province, residents jeered as he promised once again that their grievances would be seen to. He’s having to get used to it on the campaign trail. Chances are, however, that those same residents will still turn out to vote for him on May 7th when Zuma hopes to be returned for his second presidential term.
Support for the African National Congress runs deep, and although many believe Zuma has been frittering away the liberation movement's political capital, there's almost certainly still enough in the bank to see its badly tainted president re-elected. In the last election, in 2009, while the ANC secured almost 66 per cent of the votes cast, almost 240,000 voters spoiled their ballots. This time, with about 1 million newly registered voters, "born frees" who never exeperienced apartheid, the abstention rate could be higher – encouraged this week even by some well-known but disillusioned ANC veterans – and the opposition Democratic Party will continue to make inroads.
Two scandals, known simply as Nkandla and Marikana, speak volumes about how far the Zuma administration has strayed from the the ANC of liberation days and of Nelson Mandela – Marikana, the site of the brutal police shooting of 34 miners on a wildcat strike for higher wages in 2012; and Nkandla, the location in rural KwaZulu-Natal of a €16 million presidential complex, complete with swimming pool, a chicken coop, a cattle enclosure and an amphitheatre, that has become an emblem of the misuse of state funds. An inquiry has found that found that Zuma “benefited unduly” in a manner “inconsistent with his office” from the state-funded improvements, and he was ordered to pay back some of the money. He has said he will respond “in due course”.
South Africa’s problem is not just with the corruption and incompetence of its president, but, just as importantly, with the inability of its political system to deal effectively with the sort of egregious behaviour that would bring down governments many times over in most western democracies. Even if Zuma is re-elected, the ANC will have to start to reinvent South African democrcy.