As part of a small population of South Africans living in New Hampshire, the questions I am most commonly asked are: What do you think of the president, and do you think South Africa is in a state of demise?
My answer is typically cautiously optimistic: South Africa is certainly in a precarious place, but we have strong fundamental democratic institutions, and an active and outspoken media, civil society and public (and, for now, none is legally repressed), and that gives me hope.
For the first time, my optimism has started to bend ever so slightly toward doubt.
Even as Iceland’s prime minister resigned for being implicated in the Panama Papers, last week the opposition parties in South Africa’s parliament lost a motion to have President Jacob Zuma impeached. This loss was due to the commitment of members of the ruling African National Congress, of which Zuma is leader, voting to preserve their nearly two-thirds majority bloc rather than according to their conscience.
Why was there such a motion proposed in the first place?
The president had allowed $17 million of taxpayer money to be spent on turning his rural home into a mansion, complete with purported “security upgrades” such as a swimming pool, visitors’ center, amphitheater and new houses for relocated relatives.
A complaint was filed with the public protector – a public watchdog and ombudsman established by the country’s constitution – for investigation. She found that upgrading Zuma’s home had cost taxpayers almost eight times more than the amount spent on President Nelson Mandela’s home and 20 times more than was spent on President Thabo Mbeki’s.
Specifically, the luxury features included in the upgrade did not legitimately serve the purpose of security, and the president should reimburse the public the amount spent on these undue benefits.
Zuma and his party stalled. The party’s representatives established a parliamentary committee to investigate what should be done pursuant to the public protector’s recommendations and, to no one’s surprise, found no guilt on the president’s part. Zuma would not restore the public funds and the ANC would not compel him to do so.
After months of members of the political opposition dramatically halting question-and-answer sessions with the president by their insistence in parliament that Zuma must #PayBackTheMoney in accordance with the public protector’s findings, followed by public protests and campaigns such as #ZumaMustFall, the matter was finally decided by the Constitutional Court.
On March 31, the highest court unanimously found that “the president failed to uphold and defend the Constitution” as required by his oath of office, a damning indictment worthy of impeachment.
The president and his party did not agree.
The next day, the president delivered a special address to the public in which he claimed that, until the court had ruled, his obligation had been unclear. This, despite the court’s statements to the contrary that the president had a constitutional obligation to honor the public protector’s findings. This address was a far cry from the apology that it was billed as.
The leaders of the ANC (including the speaker of the National Assembly, the primary chamber of parliament) also came to Zuma’s public defense.
Since then, numerous intelligent ANC ministers have leapt to the president’s defense, insisting on an interpretation of the Constitutional Court’s findings that contradicts the court’s own words. Some of the ANC stalwarts, however, like Ahmed Kathrada (who spent nearly all of Mandela’s 28 years in prison with him), have come out to publicly say that the ANC is no longer the same and Zuma should resign.
Following months of media-uncovered corruption scandals, such as just how much power over the government the Gupta family (three wealthy brothers relocated to South Africa from India in 1993) has received in exchange for its patronage, the South African public is tired and despairing.
The failure of the ANC to impeach Zuma seems to tell us a lot – especially when, in 2008, a year before the end of his term, then-President Thabo Mbeki was recalled by the ANC for much less (conspiring to fire Zuma as his deputy president and leading the party too autocratically). It suggests just how deeply rooted the corruption of the ANC is, and that perhaps the reason why Zuma may not be removed is that he stands as bastion and protector of the institutionalized corruption from which all of the leaders of the ANC benefit.
The question that remains is whether members of the public are sufficiently tired of the corruption that disenfranchises them to express their rejection of the new ANC model of government when they go to the polls to elect municipal officials in August.
Unfortunately, the options available on the opposition parties’ side are generally not sufficiently attractive and might rather lead people not to vote at all, which only benefits the ANC.
The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, is still perceived as a party serving white interests, and many black people fear it would return South Africa to a version of apartheid. This is a message the ANC capitalizes on in each election.
South Africans face a question similar to the one Americans are wrestling with as they decide among the visions of America advanced by Republican candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz (who sow fear, especially of minorities) versus those of Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
As I hope for South Africa, I hope for here, too, that members of the public would not fall victim to propaganda or allow themselves to be silenced and disempowered by despair, but rather go out and declare loudly through their votes that they will not tolerate a politics of fear.
(Sindiso Mnisi Weeks is assistant professor in Public Policy of Excluded Populations at the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development, University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is from South Africa and lives in Nashua.)