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WITS University Press - Susan Booysen

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147 pages

English

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Precarious Power critically examines the political dynamics of the Ramaphosa presidency as head of state and of the ANC in South Africa, and its significance.
What happens in the aftermath of a former liberation movement–political party losing its dominance but surviving because no opposition party is able to succeed it? The trends are established. South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) is in decline, its hegemony weakened, its legitimacy diluted. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment suspended its electoral decline, but heightened internal organisational tensions between those who would deepen its acquired status as corrupt and captured, and those who would remodel it as redeemable. These are the knowns of South African politics; what will evolve is less certain.
Political scientist Susan Booysen uses in-depth research and analysis to distil that which is bound to shape South Africa’s political future. She focusses on contradictory party politics; internal ANC dissent that is veiled for the sake of retaining electoral following; populist policy-making, protest politics and the use of soft law to mollify angry citizens and avoid further protests. Her analysis of the ANC’s gentle stance on captured state institutions lest the Zumaist malcontents rebel reveals a weak president wavering on a tightrope between serving the needs of the organisation and those of the nation. Precarious Power is the name of the political game, for the foreseeable future.
Tables and Figures

Preface

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Chapter 1 The ANC and Precarious Power

Chapter 2 Shootouts Under the Cloak of ANC Unity

Chapter 3 Boosted Election Victory, Porous Power

Chapter 4 Presidency of Hope, Shadows and Strategic Allusion

Chapter 5 Courts and Commissions as Crutches Amid Self-Annihilation

Chapter 6 Reconstituting the Limping State

Chapter 7 Parallelism, Populism and Proxy as Tools in Policy Wars

Chapter 8 Protest as Parallel Policy-Making and Governance

Chapter 9 Parallel Power, Shedding Power and Staying in Power

Select Bibliography

Index

Sujets

Political Science

HISTORY

General officer

General

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Publié par	WITS University Press
Date de parution	01 février 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776146475
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

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Extrait

Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg 2001
www.witspress.co.za
Copyright © Susan Booysen 2021
Published edition © Wits University Press 2021
First published 2021
http://dx.doi.org.10.18772/12021026451
978-1-77614-645-1 (Paperback)
978-1-77614-649-9 (Hardback)
978-1-77614-646-8 (Web PDF)
978-1-77614-647-5 (EPUB)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
Project manager: Inga Norenius
Copyeditors: Monica Seeber and Lee Smith
Proofreader: Inga Norenius
Indexer: Margie Ramsay
Cover design: Hothouse
Typeset in 10 point Minion Pro
CONTENTS
TABLES AND FIGURES
PREFACE
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
CHAPTER 1 The ANC and Precarious Power
CHAPTER 2 Shootouts Under the Cloak of ANC Unity
CHAPTER 3 Boosted Election Victory, Porous Power
CHAPTER 4 Presidency of Hope, Shadows and Strategic Allusion
CHAPTER 5 Courts and Commissions as Crutches Amidst Self-Annihilation
CHAPTER 6 Reconstituting the Limping State
CHAPTER 7 Parallelism, Populism and Proxy as Tools in Policy Wars
CHAPTER 8 Protest as Parallel Policy-Making and Governance
CHAPTER 9 Parallel Power, Shedding Power and Staying in Power
SELECT REFERENCES
INDEX
TABLES AND FIGURES
CHAPTER 2
Table 2.1 ANC membership figures, 2007–2017
Table 2.2 Branch delegate allocations per province at ANC elective conferences
Table 2.3 Polokwane, Mangaung, Nasrec election results for the top-six officials, 2007, 2012, 2017
Table 2.4 The rise of presidents through ANC ranks, 1991–2017
Table 2.5 Process of removing a president from power: The case of Jacob Zuma, December 2017 to February 2018
CHAPTER 3
Figure 3.1 Ramaphoria and support for other party political leaders, 2016–2019
Figure 3.2 Support gap between main parties, Elections 2004–2019
Table 3.1 National turnout in South African elections, 1994–2019
Table 3.2 Declining voter registration by gender and age group, Elections 2014–2019
Table 3.3 South Africa’s national and provincial voter turnout in elections, 1999–2019
Table 3.4 National ‘vote edge’ of the ANC, DA and EFF, 2014–2019
Table 3.5 Number of political parties participating, Elections 1994–2019
Table 3.6 Comparative trends across six national elections, 1994–2019
Table 3.7 Party support across 11 national and local elections, 1994–2019
CHAPTER 4
Figure 4.1 Timeline of major ANC scandals, 1996–2020
Table 4.1 Ramaphosa’s Cabinet reshuffles and other executive changes
Table 4.2 Ramaphosa’s co-optive, consultative, supplementary leadership structures and events: Select initiatives
Table 4.3 Changing the guard of presidential advisers and core staff
CHAPTER 5
Table 5.1 South Africa’s High Courts and Constitutional Court directing the politicians and government
Table 5.2 Core commissions of inquiry, 2004–2019: Illustrations
CHAPTER 6
Table 6.1 South Africa’s incurable state-owned enterprises: Select cases, 2018–2020
Table 6.2 Succession of national directors of public prosecution
CHAPTER 7
Table 7.1 Landmarks in post-Nasrec land policy: ANC directives
CHAPTER 8
Figure 8.1 Community protest at and around election times in South Africa, 2009, 2014 and 2019
Figure 8.2 Zwelihle: Party results in five voting districts, Elections 2009–2019
Table 8.1 Protest tracking, trends summary, 2004–2018
Table 8.2 Voter turnout for Zwelihle, Western Cape: Wards 12, 6 and 5
CHAPTER 9
Figure 9.1 Four faces of ANC power: Interpretation of precarious trends
PREFACE
P recarious Power is about how South African politics revolves around a powerful but contradictory main character, the African National Congress (ANC), in the time of Cyril Ramaphosa.
It delves into politics in a way that helps us to understand the unspoken texts, the often near-imperceptible rules. It leads us to see how ‘the system’ of ANC dominance flounders yet survives. This story of South African politics pieces together and reinterprets the trends we think we have seen and know – but we don’t always see them for what they are. My study connects the dots and draws the lines. It reveals the rules and laws of an ANC intermingled (if not fused) with South African politics. It is a bottom-up case study of how a mammoth but meandering former monolith created more layers of politics while the people forged alternative politics rather than trade their ANC for another party. It is a politics that rewrites the textbooks.
The process of writing this book was like a rollercoaster of political despair and hope, and the story remains incomplete. It started with a coincidental meeting at a Sophiatown jazz club when my publisher Veronica Klipp and I reflected on ANC politics. Jacob Zuma’s fall was gathering momentum, a mere few months after I had completed Dominance and Decline and five years after I had set out the fundamentals in The ANC and the Regeneration of Political Power . The story was continuing, the plot gaining character and the finale uncertain. I had to continue analysing the saga. The narrative of the immediate events kept on changing – dramatic scenes moved from the Nasrec cliff-hanger to the recall and continuous fall of Zuma; Ramaphoria as the new panacea; elections that were ambiguous at best; the disillusionment and reality checks that followed, aggravated by the complex Covid-19 moment while the curse of corruption throttled Ramaphosa’s ‘new’ ANC. But the otherworld of South African politics, of ANC and of popular creation, continued opening in the wings, and the ANC lived and lives to see another political day.
The more the narrative ran on, the more the trends cohered and painted a curious picture of ‘the system’ in which the ANC ruled. Whether I investigated the institutions of the state, public policy-making, election practice or people’s protests, the trends were there in a system with strength that depended not simply on the veracity of its institutions and formal processes but also on indulgence in and tolerance of supplementary processes, alternative layers, complementary institutions. It was a parallel politics and, above all, a suspension of popular disbelief that the former liberation movement could be fatally flawed and faltering.
My research took five years of intense observation, collection of details, mapping of patterns, reinterpretation of political reality – ANC conferences and briefings, speeches, ANC statements, policy documents, government records, court and commission proceedings and investigative reports and writing. I observed; monitored events; analysed content; did interviews with those prepared to speak without trying to mislead; engaged with communities to hear first-hand how cadres and others related to the ANC; and dissected the reliable public opinion polls to help in seeing the bigger picture. On many of the topics in this book I developed sets of in-depth case studies to build the picture of people and protests, policy, the Presidency, state institutions and party politics. It was a continuous, 360-degree research operation. Then analysis followed.
My analysis is about seeing and synthesising the patterns and trends. What were the commonalities and consistencies, perhaps even the surprising realities, that the mass of research details revealed? The answers – my arguments and interpretations – fill the pages of this book.
The pages of references at the end of each chapter reveal much of my style of analysis, and the character of Precarious Power . The sources in many of these notes are not cited as the source of arguments – rather, they illustrate the type of information, provide typical examples or highlight an event that proves an argument. Many points like these, detected and recorded in my personal database of research – which I have been constructing since my research for The ANC and the Regeneration of Political Power – inform my inferences and insights. The book is about critical analysis, not ‘solutions’ … unless the reader is prepared to perceive the solutions through an understanding of the present and its precise dynamics. This understanding of praxis is what I see as the contribution of this book.
There was no boring moment. There would not have been a manuscript had the ANC not provided me with so much, such rich and such vexing information.
My heartfelt thanks go to Wits University Press for the confidence in my scholarship and authorship. This journey of three books on the ANC in ten years would not have been possible had it not been for the core team of Veronica Klipp, Roshan Cader and my astute editor, Monica Seeber.
Susan Booysen
20 October 2020
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS AIC African Independent Congress ANC African National Congress ANCYL African National Congress Youth League ANCWL African National Congress Women’s League ATM African Transformation Movement BLF Black First Land First Concourt Constitutional Court Cope Congress of the People Cosatu Congress of South African Trade Unions Covid-19 Coronavirus disease of 2019, caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV2 CR17 Cyril Ramaphosa 2017 ANC presidential campaign DA Democratic Alliance EFF Economic Freedom Fighters EISA Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa KZN KwaZulu-Natal IEC Electoral Commission (of South Africa) IFP Inkatha Freedom Party IMC Inter-Ministerial Committee (of Cabinet members) IMF International Monetary Fund MP Member of Parliament (of South Africa) NCCC National Coronavirus Command Council NDPP National Director of Public Prosecutions NEC National Executive Committee NGC National General Council NNEECC National Nuclear Energy Executive Coordination Committee NPA National Prosecuting Authority PAC Pan Africanist Congress PCAS Poli