Drawing parallels between Donald Trump and Jacob Zuma is idle but amusing. Both have returned, in different degrees, from the political wilderness.
Trump never stopped campaigning, despite his many brushes with the courts. Zuma too, and you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll have a candidate lined up to replace Cyril Ramaphosa as president of the ANC when it chooses a new leader at the end of 2027. Panyaza Lesufi is my current guess.
Unlike Trump though, Zuma has not had to learn any hard lessons from defeat. His new MK Party is hopelessly disorganised, with officials picked and chucked like the toys of an ill-tempered child. Even the MK secretary-general Floyd Shivambu, hired from the EFF last year with the express purpose of bringing some order, is now in danger of losing his job as Zuma’s predatory children ignore him.
We should be grateful. Zuma is still a real threat to South Africa. Whatever we may think of him, he is a formidable political animal — a cunning strategist and a master of the tactical feint that gets his opponents running one way while he stands still.
Perhaps the president knows this is flammable stuff and that the dialogue should have the air taken out of it right from the start. That is what he did
The MK Party itself may be a feint. Zuma isn’t interested in organising anything. All he wants is Ramaphosa out of the ANC. He may rightly figure if he waits a bit longer the ANC will do it for him.
Ramaphosa is no slouch politically but when you consider the decay in Johannesburg under people resolutely opposed to him, and his reluctance to intervene for fear of political consequence, you have to ask what he thinks he needs to do (and what price we shall all pay) between now and December 2027 that would guarantee him the authority to anoint the successor of his choice. He needs to continue with the painfully slow reforms he has in mind and he wants to see out a full second term.
Given that, you have to wonder why Ramaphosa would do his best to alienate his own modernising constituency and utterly ruin for them the relatively simple task of announcing the creation of a national dialogue. No-one expects much of this undertaking but it has a feel-good promise that we might somehow have an adult conversation about our national decline.
Perhaps the president knows this is potentially flammable and that the dialogue should have the air taken out of it right from the start. That is what he has done. The proposals had been put together by the guardians of black political thought and consciousness, the big foundations representing past leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Steve Biko and others.
They had taken it to Ramaphosa, who has a record of failing to deliver consensus agreements. He welcomed it and on December 16 announced that “a national dialogue will be convened in 2025” and that “in due course I will appoint an advisory panel of eminent persons to provide guidance and advice”.
“I will also appoint a national dialogue steering committee.” The foundations would play a role in the steering committee.
“We expect that the national dialogue will reach agreement on the critical challenges facing the nation … to develop a shared vision of what it means to be a South African.”
Most South Africans are way past caring about stuff like this, but instead of welcoming the announcement the foundations were furious. “The national foundations had not expected the president to appoint this preparatory/steering committee,” they snapped in a statement, “as doing so unavoidably freights and introduces perceptions that the national dialogue is a government-run initiative to be leveraged for political advantage. We hope this will be urgently corrected. Otherwise the national dialogue may lose credibility even before it starts.”
I had an insight of my own into how the presidency may have dealt with the foundations. My final column here before the break was to suggest Ramaphosa might indeed announce the dialogue in his Reconciliation Day speech. But I thought it polite to check, so I WhatsApped Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, to ask.
“Hi Peter,” he replied. “I don’t think so.” I pressed again and he replied there had been no discussion he knew of to introduce the dialogue into the speech.
When Ramaphosa did in fact build his speech around the dialogue I WhatsApped my surprise. “I just couldn’t give you the scoop man, sorry,” the spokesperson replied. “We don’t like giving previews to the president’s speeches... Your sources were spot on and you should have gone with their directive rather than listen to me.”
Lesson learnt. The presidency will lie to you when it wants to, which is a kind of relief. One less check to worry about in the future.
Ramaphosa might prefer to bury the dialogue rather than have Mbeki (they despise each other) popping up over the country taking notes, but in the process he may have done Zuma a favour.
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