South Africa, the neoliberal logjam, and (shhhh) gender
Congratulations are due Jacob Zuma – apparently far more Machiavellian than even his arch-opponent since 2005, Thabo Mbeki – and the tireless band of warriors from the Congress of SA Trade Unions, SA Communist Party and African National Congress Youth League who kept his political life support on when everyone else declared him dead.
But after his election as ANC president on Tuesday, the disintegration of his voting bloc is not far off. As Brian Ashley of Amandla magazine explains, Zuma commands “a broad coalition of disgruntled elements within the ANC. A period of political instability awaits. The ‘dreaded’ two centres of power have materialised and given rise to a lame duck President.”
This is promising indeed, after 13.5 years of unrelenting neoliberalism mixed with triumphalist nationalism (often, in turn, flavoured with ‘Breshnevite Marxism’, as the ANC’s left discourses have been termed in rare moments of autocritique). Indeed amongst the general public, there is a widespread conviction that a new balance of forces within the ANC presages a genuine left policy turn. To make this impression…
FULL COMMENTARY BY PATRICK BOND
Now here is a commentary from Loudrastress on Zuma’s rape acquittal:
A feminist lawyer friend who works in the gender based violence NGO sector has just reminded me that tomorrow will mark a year since the delivery of the judgement on the Jacob Zuma rape case. She said she was reflecting on how much has changed, or not changed in the context of GBV in South Africa. I don’t know that a whole lot has changed, or that we have fewer questions now than we did a year ago. It seems as though we have much more to think about than we did before the case.
I do know that the rape case of the former national vice president turned the volume up on gender based violence, not just in relation to the case itself, but also generally why we live in the siege we do as women. I have been called melodramatic when I’ve used “siege” to describe the state in which women live within the borders of the South African nation state. I stand by my words. Anybody with a cursory appreciation of how likely each woman is to be subjected to different forms of gender based violence (sexual harrassment, physical abuse, psychological battery, financial abuse, forced subjection to the witness of degradation and violence metted out to others, etc) knows that I am being far from melodramatic.
The case brought us face to face to the widespread nature of South African hypocrisy on the subject of gender anything. On the one hand…
Josiah:
Bond’s Zuma-Clinton analogy is interesting:
“We all witnessed how most of the US progressive movement fell
flat on its face in 1993, suckered by Bill ‘Slick Willy’ Clinton – whose
defeat of an elite incumbent (George Bush Sr), rural roots, home-boy
humility, traditions of Southern patriarchy (and promiscuity) and
apparent empathy for ordinary people presaged Zuma’s own character flaws
– and I think this is probably going to be the fate of a large portion
of the SA centre-left.”
Especially since, like Zuma, Bill Clinton cannily deployed progressive symbolism while practicing neoliberalism. And both exploited women while projecting a populist, down-home/grassroots nationalist posture. Remember how Clinton’s team engineered the air strike on Sudan, which ended up destroying a pharmaceutical plant (causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people, as even the mainstream press and later Chomsky pointed out) during the Lewinsky hearings? Zuma, in the same vein, gave populist speeches in which he chanted ‘Lethu Mshini Wami’ (give me my machine gun, an old slogan from the anti-apartheid struggle) during his rape trial. I don’t want to press the analogy too far, given the obvious disanologies between a global superpower and an apartheid-ravaged, subimperial regional one, but in both cases you had a leader adopting the Strong Nationalist Protector posture to deflect charges of exploiting women.
The Loudrastress post takes the issue head-on, and it is chilling that writes, “I long for a country I can feel safe in” (although I don’t think that country would be the U.S., either!). She touches on another interesting parallel, which is the shallowness of dominant-group self-effacement:
“On the one hand, it is about as hard to find someone who supports violence against women in SA as it is to find a white person who voted for apartheid. Yet, we did not imagine apartheid and we are not imagining the rampant abuse of women today.”
21 December 2007, 9:27 amThomas:
My previous comment did not go through.
Have a look at Richard Pithouse’s A coffin for the councillor.
22 December 2007, 1:08 pmCharles:
It is extraordinarily disspiriting to read about South Africa in the last ten years. The anti-apartheid movement and the ANC were such a source of pride and inspiration for radicals and Black activists around the world. Now Mbeki and Zuma are just complete disgraces to that legacy. One can only say : the struggle continues; victory is certain.
26 December 2007, 12:29 pmThomas:
Mbeki was understood to be the ‘power behind the throne’ during Mandela’s term, hence the neoliberal GEAR. The South African Communist party was considered neoliberal by (at the latest) ‘96 … Unfortunately, the ANC’s website (Gear was generally understood to be Mbeki’s handwork) is messed up, probably because of Polokwane (their conference just ended). The following GEAR ‘workbook’ for the ANC membership is up.
Many radicals had misgivings about the ANC quite early on (e.g. late ’70s), especially regarding their deliberately capitalistic orientation; compare them with Mugabe, his last-minute (government-wise) land-redistribution not withstanding.
Also key is Zuma’s ethnic base - the ANC is trying to woo Zulus away from the (originally apartheid supported) IFP - the merger with the (N)NP should be seen in the same light: they were trying to win Coloured voters in the provincial elections (Western Cape) - they didn’t have much of a chance with the (N)NP’s white supporters, who generally left for the DP/DA, and Coloured voters are sufficiently antagonistic to the ANC’s black base generally.
27 December 2007, 11:40 pm