by Nontando Guwa

The festive season should, by nature, be festive. The past season, however, was anything but.

A typical day involved a diet of television and radio news – load-shedding depending – broadcasting the sounds of Pastor Jacob Zuma, now ANC president, calling for his machine gun; DA leader Helen Zille’s calls on the NPA to give word on whether they were charging Jackie Selebi or not; and further afield, towards the New Year, Kenya’s Raila Odinga calling for a re-run of elections in Kenya.

Every newspaper in the country had pictures and articles from the ANC’s Polokwane conference (the 52nd National Conference) on almost every page.

Unfortunately for those who rely on television for their daily update of happenings, Eskom’s load-shedding programme was in full swing.

Scary things are being said about the whole business of load-shedding and our growing economy. According to Azar Jammine, chief economist at Econometrix, in an interview with Independent Online,  government should forget about a six-percent growth rate after 2010 as power outages worsen over the next five to six years. He said that there would be less investment, lower economic growth and reduced job creation.

As if that weren’t bad enough, The Independent reports that criminals are now following the load-shedding time-table – because most security systems are electricity-dependent, it makes sense, if you’re a burglar, to hit when the power’s out. And this, according to security companies, is exactly what’s happening, with housebreaking rates increasing over periods of load-shedding.

Months have passed since Cabinet announced it was making South Africa’s outrageous shortage of power a national priority.

Over the festive season, however, load-shedding was of less importance to the ruling party than the battle between President Thabo Mbeki and Zuma which continued in Polokwane.

A clear division of the ruling party was evident during the conference as the position of presidency in South Africa, which most of us hold in high regard, was reduced to nothing by members of the ANC Youth League in Polokwane, and nobody except Mbeki’s mother rebuked their actions.

In an open letter to the ANC published by the Sunday Times, MaMbeki alludes to the “hooliganism” on show at the ANC National Conference. She states in her letter that her concern is “with the position of presidency and the lack of respect certain ANC cadres had shown towards it in recent months”.

MaMbeki also called for the country’s electoral system to be revised so that voters, and not the party, could directly choose their party representatives in Parliament.

This issue has been raised by several parties during the floor-crossing debate and one can only hope that the ruling party would seriously take the debate further.

In Polokwane, we saw what Zille called “the coalition of the disgruntled”, clearly shown by the block voting of the top six officers of the NEC with Zuma as party president. In politics, history shows that most democratic breakthroughs are achieved not by high-minded people introducing great social visions, but by grubby people who mobilise the masses.

History also shows that putting these loose masses back into their box proves rather difficult. Sadly this is currently evident in the crisis in Kenya, and if South Africa is not careful, it could be headed that way.

It is also clear that Polokwane is only the first phase of a rather steep road leading to the 2009 elections. As a country, we dealt admirably with our transition from apartheid into democracy, but it remains to be seen whether our actions in Polokwane didn’t undermine the efforts of greats like Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and others who worked diligently to bring South Africa to where it is today.

As if the drama at Polokwane was not draining enough, the NPA swung into action almost immediately after the conference. A string of 16 charges of racketeering, money laundering, corruption and fraud against Zuma were captured in an indictment published by the City Press in late December. Allies of Zuma alleged that these charges were politically motivated; however, Mokeketedi Mpshe, acting NPA head, told the Mail & Guardian in December that the decision to formerly charge Zuma had been made independently.

When asked the same question by the Sunday Independent, Mpshe said it was “absolute nonsense, Mbeki did not even know we were going to charge Zuma or what we were going to charge him with”.

Not to be left out of the headlines, Zuma took a fourth wife and no, she is not the daughter of the Swazi Kingdom for whom he had initially paid lobola!  A queue-jumper of sorts appears to be the “first lady” in waiting.

But back to more serious matters: One wonders if in a rainbow nation such as South Africa there is still room for tribalism, parochialism and sectionalism, as was played out at Polokwane.

The one man who managed to edge Jacob Zuma from the headlines, at least momentarily, is Jackie Selebi, South Africa’s top cop. His suspension and arraignment in court managed to take centre stage for a while.

Selebi faces criminal charges for taking money from mafia boss Glenn Aglioti, Billy Rautenbach and corrupt mining tycoon Brett Kebble.

This follows a series of attempts by Selebi to forestall his arrest as he launched an application to block the Scorpions’ investigation, and the controversial arrest of Scorpions advocate Gerrie Nel, who is leading the team investigating Selebi.

Of more concern to the South African public is how Mbeki could not have known the extent and gravity of the case the NPA was investigating against Selebi. This is despite the fact that the suspended head of the NPA, Vusi Pikoli, “handed Mbeki a top-secret report detailing allegations against Selebi early last year”.

Pikoli was “suspended on the basis of an irretrievable working relationship between the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development and the NDDP”, said spokesperson Themba Maseko when interviewed by SABC.

The warrant of arrest that the NPA had secured for Selebi’s arrest then was subsequently cancelled following Pikoli’s suspension, and a commission of enquiry led by Frene Ginwala to probe and investigate the suspension was established.

The festive season ended and everybody went back to work, but the drama still unfolds.

The Ginwala Commission of enquiry is still urging government, who is somehow failing to meet the deadlines for its submissions, to expedite the enquiry; Selebi has a court case pending and most disappointingly Aglioti, in his statement against Selebi, reveals that Mbeki is walking around in shoes bought for him with Aglioti’s money; and our own pastor and ANC president Zuma has a string of charges looming against him.

It should be interesting to watch the developments in our political space as we draw nearer to the national elections next year.

References:
Mail & Guardian (14-20 Dec 2007; 4-10 Jan 2008; 11-17 Jan 2008)
Sunday Independent (30 Dec 2007; 06 Jan 2008; 13 Jan 2008; 20 Jan 2008)
Sunday Times (23 Dec 2007; 30 Dec 2007; 6 2008)
Daily Dispatch (20 Dec 2007-18 Jan 2008)
http://www.iol.co.za
http://loadshedding.eskom.co.za
http://sabcnews.com/news_archives/
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/pr.html
http://www.mg.co.za/specialreports

The Local Government Transformer Feb/Mar 2008