Satire=Democracy

South Africa goes to the polls in a week’s time. The ANC will win with a huge majority. The only real question is how huge is huge. 63% is probably the magic number – the percentage of the vote which Mandela won in 1994. Thabo Mbeki increased that in 1999 and 2004 (where the ANC won 69%). Should a Jacob Zuma-led ANC poll less than 63% then there might be a bit of an internal inquest into what went wrong.

The ANC, and Zuma in particular, do not possess a stellar record. Some commentators are likely to claim that a two-thirds majority vote for a ruling party led by a man accused of several counts of corruption shows South Africa is not really a democracy. In fact, some commentators already are.

However, one good barometer of the strength of any democracy is the willingness of voters to make fun of its leaders. And judging by that guide, South Africa isn’t doing too badly.

While I was in the country earlier this month there were plenty of signs that South Africans feel able to laugh at Zuma and the ANC:

• Joburg’s Market Theatre has just opened a show new play called MacBeki. that indirectly explores Mbeki’s dramatic fall from office (There’s also a character called MacZum.)
• I saw a couple of shops selling ‘Zuma shower gel,’ a dig at Zuma’s ludicrous claim that during his 2006 rape trial that he showered after he had sex so that he wouldn’t catch HIV.
• Last week a guerrilla artist put up fake ANC posters taking the mick out of Zuma (my favourite: ‘Justice is the name of my next wife’).

Life’s not a bed of roses for South Africa’s satirists though. Zapiro, one of the continent’s sharpest political cartoonists is currently being sued by Zuma over this cartoon:

And ANC officials didn’t seem to show much of a sense of humour after the fake posters sprung up. Jesse Duarte, the ANC’s spokeswoman, rather dramatically blamed “forces of darkness”.

Still, judging by the amount of satire in the country South Africa’s democracy is in a far stronger state than almost every other country in Africa and quite a few in Europe. (Yes, Italy, I’m looking at you.)

Hopefully South Africans will still feel able to laugh at Zuma once he becomes president. 

Help! The Commies are taking over South Africa!

Worrying news about Jacob Zuma and the ANC in the UK’s Sunday Times. According to their man in Joburg, the ANC has “has veered sharply to the left” and is planning to stand on an election manifesto  “largely dictated by the country’s Communist party”.

The man responsible for this dangerous shift is Gwede Mantashe, who the Times describes as a “firebrand” and more worryingly, “bearded”.

“Under his influence the ANC is expected to propose, in its as yet unpublished manifesto, the introduction of universal health insurance, free education, the extension of child allowances to all children up to the age of 18, new maternity grants, wage subsidies, an old age savings scheme, subsidised housing for farm workers and military veterans, free food handouts to all poor families, an expanded public housing programme and the “transformation” of the private sector through the “development of cooperative financial institutions”.

This is clearly dangerous stuff. Free education and old age pensions have been introduced to devastating effect by communist regimes like Britain and the US. That well-known commie Barack Obama plans to introduce universal health care in the US, while David Cameron, who hides his communist sympathies behind the cloak of Thatcherite economic policies, has promised to keep Britain’s NHS if he gains power.

There is a serious debate to be had over South Africa’s future economic direction, including the influence or otherwise of the South African Communist Party within the ANC and Mantashe’s role as secretary general. No one really knows where Jacob Zuma stands on a whole range of different issues. Here’s how the New York Times described him in a profile last September:

 

“…as Mr. Zuma has edged ever closer to South Africa’s presidency, his ideological underpinnings, if they exist at all, have remained opaque. Is he the pro-business capitalist who has reassured investors that “nothing will change”? Or does his heart lie with the trade unions and Communists, the base of his support? There is a third possibility, of course. It is that Mr. Zuma, as many here suggest, is the ultimate political chameleon, all things to all people, someone who senses what his audience wants to hear and then plays the right tune.”

 

I wrote a piece for Monocle at the end of last year which came to a similar conclusion. Of course, “Zuma is a bit of a chameleon” isn’t as exciting a headline as “Left seizes control of South Africa’s ANC”.