INSIGHT

Anthony Butler

THE African National Congress’s pursuit of racial, ethnic and regional balance has heavily influenced appointments to senior government positions since 1994. The movement has achieved some success in this project, even if complaints have regularly surfaced concerning the over-representation of whites, a scarcity of non-Nguni Africans, and the superabundance of Xhosa speakers in former president Thabo Mbeki ’s second administration.

President Jacob Zuma’s Cabinet choices seemed to respect this imperative of balance, and he signally made amends for the historical under-representation of leaders from Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga in the highest offices. In the past two weeks, however, important national appointments have become mired in controversy.

When Zuma announced that Gill Marcus would become Reserve Bank governor, analyst Duma Gqubule complained that “minority” incumbents in economic portfolios, such as Trevor Manuel (planning commission), Pravin Gordhan (finance), Ebrahim Patel (economic development), Rob Davies (trade and industry), and Barbara Hogan (public enterprises) already demonstrated the ANC’s “lack of confidence” in “blacks of African descent”.

Then last week Zuma chose KwaZulu- Natal safety and security MEC Bheki Cele as the new national police commissioner. The leader of the Congress of the People (Cope) in KwaZulu-Natal, Siyanda Mhlongo, denounced the “Zulufication of the security, intelligence and judiciary organs”. His unease presumably derived from the rise of others of Zulu descent to security-related portfolios: Nathi Mthethwa (Police), Siyabonga Cwele (State Security), Jeff Radebe (Justice), Vusi Mavimbela (Presidency director-general), Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (Home Affairs), and Siphiwe Nyanda (Communications). This controversy comes at a historic moment of growing racial and ethnic suspicion. Allegations about the hidden privileges of white Afrikaners, Indians, Xhosas, Zulus and every other conceivable minority relentlessly circulate around the nation’s ethnic rumour mills.

In the eyes of Zuma’s defenders, Gqubule underestimates how severely apartheid depleted the pool of African financiers and economists who are available for promotion. Meanwhile, Mhlongo’s “Zulufication” claim arguably tells us more about Cope’s ethnic paranoia than it does about the new ANC leadership. Zuma partisans can claim with some justification that the breakaway party is mistaking benign regional power shifts for malign ethnic favouritism. The organic growth and electoral achievements of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal have naturally resulted in activists moving up to Pretoria, where the province has long been under-represented.

Any new president, moreover, surrounds himself with trusted lieutenants. Many of those with whom Zuma was most closely associated – in the south Natal underground, in ANC intelligence, or in exile – happen to be of Zulu or Indian descent, as a result of the places and times at which he was politically active.

For all these qualifications, though, Gqubule and Mhlongo are each right to insist that there is something seriously wrong with Zuma’s pattern of appointments. When it comes to the economic portfolios, African politicians and officials can eventually establish a “track record” with the markets, as Tito Mboweni and Jabu Moleketi have each demonstrated. Nevertheless whites, and perhaps Indians, have less need to prove their competency.

Alec Erwin’s eccentricities were tolerated by investors for a decade, and Barbara Hogan was hailed as the most successful health minister of modern times almost before she had taken office. Mboweni and Manuel, by contrast, endured long and harrowing inductions by the markets. In his later years at the ministry of finance, when Manuel had become a paragon of fiscal virtue, a Financial Times correspondent tellingly claimed he was white.

Zuma’s appointments are a step backwards because they amount to a concession to the racial misconceptions of market actors.

As for the concentration of some of Zuma’s personal associates in and around the security cluster, this is a real cause of concern – not because, as on Cope’s account, they are Zulus, but because some of them are the president’s closest political allies.

When Thabo Mbeki packed security and justice offices with trusted lieutenants at the start of his second term, it was a precursor to the alleged abuse of executive power. The potential for a small group of closely associated politicians and officials to manipulate the police, the Directorate of Priority Crime Investigation, the prosecuting authority and even the courts, is all too real. Such institutions should build procedural autonomy and rigid rule compliance, rather than falling into a chummy interdependence. As things stand, we are on the way back to intelligence wars and selective prosecutions as the next generation of succession struggles begins to unfold.

Anthony Butler teaches politics at Wits University. This article first appeared in Business Day