Fighting for the Dream

For Barbara

Abbreviations and acronyms

AGOA Africa Growth and Opportunity Act

ANC African National Congress

ANCWL ANC Women’s League

ANCYL ANC Youth League

ATC African Transformation Congress

AU African Union

BEE black economic empowerment

BLF Black First Land First

Brics Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa

CDE Centre for Development and Enterprise

Codesa Convention for a Democratic South Africa

Cope Congress of the People

Cosatu Congress of South African Trade Unions

DA Democratic Alliance

EFF Economic Freedom Fighters

EWC expropriation without compensation

FNS Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung

Gear Growth, Employment and Redistribution

GNU government of national unity

HSF Helen Suzman Foundation

IMF International Monetary Fund

MEC Member of the Executive Council (provincial cabinet minister)

MK Umkhonto we Sizwe

MKMVA Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans’ Association

Nafupa National Funeral Practitioners Association of South Africa

MP Member of Parliament

NDP National Development Plan

NDR National Democratic Revolution

NEC National Executive Committee

Nepad New Partnership for Africa’s Development

NGO non-governmental organisation

NHI National Health Insurance

NPA National Prosecuting Authority

Numsa National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa

OAU Organization of African Unity

OBE outcomes-based education

PIC Public Investment Corporation

Prasa Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa

RDP Reconstruction and Development Programme

SAA South African Airways

SABC South African Broadcasting Corporation

SACP South African Communist Party

Sadtu South African Democratic Teachers’ Union

SAIRR South African Institute of Race Relations

SAPS South African Police Service

SARS South African Revenue Service

SIU Special Investigating Unit

SME small to medium enterprise

SOE state-owned enterprise

UDF United Democratic Front

UN United Nations

Foreword

When I returned to South Africa permanently in 1995, I did so with the intention of helping the liberal current in the country as far as possible. It seemed to me then – it seems to me now – that with the country in transition from one authoritarian nationalism to another, nothing could be more important than to keep the liberal spirit and tradition alive.

I left Oxford in order to take up the post of director of the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) at the invitation of the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung (FNS), which has played an admirable role in promoting the liberal cause in South Africa for many decades now. Although one of the smaller German political foundations, it has probably had more impact than any other. The Democratic Alliance (DA), which it has supported, has multiplied its vote more than 13-fold since 1994 and the HSF and the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), which it also supports, are without doubt the country’s two leading political NGOs.

I enjoyed working with the FNS’s small but dedicated staff, and over time I came to have a strong friendship with Count Otto von Lambsdorff (then world president of the FNS) and his wife, Countess Alexandra. Otto and Alexandra were always wonderfully well-informed about world affairs as well as analytically shrewd; besides which they were just warm, good friends. My wife and I mourned Otto’s death in 2009, and to this day his photo occupies an important place in our house.

Those were difficult times. The African National Congress (ANC) was utterly dominant and very hostile to the liberal cause. Fundraising was next to impossible. Running the HSF then meant extreme unpopularity and sometimes being under threat. The real divide was between the few people with the backbone to stand up – and the rest. One relearns old lessons in such a situation. As Pericles put it over 2 500 years ago, ‘The secret of happiness is liberty, the secret of liberty is courage.’ The friends you made in such a situation really counted.

Of that little group of HSF and FNS staff that I worked with in Johannesburg in those years only one person remains today, Barbara Groeblinghoff. Barbara has worked indefatigably to assist liberal parties and NGOs throughout southern Africa for a quarter of a century. Her contribution has been immense, and although she and I have ploughed different furrows, I have always been conscious of her working away in rough parallel with myself. A wide variety of organisations owe Barbara a great deal, and she has always worked unobtrusively with efficiency, energy and charm. I have little doubt that Otto and Alexandra would understand and applaud the fact that this book is dedicated to Barbara. Naturally, neither she nor anyone else carries any responsibility for the opinions in this book. Both they and all the mistakes are my own.

RW Johnson

Cape Town, February 2019

Chapter One

Moment of truth

17 December 2017. A moment of high political theatre in the Nasrec conference centre in Johannesburg. For years, things had been building up to this, the election of a new president of the ANC, who would, almost automatically, become the new president of South Africa.

Jacob Zuma, the sitting president, had won power by defeating Thabo Mbeki at the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007. Mbeki had fallen for that besetting sin of African presidents: he wasn’t willing to give up power. Since he had really run the country under Nelson Mandela’s presidency and then had two terms of his own, by 2007 he had held power for 13 years but still couldn’t bear to walk away. And whereas the state presidency was limited to two terms, the ANC presidency could be held indefinitely, so Mbeki decided he would run again and use that position to continue pulling the strings of government. But he had antagonised too many people and was decisively voted down by the conference.

Ten years later, Zuma found himself possessed of an equally strong wish to retain power beyond his allotted two terms. His gambit was to run his former wife, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, in his place – with exactly the same intention of pulling the strings of government and ruling through her as a virtual puppet. The evidence suggested that Zuma was immensely corrupt and had made both his family and himself extremely rich in office, while virtually handing the country over to the control of his friends, the Gupta family. Zuma was naturally keen to maintain this lucrative arrangement, but he also had reason to fear that if he lost office he might face losing everything and going to jail.

It was not difficult to find ANC old-stagers who were horrified at the thought that Zuma might be followed by another Zuma, that South Africa should succumb to the same dynastic rule that had destroyed Angola and the Congo. And they could point to Zimbabwe where, only a month before, Robert Mugabe’s attempt to arrange for his wife, Grace, to succeed him had provoked a military coup and the end of the Mugabe regime.

The truth was that there was a grossness to Zuma. It showed not only in his corruption, indeed his virtual treason in handing over the state to the Guptas, but also in the completely blatant way it was conducted and his cheerful dismissal of any criticism of it as ‘racist’ or even as ‘persecution’. It showed, too, in his propensity, even well into his seventies, to father further love children here and there – most recently with Nokuthula, daughter of Ben Ngubane, the former board chair of Eskom and the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).¹ This side of Zuma drove many South Africans almost to despair, for Zuma’s appetites seemingly had no limit. He adopted the style of a 19th-century Zulu king, with his own ‘royal kraal’; had as many wives and as many children as possible; and pride of place was given to his large herd of cattle. Indeed, Zuma benefited from gifts of cattle from several ANC premiers, who allegedly scooped up the money allocated to help poor black farmers and spent it on Zuma’s herd instead.²

This grossness showed in Zuma’s political methods too. It was not just that he was tempting fate by trying to prolong his power beyond his two terms as ANC president, after having denounced Mbeki for attempting the same thing. He was shrewd, knowledgeable and effective, but his style was that of Tony Soprano. He was only too happy to work through corrupt provincial bosses; they were at home with his methods, knew who to bribe or bully, and knew how to get things done for themselves and their boss. Committees were rigged, caucuses were packed, key actors and gatekeepers were paid off, and sometimes, especially in Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal, those who made difficulties were assassinated. Above all, Zuma, the one-time head of ANC Intelligence, made full use of the security services, ANC security and the crime intelligence division of the South African Police Service (SAPS), all of which he packed with loyal Zulus. ANC politicians, knowing that Zuma’s spies were ubiquitous and always listening, were careful to take the batteries out of their cellphones before talking to each other.³

Enter Ramaphosa

The man who stood between Zuma and the realisation of his ambitions was Cyril Ramaphosa, the former trade unionist and multimillionaire businessman whom Zuma had drafted into his regime in 2012. In part Zuma had done this because his government’s image was suffering under the weight of his and the Guptas’ corruption. Ramaphosa was the man who had negotiated the Constitution, who had been secretary-general of the ANC, and he had clean hands. Ramaphosa knew he was joining a thoroughly rotten regime but his earlier career had been thwarted by a rivalrous Mbeki, and he knew that if he ever wanted to get to the top he had to do so from the position of deputy president, the position which had traditionally served as the launch pad to the presidency. Even so, sources close to Ramaphosa say that, at first, used as he was to the more rational discussions of company boardrooms, he could hardly believe what he heard around the cabinet table, a forum where ignorance, incompetence and ideological blindness jostled to produce often extraordinary arguments and proposals. However, Ramaphosa had not joined the regime in order to argue but in order to get along, so he held his tongue and went along.⁴

Zuma was not, though, a man to give away a post such as the ANC deputy presidency on general principle. He had first done a deal with Ramaphosa on a crucial matter, the expulsion of Julius Malema, the wildly populist head of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), who had backed Zuma’s rise to power but had by then turned against him. Zuma recognised in Malema an operator just as shrewd and ruthless as himself, and Malema too was determined to get to the top. He was not easily to be bribed or bullied into line, and both in his home province of Limpopo and in the ANCYL he had set afoot powerful organisations directly answerable to himself alone. In a word, he was a real threat, and when he began to denounce Zuma as a dictator, Zuma decided to act. But the ANC had always been squeamish about disciplining its own, so when the job had to be done it was invariably whites or Indians in the ANC who had to chair the disciplinary committee. In the case of Malema, the job was given to Derek Hanekom, an old white trusty, who duly found Malema guilty and sentenced him to five years’ suspension from the party.⁵

Malema naturally appealed. He was an unbridled racial populist and it was clear that he would denounce Hanekom’s verdict as ‘white man’s justice’, so a senior black figure would have to be found to chair the appeals committee, a thoroughly dirty job because Malema would be bound to denounce any African who played such a role as a traitor and sell-out. But in April 2012 Ramaphosa agreed to accept the job and duly confirmed Malema’s suspension. Zuma then happily agreed to fulfil his part of the bargain and back Ramaphosa for the party’s deputy presidency at the Mangaung (Bloemfontein) conference in December 2012.

Ramaphosa had paid a considerable price. Zuma, having dispossessed Malema of his ANCYL base, now moved against Malema’s Limpopo base. The provincial executive committee was thrown out and Malema supporters evicted right down to ward level in every town and village in a thorough act of extirpation.⁶ But in July 2013 Malema launched his own party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and it soon became clear that not only would he not lie down dead, but he would also be a considerable factor into the future. And Malema was not a man to forget a slight. From then on he viewed Zuma as a mortal enemy, with Ramaphosa close behind. Meanwhile, Zuma continued to hand dirty jobs on to Ramaphosa.

Zuma’s downward slide

What Ramaphosa had not bargained for was the depth of the Zuma regime’s corruption. As more and more evidence came to light, public opinion was appalled. The Constitutional Court found that Zuma had violated his oath of office. There were repeated motions of no confidence in Zuma mounted in Parliament. Every parliamentary appearance by Zuma was turned into a shambles by the EFF, whose members shouted ‘Pay back the money!’ until they were ejected by security officers. The justice system had become so rotten and compromised under Zuma that when his son Duduzane – one of the biggest beneficiaries of the regime’s corruption – drove his Porsche into the rear of a minibus taxi, killing two women and injuring two others, a judicial inquest found that the deaths had been caused by negligent actions but the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) nonetheless declined to prosecute.⁷ With the NPA in the president’s pocket, a Zuma could now literally get away with murder. It was only when an application was made by AfriForum to bring a private civil action that the NPA decided to charge Duduzane with culpable homicide⁸ – and that was only when the public indignation against Zuma had risen to such heights that the NPA could sense the end was nigh.

Throughout this gathering mayhem, with Zuma’s reputation plunging in the polls among all categories of South Africans, Ramaphosa maintained a cheerful public attitude of support for the president. He had decided that he must be able to campaign for the presidency from the platform of the deputy presidency, and that he could therefore not risk doing or saying anything that might allow Zuma to sack him.⁹ But such silence did Ramaphosa’s reputation no good. By the time the campaign for the party presidency got under way, the media clamour against Zuma had reached fever pitch and was echoed by many leading ANC stalwarts.¹⁰ Even ordinary ANC members concluded that Zuma’s corruption had brought the country low, and it was clear that Zuma’s troubled reign was ending in complete disgrace. Inevitably, this undermined Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s campaign for the party presidency. Ramaphosa had strong media support and was now quite obviously a strong alternative candidate. Thus, Zuma found that he had lost control of events and that getting Dlamini-Zuma elected would be far more difficult than he had envisaged.

A bridge too far

The campaign itself was unprecedented. Traditionally the ANC leadership had been decided by a small cabal of senior party leaders who presented the party with a single candidate, who was then duly elected with unanimity. But now there were seven candidates openly competing for support, trying to put across their own personal manifestoes and implicitly criticising the previous (Zuma) administration. What could not be disguised was that this new openness was a sign of how divided the party had become.

Zuma had hardly given up, though. He knew that every possible sort of manipulation and vote-buying was possible in the election of delegates to the ANC conference – and he was allegedly a past master at it. Inevitably, this meant having to work through the great party bosses of the so-called Premier League – Ace Magashule (Free State), David Mabuza (Mpumalanga), Supra Mahumapelo (North West) – as well as the pro-Zuma leadership of KwaZulu-Natal. In the other ANC-ruled provinces Zuma leaned strongly on the premiers to deliver their delegations, or, as in Limpopo, if the premier was hostile, he encouraged insurrection against him by ambitious rivals within the local ANC apparatus. On top of that, of course, Zuma knew that at the conference itself there would be extensive vote-buying. It was a measure of how far the ANC had changed that all the presidential contenders were now extremely wealthy men and women, so the conference would somewhat resemble an auction. But with the resources of the state at his disposal, backed up with funds from the Guptas and other major supporters, Zuma felt sure he could outbid all comers.

Ramaphosa knew what Zuma knew, which was why one key element of his campaign was asking white businesspeople for support. His business career had seen him move for years among the white business elite, and now these connections proved of great benefit both financially and in terms of shrewd advice. Under Zuma, business had lain in its bunker, distraught at the damage being done to the whole economic infrastructure but intimidated by the constant appeals for action against ‘white monopoly capital’, which made it quite clear that the state viewed business as the enemy. Speaking out would only make one a target for revenge action, so little was said publicly.

Privately, business was in despair. Fresh investment had largely ground to a halt in 2010–2011 and now the main preoccupation was to get as much money as possible out of the country. South African companies bought up foreign companies as fast as they could, often in a state of near panic. A lot of very poor purchases were made as a result, but at least the money was offshore. Naturally such businessmen grasped at Ramaphosa as a virtual saviour and opened their wallets for him. One prominent businessman asked Ramaphosa how much he wanted from him. When Ramaphosa said ‘ten million rands’, the man gave him thirty million.

Zuma’s spies were following Ramaphosa’s every move, so Zuma was fully aware of this. A rumour campaign was spread that Ramaphosa was a sight too friendly with white businessmen, especially Jews. This canard was widely seen as being aimed at Stephen Koseff, the head of Investec, which handles some of Ramaphosa’s investments.

The mood in the Zuma camp was embattled. When under pressure, Zuma liked to depict himself as a victim being unjustly persecuted, a posture that is almost second nature for ANC activists with their history of struggle against white rule. Zuma had grown up in Nkandla, Zululand, listening to the stories of his elders about the Bhambatha Rebellion of 1906, during which Chief Bhambatha kaMancinza, head of the Zondi clan, had staged raids on the British colonial administration from his hiding place in the Nkandla forest. So, while the opinion surveys and focus groups carried out by eNCA, the independent TV network, made it clear that Zuma’s unpopularity, even among ANC voters, was overwhelmingly due to his reputation for corruption, Zuma’s own depiction of the situation was quite different. He was the modern Bhambatha fighting against the forces of imperialism and their agents and lackeys – such as Ramaphosa. This narrative was picked up and relayed by Zuma’s supporters. Ramaphosa was cast as a tool of the imperialists (assumed to be local businessmen plus the British and Americans) and even as a CIA agent.¹¹

The Mabuza switch

When the conference began, Zuma felt he had all the bases covered. Magashule and Mahumapelo had made sure their provinces would cast almost unanimous votes for Dlamini-Zuma (though popular opinion in both cases lay massively the other way). Both the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) and the ANCYL were securely in the hands of Zuma clients. Both these organisations were mere shells of what they once had been, but their bloc votes were still invaluable. (The ANCWL was in such a tattered state that its delegation to the conference actually included men.) Even in her home province of KwaZulu-Natal, Dlamini-Zuma had run only slightly ahead of Ramaphosa, but Zuma had made sure that the province’s delegates would also be almost unanimously behind her. Limpopo was solid for Ramaphosa, as were Gauteng and the tiny Western Cape delegation. There had been pro-Ramaphosa insurrections in both the Northern and Eastern Cape, though Zuma still counted on a substantial fraction of the latter’s delegates, and the Northern Cape delegation was also tiny. What this meant was that the contest would come down to what David Mabuza, the premier of Mpumalanga, would do.¹²

Until recently, Mabuza had been one of the most solid members of the pro-Zuma Premier League. He had come to power thanks to Zuma’s patronage and had built his regime into an impregnable fiefdom. He was alleged to have looted endlessly – The New York Times was later to run a special feature on the extensive corruption and extremely rough methods of the Mabuza regime.¹³ Mabuza had, as a result, become extremely rich, and any opponents who put their heads above the parapet were not likely to survive long. Zuma knew all this and had felt confident of Mabuza’s support. It had therefore come as a very unpleasant surprise when Mabuza, in the run-up to the conference, had announced that he was sitting on the fence – clearly with the calculation that this could make him the kingmaker. Zuma’s initial response to that had been fury: how could Mabuza be such an ingrate and traitor? Dire threats of wrath were made by the Zuma camp, but Zuma quickly realised that Mabuza was so well dug in that it was impossible to dislodge him or even encourage any significant opposition to him within his province. The only way to buy his votes was to offer him a king’s ransom.

After endless politicking, on 17 December things finally came to a head. Zuma sat impassively, wearing an ANC golf shirt and baseball cap, as he heard the results read out: Dlamini-Zuma 2 261 votes, Ramaphosa 2 440 – a majority of 179. There was pandemonium in the hall. Zuma grimaced slightly but was otherwise stony-faced. In one second all his hopes had been dashed. It could only be due to treason. Quite obviously, Mabuza, on whom Zuma had counted, had switched sides at the last moment. A few moments later the results were announced for the deputy presidency: Lindiwe Sisulu 2 159, David Mabuza 2 538. The kingmaker strategy had worked.

Zuma’s distress was so obvious to his family – outwardly impassive though he was – that a Zuma daughter got up, walked across and sat down next to her father to comfort him. For Zuma could already read the meaning of the result. President Ramaphosa. Zuma would be forced to resign. He would have to face the courts, with the whole country wanting to see him jailed. As Zuma was well aware, the Guptas had already fled the country.