Election posters with the faces of Jacob Zuma (in yellow), African National Congress and South African president, and Helen Zille (in blue), opposition Democratic Alliance are displayed on May 2.RODGER BOSCH/AFP/Getty Images
Summary
As South Africa holds national elections May 7, the ruling African National Congress is in a relatively comfortable position. After the elections end, it will focus on grooming President Jacob Zuma's successor as party leader and on relations between party leadership and ethnic voter bases. The party will also turn its attention toward its socio-economic alliance with the Communist Party and the main labor movements, continuing efforts to stabilize the mining sector and working toward its longer-term goal of expanding state control over the South African economy.
Analysis
Although the African National Congress faces several other parties in the elections, none of the opposing parties will seriously challenge the absolute majority of the African National Congress. The progressive Democratic Alliance has never managed to secure the black South African majority vote, and the more radical left-wing newcomer, the Economic Freedom Fighters, probably will not be able to draw a sufficient share of the African National Congress' traditional electoral support base, which it has held since the end of apartheid.
Most likely, Zuma will retain the presidency, but a successor will replace him as leader of the African National Congress in 2017. The South African Constitution limits presidents to serving two five-year terms, and because the presidency conventionally goes to the president of the ruling party, the future president of South Africa is likely to be decided at the 2017 African National Congress elective conference.
Zuma became party president in 2007, succeeding Thabo Mbeki, who was also South Africa's president at the time. A power struggle erupted within the African National Congress when Mbeki sought a third term as party president; his opponents mobilized behind Zuma. Mbeki's faction -- Marxist intellectuals who went into exile during apartheid or were imprisoned with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island -- was pushed aside by Zuma's faction, which consisted of former members of the armed wing of the African National Congress, called Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the Nation. Zuma's faction has cultivated a support base in the ethnic Zulu population of South Africa and has continued to use ethnic alliances, rather than left-wing labor movements, as a foundation for electoral power.
Labor Relations and the Succession Issue
However, the African National Congress does not ignore labor movements entirely. Labor unions -- particularly the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which combines a large number of unions and represents an estimated 1.8 million workers -- constitute only about 8 percent of registered voters. Many of these voters will continue to cast their ballots along ethnic lines and according to traditional African National Congress allegiances, regardless of disputes between labor leadership and the party over political offices or influence. While this severely limits the level of influence labor movements could have in the South African elections, Zuma and the African National Congress will continue to accommodate them. The ruling party cannot simply break with labor and the Communist Party, but it can downgrade their prominence.
This is why Zuma chose Cyril Ramaphosa as deputy president of the African National Congress. A former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers and a leading figure in the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Ramaphosa plays a key role in pacifying relations with labor movements. His background as a business magnate -- along with his leadership in organized labor, the private sector and the African National Congress -- qualifies him to take on the task of managing socio-economic stresses, especially in the labor-intensive mining sector. Recently, in the lead-up to the elections, Ramaphosa was instrumental in the party's reconciliation with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the National Union of Mineworkers after a spat over the labor organizations' lack of influence on policymaking.
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Ramaphosa could remain instrumental in this way, possibly by addressing the 15-weeklong strike by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union in the South African platinum sector. However, he is unlikely to be tapped as the next party president in 2017. Ramaphosa is an ethnic Venda, a group that constitutes only about 2.4 percent of the South African population; the Zulu and Xhosa make up 22.7 percent and 16 percent of the population, respectively. Thus, the significance of his ethnic support base is extremely limited. Like his predecessor Kgalema Motlanthe, Ramaphosa is supported by the increasingly ethnocentric African National Congress as long as his aspirations are limited to the position of deputy president.
The competition for the party presidency likely will take place between politicians from the Zulu and Xhosa ethnicities. And so in 2017, a break from convention will occur: Instead of the party's deputy president succeeding the incumbent president, the new president will be chosen from the Zulu or Xhosa. However, Ramaphosa could remain deputy president without controversy for another full term.
The Party's Pursuit of Greater Control
The 2017 leadership transition could weaken Zuma as South Africa's president for the last two years of his term, since control of the African National Congress will become the prerogative of his successor. As the party moves toward this transition, it will also continue consolidating control over the state. In particular, this means expanding the government's control over the economy. The African National Congress does not want to embark on a streak of forced nationalizations, but it does want the state to carry out a calculated long-term encroachment on industry.
Like the apartheid-era National Party before it, the African National Congress wants the state to have a greater decision-making role in the economy. This is because the government cannot rely on the private sector to secure employment for undereducated and underemployed black South Africans and raise their socio-economic standards -- which, despite being economically inefficient, are among the African National Congress's top objectives in order to ensure political loyalty. The ruling party, having won the political battle, wants to make sure it is not subverted by the private sector, which remains largely in white and foreign hands.
The private sector will not be taken over, but it will be forced to work with black interests though economic empowerment schemes. Moreover, the private sector will be forced to work with state-owned enterprises like utility and infrastructure agencies, ensuring that the government can shape whatever economic developments take place.
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