Nothing stays the same for more than 24 hours in our politics. A president is ousted and replaced in less than three days. Our analysts are confused. We clutch at straws, we contradict ourselves, events overtake our just-formed theories.
The old formulas don't work anymore. The rollercoaster of SA politics has run us all ragged.
No-one wants to stick his or her neck out.
So I am going to put my head on the block and say this: the ANC is in trouble. It is in trouble electorally and it is in trouble organisationally. Its façade is crumbling. Election 2009 will expose its weakness.
Mbhazima Shilowa and his supporters will, in the run-up to Election 2009, gather up strength across the provinces and regions. Theirs is what I call the Ghandi, or United Democratic Front, strategy.
Here is how it works.
From the week in October 2008 when Mosiuoa Lekota announced the mounting of a national convention to canvass various scenarios for the future of the country and its democracy, it became clear that the idea was to keep the ANC on the ropes. Lekota's press conference was followed swiftly by a tour of the ANC's troubled Western and Eastern Cape formations.
A week later Shilowa made his announcement. The ANC had no answer but to insult, insult and insult again. Meanwhile, a new announcement every week meant that the ANC was on the back foot and the new crowd was defining the agenda.
The 2009 election will result in the ANC, the continent's oldest liberation movement, emerging hobbled and needing a coalition partner in key provinces.
Gauteng, the country's economic heartland, will be one such province. The Western Cape will be another. The ruling party's majority in the Eastern Cape will be shaken to the core. Limpopo, the Northern Cape and the Free State will also experience shifts. Only KwaZulu Natal and Mpumalanga seem safe from the contagion.
And so the ANC's 2004 majority of 69,6% is threatened. At national level it may well scrape through with more than a 50% majority, meaning that it will be able to install Jacob Zuma as the president of the republic, but this is no longer a certainty. Should the ANC receive less than 50%, it will need a coalition partner, as it now does in the Western Cape.
There are implications. The first is that Zuma's path to power may not be so clear anymore. If, as I expect, the new party grabs a substantial chunk of voters, the ANC will be turning to them - rather than to the hated DA or anyone else - to form a ruling coalition. Remember that these are children of the same womb.
The rebels will then put a simple demand on the table: we have no policy differences with you, but JZ cannot be president.
They will then say they will come on board in all the provinces if Zuma is ousted and Kgalema Motlanthe continues as president of SA.
The ANC, bleeding and shorn of its immense power, will be forced to agree.
For those who are watching policy, a bit will change, but not that much. The ascendant ideology in the ANC at the moment is Left-leaning, and so one will definitely see a leftward lurch. Among the identifiable signs of this will be:
- The establishment of new state-owned entities, including a state bank and state-owned farms;
- Adjustments to inflation targeting and the mandate of the SA Reserve Bank. These have already come under attack from some orthodox, capitalist economists and the Left. Inflation targeting is very likely to be abandoned, or at least the target range - 3%- 6% - reviewed;
- Changes to land policy, and expropriation as a means to accelerate the transfer of land to blacks; and
- Reconsideration of the national budget surplus. It, too, has come under attack, and a Zuma administration would want to fund some of its new initiatives (education, public service salaries) from this surplus - if there is a surplus.
But here is why we live here: In just 15 years we will be on to our fourth president, there will be a real and viable opposition, and accountability will have entered our politics. It makes all the political turbulence quite, quite worthwhile, doesn't it?
- Malala is a columnist and political commentator
