in the 1960s. After independence, relations between the Zanu government and the ANC were sensitive, and a number of ANC operatives were detained during the 1983 Matabeleland massacres which cost some 20 000 civilian lives. These massacres provided an early indication of Zanu’s authoritarian character and its preference for transacting politics through violence. A badly mauled Zapu was forced into a government of national unity as a junior partner. Although it is tempting to see this as a precursor of the current arrangement with the MDC, the earlier agreement was the product of Zanu coercion and it was able to dictate terms to a broken-backed Zapu. By contrast, the contemporary agreement, although it was the product of Zanu intransigence in refusing to accept electoral defeat, was essentially driven by external forces, particularly the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The GPA was constructed in the face of strong Zanu hostility, even being viewed as an affront to its dignity, thus the reluctance – in some cases, outright refusal – to implement fully its provisions.
If the social character of Zimbabwe is different from that of South Africa, so too are its experiences of white domination. In the 1970s, the overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans were peasants and almost half of Rhodesia’s territory was tribal trust land. This contrasts with the scattered and miniscule thirteen per cent of land reserved for black Africans in apartheid South Africa, and the difference is the secret behind the relative success of the Zimbabwean guerrilla struggle, especially in the Eastern Highlands, whereas the guerrilla struggle in South Africa seldom moved beyond the armed propaganda phase.
The epicentre of the South African struggle was the township (both urban and rural), the university campus, the factory shop floor, the faith community and the popular and underground publications, and this set it apart from most Third World liberation struggles in the twentieth century. South Africa developed its anti-apartheid struggle though the wide-ranging democratic movement, the United Democratic Front (UDF) which linked trade unions, civic society organisations, the churches, and women’s movements into a formidable force with deep popular roots. This has no counterpart in Zimbabwe’s struggle for liberation. It is true that after 1994 the UDF was disbanded, but its legacy has been a powerful civil society and a widespread commitment to pluralism, factors which constitute a powerful antidote to Zanufication. South Africa is not, of course, immune to the ruling party stagnation and bureaucratisation we have seen in Zimbabwe or, for that matter, and in a somewhat different context, in the communist parties of the former Soviet bloc. But after independence in Zimbabwe, the mass base of the liberation struggle was demobilised. Many fighters returned to the countryside while the leaders became cabinet ministers and generals. Raymond Suttner (2010) has eloquently charted the tendency by ANC leaders to use the mass movement as a ‘battering ram’ rather than a partner (particularly evident during the negotiated transition) and the tendency towards centralisation and aloofness which became so striking under Mbeki was evident even when Mandela was leader. This has inevitably led to dismay and demoralisation among the rank and file. Mbeki’s own emphatic defeat by Zuma in the election for the party presidency in 2007, however, confirmed that this demoralisation and demobilisation was much less advanced in the ANC, and that the party grassroots still maintained a vibrancy and assertiveness – and a capacity to overturn elite machinations – which has all but disappeared in Zanu PF.
The strength of South African civil society is evident in the activities of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) on HIV/AIDS, South Africans for a Basic Income Grant, and the Anti-Privatisation Forum, as well as the annual strikes by workers against the effects of privatisation. These organisations are new social movements which have introduced new concepts of citizenship and collective action, and most of them operate at the local level. The Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, or SECC, for example, has campaigned for access to affordable services in that township. The SECC has its roots in the ANC – its leader, Trevor Ngwane, is a charismatic figure who was expelled from the ruling party for opposing restructuring plans for Johannesburg. The SECC has sought to invigorate not only veteran activists and ordinary people, but also young people. It seeks to emulate the ANC’s own traditions of defiance by leading marches to councillors and the mayor’s house, often cutting off the latter’s electricity supply (Egan and Wafer, 2004). The chapter by Buccus and Hicks elsewhere in this volume adds further evidence to our argument in regard to the resilience of South Africa’s NGO sector.
The TAC put together the first successful, national-level social movement and fights, as part of the wider Social Justice Coalition, for cheaper anti-retroviral drugs, and to eliminate the stigma associated with being HIV positive. It used the court system effectively and maintains (at times controversially) relations with the ruling ANC, as well as with key elements within the municipal and provincial health bureaucracies. In addition, the TAC has built a movement that includes AIDS sufferers as well as a cross-racial membership and leadership and good ties with the trade union movement (Jacobs, 2008).
THE ANC AND ZANU PF
The ANC was established in 1912 and is Africa’s oldest liberation movement. Its commitment to democracy and nonracialism is more powerful than that of Zanu PF, and the Freedom Charter which was endorsed by the ANC in 1955 at the Congress of the People pledged South Africa to a vision of nonracialism and a platform of radical popular democracy.
The ANC’s December 2007 Polokwane national conference endorsed Zuma as leader of the ANC and defeated Mbeki and his supporters. This open competition provided a sharp contrast with the national conference held by Zanu PF at the same time and which was a thoroughly orchestrated, top-down affair. The organisational report, for instance, was not discussed; it was not even distributed to delegates. A copy was held up on the podium. ‘Here is the organisational report. Does conference adopt it? Thank you very much.’(Cronin, 2008b). In contrast to the liberal, radical democratic and socialist currents of the ANC, Zanu PF has been almost entirely shaped by a bitter military struggle (in which violence was uncritically extolled and practised) and its politics are still strongly marked by ethnicity.
For three decades, Zimbabweans have been held captive by a nationalist project that has become increasingly bankrupt and incompatible with democracy, while it has been estimated that South Africa averages more protests per person than any country in the world – on average at least sixteen every day (Jacobs, 2008). Peter Alexander (2010: 27) suggests that there were some 34 000 protest gatherings between 2004 and 2008. In 2010, delivery protests reached a record high. These ‘delivery protests’ are a double-edged sword for South Africa: on one level they confirm the existence of a strong culture of protest (of a kind liquidated in Zimbabwe) but they also point towards a crisis of effective governance and place a question mark over the country’s long-term political stability.
Although Zuma was regarded by many as a problematic political alternative to Mbeki at the ANC’s Polokwane conference, it is true nevertheless that Mbeki respected the fact that he had lost the vote and he ceased to be ANC president. Moreover, in September 2008 when he was ‘recalled’ by the ANC executive, he resigned the presidency of the state and accepted the committee’s view. It is difficult to imagine Mugabe demonstrating such respect for constitutional and democratic processes. In this sense it is important to make a clear distinction between the thoroughgoing authoritarian character of Zanu PF in contemporary Zimbabwe and the real but contained and contested authoritarianism of the ANC in South Africa which still exists within, and is tempered by, the country’s broader democratic infrastructure. Just as dominance has an impact upon the strength of a democratic culture so, equally, a democratic culture has an impact upon the character of one-party dominance.
THE WORKING CLASS AND THE TRADE UNIONS
In
