For SA’s beleaguered governing ANC, the rise of a high-calibre woman leader should signal a turning of the pages, and lead to rejuvenation of the body politic. But sadly, for every accolade about the woman touted to be the next party president after Jacob Zuma ends his second term, there are questions, queries and lots of red flags.
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is an ambiguous, ambitious figure, an operator and bureaucrat. She reads the currents, positions herself and collects the benefits. Hagiographies and more neutral observation alike show that she is a leader in her own right. This is far more than just a Zuma hoping to replace a Zuma.
The 68-year-old comes with exile-struggle and transition credentials, extensive experience at top government level in health, foreign affairs and home affairs, and Africa-continental engagements that helped elevate her to head the African Union.
She has skirted gaining ANC leadership positions, but her ascent comes through public deployment.
Granted, campaigning in the ANC’s succession race is at the "don’t-be-seen-to be-campaigning" and "let others do the work for you" stage. But South Africans are familiar with the main successor candidates’ pitches and strategic approaches, due to the abundance of proxy campaigning.
Dlamini-Zuma has taken the regal, cougar-style of let-the-men — along with the ANC Women’s League — do the work. She soaks up every utterance of "SA is ready for a woman president".
This is reminiscent of her divisive ascension to the AU Commission. Her campaigners did the work for her — much of the South African state was mobilised to bring in the political capital that would thwart both Francophone Africa and the convention that continental big powers should restrain ambition for the continent’s good.
It is more difficult to evaluate her organisational leadership of the ANC as she has never held a high-level party position. Her ascent comes through public deployment. Here she has gained solid credentials across her portfolios.
Yet blotches and question marks bedeck this new and gender-correct page that some in the ANC hope to turn. The ANC faction aligned to her ex-husband is her dedicated backer.
Leadership is effective if it meets the needs of the time — and if it is really good it will define the needs. Yet a core doubt about her candidacy is that it promises more of the same ANC and government culture that has bedevilled the party recently.
Zuma’s de facto radio endorsement of a woman candidate by any other name than Dlamini-Zuma reconfirmed he hopes to entrust his future to the woman who will not rock the Zuma boat.
Chip off the old block
Dlamini-Zuma appears an unlikely candidate to bring a break with the past, and with it a renewal and reconnection of the ANC with its founding ideals and early-democracy optimism. This includes connecting with a younger generation.
To crown this short-list of shortcomings, the two phrases used regularly to describe her — "incommunicative" and "not people-friendly" — hardly evoke images to fit the bill. She is also intelligent, assertive, controlling, and takes no prisoners, characteristics of many strong leaders.
Digging deeper into the Dlamini-Zuma enigma, there is scant evidence of inspirational leadership, of qualities that will help restore respect for the presidency of SA.
She hardly leads from the front. Instead, she has fronted for several big men (presidents Thabo Mbeki and Zuma in particular) in the name of the national interest and to serve their ideological and reputational needs.
Hence the question that demands cold-blooded assessment: is Dlamini-Zuma too embedded to fit the ANC bill? Are the similarities between her and the other Zuma just too tangible? Traits such as stubbornness, arrogance, and the sense of knowing best what the ANC needs come to mind.
Legacy as a minister
Dlamini-Zuma’s Cabinet posts over the years reveal much about her blend of strategy and policy substance.
She held the prime position of minister of foreign affairs for a decade (1999-2009), under presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe. Mbeki’s African Renaissance and African Peer Review Mechanism offered her platforms to operate across Africa.
She embraced these, while never upstaging her boss. She did not oppose Mbeki, for example, on his quiet diplomacy approach towards Zimbabwe. Together they turned a blind eye to torture, vote rigging and human rights abuses in the name of continental brotherhood.
As minister of home affairs in the Zuma regime (2009-12) Dlamini-Zuma was part of an auditing turnaround and improved efficiency. A succession of consultants and senior departmental bureaucrats leveraged the improvements. She took the bow, but did help improve departmental efficiency.
This time around there appeared to be no scandals until it emerged in 2015 that she, a member of the local organising committee, had ordered the payment of the $10m Fifa bribe, disguised as a football development contribution, for Caribbean football boss Jack Warner and two others.
Dlamini-Zuma’s stint as minister of health (1994-99) facilitated important sectoral transitions into the democratic political order. As in most departments at the time, a post-apartheid order started emerging and new policies were introduced.
She brought anti-smoking legislation and took on the big pharmaceutical industry. The other Dlamini-Zuma, however, was in full flight. She helped open the sluice gates of state corruption when she commissioned the extravagantly funded anti-AIDS play, Sarafina II .
As AU leader
The AU Commission chair was supposed to be a crowning glory, the stomping ground or finishing school on her way to presumed presidential glory back in SA. She tried to ring in the big ideas with her Vision 2063, but excelled rather through attention to bureaucratic matters.
She never overcame the ignominy and controversy of her election, and became synonymous with continental divisions, replete with suspicions that SA was the continental power that had turned into a neocolonialist force.
When it came to big continental conflicts Dlamini-Zuma’s AU was likely to be silent. One of the big criticisms against her was that she always had one foot back in SA, awaiting the signal to enter the succession race and capture the presidential trophy.
What the ANC and SA need
The ANC needs to stop — decisively and decidedly — the culture of state looting by opaque, subterfuge actions and by open government contract.
It needs to find ways to direct black economic empowerment into consistently credible, clean tracks.
It needs to embrace each and every project to show the ANC is on the straight and narrow, including lifestyle audits of its leadership.
It needs to show through actions rather than smart words that leaders are there to serve the citizens of the country.
Dlamini-Zuma is probably not the person who can deliver on this.
Well-placed sources who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, share the information that Dlamini-Zuma’s presidential plan is to ring the changes through getting service delivery sharpened up, arguing that even if you got this contract in corrupt ways, let’s move on and get you to deliver; get those roads, bridges, houses, water pipes, to work.
This would be the sound of rain on the roof for Dlamini-Zuma’s scandal-hopping and court-avoiding ex-husband — as well as for an expansive echelon of exploitative and corrupt tenderpreneurs and money launderers in, or associated with, the public sector in SA.
Such an approach might very well secure Dlamini-Zuma the top job should her current campaigners retain unity and momentum. But the ANC’s need for a reinvigorated political organisation is likely to go up in smoke.
• Booysen is a professor in the Wits School of Governance at the University of the Witwatersrand.
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