There is really only one important question at the moment and it’s the obvious one: who is going to win?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken to a wide range of people who might know, or who claim to know, or are close to people who claim to know, and it saddens me to report that they, like me, don’t know.
And the reason is very simple: as important as it may be, this is not a knowable fact as we stand here now at this crucial crossroads in our history.
Fortunately for us, the financial markets do know.
SA was downgraded to full junk status by one of the two most reputable ratings agencies out there, and the rand promptly rose. And not just by a bit; that rand is trading about 3% stronger than it did before the downgrade.
Obviously, this is the precise opposite of what you might expect; downgrades are agonising decisions and are almost never taken without a solid body of evidence.
Many would claim, mostly after the fact, that the decline had already been priced into the market. But that’s just not true, and anyway these claims always feel to me like ex post facto justifications.
I’m not judging by the way; we all blast our way into the future looking intently for directions in the rear-view mirror.
The rand strengthened, according to the professional market watchers, partly on the belief that Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has the nomination sewn up.
I would strongly, strongly advise against that prediction.
Although who will win is not knowable, there are things we do know. The first is the motivation of candidates.
My sense is that Ramaphosa’s core motivation for standing is that he sees his beloved movement flailing and failing and is struck by a deep sense of duty and responsibility.
His motivation essentially comes from outside himself; this is national service. Even if that is not totally true, we know his motivation is not to enrich himself, because that was achieved long ago.
For Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, her motivation, I suspect, arises out of a deep sense of prerogative.
There is a country duty aspect to this, but it is also rooted in her sense of her own rightness. There is so little scepticism in her make-up and so much ideological certainty you have to conclude she is there by virtue of a deep sense of self-belief, but more importantly that it is due her.
The problem is not so much the candidates; the problem is their supporters. Ramaphosa’s supporters are in it, by and large, for personal advancement, country duty and an effort to save the movement.
Many of Dlamini-Zuma’s supporters are in it to maintain their ability to loot and to save their precarious grip on the ladder of prosperity and avoid prosecution. Their backs are against the wall and they are fighting for their lives.
These are not highfalutin notions; these are desperate people fighting a desperate rearguard war.
You can tell this is so from the slightly unhinged vociferousness of their slogans and messages — not to mention the brutality of their campaigns on the ground.
Several political commentators have encouraged business to maintain contact with the Dlamini-Zuma campaign, I suspect partly because middle-class commentators have got it so wrong on subjects such as the Trump victory and Brexit vote. Everyone in the prediction business is a little gun-shy these days. I agree, but for a different reason.
One way of looking at the ANC’s leadership race is not as a personality contest but as the embodiment of popular economic interests.
In a sense, the split between Ramaphosa and the Dlamini-Zuma camp is a split between the urban and rural poor.
Ramaphosa’s blue-collar workers want business to work and they want to reap more of the rewards of that improvement. Dlamini-Zuma’s rural or rural-aligned supporters look to the state for much more direct help. For them, state capture is not evil at all; it’s important because it means they too have the chance of a larger piece of state resources and redistribution of the economy.
This explains why Dlamini-Zuma is supported by Looters Inc and has failed so obviously to explain specifically what she would do to curb it.
The economic downturn and the ANC’s leadership vacuum have allowed these differences to emerge, and now they are tearing the party apart.
In the past, economic growth has allowed the ANC to paper over the cracks.
The consequence of this way of understanding the battle is that whoever wins will have to try to accommodate the other’s constituency, and their ability to do so is going to be fabulously difficult.
She was never my favourite person, but Margaret Thatcher was right about one thing: eventually socialists run out of other people’s money.
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