Eight days in september the removal of thabo mbeki pdf
Voters gave Ramaphosa and the ANC victory by a margin that would please most politicians throughout the world, but the election also signaled that rebuilding public trust in government and the party will take more than campaign slogans. It also inflicted substantial collateral damage on the country’s fragile economy and society. The assault on these institutions of political and legal accountability posed an existential threat to South Africa’s democracy. The term described activities that ran much deeper than the garden-variety diversion of public resources for private gain under Zuma, powerful individuals systematically sought to undermine the institutions designed to keep such abuses in check. The crisis was so dire that a previously little-known academic term-”state capture”-became part of the public lexicon. 1942), a sprawling network of corrupt procurement involving high-level politicians, public officials, and business cronies took root both in the government and across South Africa’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
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That darkness was the presidency of Jacob Zuma (2009–18), which Ramaphosa referred to in several speeches as “nine wasted years.” Under Zuma (b. Ramaphosa’s “new dawn” represented more than just the politician’s clichéd promise of a brighter future: For South Africans alarmed by the country’s recent political turmoil, it also subtly alluded to a period of darkness that he vowed to relegate to the past. He later returned to active politics, becoming South Africa’s deputy president after the 2014 national election. The party leadership opted for Thabo Mbeki (1999–2008) instead, and Ramaphosa headed to the private sector, where he was very successful. Ramaphosa was reportedly Mandela’s personal choice as presidential successor when the widely renowned ANC leader stepped down in 1999. He played a central role in the political negotiations that brought South Africa out of apartheid, and he was a key architect of the country’s progressive, democratic 1996 Constitution.
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Between 19, he served as secretary-general of the ANC, which made its own transition from banned resistance movement to dominant political party. In the early 1980s, at the height of the apartheid policies that had institutionalized a pervasive system of racial discrimination, Ramaphosa founded and led the National Union of Mineworkers, the country’s largest trade union. He had the pedigree to make this promise credible. 1952), campaigned on the lofty promise of bringing a “new dawn” that would reinfuse the country with Mandela’s values. The ANC’s presidential candidate, Cyril Ramaphosa (b. And South Africans seem to be in no rush to pass Samuel Huntington’s two-turnover test of democratic consolidation.Īnne Pitcher is professor of political science and African studies at the University of Michigan.Īt first glance, the run-up to the 2019 election looked like more of the same. With the majority of voters committed to the ANC, the essence of democracy as described by Joseph Schumpeter-elite competition for voter support-seems to be lacking. Much of the skepticism about the quality of South Africa’s democracy has centered on the ease with which the ANC wins elections. Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) had won by comfortable margins in every previous election, all peaceful, “free and fair” contests administered by the country’s well-regarded electoral commission. On, nearly twenty-five years to the day after Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratically elected president, the country went to the polls in its sixth round of national elections. Civil society, opposition parties, accountability agencies, and the ANC itself succeeded in removing Zuma before the end of his term, but the task of rebuilding public trust remains. This article argues that the most fundamental test for South Africa’s democracy has been dislodging the corrupt networks of “state capture” entrenched under former president Jacob Zuma. Yet the party faced a strengthened challenge from the populist left, and the 2019 contest saw the smallest ANC majority and the lowest turnout of any general election since the end of apartheid. The ANC won its sixth straight election in 2019, led by presidential candidate Cyril Ramaphosa. This article assesses the state of democracy in South Africa, twenty-five years after Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) came to power.