Qui est Jakob Zuma ? Même en Afrique du sud, la personnalité et les convictions du nouveau président ne se dessinent pas clairement, comme on peut le lire sous la plume de Judith February, chercheuse au think tank Idasa (Institut pour la démocratie en Afrique du sud, Pretoria et Le Cap, www.idasa.org.za).
We have little idea of what kind of President Jacob Zuma will actually be. What we have to go on is both limited and not particularly inspiring. In the battle for ideas, Zuma has hidden conveniently behind the ANC ‘collective’, rarely, if ever, providing leadership on any of the big debates worth having. Where he has entered the fray, it has been clumsy and often unhelpful. His ascent to the Presidency has come at a great cost, creating deep divisions and a crassness which has no place in a society which values democratic discourse. Zuma will need to spend every bit of his energy over the next 5 years proving his critics wrong and proving his commitment to Constitutional values (article paru dans le Cape Times du 23 avril 2009).
Le pays souffre de handicaps sérieux et ne présente pas encore, loin de là, les traits d’une démocratie pluraliste et multiraciale, comme pouvait le laisser penser la fin de l’apartheid. Il s’agit d’une démocratie gouvernée par un parti ultra-dominant.
The new South Africa is messy, contradictory, morally ambiguous. It is home to the world’s largest HIV-positive population, as well as to Africa’s largest black middle class. A government led by the formerly Marxist African National Congress embraces capitalism and reconciliation with whites but coddles Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s dictator. South Africa is a virtual one-party state and yet also Africa’s liveliest democracy — a beautiful country of hospitable people plagued by horrific violent crime and metastasizing corruption. (…) As the ANC maintains a monopoly on power, it merges with the state — as the old apartheid National Party did and as liberation movements elsewhere in Africa have routinely done. Ignoring the Mandela example, ANC leaders intimidate the press and chip away at judicial independence. Earlier this year, the ANC-dominated Parliament shut down an elite police unit that had uncovered various cases of corruption in the party’s ranks (Matthew Kaminski dans le Wall Street Journal du 21 avril 2009).
L’Afrique du sud est mal partie : dans un livre paru récemment (South Africa’s Brave New World), R.W.Johnson, ancien militant anti-apartheid et actuel directeur de la Fondation Helen Suzman en Afrique du sud, dénonce les multiples dérives de l’ANC au pouvoir, et ce dès la présidence de Nelson Mandela. The Economist publie un compte-rendu de ce livre dans son édition du 18 avril :
The ANC, in Mr Johnson’s view, has become a nest of racists, thieves and hypocrites, who have done almost no good at all since they won power in 1994. Mr Mbeki is accused of “reracialising” South African politics, and the author supports this charge with a stack of evidence. Mr Johnson hurls particular vitriol at the policy of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). As he describes it, this has merely enabled an ANC-connected elite to enrich itself fabulously in the name of affirmative action officially meant to tip more of the economy into black hands.
Le rôle de Thabo Mbeki, président sud-africain depuis 1999, est jugé avec une sévérité particulière par une bonne partie des observateurs. Son aveuglement dans le combat contre le sida et son soutien au régime de Robert Mugabe au Zimbabwe sont connus. Mais son bilan ne s’arrête pas là. Mbeki helped destroy the "multiracial genius" of the country. He centralised government massively while co-opting or undermining any democratic institutions that might have placed checks on that centralised power. If such control had led to efficient government and the upliftment of the poor, maybe we could have forgiven him, but it didn’t, écrit Shaun de Waal dans le Mail & Guardian online (journal de Johannesburg). Shaun de Waal écrit par ailleurs : The South African state is less efficient than it has ever been ; the poor are as poor as they ever were. The average life expectancy has dropped by 20 years since the end of apartheid. Deaths in police custody have increased sevenfold. Unemployment and crime are rampant. And what of the "macroeconomic fundamentals" that the ANC, speaking in its monetarist voice, is keen to tell us are in place ?
Comme l’expliquait Helen Zille, ancienne militante blanche anti-apartheid devenue maire du Cap et leader de l’opposition de centre-gauche, au cours de la campagne, l’enjeu de l’élection était de choisir entre un Etat impartial (regstaat, en afrikaner) et un Etat corrompu (magstaat).
Souvent citée comme une nouvelle puissance mondiale aux côtés de l’Inde, du Brésil et de la Chine, l’Afrique du sud est pourtant, quoi qu’on en dise et comparativement aux autres, le pays d’Afrique le plus avancé, tant sur le plan économique que sur le plan des institutions. C’est l’idée qui ressort d’un article de Sasha Polakow-Suransky (Foreign Affairs) et Eusebius McKaiser (Center for the Study of Democracy in Johannesburg) paru dans Newsweek, edition du 27 avril 2009 :
The ANC has generally shown a commitment to the rule of law. For years, it has had the votes to change the Constitution without opposition support but hasn’t done so. Instead of moving to disenfranchise South Africans living abroad—who tend to back the opposition—the ANC allowed them to vote in the April 22 election. And it has respected oversight bodies such as the Human Rights Commission, the Public Protector and the Commission for Gender Equality. The ANC has also shown respect for a free, critical press. Almost all major publications bluntly criticize the party and its leaders. Yet the ANC has not used heavy-handed tactics to silence them. Such tolerance is all too rare in Africa. (...) South Africa is still on track to becoming a stable, liberal democracy—and likely to resist a single, possibly corrupt, demagogic politician. While the ANC itself is not yet fully democratic, it does accept and respect the institutions that make up the country’s political landscape. Independent bodies, opposition parties, constitutional norms and a free and feisty press keep the nation’s rulers in line. South Africa’s next president may be no Mandela. But South Africa won’t let him become another Robert Mugabe.
