Jacob Zuma: Another lesson to Nigeria

On the Valentine night a major shift took place. President Zuma, who had boasted that he would not bow down to the ANC’s request that he resigns from office, suddenly bowed out. President Zuma in a televised speech argued that although his party was wrong to demand his resignation but for the good of the party he would bow out immediately. President Zuma, the archetypical African big man, lost the battle. But the party won. And South Africa gained.

A few months earlier, another African strong man lost the battle against change.This time again, his party won. The iconic Robert Mugabe, despite himself, left office, not in ignominy but in expressed understanding of the superiority of the party and the ‘revolution’, whatever remained of it. Just as comical and disoriented Zuma was bowing down a little known Ethiopian President resigned from office because of the political upheaval afflicting his country and the need to allow a new beginning.

In 1991, when many African countries were transiting from military oligarchy and one-party dictatorships, the western media celebrated what it called ‘Africa Rising’. Patronizing western media made heavy weather of this change of fortune and predicted that Africa will be the poster child of economic development and democracy. It did not take long for hope to be dashed as many of these half-baked and contrived democracies stumbled into authoritarian patrimonial regimes or competitive oligarchies. Africa rises turned to Africa regresses.

But the pieces of news coming out of Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ethiopia give hope of real ‘Africa Rising’. The leaders who stepped down may not be exemplary in probity, accountability and even effectiveness, but the responsible and deliberative way they took a bow, in the pressing circumstances of contemporary African politics, is a story of institutional stability that needs a retelling. Africa may after all be rising, not because the borders of real democracy and economic liberalism are expanding, but because we can point to a few African countries that are resilient because of the integrity of their state institutions.

South Africa, particularly, continues to prove its superiority, not just in its peerless corporate character in Africa, but also in its deeply stable politics. No matter what critics of ANC say about corruption in South African governance, no one should doubt that the ANC provides institutional stability to the development of South Africa. South Africa may be less than effectively governed under the ANC, particularly under the neopatrimonialism of Jacob Zuma, but it has stabilized politics in post-apartheid South Africa. In terms of the revolutionary and patriotic character of its ruling elites, South Africa continues to tower above Nigeria.

On May 10, 1994 Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first black president of South Africa. On that day, I wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian Newspaper arguing that Mandela’s emergence as president is a message to Nigerian leaders to quit lip-service to national interest and pay life-service to the public good. Nigerian leaders celebrated Mandela but refused vehemently to emulate his humanism and patriotism. Of course, it will be difficult for Nigerian leaders to borrow a leaf of Mandela’s play book because they lack the history and commitments that defined Mandela. President Obasanjo when called to act like Mandela and forgo running for reelection rebuffed the plea. Obasanjo’s pretentious idealism could not tide him over the dirty swamp of patrimonial politics. He succumbed to the lure of power and contrived a tenure elongation. Nigerian elites always celebrate the heroism of South Africans but reject their examples.

The really depressing aspect of the Nigerian-South African relationship is the endless noise about Nigerian superiority. Nigerians always go about presuming that they are somehow better than South Africans. Forget that South Africa could pass for a first world economy, Nigerians are bullish that they are the emancipator of South Africa. Somehow, we believe that our significant contribution to the apartheid struggle confers on us a moral superiority over the South Africans. We have exaggerated our population and natural resources advantages to obscure the fact that South Africa is a much more durable and institutionally stable polity.

But if there was any doubt that South Africa scores higher than Nigeria on the indicators of political stability, the orderly and firm manner that the unruly strong man, President Zuma, was forced out of office clears the doubt. Could this ever happen in Nigeria? In 2010 Nigeria was thrown into deep crisis because of a president who was dying of chronic disease in Saudi Arabia. The Executive Council of the Federation (ECF) could not trigger a simple constitutional procedure to transfer power to the Vice President. The crisis almost collapsed political governance until the National Assembly overreached itself and resorted to the fig-leaf of a BBC interview to ground a constitutional requirement of transfer of power to the Vice President. It was big shame that Nigeria was thrown into a deep crisis because political leaders could not exercise leadership and relieve a gravely sick man of the responsibilities of leadership.

The Nigerian state has carried on with a lot of exaggerated notion of its greatness. There is no doubt that we boast a great collection of extremely intelligent and resourceful people. But as someone said, ineffective genius is almost a legend. We can see all around us dilapidated and descripit lives. Check out the profile of many of Nigeria’s blundering political leadership and you will be amazed at their educational and professional accomplishments. But they always fail to rise to leadership whenever it is thrusted on them. We are blessed with abundant natural wealth, but we have succeeded in fritting it away in corrupt enrichment and poorly conceived and executed projects.

Nigerians are unyielding in their belief that they are the giants of Africa. The mere fact that out of every four African there is a Nigerian naturally confers leadership on Nigeria. But the truth is that Nigeria scores very low in the indicators of political and social stability. Even seeming banana cases in Africa ironically stands better than Nigeria in many of the critical indicators of state stability.

Just the case of Zimbabwe. Its economy is in tatters. To the western minds it is a parable of the disastrous consequences of megalomaniac one-man rule. But Zimbabwe has secret strength as a country. Its political elites are product of revolutionary nationalist struggle. As much as struggle for political power post-colonialism may have divided the elites and eroded social capital, there is a strong institutional resilience that ensures political stability. So, when the time came the leadership shoved away the old dictator in a disciplined manner that restated the overriding importance of its revolutionary ideals.

The real lesson from these events in southern Africa is that unbeknownst to many Nigerians these frontline states have developed structures that are dependable against the vagaries of competitive politics. The ANC is disciplined and focused enough to withstand the folly of a President Zuma. So, the prospect of democracy is strong in a corrupt south African polity than in any of the contrived liberal democracies in West of Africa because of the inherent stability built by years of revolutionary politics. Party supremacy in South Africa does not mean the supremacy of the politicians who win the battle to the top. It is the supremacy of an ideal, an ideal, no matter how battered by betrayal and corruption.still strong enough to constitute a lodestar in the journey of statehood.

Looking at societies from their capacity to survive the turbulence of competitive politics, Nigeria stands at a perilous low rung of the social stability ladder. There are few formal and informal constraints to ruinous exercise of power. Even the existing formal constraints are hollow and unrooted to social consciousness. Therefore, they are easily dismantled or disregarded. Nigerian politics is a play of egos undisciplined by a supervening consciousness or commitment. Nigerian political leadership can easily lose the republic in competitive politics because the republic is not etched boldly in their minds.

President Zuma’s disciplined step-down from power should remind us of how much our neighbors are better than us so we will work harder to have a fair chance of surviving. Even if we don’t want to emulate South Africa and Zimbabwe to build institutions that can constrain the turbulence of excessively competitive politicking, we can at least cure ourselves of this dangerous belief that we are anyway better than them. Once again, South Africa proves it is still far ahead of Nigeria in the quality of political institutions. And, honestly, this is what really counts in the life of a nation.