The Rule of Three

So the South African election of 2014 is over.  Apart from a few scuffles, things seemed to have gone off pretty smoothly.  We now have the great advantage (over our friends in the US, for example) that we will be left in peace by the political parties for another four years.  As far as free and fair is concerned, there seems to be no question.  South Africa continues to do well.  Even the opposition parties haven’t complained much.  That must be a good indicator for a start.

Certainly there is no danger of fraudulent voting – at least not at the individual level.  “Vote early and vote often” doesn’t apply here.  I recall that a lot of heat was generated in Minnesota in 2012 when the voters were asked in a referendum to approve the requirement of identification for voting.  It lost.  Here there is no question.  When I arrived at the voting station yesterday afternoon, I had to present my barcoded identity document – only this is acceptable.  The barcode was read by a wireless reader, and presumably the information made its way to some central computer.  So that was that, right?  Wrong. When I reached the room where the voting took place and presented myself to an electoral officer, he took the ID again, and painstakingly searched through a print out of the relevant section of the electoral role until he found my name.  He then crossed it off by hand.  Well, computers can crash, I suppose.  You might think that the nation was now safe from any thoughts of electoral fraud on my part.  Not quite. Anyway, it seems that every check is done in triplicate in South Africa these days.  The final step was to paint my thumb nail with indelible ink, and then I was allowed to vote.  I will spend the next two weeks looking as though I hit my thumb with a hammer, but at least the nation is safe from a situation where the bar code computer has its memory wiped out and the man with the ruler and pen crossed out the wrong line.

As another example of rule of three, I had to fill out a form yesterday to become a director of a company.  Naturally, it wanted my ID number.  (It’s practically impossible to do anything in South Africa without that number.)  So I filled it in.  The next question gave me pause.  It wanted my birthdate.  Let’s leave aside why the Companies Office needs to know how old a director of a company is.  (Perhaps Warren Buffett would be too old to be allowed to be a director of a company here?)  The point is that the first six digits of your ID number here is your birthdate.  Is it because they want to check if you actually know your birthday?  (Getting it wrong, I suppose, would be a fair reason to disqualify you from directing a company.)  Perhaps it’s a sneaky way of checking that you didn’t invent the ID number in the hope that the computer had crashed because of all that voting data.  Well, I correctly transcribed it onto the form.  Next it wanted to know my age…

Another interesting example is the airlines.  When you buy an airline ticket over the internet here, it eventually allows you to move to payment.  You are required to fill in the usual stuff – card number, expiry date, and the three digit security code on the back.  (It seems that if someone stole your card, it would never occur to him to note this other information.)  Now a message goes to the bank and a text message comes to your phone with a long code you have to enter before the transaction times out.  Okay, two levels.  But then – even though the flight may be taking place months later – the airline insists on actually seeing the card when you check in.  Bad news if you're paying for another person.  I would love to know what this third check is about.  Maybe just to maintain the rule of three.

Oh, yes, the election.  Well, counting continues – I guess they have to do it three times – but at this point it looks like no surprises.  The Democratic Alliance comfortably holds the important Western Cape Province and the African National Congress everything else.  Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters, who believe that nationalizing mines and banks is the route to wealth and jobs – at least for Julius – got over 5%.  Not too significant, but coming in third in their first outing gives one pause for thought.  The turnout was 75% of registered voters (yes, you have to register some months before the election: you need a bar coded identity document, and…  But you get the picture by now.)  The vote for the ANC was down a bit, but not enough to shake the grip of President Zuma on the ANC, I’m afraid.  Indeed, you can fool most of the people, most of the time.

Michael - Thursday

Phoenix Malema

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Goldman Sachs report on South Africa twenty years on from the election of the new government.  Much has changed for the better, but the young and the poor – and especially the young poor – remain marginalized in the new society.   Much of the school system remains in disarray, and the graduates of these schools, and in some areas, those of colleges and universities as well, essentially don’t have the skills to be employable in the twenty-first century.  South Africa needs the growth rate of a China to make headway with jobs for these people; currently it looks as though 2% is the best we can expect.  That’s enough to create some jobs, but far less than the number of new job seekers entering the market every year.  It’s clear something needs to be done; the problem is deciding what to do and then getting it done.  Recently the government approved a youth wage plan (which is basically a subsidy for first time youth hires) in the teeth of the trade union movement’s vehement objections.

Julius Malema at the launch of the EFF

Enter Julius Malema from stage left – far left.  He worked himself up to the powerful position of chairman of the ANC Youth League and set about enriching himself.  He once famously said that the people don’t mind if their leaders are rich.  And he seemed to be right.  Trusts and companies appeared from nowhere and he started building mansions and buying fancy clothes and cars.  All would probably have been well if he’d settled back and enjoyed that while wowing his followers with rhetoric.  But he had ambitions way beyond that.  His eyes were on the presidency.  All he had to do was to persuade the party that he was the popular leader and the heir apparent to the tarnished President Zuma.  And he was following a pretty good example.  Zuma pulled that off against the previous president - Thabo Mbeki.  Characterising Mbeki as out of touch with the people – which he was – Zuma paraded in traditional dress, dancing and singing his anthem “Bring me my machine gun” to the delight of his followers and the horror of white South Africans.  Once Mbeki was off the scene and Zuma was president, the machine gun was retired along with the song, and everyone got on with the important business of making money.

President Zuma doesn't seem too concerned...

What Julius didn’t understand was that there was much behind the scenes manipulation which went into the unseating of Mbeki.  Zuma is much too wily to fall for the same trap.  So when Julius tried the same sort of tactics, he was firmly slapped down.  One of the charges against Malema was that his “Shoot the Boer” song was hate speech.  (Do we detect a theme here?)  When he ignored the slap, he was expelled from the party and hit with corruption charges.  Now he claims to be penniless and living in the tiny house where he grew up. He claims his expulsion from the party showed that the ANC “has become a pig and is eating its own children.” He went on to say that Zuma “removed me because people said to him, ‘Remove Malema and white people will be happy.’ ”

Having failed in his takeover from within, Malema’s strategy has moved to a takeover from without.  Launching his new party –Economic Freedom Fighters - at Marikana – site of the miners’ strike where more than 30 people died – he appeared in Hugo Chávez red beret and called on his followers to complete the revolution which, he claims, stalled in 1994.  “We must restore the dignity of the black majority,” he declared to a crowd of thousands. “Now is the time to deliver on the promises of 1994.” His policies include such tried and tested economic recipes as seizing white owned land and nationalizing the mines and banks.  These have worked out so well in Zimbabwe that it makes absolute sense to do the same thing here.  Well, sarcasm will get me nowhere, but promising to do something – anything - tangible for the poor may get Malema a lot of votes in next year's general election. 

People tend to treat him as a joke, and the EFF as a paper tiger with no purpose but to restore Malema’s fortunes.  That’s as may be. History is littered with people who were laughed at and went on to overturn the world.

The EFF expressed "disappointment" at somesupporters displaying racist posters at its launch

 Michael – Thursday.