Where is South Africa zooming to? Wake up and smell the coffee from around Africa!

In my lifetime, I have witnessed one of Southern Africa’s breadbaskets turn into a begging bowl with the highest inflation rate in the world. I have watched, at fairly close range, the black star of Africa fall so low that it will take years for it to rise to the former glory of the Ghana that Kwame Nkrumah proudly led to become Africa’s first independent nation in 1957. It takes one bad leader or leader turned bad to destroy a country. It takes generations to rebuild such a country.

To add to Bishop Desmond Tutu’s words of wisdom, it not just about South Africans choosing a leader that we will not be ashamed of. It is about us choosing a leader who will not roll back the fragile gains that we have made, including with regard to gender equality.

It says something about just how fragile those gains are that on the eve of the African National Congress’ Pholokwane conference we are down to the two proverbial bulls in a kraal waiting to fight it out. With all the talent and leadership in this country of 48 million people the history of the continent replays itself as we find ourselves with just two chiefs to choose from. Shackled by patriarchy, or is it greed and self- interest, even the ANC Women’s League could not see its way clear to voting for a woman: that refreshing new symbol of South Africa’s democracy.

Thabo Mbeki has made many blunders, including his views on HIV and AIDS and Zimbabwe. However, there are a few things he grasped from his many years in exile, several spent in Zambia; the copper rich nation that slumped into despair in the 1980’s because of its failure to diversify its economic base while prices were good. One of those lessons is that you can’t end poverty by generating more poverty.

Throughout his tenure, Mbeki has kept his eyes tenaciously on the economy. A driving force in his African Renaissance vision is one of a continent, rich in human and natural resources, that goes onto the world stage and bargains with confidence. If there is anything that irks this president, it is the “hat-in-hand” image that dogs Africa internationally.

Is Mbeki hanging in there as president of the ANC because he is power hungry or because he wants to ensure that South Africa, Africa’s last big hope, does not go the route of so many of its neighbours? My own reading is that power and wealth do not really excite this president. Leaving behind a legacy does.

One of the less commented on aspects of that legacy is bringing women to the centre of power. Few modern leaders have been as vocal or steadfast on this issue as Mbeki, who has almost an equal number of women and men in his cabinet, and took the nation by complete surprise when he appointed Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka to be his deputy after the sacking of Jacob Zuma. He publicly defended appointing the wife of the then Director of National Prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka (whose actions had led to Zuma’s demise) by pointing out that her marital affiliation had nothing to do with her competence for the post.

If the ANC cannot break with a century of patriarchal leadership norms by voting for a woman president, it seems likely that should Mbeki remain as president of the party, he would push for a woman as president of the country. That alone does not guarantee gender equality, but at least it keeps us on the right track.

Where would South Africa be zooming to under Zuma?  Much has been said about whether a man who can’t balance his domestic budget can run the economy of South Africa. Without delving into the pending corruption case, the court-proven patronage of Schabir Schaik by Zuma in a continent where patronage is at the root of the most corrupt dictatorships must be of utter concern. Is this not exactly how the Idi Amin’s, Mobutu Sese Seko’s and Kamuzu Banda’s began their plundering of state coffers?

The ANC Women’s League tells us that since Zuma won his rape case we should stop harping on this. They miss the point that all the court said was the state failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that sex was not consensual. It did not say that his conduct – having sex with a woman who regarded herself as his daughter, on grounds that his culture taught him that “you cannot leave a woman in that state” – is the way a leader of a modern state that respects equality between women and men should behave.

Not once has the leader of the “Moral Regeneration Movement” – who clearly does not think twice about philandering with anyone despite having several wives – pronounced himself on the issue of gender equality. What moral authority would he have to do so?

As more than half the voters in this country, South African women should be very wary of where a Zuma presidency would take women’s rights. We need go no further than neighbouring Zimbabwe, where ordinary women can no longer afford sanitary towels, to know that patriarchy, dictatorship and economic ruin feed off each other like parasitic vines.

I am reminded of the scene at Harare International Airport when, soon after his release, Nelson Mandela paid an official visit. Two groups of women had gathered at the airport: Robert Mugabe’s party faithful sporting kangas emblazoned with his likeness and laying these down on the ground for the two leaders to walk on; and South African women in exile who broke into song and burst through the yellow tape to embrace Mandela.

Mugabe stiffened and distanced himself from this outpouring of comradely emotion. Mandela, on the other hand, was visibly uncomfortable with the kangas laid down by the kneeling Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) women for him to walk on.

Fast forwarding a few years from now, I am imagining Zuma on that red carpet, with the ANC Women’s League joining the ZANU women in laying down their kangas like the mbumba in Banda’s Malawi used to do. Is this really the South Africa that the brave women and men of this land fought for?  Is it the South Africa that brings hope to the rest of Africa?  I think not.