Donald Trump and South Africa's President Jacob Zuma have One Thing In Common

Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump and South Africa's President Jacob Zuma both preside over fading political parties with noble origins which once stood up for rights of black people, writes Xolela Mangcu.
The parallels between the meaning of Donald Trump for the Republican Party and the meaning of Jacob Zuma for the ANC are simply irresistible. This is a cruel parallel because of the two men’s vastly different stations in life. Trump grew up as a privileged son of a New York businessman. He parlayed his inheritance to build one of the largest real estate companies in the world.
Zuma grew up as a shepherd in dirt poor Nkandla, where he would put up his own piece of real estate to the tune of R250 million. While the R250 million is chump change for Trump, Nkandla residents cannot get their heads around those numbers, just as the president tried to get his head around the number of members of the ANC not too long ago.
These different personal beginnings notwithstanding, Trump and Zuma have one thing in common. They will both be presiding over the decline of political parties with noble origins as defenders of the rights of black people.
While the Democratic Party was the party of slavery and Jim Crow in the United States, the Republican Party burnished the cause of freedom for slaves under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln, arguably America’s greatest president.
Having won the Civil War, the Republican Party introduced the era of Reconstruction as a means of correcting for the wrongs of slavery. It must be said though that the Republicans never lived up to the promise of giving former slaves the 40 acres and a mule they had been promised during the course of the war.
And as Harvard scholar, Henry Louis Gates Jr, has pointed out, contrary to the notion that this proposal came out of General William Sherman’s good heart, this proposal was drafted and presented to Sherman by black leaders. Suffice to say they never lived up on their promise, inspiring movie maker Spike Lee to name his company after that broken promise.
The Republicans were also the first party to send black representatives to the US Congress. Even though Hiram Revels was the first black person to serve in the US Senate, the most prominent black Republican to serve in the Congress was Oscar de Priest, who represented Chicago’s South Side.
As Barack Obama’s biographer, Edward McClelland, put it: “De Priest wasn’t just the South Side’s representative. He stood for his entire race. In Chicago, pride in the only black congressman ran deep.”
However, the Republicans lost their domination of American politics after the Great Depression. Under the leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic Party refashioned itself as the party of immigrants and working people.
This strategy led to what the political scientist Henry Gosnell called the “great civic uprising” against the Republicans. Gosnell observed that “on the ruins of the Republican organization in the city the Democrats have built the most powerful political machine that the city has ever seen”.
The Democrats in the north became home to the millions of black people coming in from the South. Ironically, the northern Democratic Party became a refuge to black people chased out of the South by their own party. As the Democratic Party in northern cities moved further to the left and embraced black people, the Republicans moved further to the right, appealing to the majority white constituency, many of whom were also coming from the South.
As Michael Denning put it, as the north became Dixie, the American north became more and more racist. The turning point in this turn to the right was the presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater in 1964 – a candidacy that Donald Trump resembles.
It should be said, however, that Trump’s credentials are questioned by those who regard themselves as true conservatives. After all, Trump has been known to be a donor of Democratic candidates including the Clintons. This is what makes Republicans really freak out about Trump. This is so serious that sworn enemies of the Clintons would rather vote for Hillary Clinton than have Trump as president.
By some estimates almost 30 percent of Republican Party supporters will simply not vote for Trump, including party’s grandees such as the Bush dynasty.
Even though Goldwater did not win the presidency he is still regarded as the godfather of Republican conservatism. It would take Richard Nixon to consolidate white support for the party. But no one is more admired for the Republican renaissance than Ronald Reagan.
By the 1980s the party had swung full circle from being a pro-black, anti-slavery party to becoming a rightwing party under Reagan and now an openly racist party under Trump.
Interestingly, Trump’s popularity among white voters is based on the same discourse one often hears in South Africa, which is that white people must stop being politically correct and say whatever comes to their minds about black people, however retrograde those views may be.
Whereas Goldwater may have been behind the spark in Republican conservatism that ultimately led to Reagan, it is unlikely that Trump is likely to have the opposite impact on the party if the desertion of the party mentioned above is anything to go by.
And that brings me to our man, Jacob Zuma. Unlike Trump with Republicans, no one is questioning Zuma’s credentials as a lifelong member of the ANC. But what Zuma shares with Trump is a failure of judgment.
While no court has pronounced on Trump yet, Zuma has been on the receiving end of a couple of unfavourable court judgments in a matter of weeks.
The latest ruling by the Gauteng High Court is of course not as serious as the Constitutional Court judgment, although it feeds into the perception that we have a president who is constantly in trouble with the law.
That can hardly inspire confidence in our economy and in the ANC itself. Zuma will appeal the Gauteng High Court decision and stands a good chance of winning, given the discretionary powers that our constitution gives to the Director of National Public Prosecutions to review decisions to prosecute or not prosecute.
But whether Zuma is on the right side of the constitution or not is really meaningless for Zuma as the leader of a party. Granted, if a higher court were to overturn this particular decision that would certainly save Zuma’s skin as an individual but it does nothing to Zuma’s credibility as a political leader.
The court decision will ensure that the corruption charges are in the public domain until the local government elections and beyond. Given the time it takes for appeal processes to be completed the opposition parties will be parsing the several hundred charges for the next few years.
They would not be opposition parties worth their salt if they did not. The EFF will no doubt be making sure that the charges are on our minds, which leaves one wondering when the president will be able to articulate his party’s message without any encumbrance, let alone perform hisduties. Like Trump, members of his party cannot wait to see his back.Die-hard conservatives in the Republican Party have won the battle to have Trump as their party’s primary candidate but they have most likely lost the war for America.
Similarly, Zuma’s defenders in the ANC may help their man survive internal party battles but they too will have lost the battle for South Africa.THE IOL