The Zuma Affair, Labour and the Future of Democracy in South Africa

South Africa's new democracy has been tested by the controversy over the candidacy of Jacob Zuma, who became the successor to President Thabo Mbeki as leader of the African National Congress in December 2007, and is poised to become the country's new president after the 2009 elections. Few social actors had more at stake than organised labour, which found itself sidelined from the policy process by its erstwhile political allies under Mbeki. Labour supported Zuma throughout the leadership campaign, and can been seen as having ‘won’ in the leadership contest. Yet the labour movement has avoided the critical question: at what cost? We argue that labour's strategy of championing Zuma has simply reinforced the ‘insider politics’ that led to its sidelining and diminished the overall democratic process. If organised labour was to take its own post-apartheid history, and the experiences of other Third World labour movements, seriously, it would push for new, more participatory and inclusive forms of politics, rather than merely focus on a new political leader.