The South African Crisis: The View from Mogadishu

Abdi Ismail Samatar*

Recent riots and the huge loss of life and property in South Africa have alarmed many people globally, including those in Somalia’s war-ravaged capital, Mogadishu. A few of Mogadishu’s denizens who know that I spend several months annually at the University of Pretoria have urged me not to return there despite knowing that I have been in Mogadishu for the last seven months. Their remarks astonished me as Mogadishu is renowned for terrorism and violence.

My initial shock at such comments compelled me to reflect on the postcolonial political histories of the two countries. This retrospection convinced me that those concerns were not as bizarre as they initially appeared. I recollect a conversation I had with a group of South Africans in Laudium in 2009 after Zuma was elected president. Given Mr. Zuma’s corrupt reputation, I told my colleagues that I hoped South Africa’s 2009 election would not be a replica of Somalia’s 1967 presidential election. They were dismissive and retorted that my disquiet was misplaced.

What my South African comrades did not know was that Somalia’s postcolonial history started, just like South Africa’s, as a beacon of hope and democracy after nearly a century of British colonialism and Italian fascism. Somalia’s post-colonial elite was divided into two political groups.  The civic camp was committed to the liberation movement’s democratic ideals of justice and collective advancement, while their sectarian opponent saw independence as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement and wealth accumulation. Civics held sway for the first eight years of independence and left behind an admirable record. In fact, they led the continent by being the first post-colonial leaders to leave office democratically as Zambia’s first president, Kaunda noted in his visit to Mogadishu in 1968 “Somali Democracy should be a model for other African countries.”

Beyond the practice of democracy, those early leaders also reformed the post-colonial state. They enacted the continent’s first radical public service reform. Similarly, the democratic leaders ensured the autonomy of the judiciary even when they disagreed with particular court judgements as was unmistakably demonstrated when the Somali president and government accepted a judge’s decision to free coup makers on technical grounds in 1961. This was the first and possibly the last time coup-makers walked alive and free in the continent.

Africa’s first democrats were defeated in 1967 by a collection of sectarian politicians determined to use the state as their private fiefdom. In addition, they corrupted all public institutions and gutted them of their professional integrity before they turned the country into a single party state. Somalis across the country despised these pseudo-democrats, especially after the regime rigged the last parliamentary election in 1969. Several months later the military took over and their twenty years’ rule tribalized politics, engaged in massive corruption inducing deep inequality, and imposed a tyrannical rule that decimated the population’s social bonds, eventually leading to what we now know as the Somali catastrophe.  

South Africa will not collapse as Somalia did, but there are extraordinary parallels between the post-colonial political histories of the two countries. First, the Mandela / Mbeki governments, despite some internal differences and styles, were committed to the rule of law and securing the integrity of public institutions. Mandela has been the only Africa leader to leave office voluntarily after one term, although a few others have subsequently done the same after two terms. Second, Mbeki accepted his party’s demand to vacate the presidency despite the recognition that the ANC’s decision was driven by power politics rather than a danger he posed to the state or the country. Mbeki’s stature in the country and in the continent has risen since he left office. The restoration of Mbeki’s dignity is almost similar to the way Somalis now see the country’s first president and his prime minister.  

The remarks I made about Zuma’s presidency in 2009 haunted me during my yearly visits to Pretoria, and particularly as his second term unraveled. He fumbled from one major political and ethical scandal after another as the state’s institutional integrity and capacity began to waste away. Grand corruption became the lubricant of public affairs and the destruction of the public sector went into a higher gear despite the valiant effort of the Public Protector and the Courts. Among the most visible manifestations of the decay was the school textbook debacle in several provinces such as Mpumalanga, the fall of elementary school children into pit latrines, the Gupta affair, the demise of SAA, and the Eskom load-shedding fiasco. In addition, the politicization of SARS and the egregious appetite of tenderpreneurs almost broke the fiscal back of the state.  Fortunately, extraordinary pressure from some of the opposition political parties, a majority of the ANC, civil society actors, and the courts finally tipped the balance of power and forced out Zuma in the most undignified manner.

Zuma and his allies were not yet done. They fought back tenaciously within the ANC while President Ramaphosa moved sluggishly to consolidate his legitimacy within the governing party. However, the legal dragnet – via the Zondo Commission - slowly tightened around Zuma and others like the former ANC Secretary General Magashule. But Zuma precipitated a national crisis by refusing to testify in the Commission. Finally, the unthinkable happened as the Constitutional Court sentenced him to 15 months in jail for defying the court order.

Zuma’s arrest unleashed what appears to be a planned insurrection. Fortunately, it seems that the fallout of Zuma’s arrest has been contained, although the country is still on edge. It is disturbing that KZN was the epi-center of the crisis which suggests that the legacy of political tribalism lives on and has been cultivated by the sectarian elements of the ANC elite and others.