Modi’s first visit to S Africa comes as old friendship fades

NEW DELHI: Narendra Modi arrives in South Africa on Friday evening for the first official visit by an Indian Prime Minister in 10 years. What a difference a decade

NEW DELHI: Narendra Modi arrives in South Africa on Friday evening for the first official visit by an Indian Prime Minister in 10 years. What a difference a decade makes.

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When Manmohan Singh met with Thabo Mbeki in 2006 India was riding a sustained economic boom, and South Africa was at the peak of its post-apartheid GDP growth.

The relationship was also in rude health. The powerful Congress minister Anand Sharma, whose wife, Zenobia, is South African, shuttled back and forth, and substantial investments in telecoms, vehicles, and banking were underway.

It all seemed very natural. The DNA of South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress, has been coiled together with that of the Indian National Congress since Gandhi’s South African awakening.

The financial crisis, a dramatic reversal in the fortunes of the Congress and equally fundamental shifts inside the ANC have since intervened and the relationship has drifted into irritation and disappointment on both sides.

Trade has grown, but big deals have gone wrong: Tata has sold its stake in South Africa’s Neotel, Bharti-Airtel was unable to close its planned transaction with MTN, and First National Bank has been unable to expand its India footprint.

There is still co-operation in multilateral forums, but South Africa is seen by Indian diplomats as pandering to China within BRICs - particularly over the location of the New Development Bank.

Mbeki, a technocrat and reformer, was ousted, after a vicious battle within his party, and replaced in 2009 by Jacob Zuma, a post-ideological figure who presides over a growing patronage network. Like the Congress in the late 1960s, the ANC is fracturing, and popular anger over corruption and unemployment is fuelling near-daily protest.

All of this will be in sharp focus during the visit because an Indian family is at the centre of South Africa’s most intense political crisis since the advent of democracy.

The Gupta brothers, Atul, Ajay and Rajesh rose from Saharanpur to control a media, mining, and IT empire in South Africa. Zuma’s son, Duduzane, works in one of their companies, as did one of his four wives, Bongi Ngema-Zuma. Her private house was financed with the Gupta’s assistance by Bank of Baroda.

The family’s outsize presence in South Africa was first noticed in India when a chartered Jet Airways Airbus carrying guests to a family wedding, including Samajwadi Party leaders Shivpal Singh Yadav and Mohammed Azam Kahn, was illegally given permission to land at a South African airforce base in 2013, igniting instant controversy.

As discontent with Zuma has risen, senior South African ANC politicians have complained publicly of the family’s direct influence on the levers of power, including a decisive role in cabinet and other public sector appointments. The opposition Economic Freedom Fighters coined the term “Zupta” to describe “state capture” by the family.

Modi’s visit will be closely scrutinised in the South African press for signs of the family’s presence in any of the business deals that are expected. Among their key ambitions is a role in marketing South African weapons in India now that the government’s blacklisting of state-owned Denel has been lifted.

South Africans of Indian descent may also be less enthusiastic than the diaspora audiences that have greeted Modi elsewhere. They tend to identify as South Africans first, and many are uncomfortable with Modi’s tough Hindutva image.

The fact that he has chosen to interact with the community in Johannesburg, rather than Durban, which has a much larger Indian population, suggests he may be opting for something more low-key than his usual stadium-filling show.