Learn from history not to cling to power

It's hard to believe that, just 10 days ago, South Africa's economic outlook was on the up. The current account deficit was shrinking, there were tentative signs of growth and international lenders were giving the country the benefit of the doubt in terms of its ability to pull itself from the brink of economic self-destruction instigated by the messy sacking of Nhlanhla Nene in December 2015.

Then President Jacob Zuma undertook a dramatic cabinet reshuffle in a brazen attempt to reassert his flagging authority.

Few leaders in the past 60 years of South African history have left their jobs voluntarily. Many have held on well past their sell-by date, and each one of them has left a negative legacy. Those who have gone voluntarily have left a far better legacy for their successors to build on than those who did not.

HF Verwoerd became prime minister in 1958. His predecessor, JG Strijdom, had died of cancer in office, and his own tenure ended only when he was assassinated in September 1966. It took the Information Scandal to finally end the political career of his successor, BJ Vorster, and a stroke and the end of the Cold War to unseat PW Botha. Even then, senior party leaders failed to act decisively.

In more recent times, FW de Klerk negotiated his way out of the job, Nelson Mandela stepped down as promised and Thabo Mbeki did his bit to save the ANC from tearing itself apart at Polokwane.

Zuma looks as if he intends holding on, whatever it takes. He needs to understand what happens when political leaders stay too long.

Verwoerd oversaw the biggest boom in economic growth since GDP has been measured. Growth averaged over 6% through the 1960s.

It excluded 80% of the population and coincided with the forming of the South African laager and the equipping of strong state-owned enterprises with highly trained young nationalists eager to ensure the maintenance of their political and social dominance.

It all came to an end under Botha. But it was a devastatingly slow burn. Not even earth-shattering events such as his disastrous 1985 Rubicon speech, where, given the chance to announce reforms that would have stayed economic collapse, he chose a hard line instead. The economic calamity that followed amid the debt default hastened the end of apartheid. But it was agony.

Thousands died on the streets as political tension escalated, and global companies disinvested in droves. Inflation peaked at just over 20%. The Reserve Bank was forced to intervene with unsustainably low interest rates, which, ironically, helped bring about the demise of the nationalist state.

It was a critical period for political change. Back then, the wheels seriously had to come off before change happened. You would think we had learnt from our history.

When Botha - who had stated in a TV broadcast after his stroke that he would fight another whites-only election in 1990, which might have kept him in office until 1995 - finally stepped down on August 14 1989, his successor, De Klerk, inherited a bankrupt state. There was no money to keep running the apartheid system.

Left without a choice, he unbanned political organisations and released political prisoners. It took another four years for free elections to happen and 10 more before South Africa was elevated to investment grade by ratings agencies.

Disasters happen quickly. It takes far longer to emerge from the mess that is created in the process.

For Zuma and those closest to him, many of whom will live to see the consequences of their actions messily play out, what will their legacy be? Will they be remembered with the reverence of Mandela, who handed Mbeki a golden opportunity to grow a battered economy, or with the disdain with which we think of Botha, who took the country into a cesspit of oppressive despair?

It really is a choice.

Whitfield is a speaker on the political economy, a financial journalist and broadcaster