Jacana Pocket History: Presidential Power by Anthony Butler

A good deal of time and energy has been expended detailing the ideas, strategies, personalities, and assorted idiosyncrasies of South Africa’s post-apartheid presidents. After three decades of generally disheartening national politics, it is time to ask how much difference, if any, these presidents have actually made.

It is popularly assumed that leadership is an important resource. Most commentary on recent heads of government, however, presents a procession of stereotypes, and oversimplifies leaders’ capabilities, the challenges of government and the limits on how individuals can seize and exercise presidential power.

This book pushes back against the simplifications that have dominated recent analysis of leadership and reaffirms many aspects of a more ‘structural’ view. Social scientists and historians have traditionally preferred explanations for events that focus on what was likely to happen in the longer term, regardless of the intentions
and actions of individual leaders. Presidents and prime ministers, in this view, are primarily vectors of underlying historical forces rather than the makers of history.

Advancing a new way of conceptualising apex political power, this book shows that presidents can indeed make a difference – but only in a tightly circumscribed way – and shows why their larger impacts on history are primarily destructive. It also explains how popular visions of impactful leaders have been summoned up
and recreated, and why a leader’s place in history can change so dramatically a few years after they have left office.