Just as President Jacob Zuma has delivered the January 8 Statement, which recommitted the ruling African National Congress to the National Democratic Revolution, the ANC Women’s League backed his ex-wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma for presidency of the party – and thus ultimately for President of South Africa in 2019, if the party wins the next national election. Cape Messenger editor Donwald Pressly tries to make sense what is going on
10 January 2016 – What is to be made of the annual January 8 statement, the official policy position presented on the anniversary of the ruling party’s founding in 1912? Economic Freedom Fighters’ leader Julius Malema, a former ANC youth league leader, says that the ruling party is ‘imploding’. The ANC can’t even fill ‘a small’ stadium like the Orlando one in Soweto to mark the occasion, he says.
Indeed, Malema is well, sort-of, right. The ANC is, indeed, an ideological mess. But it is a mess that makes sense for some, the ruling group within the ruling party. ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe complains that the decision by the ANC Women’s League to back the president’s ex-wife for the presidency ahead of the December elective conference of the party doesn’t leave space for the branch structures to deliberate. They will complain that a structure has already taken a stance. In contrast, ANC national chairperson Baleka Mbete believes that the announcement by the Women’s League doesn’t muddy the waters for other candidates to spring up.
The January 8 statement is supposedly the collective work of the 100 national executive committee members. It is unlikely that all the members were lucky enough even to see it before it was delivered on Sunday, but it is likely to be the ‘collected work’ of the senior leaders, including the top six.
Image Source: Youtube – Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is in the winning lane for President of South Africa
So it is a wordy, revolutionary diatribe that calls for unity. There is a tremendous focus on unity, which implies that disunity in the current ruling party and its structures is a huge problem.
Zuma rambles on: “Like comrade Oliver Tambo, cadres of the Movement must be inspired by the spirit of unity that informed the signing of the Three Doctors Pact. Seventy years ago, the ANC, the Transvaal Indian Congress (TIC) and the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) pledged mutual support for one another’s campaigns. Doctors Xuma, Yusuf Dadoo and Naicker, the presidents of the respective organisations, signed the Pact, which represented the beginnings of the Congress Alliance.”
These three leaders had made clear that the success “of our revolution” depended on showing unity … in the face of heinous oppression. “Today, our Movement faces serious challenges to its unity. Divisive tendencies such as factionalism, gatekeeping and manipulation of internal processes exist at all levels of the ANC, the ANC Leagues, the Alliance and the Mass Democratic Movement. These tendencies inhibit our ability to give decisive leadership to society,” he reports.
What this masks, of course, is that the strategy to destabilise the ruling party is not as a consequence of factionalism at all. The president and his tenderpreneur class – that class of people who have made it their business to make money out of being in power – have made sure that they have created structures in the ruling party and government which control the means of siphoning off the political trough for (to the advantage of) that very class of people.
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will, no doubt, be elected by a sizeable majority at the December elective conference because ANC structures are in a mess. Ghost branches were created long ago, particularly in KwaZulu Natal, the president’s home base. There are already reports of car bootfulls of booty to buy votes. It will be this constructed constituency – one could call it a faction – which will carry the Zuma name to victory again. President Zuma knows his party and his organisation well. He has poisoned the waters for his opposition. Anyone who stands up to him will rue the day. That is why Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa will probably need to find a new political home after December – or just drop into political obscurity. He is most unlikely to win the race for president.
In the meantime, the president and his cronies have to punt ‘unity’ and prosperity and the national democratic revolution up front to mask their real intentions. They have to paint their opponents, both within the ruling movement and without, as spoilers and egotistical individualists representing no-one in particular.
Malema, however, is wrong about the ANC imploding. It will not implode until it is obvious to the losers within it that they have no more options. Then it may split. Even then, it is unlikely to implode. Even if Members of Parliament protest because they see that the baddies are staying in power, they will have to resign their seats. They will then be replaced by the ruling group in the ANC who are loyal to the Zuma faction.
You can bet your bottom dollar the ANC will still be around to fight the 2019 national election. Only if it loses that election is there a chance that the party could implode. But that is the million dollar question. It is too early to predict such a result.