Expect the wounded faction to fight back
While it is clear that the ANC faction aligned to President Jacob Zuma and the purveyors of his “shadow state”, are on the back foot, it is equally apparent that we are not out of the woods yet.
An ardent Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma supporter and businessman declared this week that the governing party’s elective conference in December had been “bought and paid for” and that her position as president was guaranteed.
He even suggests that certain ministers are already reporting to ANC Free State chairman Ace Magashule, who is on Dlamini- Zuma’s slate to become secretary-general.
It may be easy to dismiss such talk as political gossip, but it would be reckless to ignore it.
While it is no longer a two-horse race — with the endorsement of Zweli Mkhize by the Alfred Nzo region in the Eastern Cape and Baleka Mbete’s expression of readiness to stand for the post — the frontrunners remain Dlamini-Zuma and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The bravado expressed by the Dlamini-Zuma group should raise alarm that it is far from over. If December’s critical elective conference has been “bought and paid for”, we are headed for turbulent waters.
The conduct of this group after the ANC’s policy conference spoke volumes: the party’s youth and women’s leagues declared victory, even after being outmanoeuvred. A leaked video of a caucus of this faction showed that it was not willing to accept defeat.
There are also increasing reports of membership fraud in the party as temperatures rise ahead of the elective conference and efforts are made to bolster the numbers of various factions. Ghost members and forged membership forms are already abundant.
The party’s KwaZulu-Natal structures claim that membership numbers are being manipulated and they do not trust the provincial leaders to deal with their concerns fairly.
The last ANC elective conference in that province is still being challenged in court with allegations of widespread vote rigging.
There is also further evidence that Zuma’s opponents in the party are finally getting up to speed with the mood among ordinary South Africans, who are increasingly pessimistic about the country’s future.
Ramaphosa reflected this at the SACP congress when he bellowed that he would no longer remain quiet in the face of state capture and the erosion of SA’s sovereignty.
The SACP has publicly outlined a long-held fear that should “the faction” become alive to the fact that is losing in December, it would move to collapse the elective conference.
Should that happen, what would be the way forward? One possibility is that Zuma would remain as party president until the ANC puts its house in order and is able to hold a fresh conference.
There is recent history of this happening.
The ANC Youth League conference was deferred and its second take elected Collen Maine as its president.
At the Northern Cape provincial conference, a faction succeeded in getting the gathering postponed. When it eventually took place, the faction raised the same concerns and in the end, refused to participate.
Going back further, the outcomes of the ANC Free State conference of 2012 were reversed by the Constitutional Court, but by the time the conference reconvened, the faction that initially stole it was so well entrenched that it had a walkover win.
The pending court case over the KwaZulu-Natal conference has been raised as a possible pressure point to collapse the December conference.
Insiders say that irregularities in that conference may result in a court victory for the anti-Zuma faction. These include the problem of fraudulent identity documents.
Should the court overturn the outcome of the KwaZulu-Natal conference that installed Zuma-aligned chairman Sihle Zikalala and other leaders, this group may use it as an excuse to delay or postpone the December national conference.
An outright win for Dlamini-Zuma could also spell a split. As former SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin said, many in the ANC would not want to remain inside under the “gangster leadership” of the “Premier League” — the ANC chairmen in Mpumalanga and the Free State, supported by KwaZulu-Natal and the women’s and youth leagues.
The Dlamini-Zuma group’s defeat at the policy conference, while welcomed by some, marks the beginning of a long and bitter battle that could reorient South African politics.
THE DLAMINI-ZUMA GROUP’S DEFEAT AT THE POLICY CONFERENCE, MARKS THE BEGINNING OF A LONG AND BITTER BATTLE