ANC two-horse race may be a phantasm

After last week’s no-confidence vote in Parliament, a line of analysis has emerged in this newspaper and in others. The closeness of the vote has revealed that the ANC is destined to split, it is said. Those committed to SA’s Constitution are on one side, those who put party above country are on the other. Breaking away will be hugely difficult for either, so the argument goes, but the differences cannot be bridged and the split is bound to come.

With great respect and in the best spirit, I am not sure that is right. It appears to be an analysis born of hope instead of sobriety.

The hope is that if the ANC can be divided into good and bad, the bad will conveniently self-destruct, leaving the rest of us to a new beginning.

We are dreaming we can have our cake and eat it; that if Cyril Ramaphosa wins in December, things will turn out well. And that if Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma wins in December, things will also turn out well, because following her victory, the good ANC will break away, leaving the bad ANC to contest the 2019 elections and lose.

It is an analysis that starts with a happy ending and works backwards.

Why is it not right? Even for a country at ease with itself, one blessed with a healthy and stable polity, the idea that clashes between cherished principles will decide the future is a little quaint. Given what has happened in SA over the past decade, the notion that politicians’ commitment to their principles might shape what happens next is to describe a world that simply isn’t ours.

Ideas and values are, of course, important, but in such a slippery way. If we want a sense of what will happen to the ANC, we need to follow the money and the power.

In the backroom talks Ramaphosa is having, his appeal to constitutional principles goes only so far. He must appeal to his colleagues’ taste for power. He must convince them all, “good” and “bad”, that if he does not lead the ANC, they will lose their positions. The EFF will not join a governing coalition with a Dlamini-Zuma-led ANC. And if she wins in December, the South African Communist Party will form a front to contest the votes of the urban working class.

The ANC will be out on its own, dogs snapping at its heels, and God help it if it does not get 50%.

Ramaphosa will also have to assure those who have wandered to the dark side that he will not shine a light on their deeds.

For if he is to go after them, they would rather install a dictatorship than see his ANC win. There will be scapegoats — he will make a spectacle of going after those who cannot fight back.

I’d be surprised if Ramaphosa makes it. Enough of the ANC distrusts him to prevent him from becoming president. I doubt whether Dlamini-Zuma will make it either – she is an electoral liability and the ANC does not seem to be on the brink of suicide. In retrospect, the contest between Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma may seem a phantom race between two ghostly horses.

I suspect a third candidate will emerge at the very last moment and win. And then the whole egg will be rescrambled – new alliances, new policies, new enemies.

Under its freshly installed leader, the ANC will make a show of turning the world upside down. The organisation will throw its wrath at the Guptas. A whole troupe of foul hangers-on will be flushed out – Shaun Abrahams, Bathabile Dlamini, Faith Muthambi. Severed from their former patron, they will be nothing. The government will announce a dramatic new land policy, so far-reaching in its implications that we will talk and think of little else.

By the close of 2018, the Zuma era will seem ancient history, the personalities and the issues over which we now obsess blown away in the wind. A renewed and invigorated ANC will prime itself to fight the national election of its life.

How plausible is this scenario? Who knows? A dozen others are possible. But it is far more likely than the proposition that the party will split on matters of principle.

The ANC may be battered, but it is not about to kill itself for our convenience.

If the organisation understands anything, it is power. Its warring parts all know they need each other. They will fight the next election together and they will probably win.

IDEAS AND VALUES ARE IMPORTANT, BUT IN SUCH A SLIPPERY WAY. IF WE WANT A SENSE OF WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE ANC, WE NEED TO FOLLOW THE POWER