Our Hillary Dlamini-Zuma is in denial too
If you had to analogise the ANC’s leadership race in terms of other presidential candidates, where would you end up? The easiest analogy would be Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as our Hillary Clinton. Like Clinton, Dlamini-Zuma seems to be the person most destined to be president yet her support — both inside and outside the party— is reluctant and based on duty more than real enthusiasm. You can almost hear people sigh when her name is mentioned.
She and Clinton have vast track records within their respective political systems, but, although impressive, those track records have brought as many critics as supporters to their camps.
Dlamini-Zuma was in Nelson Mandela’s cabinet, she goes back that far. Her record was attentive and, on occasion, brave. But she was also responsible for the one real example of corruption in the Mandela era; the Sarafina scandal. EU funding of R14.2m was channelled to playwright Mbongeni Ngema after he won a contract to write a play about HIV/AIDS. The matter was referred to the public protector and its report found that the expenditure was unauthorised, the initiative mismanaged and that Dlamini-Zuma and then health department director-general Olive Shisana had misled Parliament and the media.
Clinton this week published a book on the 2016 presidential campaign that she had won in numerical terms but lost in terms of the parameters that matter. Yet, like Dlamini-Zuma, she seems often to be in denial and incapable of hearing anything she doesn’t want to hear.
What about Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa?
Here the analogies are different, but I would suggest Al Gore comes closest — the man who should become president but somehow always seems to contrive to lose, either by bad luck or a lack of ruthlessness.
Both men seem to be forever in the wrong place at the right time. Gore and Ramaphosa deserve to be president; so why is it so difficult for them to actually nail the damn thing down?
Years ago, I watched this process in action at the first ANC elective conference after its unbanning in Durban in 1991. The conference elected Mandela as president and this event overshadowed the large battle for deputy.
The candidates then were Ramaphosa, Thabo Mbeki and Chris Hani. In what became an ominous foretelling of the leadership battles of the future, the party was unable to choose between the three. The steady but undramatic figure of Walter Sisulu stepped in as a compromise candidate and became the first ANC deputy president of the new era.
The ANC was trying to avoid a battle between the three dominant figures at the time. Of the three, Ramaphosa technically won and became secretary-general, but he was unable to convert that advantage to become deputy president at later conferences.
Like Gore, there seems to be a reticence about Ramaphosa, and it is perhaps one of their most likeable characteristics, but at the same time their Achilles heel.
Both seem to be unable to present themselves as unifiers and uniters — partly unfairly but partly also their own doing because, at root, they seem to prefer the status of being a unique voice asking the inconvenient truths.
So what about Zweli Mkhize? I had my first opportunity last week to hear Mkhize making a stump speech at AHI’s Durban conference and he was impressive. It was a small group, but that he agreed to speak at a formerly Afrikaans-centred small-business organisation conference says a lot.
He connected with the audience immediately, even though it was hardly his home base, emphasising growth and transformation, unlike other ANC leaders who seem entirely unconcerned about growth.
But his repeated emphasis on inclusiveness, dialogue and confidence were clearly heart-felt and a breath of fresh air compared to the sour vindictiveness of Dlamini-Zuma’s address at the Gibs business school which was designed to make the horrible audience understand the true nature of radical economic transformation.
Mkhize even quoted Pik Botha’s old antisanctions zebra analogy. Botha used to say whether you shoot a zebra in the black stripe or the white stripe, it still dies. Mkhize applied this same logic to the current situation in SA, which I thought was both brave and weirdly real.
Does he have a chance? He is positioned as the X-candidate, the compromise candidate who might just be able to balance the conflicting poles of the party. Consequently, the more the party divides, ironically the better his chances are.
And it is dividing pretty fast, as demonstrated by the ANC’s disputed KwaZuluNatal leadership elections struck down by a court. In my view, the party is on the edge of splitting.
In some ways, winning the party presidency now would be a real hospital pass. Yet, the ANC’s position is so tricky, and politics of the modern era so welcoming of lesserknown upstart candidates, that Mkhize must have a chance. He is the Emmanuel Macron, if you like, of the ANC’s campaign: likeable, centrist, capable and, you fear, doomed to victory.
MKHIZE IS THE EMMANUEL MACRON OF THE ANC’S CAMPAIGN: LIKEABLE, CENTRIST, CAPABLE AND, YOU FEAR, DOOMED TO VICTORY