Collapse of ANC vote looms ever larger
The ANC special national executive committee (NEC) meeting at the weekend was instructive. It provided evidence for what has been written about in these pages since July 2017: that the party’s national elective conference in December is at risk of being collapsed.
With exactly four weeks to go before that conference, the potential for this remains a clear and present danger.
At the weekend, the NEC received a report from the national working committee on the Eastern Cape elective conference, which had resulted in Oscar Mabuyane, former secretary and supporter of Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, being elected as provincial chairman.
At the weekend meeting, the faction aligned to President Jacob Zuma and his allies pushed for Mabuyane’s leadership to be dissolved or declared null and void by the ANC’s highest decision-making body between conferences, the NEC. So desperate has this faction become that it was peddling its wish lists far and wide to be picked up by journalists, who were then chastised by ANC secretarygeneral Gwede Mantashe and spokesman Zizi Kodwa for publishing “fake news”.
Kodwa went as far as releasing a statement midway through the NEC meeting, saying that reports of Mantashe’s removal having been discussed at the meeting were not true. Indeed, they were not. But they did represent the desire of a faction with much to lose in December should its preferred candidate, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, fail to succeed in winning the hearts and minds of ANC branches.
The meeting was tense. Many argued that the faction aligned to Zuma was bent on ensuring that the Eastern Cape conference be declared null and void — so much so that when the initial complaint was brought last month by the faction aligned to Zuma and his proxy Dlamini-Zuma (we can now confidently call her that), the faction had declared victory, broadcasting that the conference had been nullified and would be rerun early in 2018. However, this group did not triumph at the meeting.
To deviate a smidgen, why is the outcome of the Eastern Cape elective conference so important? Well, it boils down to numbers — victory in politics is often about mathematics.
ANC branch nominations were closed on Wednesday and by all accounts, Ramaphosa received an overwhelming majority of endorsements in the Western Cape, Northern Cape, Gauteng, Limpopo and thus far in the Eastern Cape.
The Eastern Cape, however, is only 56% through its nomination process — a generous split in favour of Dlamini-Zuma would certainly benefit her campaign, particularly because Mpumalanga continues to pose a headache for both factions. Neither knows where it stands.
This is exactly where Mpumalanga chairman David Mabuza wants them: guessing at their support from him.
But even he does not have complete control over the way his branches are nominating and it appears Ramaphosa may just be in the lead.
What does this mean? That the December race could go either way between the two lead contenders.
The slightest variable, the smallest development, could tip the scales. Think free higher education, or a decision by the National Prosecuting Authority to charge Zuma.
This is why the potential for the collapse or even complete postponement of the December conference looms large, as it has not done since the historic Polokwane conference in 2007. It is a tight race and the faction aligned to the incumbent has so much more to lose — potentially even jail time, and this is by no means a reference to just Zuma.
In addition, the degeneration of internal democracy in the ANC has culminated in the precarious position in which Dlamini-Zuma’s base and the party’s largest province is.
Mantashe declared that only 40% of KwaZulu-Natal branches had held their general meetings, only to be contradicted by the now illegal provincial executive committee, which countered that 70% of branch nominations had, in fact, been concluded.
The public contradictions are no accident — the ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive is still appealing against the judgment that declared Zuma lackey Sihle Zikalala’s election as chairman of the province illegal.
The matter is set to be heard at the end of November, and at the same time, Zikalala’s opponents and Ramaphosa’s allies in the province are moving for an enforcement order to ensure that Zikalala and his allies are no longer in charge of the branch nomination process.
Therefore, the 40% versus 70% completion of branch nomination ratio will most certainly play a role in the way the province votes in December, and the delegates selected to cast that vote.
The current committee having to hand power back to the previous one under Ramaphosa ally Senzo Mchunu, due to a court order, would have a big effect on the way the province votes in December.
A collapse of the December conference will be the final nail in the ANC’s political coffin — whether it wins the 2019 election or not, it will have lost the moral authority of a 105year-old organisation that had fought for democracy and won SA’s liberation.
THE SLIGHTEST VARIABLE COULD TIP THE SCALES. THINK FREE HIGHER EDUCATION, OR A DECISION BY THE NPA TO PROSECUTE ZUMA