Murky Mabuza is playing a dicey game
Will Mpumalanga chairman David Mabuza turn out to be the Tokyo Sexwale of the Nasrec conference?
At the ANC’s fateful 53rd national conference, Sexwale was in the running for the presidency, with the support of a province — albeit the smaller Gauteng — when he realised he would lose and opted to throw his weight behind Jacob Zuma.
Mabuza, long part of the Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma slate, pushed for a bizarre “nomination” for “unity” at his province’s general council last week instead of openly endorsing Dlamini-Zuma, the candidate who obtained the majority from the branches.
The ANC election agency’s Dren Nupen read out the results of the branch nomination process in a marquee at the Mbombela Stadium on Friday. After announcing the numbers for each candidate — 123 for Dlamini-Zuma and 117 for her opponent, ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa — she told the energetic gathering of ANC faithful there had been 223 “abstentions”.
As if on cue, the crowd greeted her pronouncement with a loud cry of “Unity!”.
The slick Mabuza then sauntered onto the stage and clasped the microphone, asking Nupen to tell the audience what was actually penned on nomination forms that had been counted as “abstentions”.
“Unity,” Nupen said, almost sheepishly. Mabuza then prodded and poked in an attempt to force Nupen to pronounce that “abstentions” meant “unity”.
She did not budge. Eventually, chairman of the elections committee, Sindiso Mfenyana, took to the podium and declared that the matter would be resolved on the national conference floor.
The move surprised Dlamini-Zuma backers, who have long been waiting for Mabuza — the chairman of the ANC province with the secondlargest voting delegation to conference — to give their candidate the nod.
They expected him to appear at a rally she addressed in Mpumalanga two weeks before. He did not. They also expected him to hold a rally in her honour at the Mbombela Stadium. Again, he did not deliver. He could easily have come out in Dlamini-Zuma’s support at the provincial general council by simply allowing the agency to announce that she, and not the enigmatic “unity” position, had won out. He did not do so.
The move was interpreted by some as dangling a carrot before the Ramaphosa camp, which has been loath to align his ticket, touted as one of “renewal”, with the wily and murky Mabuza.
But the Ramaphosa camp did not bite, saying instead that Mabuza had overestimated his influence over voting delegates in his province.
Now there are reports that even the Dlamini-Zuma camp is considering an alternative to him — information that was probably designed to pull him back into line. And it may have worked. Sources in the province say the line of march has been handed down to regions for the “unity” vote to go to Dlamini-Zuma.
If the “unity” nominations are handed to his opponent, this would still leave Ramaphosa in the lead in terms of branch nominations, although the margin between the two would shrink dramatically, making the race for the presidency even more nail-biting.
Branch nominations are not a replica of the way actual delegates would choose to vote at the conference. The intense lobbying and horse-trading in the run-up to the conference and at the gathering are set to heavily influence them, as is the actual size of delegations from branches and the potential for vote-buying and bribery.
There is resistance from some of those in the province who opted for “unity”. The group is said to be split between support for Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa, with many having genuinely considered a unity option to save the ANC from another split, which could translate into further bloodletting in the 2019 national election.
This could be one of the reasons Mabuza has been hesitant to back Dlamini-Zuma outright. He is aware the ANC is set to face a gruelling election battle in 2019 and believes Dlamini-Zuma does not have the charisma to lead the party to a victory, not to mention questions over the credibility of her backers. As a provincial leader put it this week, the battle to be fought next week is simply “a choice between whether the ANC wants to win the 2019 election or not”.
While Mabuza came across as a man in charge at the Mpumalanga conference, the two warring factions have seen through his facade. With consensus talks on the boil and lobbying and horse-trading set to take place, as well as considerations about the ANC’s election prospects, Mabuza may have overplayed his hand.
Like Sexwale, he may have no choice but to throw up his hands and concede, accepting a lesser post than even Dlamini-Zuma’s camp is now offering him — or nothing at all.
MABUZA IS AWARE THE ANC IS SET TO FACE A GRUELLING BATTLE AND BELIEVES DLAMINI-ZUMA DOES NOT HAVE THE CHARISMA TO LEAD IT TO VICTORY