Two centres or one, just how must ANC axe Zuma?

Jacob Zuma’s days as SA’s president are numbered. In fact, there is consensus within the national executive committee of the ANC that Zuma must vacate office expeditiously. But there is some disagreement over the manner, timing and conditions of his departure from office.

What is clear, though, is that — for the sake of “unity” — ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa does not want a clumsy and messy exit. The first prize for Ramaphosa is a dignified exit by resignation. Within his camp, there are many who want maximum humiliation for the president because, as some of them argue, Zuma benefited from Mbeki’s humiliation a decade ago. Those who managed the tension between the two centres of power — Zuma’s presidency of the ANC and Mbeki’s presidency of the country — following the Polokwane conference tend to be more pragmatic because they witnessed, firsthand, the debilitating effects of tension between the two centres of power and the instability that followed the decision to recall Mbeki as head of state.

Before I proceed, I feel compelled to remind many among us about how the twocentres debate arose in 2007. It did not arise in the narrow context of two centres of power coming into being after an ANC national conference. Because Mbeki sought a third term as ANC president, the president of the party and that of the country would have been two different people after the 2009 elections had Mbeki won. The 2007 policy conference was on the verge of adopting a resolution opposing the emergence of two centres of power, which would have amounted to a vote of no confidence in Mbeki six months before the Polokwane conference.

This meant Mbeki’s humiliation would have arrived six months early. It is for this reason that the then ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe proposed that the person elected ANC president at the national conference should “preferably” be the party’s presidential candidate at the next general election — a position that was endorsed by the Polokwane conference.

I still maintain that the ANC needs to be flexible on this matter because the day may come when there is a need to keep a disastrous palooka of an ANC president as far away from the Union Buildings as possible. For me, the problem is that the transition period between the ANC conference and the general election is just too long.

The ANC must consider the possibility of aligning its processes to the country’s electoral cycle.

The question for now is how the ANC should manage the immediate Zuma challenge. It must manage Zuma’s fears or call the bluff of Ramaphosa’s opponents by threatening to use the ANC’s majority in Parliament. Of course, there is always the risk of Zuma’s supporters, a significant minority perhaps, voting for the opposition’s presidential candidate after Zuma’s removal.

But the allies of an ANC president are not always the allies of a former ANC president. Ask Fikile Mbalula and Malusi Gigaba. There may be more of their ilk if Zuma decides to call Ramaphosa’s bluff in the hope that the dice will roll in his favour in a vote of no confidence.

Otherwise, Zuma must cut a deal for himself and sacrifice his disciples before they cut deals for themselves in return for his scalp. A few years ago, a Zimbabwean colleague used a Shona expression to explain why Robert Mugabe was refusing to relinquish power. She said, “The Old man has soiled his pants. That is why he does not want to stand up.”

If Zuma has not soiled his pants, he must stand up.

He must resign and maybe, just maybe, his political enemies will pour a potpourri of fragrances over his political sins.