ANC AND ZUMA DIVIDE A movement caught between old and new

There were two ANCs on display this week. The old Jacob Zuma ANC and the emerging new Cyril Ramaphosa ANC.

On Tuesday, the Zuma ANC was represented by secretarygeneral Ace Magashule, who announced the decision by the party’s national executive committee to recall Zuma.

The way in which he phrased the recall — “We did not take these decisions because comrade Jacob Zuma has done anything wrong” — and the way in which he dealt with questions from reporters was emblematic of the uncomfortable, inwardlooking politics of a closed organisation. In this world, the protection of the leader against the slings and arrows of criticism trumps all else. And so Magashule said: “Forget about fake news [on] Russian nuclear or any other thing that disrespects President Zuma. We still believe in him as a leader.”

He actually thought he could get away with saying that Zuma was being recalled despite doing no wrong and that the ANC “still believed in him as a leader”. It was the sort of double-speak that a closed society without an interrogative media might have been fed during the Cold War.

The following day Magashule was nowhere to be seen. Addressing the media after the ANC caucus meeting were its treasurer-general, Paul Mashatile, and chief whip Jackson Mthembu. It was like night and day. Mashatile made it plain that unless he resigned on Tuesday, Zuma would be voted out of office by a motion of no confidence on Wednesday.

Mashatile put it bluntly: “Our people want to see change. They want to see the new leadership taking over the management not only of the ANC but of the affairs of the state.

“We don’t have time to be bickering about who should be president. We have elected president Ramaphosa, he should be the president. All is clear, that is how we move ahead.”

The contrast between these two styles illustrates the transition that the ANC has to make if it is to win back its lost support and successfully rebrand itself as the party of accountability and good governance. The party has to lift its gaze from its navel to the horizon. If it does, it will see millions of sceptics contemplating support for it in 2019.

Magashule was gazing at the party’s navel, assuring its leadership that he had their backs even when the entire country – including the ANC’s national executive committee — had turned against them.

Mashatile was looking up at the political horizon and talking to voters, assuring them that decisive action would be taken.

Later on Wednesday evening the old ANC was on display again, this time represented by deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte. No public reasons could be given for Zuma’s recall because this might hurt his family’s feelings, she said.

In this old ANC universe, Duarte would have us believe that it would be insensitive to tell the public why their president was being fired.

President Ramaphosa has no choice but to modernise the ANC and to do so quickly.