The sorry state of the ANC
The timing could hardly be worse for President Cyril Ramaphosa and his renewal project. From Davos to Cape Town, he has talked up the theme of rebirth for the country, even urging us to see the positives in the grisly corruption scandals that have emerged during the Zondo commission on state capture.
In words that irked his predecessor so much that Jacob Zuma felt moved to respond on Twitter (where else?), Ramaphosa has talked much of the nine “wasted years” in which rampant corruption became entrenched and key institutions such as the power utility Eskom were manipulated to serve the interests of one family.
From law enforcement to tax revenue, the destruction was immense and threatened to bring down the whole economy.
Perhaps reflecting the country’s need for soothing and, most importantly, hope, Ramaphosa has got away with it, though now and then there’ll be an observer pointing out the irony of the renewal being led by someone who was often sitting alongside Zuma when untold damage was being inflicted on the country.
That’s an interesting debate on its own, but those familiar with the workings of the ANC largely appreciate that there was probably no other way. Rather than talk of a new dawn, the price of Ramaphosa giving away his seat at the time would have been the country having another president called Zuma today, and yet more despair.
So, the national instinct has been to give Ramaphosa the benefit of the doubt in the hope he can take hold of the ANC and be the force of reform he wants to be.
News on Wednesday that Zuma ally Supra Mahumapelo had succeeded in his court bid to overturn an ANC national executive committee decision to disband the provincial leadership — effectively firing him as party leader in the North West — is a timely reminder of the forces Ramaphosa is up against.
Coming just a day before he delivers his widely anticipated state of the nation address, it will cast a dark cloud over what is meant to be an optimistic message about a way forward for the nation. The faction Mahumapelo is part of cannot be said to represent anything to do with a new dawn.
This is the same Mahumapelo who was part of a group that met Zuma at a hotel in Durban in 2018, where they allegedly cooked up a plot to unseat Ramaphosa. If anything, he is a symbol of the toxic divisions that bedevil the ANC and constrain any prospects for meaningful reform.
One of Ramaphosa’s lieutenants, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan, who has been given the mammoth task of cleaning up state-owned enterprises, has consistently warned about a fightback by the “forces at the centre of state capture”.
He told a conference in 2018 that this grouping is “not just walking away, they’re fighting back and trying to hold on to what they have and get rid of the good guys so they can win back that space and continue with the kind of destruction in those stateowned entities”. Whether Mahumapelo is part of such a grouping remains to be seen, but what is not in dispute is that this sorry mess shows how far Ramaphosa has to go before he has control of his party, and the dangers that lurk around his leadership.
For ANC supporters, the most immediate concern may well be what all of this means for the party’s electoral prospects in a province where it has seen its support drop since 2009. For citizens and investors looking for solutions to challenges such as unsustainable levels of unemployment and poverty, that is the least of their worries and the distraction is unwelcome.
At a time when the country is crying out for leadership, these spats within the ANC can only lead to anxiety about what’s to come and questions about how much authority the president commands in order to give meaning to any promises he makes on Thursday night.
THIS SORRY MESS SHOWS HOW FAR RAMAPHOSA HAS TO GO BEFORE HE HAS CONTROL OF HIS PARTY