Ex-wife key in roll-out of ’Zumafication’ strategy
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe is one of the most courageous and highly principled political leaders in the country.
Last week, he launched an attack on the so-called “premier league”.
With his usual no-nonsense and sarcastic demeanor, Mantashe quipped: “The ANC must ask difficult questions. What happens when the ANC is taken over by only three premiers?”
It’s a thought-provoking question indeed.
The premier league is a pseudo-political structure made up of three ultraambitious provincial premiers – Ace Magashule, David Mabuza and Supra Mahumapelo.
These premiers are also ANC provincial chairmen in Free State, Mpumalanga and North West respectively.
This self-styled politburo emerged in the ANC just a month before the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) national congress.
The “premier league” has arrogated to itself the power to determine who gets elected at elective conferences of the ANC and its leagues.
This three-member brigade campaigned tirelessly for its preferred candidates to be elected at the recent ANCWL and ANC Youth League (ANCYL) congresses.
The electoral outcomes of these congresses were stage-managed and tailormade by them.
Bathabile Dlamini and Collen Maine are the prime beneficiaries of the premier league’s modus operandi.
But the premier league is not an insulated faction existing and operating on its own.
It is secretly masterminded, backed and driven by some powerful bigwigs in the ANC national executive committee.
That explains why, until last week, Luthuli House did not condemn the three implicated premiers for their divisive tendencies and activities.
Three weeks ago, the SACP accused the premier league of turning the ANCYL and ANCWL congresses into “power brokers and storm troopers”.
But, in reality, the premier league, ANCYL and ANCWL are President Jacob Zuma’s “power brokers and storm troopers”.
It could be that Zuma does not want Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa to succeed him in 2017, but this is not conclusive.
ANC presidents have it as their task to condemn factional tendencies in the party. But, to this day, Zuma has not personally condemned the factional and divisive tendencies of the premier league. This feeds into the popular belief that Msholozi is the political godfather of the premier league.
There are multiple reasons to believe that Zuma is appreciative and approving of the existence of the premier league. What the premier league is accused of doing could be to the benefit of Zuma’s political ambitions.
Early this year, Zuma intimated that the ANC would soon have a female president. That (presidential) pronouncement paved the way for the emergence of the premier league.
The modus operandi of the premier league is paradoxically tied to the 2017 ANC elective conference.
In 2010, an eminent leader of the Young Communist League penned a brilliant opinion piece about the looming “Zumafication of the ANC”.
The ultimate mission of the premier league is to usurp full control of the leagues for their own interests but this may further – wittingly or unwittingly – the Zumafication agenda.
If that is the case, then the aim is to install Zuma’s former wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the next president of the ANC in 2017, and thus the ANCWL’s call for a female president of the ANC is not informed by any genuine considerations. It is fuelled by the pursuit of selfserving political opportunism and designed to obstruct ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa from becoming ANC president.
It would follow then, that the premier league, colluding with the ANCWL and ANCYL, seeks to dilute and compromise the revolutionary culture and tradition of the ANC.
The 1949 ANC national conference resolved that the party should begin to groom and nurture its leaders and that the party’s deputy president should be considered the successor to the incumbent president.
And so Albert Luthuli succeeded James Moroka, Oliver Tambo succeeded Luthuli, Nelson Mandela succeeded Tambo, Thabo Mbeki succeeded Mandela and Zuma succeeded Mbeki.
Dlamini-Zuma becoming ANC president in 2017 would result in her becoming the state president in 2019.
If that probability becomes reality we’ll have to ask: Is it morally, ethically and politically justified for a party and state president to be succeeded by his exwife? What would this mean?
The ANC is not and has never been a political organisation modelled on aristocratic dynasty. Dlamini-Zuma’s relationship to Zuma poses a complex conundrum for our constitutional and electoral democracy.
During the primitive and ancient stages of societal development, leadership was conceptualised and premised on “bloodline aristocracy”.
But democracy is the antithesis of bloodline aristocracy. Democracy is a leadership framework premised on the popular election of leaders who enter into a social contract with the electorate.
Leadership and authority is not to be inherited and passed on like an inheritance.
Because of that, it is undesirable and unacceptable for a president of a democratic country to be succeeded by a family member. I’m in awe of Dlamini-Zuma’s competencies and skills but am totally against the mooted idea that she must succeed her former husband.
Dlamini-Zuma’s elevation into the presidency would erode our democratic stature and plunge our country into an aristocratic dynasty that advances the interests of Zuma and his corrosive faction.
Dlamini-Zuma becoming ANC president in 2017 would result in her becoming the state president in 2019
Elvis Masoga is a political analyst and researcher at the Institute for Dialogue and Policy Analysis. This article first appeared in Sowetan