BCM fails to heed clear lesson

AS FAR back as 2002, the ANC’s own Organisational Report – tabled at its 51st National Conference in Stellenbosch – warned of the challenges that come with being a party in government.

In his report the then ANC secretarygeneral Kgalema Motlanthe cautioned that occupying a position of power, which comes with material rewards, could create a social distance between politicians and the constituencies they represent. This distance was made possible by “the legacy of inequality, large-scale unemployment and poverty that still plagues us”.

At the time ANC had been at the helm of government for eight years.

High political office, Motlanthe said, “could render some in the revolutionary movement complacent, concerned with maintaining their positions and even indifferent to the conditions of the poor”.

But in true ANC fashion, it seemed no one was listening and the infighting, jostling for positions and general sense of entitlement took hold.

Fast forward to 2011 – the ANC lost its first metro, the City of Cape Town.

The outcome of that election suggested that the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro could be next in line. ANC support in Nelson Mandela Bay had been steadily dropping – from 64.8% in 2006 to 51.5% in 2011.

At the heart of the ANC’s problems in Nelson Mandela Bay was the schism that birthed COPE as well as issues of gross financial mismanagement.

A forensic investigation uncovered gross mismanagement of the books by the council led by Mayor Nceba Faku and after years of trying to sweep matters under the carpet, the forensic reports, including the Kabuso report, were finally made public.

But instead of those at Calata House, the ANC’s provincial headquarters in King William’s Town, dealing with the individuals who were implicated, the municipal manager at the time, Lindiwe Msengana-Ndlela, became the governing party’s soft target.

Interestingly, Msengana-Ndlela had just put an end to the exorbitant and obviously corruption-riddled bus rapid transport system after irregularities were discovered in how the tender was issued.

From then on, the ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay spiralled downwards.

And all the while the metro’s residents watched. They also indicated through at least two by-elections in Uitenhage and kwaMagxaki, that they did not like what the ANC was doing in the metro.

It is now history that the ANC went on to lose Nelson Mandela Bay in the 2016 August local government elections.

And not only that, but the City of Johannesburg and the City of Tshwane.

The ANC was reduced to an opposition party in Nelson Mandela Bay after securing only 40.9% of the polls, thus gaining just 50 seats, against DA’s 46.7% (57 seats) in the 120-seat council.

For the ANC it was a major drop from the 62 seats it won in 2011.

Such punishment should be a hard lesson for any political party not to be “complacent” and “indifferent to the conditions of the poor”.

But a similar drama seems to be playing out in Buffalo City Metro.

Echoes of the infighting that brought down the ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay are audible enough locally, even to the usually compliant ANC voter who has now started questioning whether the party is still committed to the “better life for all” that was promised many moons ago.

According to the Eastern Cape SocioEconomic Consultative Council’s (ECSECC’s) 2014 Socio-Economic Profile Report, 47% of Buffalo City Metro’s 775 000 residents live in poverty.

BCM is one of four (out of eight) metros managed by the governing party after the August 3 election. The others are Mangaung, eThekwini and Ekurhuleni (albeit with a coalition hanging by a thread).

BCM is now under the leadership of Xola Pakati in the ANC and as the current BCM executive mayor.

He was elected chair with the support of a group led by the now suspended regional secretary, Pumlani Mkolo.

A rival ANC faction within the region had challenged the legitimacy of an elective regional conference where they were elected.

The rival ANC faction accused Mkolo of manipulating branch membership by backdating the membership forms to enhance his support in the build-up to the regional conference held in November 2015.

But now there is a split within the Mkolo/Pakati faction.

The fight is now between those who support Pakati and those backing Mkolo.

Mkolo is now on suspension as regional secretary for his involvement in the Nelson Mandela memorial funds scandal.

The power struggle has seen some of the directors who were hired while Mkolo was in office being demoted from their positions in BCM.

The drama at City Hall has resulted in a sharpening of divisions between the two sides, so much so that Mkolo’s supporters within council, assisted in the appointment of an opposition-sponsored candidate as acting municipal manager, thus going against the governing party’s favoured candidate.

Barely five months into office, Pakati is faced with 21 ANC councillors working against him.

The jostling for control within the ANC is happening on the eve of a watershed elective provincial conference that will decide the new provincial chairman. The slates have already been set and distributed.

Closer to the June (provincial) and December (national) conferences, the dirty tricks may well get dirtier.

The ANC provincial secretary Oscar Mabuyane is likely to contest the current provincial chairman Phumulo Masualle for the position of chair when the party goes to its elective conference.

And once again, the Dr WB Rubusana (BCM) region will go to the provincial conference divided and these divisions will continue to play out at the December conference.

As happened in Cape Town, in Nelson Mandela Bay and elsewhere, the ANC is unlikely to heed Motlanthe’s 2002 warning. Come 2019 and the 2021 local government elections, some within the ANC will watch in utter dismay as BCM, the province and even the country falls into opposition hands.

And then, as the ANC did in Nelson Mandela Bay, Johannesburg and Tshwane, it will pretend it never saw such a possibility coming.

Sometimes hard lessons are necessary to rouse the arrogant and blind from their positions of privilege and sense of entitlement.

In the meantime, the people of Buffalo City Metro continue to wait for their leaders to deliver on their promises of more jobs, resurfaced city and township roads and access to proper houses, water and electricity for all.

Zine George is the Daily Dispatch’s politics editor