Daily Dispatch

Oscar still holds reins – for now

OSCAR Mabuyane may have survived attempts to remove him at the ANC national executive committee (NEC) meeting over the weekend, but the fight is far from over.

His supporters are breathing a heavy sigh of relief after the NEC decided to send a task team to investigate the disputes raised by a rival faction, led by Premier Phumulo Masualle.

Mabuyane was elected amid chaos where violence broke out between his and Masualle’s supporters, leading to several delegates being hospitalised due to injuries sustained during the fracas.

As this newspaper reported yesterday (Monday), that the Eastern Cape provincial conference took centre stage at the NEC gathering – this was hardly surprising.

Never before has the ANC been so meticulous in dealing with grievances from branches or disgruntled groupings in the provinces. It is unprecedented.

But before one starts to imagine that the governing party is finally taking the views of their members seriously, then think again.

All these investigations and endless reports have everything to do with the national conference next month.

After the chaotic provincial conference – dubbed “the festival of chairs” by deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa – the NEC team that oversaw the conference submitted their report on the proceedings.

It was this team that took the decision to continue with the conference despite the earlier violence.

The dispute is whether the conference should have continued despite the violence.

This was followed by a fact-finding mission, led by President Jacob Zuma and members of the ANC’s powerful national working committee (NWC), visiting all the regions in the Eastern Cape to listen to complaints from the branches.

Despite all of that work, now the governing party has decided to send a sevenmember task team to the province to listen to accounts of what led to the violence at the conference.

What this demonstrates is that both factions – one led by Zuma and another by Ramaphosa – do not have overall control of the NEC. It talks to an ANC NEC being evenly split in the middle.

The Zuma grouping obviously wants Mabuyane’s PEC disbanded as this would bolster Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s campaign to become the next ANC president.

For Ramaphosa and his backers, having Mabuyane at the helm of the influential province is a major shot-in-the-arm in his quest to succeed Zuma at the national conference next month. The appointment of the task team is merely a compromise position. It is no victory for either faction.

But what it tells us is that the bickering and the back-stabbing will continue.

The task team will finally recommend to the NEC whether the Mabuyane-led PEC remains in office or is disbanded. Lobbying for either position, among NEC members, will also continue in the background.

For now Mabuyane and his PEC will live to fight another day.