Between a rock and a very hard place
FORMED at the initiative of Pixley ka Isaka Seme in January 1912, the ANC this month celebrated its 106 anniversary.
The KwaZulu-Natal born lawyer who was educated in the United Kingdom and the United States came up with the idea of uniting all the African population groups into one organisation.
This dream was realised on January 8 1912 with a gathering in a Methodist church hall in Bloemfontein of Africans from across the length and breadth of the country.
The South African Native National Congress was born and had an educationist, John Langalibalele Dube, as its first president.
Then in 1926 it changed its name to the African National Congress.
The oldest liberation movement on the continent has undergone many crises since then – all of which it has emerged from triumphant.
Presently, it finds itself in a dilemma with its former president still the president of the country and a liability to the party.
To recall or not to recall President Jacob Zuma is the big question facing the party right now – or perhaps more ... when. Some background is necessary here. In 2008, just a year after the party held its bruising elective conference in Polokwane, Limpopo, Zuma was party president and Thabo Mbeki was president of the country.
The tension between the two, a spill-over from the acrimonious campaigning prior the elective conference, was palpable across the nation.
The Zuma camp held the view that President Mbeki had used sinister methods to try to ensure he would win a third term as ANC president.
Among the allegations levelled, though not proven, was that intelligence operatives had been used to spy on Zuma and his coterie.
It was also even suggested by some that the rape case against Zuma (he was accused of raping the now late Fezekile Khuzwayo but subsequently acquitted) was a manufactured ploy to block him from ascending to power.
It was during this period – with Zuma as party president and Mbeki as the country’s president – that the issue of two centres of power came to the fore.
The question raised then, as is it raised now, is which of the two incumbents defers to the other.
The ANC maintains it is the centre of power. According to this logic the country’s president is a deployed cadre of the party and has to execute the mandate as given to him/her by the party.
This logic however, seems somewhat oblivious of the reality that the country’s president, unlike his counterpart (the party president), has jurisdiction over all South Africans, not just ANC members.
Furthermore, the country’s president is governed by the supreme law of the land, the constitution.
Whether it was in response to exigency or in a fit of pique, the then ANC national executive committee decided to recall Mbeki as state president in September 2008.
For an extensive explication of Mbeki’s recall I encourage readers to read Frank Chikane’s
A caretaker president, Kgalema Motlanthe, was then appointed to fill the vacancy left by President Mbeki.
National elections were held in 2009 and Zuma, who had been elected president of the party at Polokwane in 2007, assumed the role of the president country with Motlanthe as his deputy.
Moving to the ANC’s recent hotly contested presidential elective conference at Nasrec, Cyril Ramaphosa emerged as the winner, albeit with a slender majority, over Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the favoured candidate of the State President.
The result is that the ANC finds itself in exactly the same position it was in 2008 – with two centres of power.
It is no secret that Zuma campaigned for the loosing candidate. Nor is it a secret that he has had 783 charges of corruption, money-laundering and fraud relating to the arms deal hanging over his for the past eight years and that from the moment he got into office he began decimating the prosecutorial mechanism of this country in an attempt to deflect these charges.
The plausible thesis advanced by political analysts is that Zuma campaigned for Dlamini-Zuma hoping that a triumph for her would ensure some form of immunity from prosecution.
Whether the party will admit it or not, there is no disputing that Zuma, with his never-ending and ever-deepening scandals, has become a massive liability to the party. For evidence look no further than the 2016 municipal elections where the ANC lost three metros.
But a recall is a high risk tactic.
The recall of Mbeki in 2008 led to a split in the ANC and saw the formation of the Congress of the People (COPE). The latter went on win about 7% of the vote in the 2009 national elections.
COPE, owing to internal wrangling, is now a poor shadow of its former self. But it has been replaced by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in the imaginations of many voters as a credible and predominantly African alternative to the ANC.
This was evident in the EFF’s success in the 2016 local government elections. Though it did not win any municipality outright it garnered enough votes to play the critical role of kingmaker in the Nelson Mandela Bay and Johannesburg metros.
Ironically the EFF was formed after the expulsion of Julius Malema by the ANC.
The ANC is wary that another split might take place if a decision is made to recall Zuma as president of the country.
Unlike former President Mbeki, President Zuma still has a significant support-base within the party – in parliament and in certain provinces, especially his home province of KwaZulu-Natal.
But then again, if the party decides against recalling Zuma it risks alienating its voters and the general public. New leadership or not, not many people will believe the ANC is serious about fighting corruption if it retains someone who faces a myriad charges of corruption.
A perception of inaction on the part of the ANC regarding his fate may further tarnish the party’s image.
Some political analysts have gone as far as to say that if Zuma is not recalled by the current NEC the ANC may lose its majority in the 2019 national elections and South Africa may have a coalition government.
That is not beyond the realm of possibility. I would suggest that in order to avoid the problem of two centres of power the party needs to align its internal conference with the country’s national elections.
It could appoint a caretaker president for the few months before the elections or use its president as a caretaker for the country. The saddest reality the ANC has to face is that it recalled a president who was not supposed to have been recalled and now that it has a president who must be recalled, it has fears.
Ah, maybe that’s the way the political cookie crumbles.