Zuma faction about to run out of steam
For the past two years the Jacob Zuma victimhood and fightback campaign has been blamed for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s tentative approach to reforming the state, turning the economy around and taming the ANC.
That kind of reasoning may now have to be permanently parked.
Zuma’s cynical campaign has long run out of ideas. Now it is running out of steam.
There were just over 100 people who turned up on Saturday to “welcome” Zuma from his trip to Cuba allegedly to receive medical treatment.
Zuma’s most enthusiastic supporter and occasional righthand man, Carl Niehaus, had predicted that “thousands” would gather for the welcoming jamboree.
Instead, a pathetic group of supporters and a handful of disgraced leaders — Ekurhuleni mayor Mzwandile “I will resign if Cyril wins” Masina, ANC Free State chair Sam Mashinini, former North West premier Supra Mahumapelo and MPs Mosebenzi Zwane and Joe Maswanganyi — pitched up to welcome the corruption-accused Zuma back to SA.
On Friday, a handful of ANC leaders arrived at the Cape Town magistrate ’ s court to support Zuma acolyte and ANC MP Bongani Bongo.
Bongo is accused of trying to bribe an advocate to help throw an inquiry into corruption at Eskom. Among the Bongo supporters were the usual suspects again: Zwane, Maswanganyi and Mervyn Dicks.
About 30 supporters transported from Mpumalanga and the Free State on a working Friday, clad in new ANC regalia, turned up to cheer Bongo.
They were late for their own man’s court appearance, only pitching up after the matter had been heard.
When Niehaus announced the latest Zuma support grouping two weeks ago, the people around him comically parroted every line he said, even when he was wrong about their own political position.
It looked like a rented crowd, acted like a rented crowd and sang for its supper like a rented crowd. There is only one conclusion to draw here.
Watching all this, one is reminded of Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder’s comment following Thabo Mbeki’s state of the nation speech in 2007: “Die gas is uit die bottel van die Mbeki era” (the gas is out the bottle of the Mbeki era). Zuma was ascendant in 2007. Now, out of power and shorn of any shred of credibility, he has run out of steam, left only with the support of a disgraced handful of his former cabinet colleagues.
At the Bongo court appearance, Zuma’s former minerals minister Mosebenzi Zwane claimed the Zuma supporters who are being charged are being politically persecuted.
He whined that in the ANC when “issues were raised by [former second deputy president FW] De Klerk, people came to his defence very quickly, for his democratic rights, but nobody raises these issues with us. We think that it is unfair. Some of us are treated worse than De Klerk.”
Evidence of this faction’s demise has been mounting.
In January, the same Zwane apparently tried to lead a round of anti-Ramaphosa criticisms at the party’s national executive committee meeting.
Together with Bongo, they apparently moaned about public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan and insinuated that he be fired. They were swiftly swatted aside. Gordhan is still in his office.
There is no doubt charges of corruption will be laid against Zwane in relation to the Estina dairy farm scandal in the Free State and possibly in other Gupta-linked corruption cases.
Allegations of corruption swirl around his friend and leader Ace Magashule. There are corruption investigations against Mahumapelo in the North West province. All these are fervent Zuma factionalists.
Zuma himself will be in court — again — for corruption.
So the faction, which may have stopped Ramaphosa from acting, is bleeding at the moment. They are scared and vulnerable.
Why, then, is he still so tentative? It may be that with the defeat of one faction within the party, others are rising.
Ramaphosa was always going to have to deal with the ANC’s trade union allies in Cosatu, plus the voluble yet numerically puny SA Communist Party.
He is still trying to keep them onside, as evidenced by his enthusiastic dance with Cosatu on the financing of Eskom.
Further, new factions, possibly built around Deputy President David Mabuza and minerals minister Gwede Mantashe may be slowly forming within the party, meaning that new alliances are emerging.
These groupings may have their own agenda for Ramaphosa in the short or long term, with implications for whether he gets a second term or not.
With three years before the next ANC conference, these groupings are just beginning to feel each other out and build connections. But they are the next Ramaphosa administration policy implementation enhancers or obstacles.
In the meantime, however, it’s clear that the Zuma faction is limping.
It may try to go for Ramaphosa at the national general council in June.
But that may be its last throw of the dice.
It may be that with the defeat of one faction within the party, others are rising