LOSING GAMBIT OF A JOKER
It’s clear that Ace Magashule is no chess grandmaster, given his absurd attempt to ‘suspend’ Ramaphosa last week. But his bungling reveals that he has run out of options, and support
It is well and truly over for ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule. While he was already on the back foot last week when he was issued with a suspension letter, his response — to try to “suspend” President Cyril Ramaphosa — was a strategic blunder on a scale he might not yet fully comprehend.
The former Free State premier never had the sort of support in the party his supporters believed he had, but his bumbling tit-for-tat “suspension” of Ramaphosa has lost him what little sympathy he had left.
In the ANC, an attack on a sitting president is seen as an attack on the party itself — it’s a tradition that suited former president Jacob Zuma very well as he flitted from one scandal to the next while escaping censure.
The imminent political demise of both Magashule and Zuma marks a key, even historic, moment for the
ANC — it’s the end of a long, dark era that began in the mid-2000s with the swelling of the “Zuma tsunami”, which then swept him into the ANC presidency at Polokwane in 2007.
The extensive refashioning of the ANC into Zuma’s image began almost immediately.
Now, however, the tide has finally gone out.
So what happens next? The ANC’s national executive committee (NEC), in a statement delivered by Ramaphosa on Monday, said Magashule has to publicly apologise for defying the party and trying to suspend its president — or he’ll face a disciplinary hearing.
But Magashule can’t afford to apologise. A public apology to Ramaphosa, of all people, would be wholly destructive to his cause; if he does that, he’d lose the support of his diehard radical economic transformation (RET) loyalists, those who bleat that they’ll “die for Zuma”.
A public apology would also bind Magashule to any future censure by the party.
He is damned either way.
If he doesn’t apologise, the ensuing disciplinary hearing would almost certainly find him guilty. There’s little he could argue: he personally confirmed the authenticity of the suspension letter sent to Ramaphosa.
Magashule might not be as adept a chess player as Zuma (ask Garry Kasparov), but he tried a trick out of Zuma’s playbook by seeking sympathy from the public and the ANC rank and file in a string of media interviews. Only, he painted himself further into a corner, repeating damning claims against Ramaphosa that will surely feature in a disciplinary process.
The possible consequence: his party membership will be suspended, or he will be expelled from the ANC altogether.
It hardly helps that the prospect of new disciplinary action comes as he is appealing his initial suspension, imposed when he refused to heed the ANC’s stepaside policy.
Meanwhile, his ally in the North West, Supra Mahumapelo, is appealing against his own suspension. Insiders say Mahumapelo is moving to create an “alternative party” to the ANC in the North West — the province where there is the clearest evidence of a potential split.
But what would
a split in the ANC of today look like?
For a start, it won’t be nearly as organised as the breakaways that led to the formation of COPE and the EFF. This is because those aligned with Zuma and Magashule are far from a cohesive whole; they’re loosely united around avarice, a common desire to access state resources for their own benefit — or they want to escape jail time. Those motives — distinct, and very personal — hardly make for an ideologically compelling new faction.
And that’s before you even talk about the money. With Zuma and Magashule out in the cold, what donors would fund such a venture?
There’s also the question of who would lead such a breakaway party.
With the usual suspects facing the very real prospect of jail time, it’s not exactly feasible for them to begin plotting an assault on the ANC fortress between court appearances.
There is, however, Zuma’s 2019 “insurance policy” that this group could fall back on.
Two years ago, in the run-up to the 2019 election, a number of political parties ostensibly received Zuma’s “blessing”. The theory among ANC insiders was that the RET faction wanted the ANC to dip below 50%, so that these tiny parties could become kingmakers — effectively dictating the governing party’s agenda from the outside.
Many of these parties were headed by
Zuma loyalists: Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s African Congress Movement, Mzwanele Manyi’s
African Transformation Movement, Andile Mngxitama’s Black First Land First, and even the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party launched by the National Union of Metalworkers of SA.
That ploy failed. The ANC won 57% of the vote — a reduced but clear majority — and only one of those parties scraped into parliament.
This suggests that, in a way, the RET forces’ flirtation with an alternative political vehicle has already been tried and found wanting.
Retired Gen Mojo Motau, a Zuma loyalist, has conjured up military veterans who he claims want the ANC NEC to be dissolved. But come party insiders belonging to the RET faction have distanced themselves from him. His attempts to create a crisis where there is none was also dismissed by ANC deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte this week.
Not that this would stop them trying again; history has never been their strong point. It could be their only option once Magashule runs out of appeals.
Perhaps a broader question is how much support such a new vehicle would receive from voters. Intuitively, it seems unlikely that a significant number would embrace a party whose leaders are associated with corruption.
There is another option for Magashule and his allies: to try to “win back” the ANC.
Back in 2018, Magashule publicly declared his intention to do this, saying “five years, comrades” — implying his backers should bide their time until the next ANC conference, when they could regain control.
Again, this seems unlikely. The next ANC elective conference is set for 2022 — and Magashule doesn’t have support in the NEC, as is clear from its decision to suspend and censure him. Nor does he have support in the national working committee — as was demonstrated in March when Gwen Ramokgopa was preferred over his favoured candidate, Ayanda Dlodlo, to replace Jackson Mthembu on the structure.
Magashule also doesn’t have majority support in the ANC’s parliamentary caucus — the proof being that ANC MPs voted, with barely a hitch, to begin a process to remove one of his allies, public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane. They did this despite Magashule having declared that the ANC would never “vote with the opposition”.
At grassroots level, his backing is scattered. The RET faction’s plan to stage a “national shutdown” in his support never materialised. Magashule’s clout in his home province of the Free State is also waning.
Though he has pockets of support in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, they hardly represent the groundswell that would be needed to spark a fundamental shift in the balance of forces by next year.
As it is, the party has taken steps to counter manipulation of its internal election process by putting in place a new membership system and appointing ANC stalwart Kgalema Motlanthe to head an internal electoral commission.
This is likely to vastly improve the ANC’s internal election process, and leave it less vulnerable to the shenanigans of the pro-Zuma remnants still inside the party.
Last week at a Northern Cape regional conference chair of the province, Zamani Saul, said it is clear that “renewal” of the party won’t be easy — but it has to happen.
“In 1978, Indira Gandhi, leader of the Indian National Congress, had this to say about renewal: ‘Renewal is not free, there is a price … as those who are used to wrong habits will oppose it. The price … is the courage to endure pain, and sometimes utter chaos,’” Saul said.
Magashule and Zuma are at the end of their political road — but neither of them seems to see it. There will, of course, be threats of chaos as they depart, but depart they will — and the country will be forced to watch their cringeworthy final kicks.
Renewal is not free, there is a price … as those who are used to wrong habits will oppose it
Zamani Saul