The spin stops here
For the past five years Zizi Kodwa was the public face and voice of the ANC, often defending the indefensible. Now he could be destined for greater things in the Cyril Ramaphosa administration
“To mantash” is now an acceptable political term that means saying one thing today and arguing the opposite the next.
It was inspired by Gwede Mantashe, who as ANC secretarygeneral publicly held certain political views only to disown them a few days later following a meeting of the Jacob Zuma-controlled ANC national executive committee.
So if that was what Mantashe used to do, what do we call what
Zizi Kodwa, the party’s spokesman at the time, now confesses to having done?
For most of the past four years, he tells me, he often found himself explaining positions he neither agreed with nor fully understood. Spinning doesn’t fully explain this.
Kodwa, 48, and Mantashe stood before cameras on the ground floor of Luthuli House to say what they did not believe. And on many occasions, not even understand.
Kodwa manages a smile and a chuckle every now and then when he relates some of the ludicrous decisions he had to defend under Zuma’s disastrous rule.
“There were issues that Gwede and I did not understand, but we explained. That is why officials in one instance [when Zuma fired former finance minister Pravin Gordhan and his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas] contradicted one another in public. There are decisions that are sometimes taken by ministers in government that we didn’t understand.
“We spent 60% of our time defending a leader of the ANC. But that denied us an opportunity to communicate ANC positions to influence society about the view of the ANC. Every time you have an interview, a question is thrown at you. Then you’re in a defensive mode. It is one lesson during my period I had to endure for days and weeks.”
Public pleas on Hlaudi
He singles out the decision by former communications minister Faith Muthambi to appeal a 2015 court ruling that declared the appointment of Hlaudi Motsoeneng [as chief operating officer of the SABC] unlawful as one of the worst cases he had to deal with.
Despite public pleas by Kodwa and Mantashe to Muthambi not to appeal, she went ahead.
“We didn’t understand, but we explained it.”
And there was another: the reappointment of former Eskom CEO Brian Molefe to the Eskom board.
“We would say: ‘Don’t reappoint him.’ He got reappointed. But we explained it.”
So I ask Kodwa whether he regrets putting up a spirited defence of Zuma during the Nkandla saga, especially when Zuma avoided appearing before parliament to answer questions on the multimillion-rand upgrades to his private home.
“As a spokesperson of the ANC you can’t say I should have never defended this one. If you speak on behalf of the ANC you articulate positions of the organisation, not of your own.
“When there is a position of the ANC, you must articulate it. You can’t say maybe the defence of Nkandla was wrong. I expressed my views in meetings about it. But ultimately there was a decision,” he says.
It is an explanation I don’t understand, so I will not try to explain it. But perhaps it can be explained by Kodwa’s history.
Kodwa spent most of the past 12 years defending Zuma. He shot to fame delivering colourful speeches in defence of Zuma. These helped him ascend to the Union Buildings.
On a typical Johannesburg autumn afternoon, on the corner of Pritchard and Kruis streets, a young Kodwa stood on a makeshift stage. In the building behind him Zuma had just made another appearance, accused of the rape of Fezeka Kuzwayo.
In front of him, a huge crowd was baying for blood because their preferred leader was facing a lengthy jail term that would deny him the chance to ascend to the highest office.
“We must hit the dog until the owner comes out!” Kodwa shouted to the excitement of his audience.
He was a regular act outside the
High Court in Johannesburg. Perhaps the only person who attended more court dates than him was Phindisile Xaba, known as MaMkhize and one of Zuma’s regular supporters at court.
Kodwa was one of the first post-1994 ANC Youth League spokesmen to be quoted extensively by newspapers.
Now a member of both the NEC and national working committee, Kodwa is one of the most senior ANC leaders and was instrumental in Zuma’s removal this week. It would not be surprising if he were included in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet.
The Gugulethu-born activist has risen through the party ranks over the past 20 years. He was a member of the Congress of South African Students, the South African Student Congress at the University of the Western Cape and the ANC Youth League.
Kodwa grew up tough, something that drove his activism while he was still at high school.
“I’m the last of six siblings. My late mother, Esther Kodwa, was a single parent. She was a domestic worker.
“Whenever she came back, we’d jump for her bag because we knew there’d be a tea bag, a slice of bread.
“We discovered that in fact she sacrificed her lunch for us. So
As a spokesperson of the ANC you can’t say I should have never defended this one. If you speak on behalf of the ANC you articulate positions of the organisation, not of your own
Zizi Kodwa On his defence of Nkandla as ANC spokesman
that’s how I grew up. I wanted to find out why she always had something in her bag.
“Later I discovered that she works seven days of the week but every end of the month she’s penniless. I realised there is something wrong with the system. There is no way that someone can work seven days a week and at the end she has nothing. The tea bag was her lunch that she did not eat. She kept it for us. That’s how I got involved in politics.”
Kodwa, as a leader of the student representative council, led a number of protests at the University of the Western Cape.
This caught the eye of the ANC Youth League leadership and he was assigned a communications role by then league president Malusi Gigaba.
But it was under Fikile Mbalula’s presidency that Kodwa gained prominence as the two went on a media charm offensive while they were also campaigning for Zuma.
Kodwa was dispatched to Zuma’s office as a special adviser on communications in 2010, a year after Zuma was elected the country’s president and when he was facing one scandal after another.
Kodwa was appointed a month after it was revealed that Zuma had fathered a child with the daughter of a friend, football boss Irvin Khoza.
Kodwa says he and Mbalula had advised Zuma, even before he was appointed to office, to make a public apology.
“Very few people wanted to talk to the president about it. It took Mbalula and I to go to the president and we said: ‘President, apologise in public.’
“We were caught up because in the African culture you don’t talk to your elders about those issues.”
It was the second time that they had confronted Zuma about matters that involved his sex life.
“When there was a rape case, we took the decision as the youth league that we can only defend on the basis of knowing the truth. We had to go to the president. And again we were caught up on the issue of age. We said: ‘Where do we start?’ There were those odd moments.”
Friends with Zuma’s family
Zuma and Kodwa’s relationship went beyond the Union Buildings, as the spokesman travelled to Nkandla for non-official visits. He made friends with Zuma’s family members and allies.
He says the age gap and the culture of ageism did not make his job easy when he was advising Zuma on how to handle the media.
“There are certain things you can’t say. You can’t say ‘no’ as if you’re speaking with a certain friend. Even if the president should have said something in a particular way, you can’t say: ‘You didn’t say it in a right way.’ You’ve got to say: ‘Maybe in future you must say it like this.”
When Kodwa left the Presidency, speculation was rife about his departure. There were suggestions that Zuma had started isolating Kodwa when he discovered that his spokesman was still close friends with Julius Malema and Mbalula, who were both campaigning to have Zuma removed at the ANC’s elective conference of 2012 in Mangaung.
Rumours spread that Kodwa’s lavish lifestyle was being funded by Tokyo Sexwale. At the time Sexwale was part of a group that wanted Zuma replaced by his then deputy Kgalema Motlanthe. Sexwale unsuccessfully contested for the deputy president position.
Nobody, including Zuma, confronted him about these allegations, Kodwa says.
“I thought I would be wasting time even if I were to ask him [Zuma]. But ultimately I supported him. Not that there was any pressure, but I thought it was the right thing to do in Mangaung.”
Switched sides
However, in December Kodwa and Mbalula switched sides, with Mbalula rejoining the Zuma camp and Kodwa pushing for Cyril Ramaphosa to take over.
Why did he break ranks with Zuma?
“I don’t have what is called blind loyalty. I don’t worship an individual . . . I knew that Zuma was not coming back in Nasrec. Then in my mind I was very clear that we needed somebody who will take over. And I realised that Matamela [Ramaphosa] is the only person who can take over. He is the kind of leadership that the ANC needs at this current moment.”
However, Kodwa says, that did not affect his friendship with Mbalula. This week the two found themselves agreeing, during an NEC meeting, that Zuma must be recalled as president.
Kodwa is a proud socialite with a flashy fashion sense. He is known for his love of extravagant fashion brands.
He says he is conscious about what he wears, a lesson he was taught by his mother. “My mom used to say: ‘Before you go outside, take a bath.’ ”
Parks Mankahlana, a spokesman for Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, chastised Kodwa when he appeared on TV wearing a cap and “a funny T-shirt”.
Kodwa says: “What Parks did was to add flair to my dress sense.” Many are critical of this “socialite” image, which they claim reduces the ANC to an organisation of parties and fun. But Kodwa disagrees.
“Leaders of young people must be found in parties but must not drown in them. [Late youth league president] Peter Mokaba threw the best parties . . . Relevance is not static.”
Now that his term as ANC spokesman has ended, there is talk that Kodwa could be appointed to the cabinet or to head Ramaphosa’s office in Luthuli House. He seems to prefer the latter.
“I’m not obsessed with government. I’ll be happy to go back to Luthuli House, but not as a spokesperson.”