What is Zuma after?

The ANC needs KwaZulu-Natal to win in 2019, but the former president’s home base is his key to power

‘When the president comes down, move all the shields to the side. Just open the way.”

The lineup of riot police officers nodded earnestly as the officer in charge dished out orders outside the High Court in Durban.

Not one of the officers would have wondered whether Cyril Ramaphosa was about to make his way down the driveway past them. In these parts, Jacob Zuma is still referred to as the president — irrespective of the fact that he was at that very moment sitting in the dock of courtroom B in the courthouse behind them.

A little while later, there was an electric surge through the crowd in front of the court as the officers made way for the Zuma throng following his brief appearance on corruption charges.

The song the crowd had been singing, which asks rhetorically what Zuma has done wrong, segued into chants of “Zuma! Zuma! Zuma!”

The former president, surrounded by a phalanx of protection officers, religious leaders, family members and a gang of disgraced political honchos, beamed as he drank in the adulation.

Zuma was compelled to come to court, but the sideshow on the makeshift stage across the road allowed him to demonstrate that, recall or not, he still has pulling power.

He stopped briefly to chat to an SABC reporter, and ask for her phone number, claiming he had lost it.

As with all Zuma’s court appearances, it is about the theatre.

There is a long lineup of speakers belting out political platitudes, underscoring that Zuma was a supposed political victim and threading it all together with the fight for radical economic transformation — now with an extra dose of rhetoric on land.

No real political heavyweights

But there was a discernible difference at last week’s court appearance.

There were no real political heavyweights on stage with Zuma, just a posse of outlaws such as Carl Niehaus, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, Faith Muthambi, Des van Rooyen and Andile Lungisa. D-grade politicians — former North West premier Supra Mahumapelo and Black First Land First leader Andile Mngxitama — had top billing.

There was also a smaller turnout of religious leaders after they had been exposed as having been mobilising in their churches for a new political movement. Media reports on the plans to assemble the new party around Zuma have caused ructions, with some of the church leaders facing questions and dissent from their congregations.

Some of the bishops therefore avoided coming to court, as being seen with Zuma would raise further questions.

If Zuma had noticed that there was a smaller crowd than at his last appearance, or that nobody of real significance was with him on the stage, he did not mention it. He was there to protest about the charges against him, rail against his political enemies and, because he no longer has the restraints of high office, threaten his critics.

While the crowd was titillated by the performance, it was 160km away at the University of Zululand, outside Empangeni, where Zuma would loom large and have maximum impact that day.

Eleventh-hour bid

But there was still a second act that would play out in the High Court in Pietermaritzburg, where ANC branch members made an eleventh-hour bid to stop the provincial elective conference proceeding.

The application succeeded, leaving the hundreds of ANC delegates who had made their way from across KwaZulu-Natal to Empangeni bewildered.

On Friday night, some of the delegates gathered at the university’s main hall demanded that the conference proceed in spite of the court ruling. Of course this could not happen. They demonstrated their frustration by booing ANC national executive committee members Bheki Cele and Jackson Mthembu and their anger boiled over when ANC national chairman Gwede Mantashe tried to address them.

The same song that had been sung outside the court earlier that day was sung to drown out Mantashe: Wenzeni uZuma? (What has Zuma done?)

What Zuma has done, from his explosive cabinet reshuffles to impaling state institutions, apparently did not matter to his ardent loyalists. It remains to be seen whether what emerges in the state capture commission and the outcome of his corruption trial answers the question in their song.

The more appropriate question, however, is what does Zuma want?

After being ejected from the presidency, Zuma needs to demonstrate that he remains politically relevant and that the ANC is dependent on him if it wants to keep control of KwaZulu-Natal. The province contributed the highest number of voters to the ANC’s national tally in the 2014 elections — if it wants to remain in power, the ANC needs to keep control of KwaZulu-Natal.

On Planet Zuma, South Africa will be in such a fractured state after the elections that it will require an experienced playmaker to ride to the rescue

The man caught in the Zuma vortex is Sihle Zikalala, elected as provincial chairman at the nullified conference in 2015 and now the co-ordinator of the task team managing the ANC in the province until a new leadership is elected.

Zikalala was set to be elected unopposed as the new provincial chairman had the conference gone ahead. The officials who were to be elected alongside him were meant to be a mixed slate, incorporating people from the two warring factions — those loyal to Zuma and those believed to support Ramaphosa.

It was no easy feat getting to the point where a credible conference could be held, let alone negotiating a cessation of hostilities to emerge with a mixed slate. Ramaphosa had worked behind the scenes to lobby leaders from the opposing factions and managed to gather together for the first time all of KwaZulu-Natal’s regional chairmen in one room.

This is where the rubber had to hit the road, in terms of the ANC’s unity parlance. The situation was tenuous, and despite calls from some of Ramaphosa’s backers in the province to postpone the conference, the national leadership gave the green light for it to go ahead.

Enter Zuma.

Had the conference proceeded and the mixed slate been elected, it would have loosened Zuma’s grip on the province. For as long as there is uncertainty, volatility and a parallel reporting line to Zuma, he remains a major factor in KwaZulu-Natal.

Many people are not aware that it was Zuma who bulldozed the ANC into holding the November 2015 KwaZulu-Natal conference when the NEC had decided that the province was not in a position to hold a credible conference. As president then, he had the final say.

Courts nullified elections

Chaos ensued when the conference was held, and the courts eventually nullified the elections.

But Zuma’s wish is that the slate that was elected in 2015 should be returned to power as it gave his loyalists a clean sweep. Therefore, two days before the conference, Zuma summoned some of his loyalists and instructed that the mixed slate be torpedoed.

As delegates were being accredited on Friday, they sang “Phakama [prevail] status quo”, signalling that Zuma’s supporters considered the deal was off the table. The court application to stop the conference was a signal that the other side felt the same.

The “zebra list” that came about after Ramaphosa’s intervention would not only have involved bridging the factional divide in the leadership but would probably have led to attempts to ensure that people from both factions were incorporated onto the election lists for the 2019 poll.

The curious thing is why Zikalala would allow Zuma to continue to destabilise the province and make his life so much more difficult.

While Zuma might be yesterday’s man nationally, he remains popular and continues to garner sympathy in KwaZulu-Natal. Even though many of the provincial and regional leaders are mindful that siding with Zuma might lead to them falling off the New Dawn bandwagon, they fear a backlash from their support base should they lean towards Ramaphosa.

The KwaZulu-Natal business network that reached its heyday during the Zuma years remains in place, with access to massive resources through lucrative government contracts. Zuma is still able to access and deploy these resources.

Zikalala is aware that without Zuma’s support, some of the ANC’s funding sources in the province could dry up.

Agree to work together

Nobody quite knows the state of play since the conference was called off.

Zikalala said they wanted the conference to be held within six weeks, but there needs to be some heavy lifting before a credible election can be held.

“We just need people to agree to work together,” said one of Ramaphosa’s lieutenants. “We may not resolve the deep-seated hatred and unbelievable levels of distrust, but we cannot go into an election campaign with ANC people seeing each other as enemies.”

But Ramaphosa does not have the ground forces in the province to rally support behind the unity deal. In fact, leaders in his faction were caught off-guard by last week’s court action to stop the conference as they do not have a line of contact to the disgruntled groups.

Even NEC deployees are distrusted and seen to be siding with factions.

Although Zikalala’s faction is dominant, it will struggle to establish the support of its opponents.

Someone needs to draw the disparate groups together and, ironically, it is only Zuma who would have the experience and the pulling power in KwaZulu-Natal to be able to do that.

But Zuma has a vested interest in encouraging the factional divides, as well as the new political movements taking shape.

On Planet Zuma, South Africa will be in such a fractured state after the elections that it will require an experienced playmaker to ride to the rescue to assemble a coalition government. This will elevate him to take his place as South Africa’s elder statesman.

As the KwaZulu-Natal ANC continue to sing their favourite song, they remain caught in a giant spider’s web with no way to escape. And the answer to the question “Wenzeni uZuma?” becomes more ominous.