Cyril Madlala

THE ANC conference this weekend, to be followed by the national policy conference, is taking place against a backrop of turmoil within the ANC and the broader body politic.

A battle for the party’s soul is under way. External forces in the form of opposition parties, civil society and churches have been given impetus by strong signals of disapproval of the current ANC leadership from historical allies the SACP and Cosatu.

Critically, some struggle veterans’ views of the president are in line with those who believe the ANC has lost its bearings.

Rating agencies’ negative assessments have entrenched a gloomy international perspective of the country under the ANC.

The loss of control of the main cities that drive the economy and the ANC’S disappointing performance in the last local government elections will have emboldened in particular the DA and the EFF to believe the ANC is terminally wounded.

Perhaps inadvertently rather than by design, voices of dissent from the ANC’S own MPS have fed into the narrative that the party has abdicated its historic mission.

It is in that context that the coming elective conference of the ANC should be seen. It finds the organisation vulnerable from external and internal dynamics that have the potential to undermine it as the fulcrum of politics in South Africa.

On the shoulders of the leadership that will emerge from that conference will rest not only the survival of the ANC, but also the trajectory of the country.

Essentially, the battle is between two contending forces that will seek to define the nature of the beast that will emerge.

On the one hand is the propresident Jacob Zuma lobby, which is currently dominant by virtue of its firm grip on State power.

The leverage of patronage has allowed this faction to manipulate ANC branch membership to serve its agenda. It is able to steer how the majority of branches should respond to leadership issues.

It is as a direct result of this manipulation that KZN always seems to adopt unanimous positions on issues of leadership.

Long before nominations for the December conference were allowed, this machinery had swung into action, boldly proclaiming Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma was ready to lead the ANC and the country. It would be a gross understatement to say she has had a head start.

The president has openly anointed her the preferred successor. Whoever then challenges her is taking on the president and the formidable network of “captured” branches that have considerable state resources at their disposal.

On the other hand, juxtaposed against Dlamini Zuma’s candidacy, is Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa. He has the backing of Cosatu and the SACP on the basis that he is the “natural heir” – that is, when Zuma was elected, he stood with Ramaphosa on the understanding that the deputy was the next in line.

During times of harmony within the organisation, and in the interests of a smooth transition, there could even have been an expectation that Ramaphosa would not be challenged in December.

He has raised his hand but some would say in a tentative manner. In recent months he has found his voice in the context of a deafening cacophony for the president to step down. He remains coy, referring to the “elephant in the room” that must be tackled. It is a code for the person regarded as the embodiment of all that is wrong (corruption, state capture, incompetence, looting of State resources, the collapse of stateowned enterprises, irrational cabinet appointments and the manipulation of ANC branch membership to entrench nefarious practices).

If Zuma were to step down prematurely as head of State, that would fit neatly with Ramaphosa’s plans as he is the “obvious” successor. The branches as presently constituted will, however, not recall Zuma as leader of the party, which means that Ramaphosa and his camp have to brace for a hard battle ahead.

Ramaphosa needs a strong running mate to complement him not only for ANC work, but also in a new government that will have been restructured and reconfigured to clear the patronage system deadwood in its top echelons.

One person fits that bill perfectly in several key respects, but he has not publicly declared an interest in the December contestation, is ANC Treasurergeneral, Dr Zweli Mkhize – behind whose mild-mannered disposition stands a leader with his own mind. THE KZN FACTOR

Purely because of its strength as a voting block, KZN is a key terrain for any power contestation in the ANC. This is the province that will influence the outcome of the December conference – voting as a block as it has done traditionally or being divided if the wounds of the divisive last elective conference are not healed.

Few would understand the dynamics of the province better than Mkhize.

Despite recent efforts by the Youth League to tarnish his image when he addressed the Ahmed Kathrada Memorial Service in Durban, he remains influential.

The gross disrespect towards him on that occasion alone indicates he has been identified as a possible obstacle to the Dlamini Zuma project, a development that is significant in the context of another attempted humiliation when the president “unexpectedly” arrived at the January 8 celebration rally in Kwadukuza to upstage him when he had been assigned by Luthuli House to deliver the key message.

Mkhize also remains a critical player in the vexed question of the case before the Pietermaritzburg High Court whereby disgruntled ANC branches seek the annulment of the outcome of the last provincial election.

The detail laid bare in the form of alleged gate-keeping, bogus membership and electoral fraud allegedly perpetrated by the winning faction is too staggering for one to imagine what the implications would be for the ANC were the court to find substance to them and order a rerun.

It would mean the current provincial executive is illegal and it would follow that its actions, which include the dismissal of the former premier and members of his executive, were illegal.

There is a real possibility that it would be logistically impossible to reconstitute legally all ANC branches in Kwazulu-natal before the December conference in order to qualify as delegates.

Any efforts at reconciliation between the two factions would need to be handled by somebody of