Forget about compromise, this is war

Power-sharing idea falls flat

EFFORTS to reach a compromise on President Jacob Zuma’s successor have collapsed at the first hurdle.

By late yesterday, supporters of both presidential candidates, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa, said they were prepared for an all out war at the ANC elective conference starting today.

Provincial chairperson of the ANC Paul Mashatile and David Mabuza had been leading efforts to try to get a deal on the contentious question leadership.

A senior leader in the Dlamini Zuma camp said Ramaphosa’s campaigners had played hardball, leading to the collapse of the talks.

“We have tried but they failed us. They have been making noise after the branch nominations,” he said.

“I think the chairpersons have let us down. The NEC gave them enough opportunity for this,” he added.

The leader said another proposal to vote separately on the ANC top six fell flat.

The idea was to ensure that the losing presidential candidate can become a deputy.

Zuma had proposed a power-sharing deal between the warring factions at the national policy conference in July.

But another senior leader aligned to the Ramaphosa camp said the unity proposal would have never worked.

“From our caucus, we simply said we are reinstating Lindiwe Sisulu because we want to have credible leaders. There were people like Paul Mashatile who tried to push for a deal with David Mabuza. We said we wanted to go to a conference and win it, not for unity with strange bedfellows, but to reunite the ANC,” he said.

“How do you reunite the organisation with people involved in state capture and looting? It would have tainted our campaign.”

ANC voting delegates from two provinces were emphatic that they were sent by their respective branches with mandates on who to vote for, and would not entertain the idea of an “arranged leadership”.

“The popular view among us delegates is that we must stick to our procedure of NEC (national executive committee) election; elect six national officials first, announce the results and then elect NEC additional members,” said the delegate, from the Western Cape.

Splitting

“We’ve heard about the socalled ‘unity’ approach of splitting the election of the president and deputy president. We are going to argue vigorously against that,” he asserted.

His views were echoed by three delegates from the Eastern Cape.

“We all want a united ANC, but it should not be at the expense of leadership collective that compromises the mandates we’ve been given by our branch,” one of the Eastern Cape delegates said.

The delegates were speaking to Independent Media at the University of Johannesburg’s Soweto Campus yesterday, where they were receiving their accreditation.

The views mean that a winner-takes-all scenario is on the cards.

Political analyst Steven Friedman is not convinced that the ANC would manage the conference. He says the sticking point might just be the issue of credentials of delegates, an issue that played out in the courts in the lead up to the conference until the last day yesterday.

“I am very sceptical. There are so many claims of irregularities, there have been so many problems. I gather that they are now saying if there would be any credentials challenges, it won’t happen in the open, but behind closed doors. I am not convinced they will get out of those closed doors, quite frankly,” Friedman said.

He pointed out that with both the Ramaphosa and Dlamini Zuma camps being “absolutely convinced that they have won”, it made the conference interesting.

“That probably could be the only reason that they may get beyond the credentials stage, because if you think you will win, they might just say why challenge all the credentials.

“If they do get beyond that stage, they might just be in for a rude awakening,” he warned.

“If one of the sides comes to terms with the fact that they don’t have the majority votes, whoever the loser is between Cyril and Nkosazana, stands up and says we accept this result, that might be problematic because this is about factions.

“It doesn’t mean that everybody who is in a faction is going to accept the result.”

Friedman believes that the governing party might end up having to deal with a crisis of an unconstitutional leadership as the current NEC’s term ends at the end of this month.

“If the conference collapses, it means that from January 1, the current leadership of the ANC is there in violation of the ANC constitution.”