Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Shades say it all in briefing with Marie Antoinette of Nasrec
THE sunglasses said it all. ANC Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini, flanked by two of her executives on her left and two on the right. Three of them were wearing them. They were the kind of sunglasses you wear to a funeral, or the day after a massive bender. Or both.
Dlamini was resplendent in green, gold and black. Immaculate in a traditionally-themed outfit, with a cloak over her shoulders and a beaded Alice band in her hair, a far cry from the slogan T-shirts of the faithful or the embroidered golf shirts and down-filled gilets for those nippy mornings beloved of the tenderpreneurs.
She took off her sunglasses, as did the executive member to her left. Looked balefully at the assembled hacks – and proceeded to try to lambaste the ANC. The night before she’d stormed into the media lounge, looking like Medusa on steroids, within minutes of the Top 6 of the ANC being announced. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, whose campaign she had helped manage, had lost to Cyril Ramaphosa for the presidency of the ANC.
Leading a mini-entourage, with journalists crowding into her wake, she refused to answer shouted questions, saying only, Sisetshenzisiwe (we were used). She was distraught, ferociously angry, weeping. Accompanied by fellow minister Lindiwe Zulu, she disappeared into the little lounge-let that the ANC’s Department of Information and Publicity has had this week in the middle of the media lounge at Nasrec where the ANC held its 54th national conference. They emerged about an hour later, composed. She left the room, still purposeful but no longer like a battleship on a collision course.
It was left to Zulu to plead for a bit of space for her friend and promise a press conference the next day when all would be revealed.
Except the next day it was promptly cancelled, as the ANC tried to keep the lid tightly on the entire conference… and then it was on. There was only one item on the agenda. How could the ANC, with its official policy of 50:50 male/female representation in senior positions, have ended up with one less female member on the all-important Top 6?
For Dlamini, there was no doubt, it was patriarchy. This being the centenary of OR Tambo it was almost obligatory that she would hark back to his presidency, but first a saccharine interlude: “The ANC calls itself the leader of society, it prides itself on being a non-racial, non-sexist organisation. We’ve come out of the 54th conference, we are not talking about the end of women, those in decision-making, those who are CEOs, we are thinking about the ordinary woman faced with poverty, no access to water, with a child who can’t go to tertiary institution, a farmworker. Multidimensional poverty linked to employment, education and issues of inequality…
“What does this outcome mean to an ordinary girl?”
It wasn’t just rhetorical, it seemed to be devoid of irony too for the one person in the country who has kept 17 million South Africans – many like the ones she described – on tenterhooks for most of this year for her criminal mismanagement of the social grants tender scandal.
Dlamini wasn’t looking for answers, though. She had them. Tambo was quoted. It had been he, she said who had formed a commission for the emancipation of women. It was he who had ensured women were represented on the organisation’s bodies. He had confidence in women. By the time the ANC was unbanned, women had fought and won 30% representation in Durban in 1990, eventually becoming 50% by Polokwane and reaffirmed in Bloemfontein five years ago.
“In the 105 years of history, we feel the ANC has failed the women of South Africa… we are here to express our disappointment.”
She had started well. A tad schoolmarmish, but after the usual platitudes of loyalty to the party it was all downhill; a seamless progression to blazing-eyed evangelist, just shy of the tears or frothing at the mouth.
“The fight continues, our common goal should be fighting patriarchy and the marginalisation of women. The ANC has regressed on the matter of women. In the year of Oliver Tambo, he can’t be proud of this outcome… he must be turning in his grave. Patriarchy has once again raised its ugly head.”
Duarte, the incumbent Top 6 member, averred Dlamini, had only won because she was contesting the position against another woman, Zingisa Losi.
“If she’s stood against a male she would have gone under the bus and we would have had an all-male Top 6.”
Then Dlamini got into her stride: men had won a campaign that had had the face of a woman. “Men did not lift the candidate up, they used her as a ladder.”
“When Comrade Nkosazana (Dlamini Zuma), comrade Maite (Nkoana-Mashabane), or even Lindiwe Sisulu can’t be elected in the ANC which has a membership of 60% women – we are a majority in the ANC and in society – we have been dealt a blow. We call on all women to stand together.
“We thank Comrade Nkosazana for selflessly availing herself… even though she was humiliated and reduced to being an ex-wife.”
With that, it was over to the assembled press corps to ask questions. It was carnage.
The first two questions were from female journalists.
“Are you going to resign?” asked the SABC’s Sophie Mokoena, “since you’ve failed women.”
Hadn’t Dlamini failed Dlamini Zuma twice, asked another, by “foisting” her on the party when there were many other capable candidates who had been shut out. Hadn’t the party failed Dlamini Zuma by not electing her in Polokwane 10 years ago when they had the chance instead of exiling her to the AU?
ANCWL secretary national spokesperson Thoko Xasa tried to intervene. The executive wouldn’t resign, she said. They were proud that they had had women on the ticket. This from a league whose erstwhile president Angie Motshekga only four years before had said that South Africa wasn’t ready for a woman president – admitting it would be a losing battle to even try.
It was left to eNCA’s Lester Kiewit to ask the question of the press conference: “Ma’am Dlamini, did you vote for Lindiwe Sisulu or DD Mabuza ( for the position of deputy president of the ANC)?”
It was a simple question. The answer should have been very simple for an organisation espousing sisterhood and solidarity, except this elective conference has been everything but collegial, fought on the “democratic centralism” of slate politics where delegates vote for who they are told to.
Mabuza, the Mpumalanga kingmaker who had proposed the Unity or consensus slate, had eventually held out to whoever offered him what he wanted.
Dlamini went off on a riff about how voting was secret and then: “Women, like men, are not homogenous.”
It was enough. There was blood in the water.
In the next round of questions, the league was damned for not standing up for women’s rights when disgraced former basic education deputy minister Mduduzi Manana smacked three women at a Fourways nightclub. Dlamini fudged her answer, going off on a diatribe about the levels of sexual harassment in the media against young women, in the judiciary, business, everywhere.
“Patriarchy, it’s like a demon. It’s an issue that affects all us women.” But she only had the highest praise for Jacob Zuma; her boss, the president of the country and undoubtedly the biggest unashamed patriarch in the country.
Then she was taken to task for snidely insinuating at a public rally earlier this month that Ramaphosa couldn’t speak about women’s rights because he was a woman abuser. Would she still support him now?
Begrudgingly, she kept to the ANC template: “Yes, I’m going to support Comrade Cyril, that’s the culture of the ANC. We are not going to part ways.”
But the elephant in the room remained. Who did she vote for?
“It’s unfair to ask why we didn’t support Comrade Lindiwe. An unfair question is coming out…
“The issue is to push us into a corner, to crrrush us,” she roared.
“You people are trying to put words in my mouth,” she shouted. “You must stop demonising us.”
But she was doing it all herself, the Marie Antoinette of Nasrec.
Journalist and analyst Ranjeni Munusamy tweeted about the press conference: “To be honest I’d rather have a flock of hadedas represent my interests as a woman.”
When the dust of the ANC elective conference finally settles, Dlamini should be one of the casualties.
If not, there is still the league’s own national conference next year when a new leadership will be elected.An old friend and veteran political writer looked at me aghast as we packed up our notebooks.
“You know, I’ve been doing this for more than 25 years. For the first time looking at that stage, I was horrified with myself that I didn’t know who the national executive were.
“Then I stopped blaming myself,” she said, “I realised it’s not my fault. It’s because they are so totally irrelevant.”