Cracks are showing in Zuma’s heartland

IT SEEMS like yesterday that the African National Congress (ANC) in KwaZulu-Natal was boasting about how unified it was in the province. The province has been a huge success story for the ANC in recent years, as seen in its gaining control of nearly all municipalities in the previous municipal elections. No other party can claim to be even close to the ANC’s current level of support, not even the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which once counted this region as its home base.

The ANC’s regional and provincial congresses were held in an orderly fashion some months back, and support for a second term for President Jacob Zuma was confirmed. Political analysts reckon it is the one province Zuma will be able to count on in his bid for re-election.

Ten days ago, a meeting was held with the ANC’s alliance partners in KwaZulu-Natal and, although relations between the South African Communist Party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the ANC are strained at times, the three days of talks appeared constructive. Preparation for the 2014 elections would start now, ANC provincial chairman Zweli Mkhize said at the end of the meeting.

But cracks have begun to emerge in the political landscape. There have, in recent weeks, been a spate of service delivery protests. At Mariannridge outside Durban, stones were thrown last week, tyres burned and roads barricaded as residents protested about housing and land issues. This in a province that has seen very little protest activity in the past two years. The protests indicate frustration with the lack of basic services among poorer communities and also increasing dissatisfaction with the political leadership that was supposed to provide those services.

Perhaps more disturbing is that some municipalities have resorted to further promises in the face of protests, which may cause enmity in other parts of the community that have been waiting for those services for much longer.

There has also been a return of the assassination of political leaders in the province, with 22 National Freedom Party (NFP) members killed since the beginning of last year. And police still have no suspects for the shooting of three top ANC leaders.

KwaZulu-Natal has a long history of councillors being murdered, but there were signs this scourge may be on the way out after the last year’s local government elections — political discourse in the province seemed to have matured.

Motives for nearly all the murders are not yet known, but Mkhize has alluded to an “industry” of contract killers being used to settle political scores. Some NFP members claim there is a hit list with their names on it. Adding to the tension is the fraying coalition agreement between the ANC and NFP in some municipalities. Talks are under way to mend the agreement, which is barely a year old.

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect is that the violent manifestations of political tension could increase in the short term, rather than decline. Reasons include competition for positions as the ANC electoral conference at Mangaung draws nearer, the intractability of service delivery issues and increased political competition in the region with the advent of the NFP.

The ANC leadership in KwaZulu-Natal has in the recent past been proactive and successful in maintaining stability in its ranks. The difference is that the source of the discontent has not revealed itself this time, in that the service delivery protests have not been by the ANC, nor aimed at it or focused in any single region. This diffuse malcontent may present no organised threat to the ANC, but it does lay the ground for other parties to mop up some of the ANC’s lost support.

Political analyst Daniel Silke says that given the province’s political history — more than 20,000 people were killed in a low-intensity civil war between the IFP and ANC in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1980s — it has become important for all political leaders in the province to keep competitiveness between them at manageable levels in order to combat the rising incidence of violence.

West is KwaZulu-Natal editor.