Ballooning ANC membership figures raise eyebrows
EXACTLY when did African National Congress (ANC) KwaZulu-Natal membership figures balloon? It came as a shock at the weekend when it was revealed that it had signed up almost 87,000 new members since the beginning of the year. Such a huge jump fanned speculation that there has been gerrymandering, meant to boost President Jacob Zuma’s re-election bid. KwaZulu-Natal, Mr Zuma’s home province, is at the forefront of the campaign. In January, the province had 244,900 members, and the figures released by the ANC at the weekend saw its biggest province leaping to 331,820, out of the ANC’s total membership of 1.2-million members.
That the Eastern Cape has been going the other direction has been perplexing to people in and outside the ANC.
In January, the Eastern Cape was hot on KwaZulu-Natal’s heels with 225,597 members. According to the latest figures, the home of the ANC now has slid to 187,585.
That means about 38,000 members have left the party in that province, or have not paid the R12 required to renew the annual membership. ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has attributed the Eastern Cape’s decline to serious organisational problems. That is plausible. However, the decline of a province that is hostile to Mr Zuma’s re-election raises eyebrows. It was Mr Mantashe who said two years ago that a lot of the ANC’s branches were dysfunctional, and were only revived for conferences. It then becomes strange for the Eastern Cape to be losing members in a conference year. Also, elections have been due in the Eastern Cape since the beginning of the year, with five regional elections held so far.
KwaZulu-Natal’s growth surpassed the provincial leaders’ own targets. At the provincial conference in May, KwaZulu-Natal’s official records showed that the province had 252,637 members.
The figures released last week came as a surprise to many. A senior member of the ANC says the audit cutoff was June 15, meaning any members gained after that would not be counted. That suggests that KwaZulu-Natal managed to increase its membership figures by 79,183 in just a month.
Limpopo also grew, from 114,385 to 161,868. North West grew from 60,319 to 75,145. It’s also strange that these dysfunctional provinces’ membership figures are on the rise, and the Eastern Cape’s are on the decline. North West is probably the ANC’s most dysfunctional province. It has two distinct camps that are at war. The provincial executive was elected early last year.
Before that, the province was run by a task team led by people who are from other provinces, deployed by the ANC’s national executive council (NEC). With all that confusion, they still managed to attract 15,000 new members?
The membership trends would have been a big deal if the NEC had accepted the suggestion that branches be allocated voting seats at Mangaung as a proportion of their membership size. That would have seen KwaZulu-Natal being allowed to send more than 1,000 delegates. But that format was rejected at an NEC meeting, where it was decided that each branch must have at least one delegate, as per the ANC’s constitution.
ANC conferences are easily won at the membership and delegate breakdown stage. You only need to look at the breakdown of delegates to tell which way it will go. KwaZuluNatal’s numerical strength gives it more comfort now, 11 weeks before the Mangaung conference, while opposing provinces look demoralised by the breakdown of delegates.
The membership audit system is overseen by Mr Mantashe’s office. And it is an open secret in the ANC that the secretaries have the power to frustrate hostile branches. Mr Mantashe and Mr Zuma are enjoying the wave of incumbency. It has become difficult to remove those in positions, primarily because of the power of their offices.
The squeals that Mr Mantashe and Mr Zuma are extracting from their incumbency, as they squeeze the lifeblood out of their opposition, are heard. But there is always the risk that the perception of gerrymandering will be there long after the Mangaung conference — to discredit those who will be elected.