Ramaphosa seems unable to curb rise of the fifth column

Cyril Ramaphosa should beware: he is being pushed ever closer to a postelection EFF alliance. If that were to happen, it would put the Zuma fightback camp back in business in municipal councils across the country. It would be disastrous for his project to set SA back on the path of good governance.

For the rest of us it could mean another lost decade of growth and an overall decline in prosperity.

To stop it the ANC needs to put clear blue water between itself and the EFF. It needs to tell voters that the EFF’s policies will be disastrous for SA. Ramaphosa also needs to protect Pravin Gordhan from further attack. At the moment, it seems as if Gordhan — the champion of the clean-up — is being hung out to dry.

The attack on Gordhan is now in full flight. The political temperature and tempo have ratcheted up since the Zondo commission began sitting. The EFF is leading from the front, with two complaints against him last week with the public protector — one claiming he lied in 2016 when he said in answer to a parliamentary question that he had not met the Guptas, and another asking for a probe into the establishment of the so-called SA Revenue Service (Sars) rogue unit.

Floyd Shivambu, the EFF’s chief whip, has sent Gordhan a letter with a list of questions he says he must answer, ranging from questions about family members to procurement matters at Sars and the Treasury. It is clear from the letter that the idea is to create a cloud of suspicion around Gordhan. It contains no evidence but is full of innuendo of wrongdoing, implying that Gordhan has profited from tenders and has a bank account in Canada, where he plans to retire.

The letter was accompanied at the weekend by a Twitter attack on Gordhan by the EFF and Jacob Zuma’s antiwhite monopoly capital mob. Shivambu also wrote a lengthy “insightful polemic” (his own description) in October in which he detailed Gordhan’s history in the 1980s mass democratic movement and the role he played in the factional politics of the United Democratic Front.

In those days, Gordhan was accused of being the leader of an Indian-dominated “cabal” that pushed a centrist political line in opposition to various other more left ideological inclinations.

Shivambu claims Gordhan still leads a cabal inside the Ramaphosa government, fed by his old comrades working in private intelligence and his allies in a variety of institutions and the Treasury. While the idea is mostly to throw mud, the polemic hones in on his biggest vulnerability — his ethnic background — linking him to other people of Indian descent in the cabal conspiracy.

There are obvious immediate reasons to go for Gordhan, and then there are bigger strategic reasons. The obvious ones are the stateowned enterprise clean-up — the EFF has formed alliances with some of the characters under fire — and the VBS clean-up, which is not being carried out by Gordhan but is being pursued by people considered his political allies.

The bigger strategic reasons relate to the EFF’s nature as a faction of the ANC. During the Zuma years, the EFF played the side of the constitutionalists — taking Zuma to court where the ANC constitutionalists couldn’t— and winning big politically.

THE END GAME IS TO SPLIT THE ANC AND DRIVE A WEDGE BETWEEN THE RAMAPHOSA FACTION AND THE ZUMA FACTION, WHICH IS STRONG

Now they are alongside the Zuma crowd. Inside the ANC this faction is compelled to be undercover, while the EFF can caucus and organise against the Ramaphosa project, unfettered by ANC organisational discipline.

The end game is to split the ANC and drive a wedge between the Ramaphosa faction and the Zuma faction, which remains strong both in the cabinet, parliament and through the institutions of state. In this way, the EFF adds to the ANC’s political strife; it makes Ramaphosa’s dream of uniting the ANC impossible; and strengthens its own ideological and political position.

Should the ANC fall below 50% in Gauteng in May, or should the EFF decide to re-evaluate its municipal arrangement with the DA as it has said it will, then we will have a new set of political dynamics to deal with. Faced with the choice of an alliance partner, the ANC’s inclination is likely to be to go with the EFF. If and when the ANC moves into such an alliance, the EFF will serve to boost the fightback faction, putting it back in business in municipalities across SA.

The attacks against Gordhan are more than just noise. A fifth column is arming itself in Ramaphosa’s backyard. He seems powerless to stop it.