Man who would be king: Paul Mashatile’s long (or short) game
From the confusion of the Phala Phala saga, one man emerges strengthened. Paul Mashatile is a good bet for deputy president, and for SA’s next president. The question is when he will take the reins? By
David Mabuza’s recent history is a cautionary tale for those who lust after the top job in the ANC. Five years ago, at the ANC’s elective conference, Mabuza’s emergence as deputy president was greeted as bad news in many circles. In terms of ANC custom, it put Mabuza in pole position to be Cyril Ramaphosa’s successor.
Yet, days away from the ANC’s next conference, Mabuza is a spent force. In political terms, he is dead in the water – weakened by mysterious recurring illness, a corruption case and removal from the provincial politics in which he built his fiefdom.
A lot can happen in five years. Which is why, if you’re a shrewd political operator, you’re better off shadowing a sitting president in his second term rather than his first.
Paul Mashatile is an extremely shrewd political operator.
How ‘Holy Trinity’ built his base
The candidacy of Mashatile, at 60, is one of the ANC’s more youthful Top Six options.
Mashatile seems younger than his years in some ways. Perhaps it is that he has yet to develop the generous belly of most male South African politicians. Perhaps it is because he is associated with a group of forever young bucks, activists who cut their teeth in Alexandra township in Johannesburg in the late 1970s and 1980s, many of whom have gone on to influential positions.
“They are fiercely independent rebels,” Matuma Letsoala said of this group in 2014. “Some call them – without evidence – reckless adventurists, a corrupt mafia whose common drive is to pillage the rich province’s resources. Their grip on Gauteng, the economic and political dynamo of the country, has indirectly turned them into a quasi-independent body of the ANC. Their impudent, cheeky streak is legendary.”
The core of the group were dubbed “the Alex mafia”. Key members: Mashatile, Mike Maile, Nkenke Kekana and Bridgman Sithole. It is not a label Mashatile appreciates today, as it reflects a perception that he and others awarded plum Gauteng contracts to their old Alex buddies.
There are other nicknames aplenty, a sign of a politician with wide popular support.
Detractors call him “Holy Trinity” bacause he holds three of the ANC’s Top Six positions currently – owing to the suspension of secretary general Ace Magashule and the death of deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte.
Supporters call themselves the “Adiweles”, a reference to an amapiano song that eulogises underdogs and upstarts.
Mashatile is anything but. Over decades he has held a remarkable variety of political jobs: spokesperson for the South African Communist Party, Gauteng elections manager for the ANC, Gauteng Premier, Minister of Arts and Culture, MEC for Finance, for Housing, for Public Transport and Roads…
Though Gauteng is seen as Mashatile’s political base, his wide experience has given him access to a broader constituency.
Mashatile is currently the only politician who rivals Ramaphosa in terms of popularity. At Nasrec in 2017, he won the second highest number of delegate votes – behind only Mabuza and ahead of Ramaphosa.
Mashatile has the most pre-conference nominations, with 1,791 ANC branches endorsing him for deputy president.
There are those who reckon that, after Phala Phala, Mashatile has a good shot at the ANC presidency, leapfrogging the deputy job. But he’s not competing. Or is he?
Critics and supporters agree: the dude is very likeable. (As was JZ).
Other words that recur about Mashatile: laid-back and soft-spoken.
“I don’t recall ever seeing him flustered; he never shows anger,” a senior ANC figure told this week.
ANC veteran Ben Turok called him “decent and kindly”. Former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein said “quiet, shy, studious, smart and humble”.
He likes fine things – as scandalously revealed in 2006, when he reportedly charged a R96,375 lunch at a Sandton restaurant to the Gauteng taxpayer.
“He’ll never be the loudest voice ... that’s not his style,” says another ANC insider. “But to underestimate Mashatile will be your downfall. He is a master tactician.”
It is surprisingly difficult to pin down Mashatile in terms of his personal political beliefs. Perhaps this ambiguity has let him win respect across the ANC’s “broad church”, from Gauteng’s metropolitan elites to KwaZulu-Natal’s “Taliban” faction.
He is the ANC figure with whom the EFF’s Julius Malema has said he would be most able to work. But Malema is Machiavellian.
Over the years, Mashatile has been a reliable mouthpiece for official ANC policy, with two notable exceptions: his outspoken opposition to e-tolling and his calls for former president Jacob Zuma to step down, before it was common.
Resisting e-tolling was based on a view of road agency Sanral trying to usurp government.
“Government agencies don’t run the country, the ANC does,” Mashatile said in 2014.
On Zuma, he lobbied for Kgalema Motlanthe for the presidency in Mangaung and held firm on the “stepaside” rule for ANC members bringing the party into disrepute.
A strict anti-corruption stance has been Mashatile’s calling card of late. Sceptics find it hard to swallow, given certain history.
The general ideological impression is of a moderate centrist.
In 2018 he reassured the genteel Cape Town Press Club on land, saying ANC land grabs were out of the question. Earlier, he said “white monopoly capital” was not in the ANC vocabulary. He has argued that measures like nationalising the Reserve Bank are unimportant compared with service delivery.
“He’s not politically or economically reckless,” was told this week by an NEC member. “He is mature and sober-minded. He does not pose a policy risk.”
The C-word trailing Mashatile
There is one major drawback to Mashatile’s candidacy – until at least 2010 the stench of corruption enveloped him.
One allegation dates back to June 1997 when he was Gauteng Transport MEC. The Star newspaper reported he took an advance of R34,000 for a study trip to Australia, but never went. He started paying back the money in 1999, but the Democratic Party at the time said it was “in effect a two-year interest-free loan from taxpayers”. To record every corruption incident in which Mashatile was fingered in Gauteng over the next decade would take more space than this.
While provincial Finance MEC, in 2007, his daughter and nephew allegedly got benefits from government contractors.
AmaBhungane reported on Mashatile’s alleged involvement in corrupt contracts with Gauteng development agencies.
Though he has not been publicly linked to scandal of late, many observers are sceptical of the current anti-corruption stance.
How long is his game?
For the past few months, rumours have been building that Mashatile is positioning himself to take over from Ramaphosa long before the 2024 general elections.
In November, a Standard Bank memo to investors said Mashatile appeared to be launching a “stealthy” presidential bid. It said he had been “quietly lobbying key constituencies, including business, in recent months, arguing that he would be a more decisive leader than President Ramaphosa”.
That this lobbying has borne fruit is seen in a flurry of recent positive press. Bloomberg described him as a “can-do, investor-friendly politician” in an article with a headline that said he had “a plan to fix South Africa’s struggling economy”.
Mashatile has not endorsed either Ramaphosa or rival Zweli Mkhize for the top job, and has said if he were nominated for it at the conference, he would assent.
This is improbable as it would require a show of hands of 25% of delegates.
But if anyone could pull off the secret manoeuvring such a development would require, it would be a person with keys to the ANC engine room, and access to branches across the country. Never bet against Mashatile.