CAN THE ANC AFFORD REFORM?
The likely suspension of Ace Magashule could be the spark that President Cyril Ramaphosa needs to finally ‘renew’ the governing party. This would be a bolt of lightning to the ANC, probably leading to the departure of the ‘radical economic transformation’
The rebirth of an eagle: this is the image President Cyril Ramaphosa conjured up on the campaign trail towards the ANC’s Nasrec conference in 2017, to describe the coming renewal of the governing party.
The legend goes that once an eagle reaches old age and finds it can no longer catch prey and feed itself, Ramaphosa told Raymond Zondo’s commission of inquiry into state capture last week, it withdraws and ascends to the highest peak of a mountain.
There it undergoes a painful transformation — it plucks out its old feathers and sheds its claws. When the “new eagle” emerges later, it has new feathers and claws. And, you’ll be glad to hear, it soars higher than ever.
This, he argued before Zondo, is the process the ANC is going through today: a rebirthing, a renewal, a painful ordeal.
Unfortunately for Ramaphosa, the myth of an eagle’s rebirth is just that: a myth.
In nature, there are no such second chances — and no rebirthing atop cloudshrouded mountain peaks.
Is the fate of the ANC’s quest for rebirth equally mythical? If so, Ramaphosa may have inadvertently provided the perfect metaphor for the ANC today: that any hope of a rebirth is about as realistic as his shedding eagle.
Or will Ramaphosa go down in history as the leader of a political
party who did something that analysts believed was nearly impossible in large established political parties: a dramatic overhaul and renewal?
Academically and historically, the odds are stacked against Ramaphosa doing this.
Anthony Butler, professor of political studies at the University of the Western
Cape, says most political scientists believe it it’s hard for a party, at this stage, to change.
“Parties are large and complex, and their leaders are locked into ideological and regional alliances that have evolved over many years,” he says. “They cannot easily abandon historical constituencies who support them, or those donors who fund them. This means they find it hard to adapt even marginally, and they do so only when faced with the prospect of electoral defeat.”
Typically, says Butler, big internal reform only follows “an electoral catastrophe”.
The ANC, though it won 57% of the national vote in 2019, may be closer than it thinks. Ramaphosa has himself conceded that the party’s decline in electoral support was what spurred the overhaul.
Deputy president David Mabuza echoes this in an interview with the FM this week.
“There is no other choice for the organisation, other than unity and renewal, if it is to realise its historic mission,” says Mabuza.
“The ANC has always understood that to successfully lead the national democratic revolution, it has to continuously renew itself so that it remains relevant to the changing conditions of the struggle as shaped by both domestic and international dictates.”
The party “has to be conscious of the competing interests in society that must be considered and pursued towards the realisation of socioeconomic transformation”.
Many doubt there will ever be a rebirth. For one thing, there are still many within the ANC who are quite comfortable with the latitude they have — and will resist any efforts to implement Ramaphosa’s “renewal”.
Paul Mashatile, the ANC’s treasurer, tells the FM, however, that “there is no turning back — we want an ethical organisation, led by leaders who are ethical”.
Despite these soothing words, the prospects for a real “dramatic” change are slim, says political analyst Susan Booysen. Instead, what is more likely are “waves and degrees of reform” in the party and the state, amid a general continuation of the ethical decline, which set in almost immediately after the democratic breakthrough.
This is something which former President Nelson Mandela warned about as far back as 1997, at the ANC’s national conference.
“A number of negative features within the ANC, and the broad democratic movement, have emerged during the last three years,” said Mandela. “We have an inescapable responsibility to attend to these matters frankly and decisively in defence of both our movement and our revolution.
“Many among our members see their membership of the ANC as a means to advance their personal ambitions to attain positions of power and access to resources for their own individual gratification.”
Even at that time — before the fallout of the arms deal and state capture — Mandela said that “during this period, we have also been faced with various instances of corruption involving our own members, including those who occupy positions of authority”.
Despite Mandela’s censure of the party faithful, it only got worse. Even though successive ANC conferences have highlighted the need for reform, it fell on deaf ears.
Who can forget the ill-fated “decade of the cadre” agreed upon at the Mangaung conference in 2012, which was meant to improve the calibre of party members?
So much for that. Within five years, SA was confronted with the party at its lowest ethical pitch: Nkandla, state capture, the collapse of institutions and the economy.
The FM canvassed a number of ANC leaders, who argue that the 2017 Nasrec conference was groundbreaking as it marked a real shift from simple rhetoric to action — and they say Ramaphosa has been slowly implementing reforms in the state.
But if you think that’s already glacial, reform has been even slower in the ANC.
It has literally taken months to convince a senior official, the party’s effective CEO — secretary-general Ace Magashule — that being criminally charged for corruption harms the party’s standing in society.
Which is why this week is crunch time for the ANC — a barometer of how far it is willing to go to cleanse itself.
The end of Magashule and RET?
This week, Magashule faces suspension by the party for refusing to step aside, despite the fact that he has been criminally charged for corruption for his role in a dodgy asbestos tender in the Free State when he was premier. Though the ANC gave him 30 days to step aside of his own volition, Magashule refused.
It sets the stage for a bruising battle for him to retain his post.
For Ramaphosa, though, it will make a fantastic impression: the suspension of an elected official not only sends the message that corruption will no longer be tolerated, but also show that his reform agenda has gone mainstream with the ANC’s rank and file.
The question is: how much damage can Magashule do, once suspended? His loyalists, like fellow corruption accused Bongani Bongo, have indicated they will fight the ANC’s new step-aside rule in court. Magashule is likely to join them.
Then there is the acute and real possibility
Nelson Mandela: We have also been faced with various instances of corruption involving our own members that the ANC will finally, after much speculation, split — should Magashule and his allies fail to persuade ANC structures and the courts to have him returned to his post.
Already, his backers have the ball rolling: retired general Mojo Motau, a fringe character in the party, is moving to constitute an ANC “national task team” to “oversee the affairs of the ANC until a provisional national executive committee is constituted”.
Motau, a Zuma loyalist, claims he is leading an effort to “cleanse the ANC from apartheid spies, counter-revolutionaries and criminals”.
Insiders say this grouping led by Motau marks the beginning of a “departure” of the so-called “radical economic transformation” (RET) faction from the party — even if Motau’s group is largely insignificant.
Both the ANC’s Eastern Cape chair Oscar Mabuyane and ANC Northern Cape chair Zamani Saul have already spoken of the prospect of a split with the RET faction.
Mondli Gungubele, a former deputy minister of finance and a Ramaphosa ally, told the FM he’d see any such split as the “departure of the rogue element” in the ANC.
Gungubele’s assessment may be accurate: the RET group seems to hold no significant sway within the ANC, nor does it enjoy mass support.
Sources within provincial structures tell the FM that this
RET group can be found in pockets across the country, but is largely concentrated in Magashule’s home province of the Free
State, parts of Mpumalanga, the North West and KwaZulu-Natal.
But even then, Magashule’s support in the Free State is far from unanimous. He was dealt a blow in recent weeks when both the ANC Youth League in the province, as well as the party’s Mangaung region, said he should step aside. He was weakened further when the courts nullified the election of his ally, Sam Mashinini. as the provincial chair.
Critically, the ANC’s provincial executive won’t appeal against that ruling — even though Mashinini and Magashule disagreed with it. Instead, a “task team” is being put in place to run the province — which will diminish Magashule’s influence even more.
Insiders say there is a push for Mxolisi Dukwana, the former Free State MEC for economic development, to lead the task team. It was Dukwana who laid bare, before the Zondo commission, Magashule’s involvement in wrongdoing.
And, as a final cherry on top of a really bad month for Magashule, his ally Supra Mahumapelo had his party membership suspended for five years for bringing the party into disrepute. Mahumapelo could appeal against this, but it’s unlikely to be reversed.
In KwaZulu-Natal, the RET forces are few in number and Magashule doesn’t have the backing of the provincial leadership. This is significant. The province was on the same side as Magashule in the run-up to the Nasrec conference, where it backed Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.
But ANC KwaZulu-Natal secretary Mdu
miseni Ntuli said recently that even though it supported Dlamini Zuma, it was able to differentiate “right from wrong”.
“Some cadres were scared to tell Ace what he said in Bloemfontein was wrong,” Ntuli said — referring to Magashule’s comments after his court appearance, when he said he wouldn’t step down unless branches told him to, despite the NEC’s diktat.
“You can’t stand on an ANC platform and say you won’t adhere to decisions of the ANC, but you will do another thing. These are the things that will destroy the ANC,” Ntuli said.
This, says Booysen, is key to any possible renewal: the departure of those associated closely with state capture and corruption.
But even if the RET group splits, there are other factors which could hinder renewal: any shift in the balance of power, and whether the party is genuinely willing to jettison practices that have led to patronage, nepotism and corruption in the past.
Power in Ramaphosa’s second term
What seems certain now is that Ramaphosa is likely to win a second term in office, which means the only real contest will be around who will be his deputy.
Mabuza, it seems, won’t stay, and there is a consensus forming that the deputy president should be young and (at least among Ramaphosa backers) a woman.
Gungubele agrees with this position, but won’t say who could be in the running. The names mentioned for deputy president, among Ramaphosa backers, include public administration minister Senzo Mchunu and justice minister Ronald Lamola.
There is also talk that Mashatile may be deputy — though Ramaphosa allies don’t trust him, fearing he plays “both sides”
This is despite the fact that Mashatile was instrumental in crafting the step-aside guidelines used to push out Magashule.
Though Mashatile told the FM that these guidelines were intended for the whole organisation — not just Magashule — he says there’s no turning back now. “We must all subject ourselves to the rules of the organisation,” he says.
On the idea that he can’t be trusted, Mashatile’s allies argue that he speaks to ANC leaders across the board — and had reached out to Magashule and personally asked him to step aside.
Mashatile says he will always subject himself to “the will of the ANC”, and what is needed now is an “ethical ANC”, with a preoccupation for serving the country.
One of the unknown factors is what will become of Mabuza, the current deputy president. who is known to always play his cards close to his chest.
Mabuza addresses renewal saying “factionalism and unwarranted discord that turn comrades against one another, are tendencies that need to be defeated at all costs”.
“For if these tendencies are allowed to grow roots and gain traction, they would weaken the hegemony of the ANC as a force of transformation of society.”
While Mabuza says the ANC is “unequivocally committed” to renewal, this requires “conscious and deliberate action on the side of the leadership to inspire confidence in members and broader society that the organisation is capable of meeting the aspirations of the people”.
The ANC must “unreservedly and unequivocally denounce corruption, factionalism, dishonesty, and other negative practices”, and the party’s leaders must set the right example.
He tacitly addresses whether he believes Magashule should step aside. Mabuza says that after the NEC has decided on something, it should “implemented and respected”. Mabuza says his party will “engage in all processes that are meant to assist us to mend our ways, because we are a listening organisation that takes the sentiments of the people seriously”.
The ANC has a “particular responsibility to self-correct”, since it’s the governing party of the country.
Can the ANC afford to reform?
While the FM could find no ANC leader who would openly say they reject the idea of “renewal”, there are some on the fence.
These people, Magashule’s opponents say, have done nothing to change the status quo as it was during the Zuma era — contributing to a near-paralysis in the party. And, since they’re likely to remain on the NEC for some time, this risks derailing any genuine overhaul. Sources cite Jeff Radebe, Nosiviwe
Mapisa-Nqakula and Lindiwe Sisulu as examples.
Some in the Ramaphosa group find this particular group — the status quo seekers — particularly frustrating.
Butler says he isn’t convinced there is paralysis.
“Ramaphosa, in my view, is trying to establish a lever for future cases, even if it is only a very general version of the “stepaside’ principle. Just kicking out Magashule means nothing; doing so to establish a rule means much more,” he says.
Nonetheless, Butler says there are real limits to Ramaphosa’s authority — which limit his ability to implement reforms.
“Some concern money; others concern the power of regional and local barons, who continue to control leadership elections.”
As journalist Carol Paton argues, another obstacle to reform is internal ANC practices — including deploying ANC activists to key positions in the public service and organs of state, the policy of BEE, and the system of party political funding,
In practice, those who benefit from state contracts are expected to pay back corrupt officials and the ANC — a corrupt patronage system which has been hugely beneficial to the party. Would it volunteer to sacrifice this, unless it had to?
Surprisingly, Ramaphosa went as far as to defend the “cadre deployment” policies at the Zondo commission, as did ANC chair Gwede Mantashe. This alone will fuel the view of sceptics, who say that talk of reform is simply paying lip service to the notion.
Booysen says the ANC cannot afford to change these policies as it has to meet the expectations of its supporters — “a very hungry class of petite bourgeoisie” who use the ANC as a vehicle for their own benefit.
This leaves the ANC between a rock and a hard place, says Booysen. It can’t afford to cleanse itself, but it can’t afford not to do so.
This leads to another point raised by Mandela in 1997, which is that the ANC mirrors the society it leads. The odds of the party reforming itself depends on the calibre of South Africans who constitute its membership and its supporters.
Which leaves the country in a bind too. “No political party can match the ANC,” Booysen says — which means SA’s fate is tied to the governing party right now.
Its renewal, then, is a matter of national concern. And it suggests that if Ramaphosa fails to reform the party, SA will fail too.
If these are the stakes, we’d better hope that any “rebirth” is a lot less mythical than Ramaphosa’s eagle.
‘Just kicking out Magashule means nothing; doing so to establish a rule means much more’