HOW LESUFI MISREAD THE ROOM
The ANC Gauteng leader discovers not everyone in the party likes his coalition politics
In what is surely a harbinger of things to come, the ANC has formed a coalition with the EFF in the City of Joburg. The coalition has installed a new puppet mayor to replace the previous, failed puppet mayor it had agreed on.
Danger lies ahead for the ANC, though, as it canoodles with the EFF. That’s because the ANC is itself a coalition and, on top of that, is in a tripartite coalition with Cosatu and the SACP. If ANC Gauteng leader Panyaza Lesufi supported by many top figures in the party understood this, he would not be leading the ANC into a coalition with the EFF without care and deep reflection.
Let me explain. The ANC truly is “a broad church”. Formed by journalists, lawyers, teachers, chiefs and other members of the black elite more than a century ago, it attracted the urban working class and the rural poor into its ranks in the 1940s and 1950s. It also attracted young people opposed to apartheid’s relentless rise and women sick of misogyny.
By the late 1950s, there were communists, liberals, capitalists, nationalists, nonracialists, Muslims, Christians, Africanists and people of many other political, social and economic persuasions in its ranks. It outlawed tribalism.
To keep this broad church united, the ANC’s leaders had to hold consultations, mediate disputes and forge unity at all times. In the 1960s, with the ANC banned and many of its leaders imprisoned or in exile, this was a particularly tough task.
In 1990, the ANC was unbanned. Inside the country, Cosatu had become a juggernaut. United Democratic Front (UDF) leaders such as Cyril Ramaphosa and others had become major political players. The SACP, with popular leaders such as Chris Hani and Joe Slovo, was also a major player. The UDF was collapsed into the ANC and a formal alliance declared between the SACP, the ANC and Cosatu. This is the tripartite alliance a coalition of a special kind.
This is why the Gauteng ANC’s flirtation with the EFF led to the turmoil in the Joburg council last week. Lesufi, sitting in the public gallery, had instructed the ANC’s 91 councillors to kowtow to the EFF’s demands that a member of a minority party be elected as mayor.
Just as voting was about to take place on Tuesday, the ANC’s councillors walked out in protest, demanding that their regional chair, Dada Morero, be installed as mayor.
“Are those our councillors walking out?” a shocked Lesufi was overheard asking.
The point here is that the ANC is not homogeneous. It is a house of many rooms. Lesufi and his ilk need to be careful how they navigate it towards coalitions. Lesufi had read the party wrong. He thought he could ram a partner down councillors’ throats and give power to nonentities from Al Jamaah without any pushback.
Not every ANC member in Joburg wants a marriage between the party and the EFF. Many in the ANC would rather sit in the opposition benches than be subject to the fascistic, populist, rude theatrics of the EFF. Others would rather jump into bed with the DA, IFP, ActionSA and others than huddle in the same tent with the EFF. Quite a few ANC leaders do not want to be subject to the notorious flip-flopping of the EFF, which has already led to the collapse of various coalitions in municipalities in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
Lesufi and ANC secretarygeneral Fikile Mbalula have many constituents who might not like the parties they choose to jump into bed with. Some of the potential partners have over the past eight years stabbed each other in the back many times. Would the SACP and Cosatu accept such partners?
Lesufi’s biggest blunder as he rushed into the embrace of the EFF was to forget that great leaders always bring their supporters along on a journey as perilous as coalition-building. Lesufi assumed support where none existed. That’s why he was left with a bloody nose last week and had to be rescued by Mbalula.
The lesson is this: coalitions forged without care could tear the ANC apart and even collapse it.