IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU, ACE
Fears of further electoral decline for the ANC in the Free State after Magashule’s departure are unfounded
The “radical economic transformation” faction of the ANC was dead and buried long before last week’s announcement that former ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule is about to be expelled from the party.
“RET” was a moniker for a predatory elite that hitched a ride on the back of the nationalist strain in the party, intent on fashioning the state as a mechanism for personal enrichment. Its death knell was the national elective conference at Nasrec in 2017, when President Cyril Ramaphosa won the party presidency against RET candidate Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.
Magashule was a key figure in that faction, led by convict-in-chief Jacob Zuma.
Even after the RET faction’s defeat at Nasrec, Magashule who won a narrow victory over Senzo Mchunu in the race for secretary-general (which many claimed was manufactured) was defiant. Shortly after the conference he declared that his faction would retake the ANC in five years. It was not to be.
Ramaphosa was overwhelmingly reelected in December last year and the RET faction was left bruised, with many key figure heads facing serious corruption charges or allegations.
Last week, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula announced that a disciplinary committee had found Magashule guilty of misconduct for trying to suspend Ramaphosa from the party without such a decision having been taken by the national executive committee, the ANC’s highest decision-making body between conferences. This was shortly after he himself had been suspended for facing corruption charges as the ANC tried to clean up its image ahead of the 2021 local elections. He has seven days to provide reasons he should not be expelled from the ANC.
Way back in 1999, the ANC’s electoral support in the Free State stood at 81%. The trend continued in the 2004 national and provincial election: it got 82% nationally and 81.7% provincially.
Magashule was elected provincial party chair in 1998 and remained in the post until 2017, when he was elevated to Luthuli House.
His rise to the national leadership of the ANC correlated with the decline of the former liberation giant.
Mbalula, who hails from the Free State, warned ahead of Magashule’s elevation to the top six that he would destroy the party. “Ace Magashule a definite no no no, the man will finish what is remaining of our movement. He will kill it,” he said.
Magashule’s rise to the top in party and national politics, as premier of the Free State is a mystery; allegations of corruption have stalked him for much of his career.
In 1996 he was removed as MEC for economics and tourism when then premier Mosiuoa Lekota exposed his role in the abuse of R6m of public money. Instead of being barred from any position, Magashule was shifted to parliament, only to return to the province after his election as chair.
In 2009 Zuma appointed him as Free State premier.
His re-election as provincial chair in 2012 was declared unlawful by the Constitutional Court after serious allegations of vote-rigging surfaced.
In national and provincial elections, the ANC’s support in the Free State took a nosedive, from 82% in 2004 to 71% in 2009, though it didn’t cause a stir, probably because of the continued high base of support.
Its support stabilised between 2009 and 2014, dropping only slightly to 69.7%. But just five years later, that dropped significantly again, to 62.9%.
In local government elections its support went into free fall from 2016, from 62.4% to 50.4% in 2021.
The Free State is among the worst-performing provinces in terms of its municipal audit outcomes. The only metro in the province, Mangaung, was placed under national administration by the cabinet last year.
Now there are fears that Magashule’s expulsion could cost the ANC yet more votes in the Free State, especially if he jumps ship to another party or launches his own. But that’s an oversimplification of the politics of a province which has become a textbook example of the impact of corruption on service delivery and, by extension, political support.
His backers may linger in the party and have the ability to direct the intensity of the party’s campaign there, but ordinary voters have long bucked against the rule of the ANC strongman who came to epitomise everything wrong in the former liberation movement. Magashule is the antithesis of modernisation, progress and renewal in the ANC, and a further decline of support for the party in the Free State will likely be in spite of his departure, not because of it.