Magashule is not without blame in the ANC’S list mess
Not all of the blame for the ANC’S desolate entry to the election campaign season can be laid at the feet of suspended secretary general Ace Magashule, but some party leaders say he left the office in total disarray, which gave rise to the current state of chaos in which the party finds itself.
The ANC was unable to timeously submit candidates for registration for the local government elections in 93 municipalities, blaming lockdown regulations and technical glitches. The party applied to the electoral court to have the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) reopen its registration window, but withdrew the application hours later.
The party is now faced with hundreds of disputes across provinces as branches claim unfair processes, gatekeeping and manipulation. In the Ugu district municipality, branches had in May warned the national executive committee (NEC) of the ANC that it had left many branches in disarray as many regions had not gone to conferences and many left were with regional task teams whose tenure had lapsed.
Two ANC NEC members have told the Mail & Guardian that some of the blame should be levelled at the suspended secretary general.
Before Magashule was suspended, humiliated and kicked out of NEC meetings, the party leader, who took over the reins as the head administrator for the ANC in 2017, boasted of his successful reign at the party headquarters because he had increased the ANC’S membership by a whopping 25%, from less than a million members in 2017 to 1.4-million members.
Magashule boasted of his prowess on the lower structures of the ANC which could have catapulted him to become President Cyril Ramaphosa’s most powerful adviser, destined to one day call the shots.
Cracks began to show when the ANC’S chief administrator handed Ramaphosa a loaded gun by announcing shortly after the party’s lekgotla in 2019 that the ANC’S NEC resolved that the South African Reserve Bank’s mandate would be expanded to include employment and growth, contradicting Ramaphosa, who said that the independence of the Reserve Bank would not be tinkered with.
These remarks elicited strong denials from then-finance minister Tito Mboweni and Enoch Godongwana (then the head of the ANC subcommittee on economic transformation and now the finance minister) who said the governing party never agreed to this.
Shortly after, Ramaphosa began to take powers away from the secretary general. Ramaphosa began inviting media to his closing remarks which included a summarised version of NEC meetings. An unprecedented move which shot Magashule in the knee, making his post NEC media briefings redundant.
ANC insiders also said Magashule ran his office for his “own gains” by deploying allies, including Carl Niehaus, and neglecting the work of organising and administration of branches.
“It’s been chaotic. I’ve never seen such chaos since [Magashule] took over. There is a correlation to why we find ourselves in this situation now. The DSG [deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte] cannot take the blame for the mess at Luthuli House. She deputised someone [incompetent],” one NEC member said.
In an NEC meeting in April, former president Thabo Mbeki told party leaders that the NEC should urgently attend to its weakened secretary general’s office.
Mbeki is reported to have said that the ANC had a history of strong secretaries general, who often functioned as the glue that kept the party together. Eyewitness News reported that Mbeki told NEC members that this was the first time the ANC had a weak secretary general, calling it a problem that needed to be resolved as part of the party’s renewal.
Magashule also lost the confidence of the party’s provincial secretaries. While fighting tooth and nail against the step-aside resolution, secretaries of key provinces pushed back, calling for an urgent meeting of the party secretariat to confront him over his actions after he attempted to broaden the stepaside list to include ANC members accused of — but not charged with — corruption.
Eastern Cape secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi called Magashule’s office — on the sixth floor at Luthuli House — a cocoon for a splinter group of the party.
“That RET [radical economic transformation] thing that is found [there] is nothing of the sort of a tendency of a faction, but it has grown into a formidable organisation that will contest the ANC,” Ngcukayitobi said, adding that the ANC should deal with the faction as an organisation, rather than a tendency.