ANC gave the wrong message on Zuma and the party

By voting against the no-confidence in Zuma motion, the ANC has fuelled perceptions that it is afraid of him

THE ANC parliamentary caucus handled the latest motion of no confidence debate into president Jacob Zuma’s constitutional fitness to hold office, badly. That is unsurprising, of course, given that the caucus is deeply divided.

The party was forced to try to have its cake and eat it. But that’s seldom possible in politics. On the one hand, the ANC cannot play into the hands of the opposition by agreeing that Zuma is useless. That admission would indict the ANC itself, since Zuma serves at the party’s behest. So voting in favour of a no-confidence motion would simply be the equivalent of also voting against brand ANC.

I totally get why that feels like political suicide or, at the very least, like giving yourself a big fat klap while your opponents laugh at your doing so.

On the other hand, the ANC cannot afford to feed public perceptions that it is scared of Zuma, and that Zuma is more powerful than the party. So, by inadvertently supporting the president in a no-confidence motion debate, the party undermines the ANC brand by confirming suspicions that Zuma has a powerful hold, still, over the organisation.

So what could the ANC have done to both distance itself from Zuma, while at the same time not giving ground to the opposition? Well, to be honest, the answer must be “very little”.

Sadly, Zuma has done the party and the state so much damage now that at some point the party will have to accept public humiliation by conceding what we all know – that it is time for Zuma to go.

That said, the ANC can, nevertheless, play smarter than it is currently.

There was absolutely no reason for ministers Malusi Gigaba and Nomvula Mokonyane to deliver such a bizarre set of speeches on Thursday, singing off-key for their Saxonwold shebeen pub grub.

Besides a buffet of red herrings, including references to Lenin and the Anglo-Boer War, Gigaba essentially defended Zuma by suggesting that the opposition parties are merely an extension of imperialist forces hell-bent on resisting economic transformation.

Jesus, take the wheel already! You can suck up to Zuma – or actually no, you can’t do so if you have integrity – but without making a fool of yourself in broad daylight. There are countless South Africans, including ANC members, who are deeply opposed to white monopoly capital and also opposed to state capture, and also opposed to the ruinous leadership of President Zuma.

It is lazy, hasty and unconvincing to pretend that any genuine concern with the rotten state of the state can be ignored by asserting that opposition parties are pawns of unidentified imperialist forces.

That is pathetic. Worse, it simply tells the public that the ANC isn’t serious about admitting that Zuma is ruinous, and that the state needs to be protected from the final clearance sale that’s going on right now.

Mokonyane delivered a similarly embarrassing speech. When she wasn’t being a race reductionist, trotting out the old claim that the DA’s Mmusi Maimane represents the black face on the part of the DA, she too tried to dismiss the motion as the work of opponents of economic transformation.

That’s right, South Africans, Cabinet members think that if you are opposed to the theft of public resources, then you are opposed to economic transformation.

Yes, yes, you’ve inferred correctly: Mokonyane and Gigaba think economic transformation means corruption. Why else would they argue that opponents of corruption are opponents of economic transformation? These arguments are as silly as they are insulting to ordinary South Africans, who are the biggest losers when it comes to the cost of state capture.

What the ANC should have tried to do last week is to focus on the fact that the former public protector’s report doesn’t make any findings.

It is a litany of observations that are, of course, so serious that they merit a judicial investigation.

But the implication is that it cannot be regarded as a definitive fact basis to support the no-confidence motion.

That isn’t a convincing position,

Zuma is ruinous, and the state needs to be protected from the final clearance sale going on right now

of course, because the motion that was being debated doesn’t require us to look only at the former public protector’s report when asking whether or not the president is constitutionally fit for purpose.

But at least if the ANC speakers admitted that Zuma is deeply flawed, and the state deeply damaged, then the public could be assured that they are indeed working behind the scenes on a plan to get rid of Zuma that will also leave the ANC intact.

However, as the debate actually unfolded in front of our eyes, the ANC didn’t signal any sophisticated behind-the-scenes plan to deal with the mess.

All we saw were ANC members propping up a ruinous presidency.

That is not surprising, of course, because it is unlikely that Zuma is the only ANC leader without a moral compass.

is an author and a political commentator

McKaiser