KZN’s ANC leadership and withering non-racialism
HOUSES and tombstones are two types of monuments of the ANC that I saw in the past week.
The first are the homes of exiled freedom fighters in Lusaka, which the Zambian government has declared protected heritage. The second are blocks of granite in graveyards in KwaZulu-Natal, surrounded by the dainty footprints of designer shoes left after glowing speeches to fallen heroes
The difference in the latter is that the metaphor of the fallen is wholly deceptive. The victims met their makers lodged with a bullet from an assassin’s gun. Amid the euphoria of the after-parties crowning the new elected elite emerging triumphant from the movement’s recent 8th provincial conference in Durban, a minor news item was lost altogether. It popped up starkly on my mobile phone: “ANC in KwaZulu-Natal Youth League secretary Thanduxolo Sabelo has confirmed that chairperson of the ANC Youth League at the Coastal College campus in Umlazi, Bongani Usher Mkhize, has been shot dead.”
Soon after, a picture of a lifeless Mkhize lying on a pavement outside his home did its rounds. Tragic and bizarre on all counts. A deep tragedy for the family and loved ones of the deceased and bizarre that the ANC has calmly taken another murder in its stride. Scanning the credentials report presented to conference delegates, one could not but notice a huge missing category in the tally – the bodyguards.
They are a massive growth industry thanks to ANC internal battles in KZN. Literally hundreds of bodyguards milled in the car park and the dining marquee as their bosses traded loyalties in the conference hall. From the top ANC leaders through to municipal managers and even minor government officials, the bodyguard is as much an accessory as expensive shoes. (Word is that even at the Durban July horse race, a local municipal manager nonchalantly paraded a phalanx of protectors in earpieces that would have put North Korea’s Kim Jongun to shame.)
No amount of firepower is going to be enough to protect the ANC from the slippery slope to self-destruction. Let’s unpack some of the conference outcomes that might support this view. Slate politics that pretends to have a zebra dimension has produced a provincial executive committee (PEC) that both accommodates and excludes.
Factionalism drove the voting on the conference floor almost as vigorously as unity was thundered from the podium. The youth bloc held away by the sheer force of its numbers from the headlong plunge into capturing branches. That might be positive from the point of view of organisational renewal but disastrous from the perspective of citizen perception.
An ANC insider once shared a view that the reason the movement was taking a hammering in by-elections in rural KwaZulu-Natal constituencies was that the ANC sent “children” while the IFP respected the conservative community and put up candidates with gravitas. The demands of the youth for greater representation is commendable but it comes at a price. With this emerging trend of sacrificing the seasoned leadership the ANC has already found that the citizen’s voting trend goes the other way.
Another regret in the make-up of the PEC is that non-racialism has flown out the window. There was not even the slightest pretence to accommodate minorities. A facetious text being circulated suggests that 106 years after its founding on the principle of unity, the movement has morphed into an African NATIONALIST congress.
One could read into that even a narrow ethnic dimension as former President Jacob Zuma shamelessly mobilises support in his home province. As the new PEC meets, it will be interesting to watch its onward programme.
The unifiers in Sihle Zikalala and Mike Mabuyakhulu have secured the top two spots. Mabuyakhulu went into a contest against Willies Mchunu, who unsportingly threw his hat into the ring (egged on by the eThekwini region Mdumiseni Ntuli as provincial secretary), brings both a measure of youth and national experience. It waits to be seen what fresh energy they can muster from a fresh base of organisational stability. Tragically, Bongani Mkhize and the long roll call of the deceased will go down along with non-racialism as the casualties of the 8th conference.
Buccus is senior research associate at ASRI, a research fellow at the School of Social Sciences at UKZN, and academic director of a university study abroad programme on political transformation