Speaking to expectant media at the gleaming poolside of the four-star President Hotel in Sea Point where the ANC NEC met on Wednesday to formulate the party’s traditional 8 January statement that President Jacob Zuma will deliver on Saturday, Secretary General Gwede Mantshe hinted at what the nation could expect from the speech.

The address traditionally marks the beginning of the working year and is also a sort of signal or statement of intent indicating the party’s priorities for the coming 12 months.

“This is the year of the Freedom Charter. It is the 60^th anniversary of the Freedom Charter. That is the emphasis, because every Jack and Jill claims to be the custodian of the Freedom Charter these days. Now we will be giving the country content on the Freedom Charter, progress made, challenges faced, what should be done practically because it is easy to shout slogans when you have no responsibility,” Mantashe told those gathered.

The Freedom Charter, for those of you who were mere stardust in 1955 when this seminal document was adopted on 26 June at a gathering of the Congress of the People in Kliptown, has been the loadstar of the liberation struggle and provided a vision of democratic South Africa.

But of late the Freedom Charter has become a political football in a highly contested ideological battle within the Tripartite Alliance as well as outside of it. Little wonder then that ANC is scrambling backwards in order to move forwards. It is a calculated preemptive strike.

In November last year, delivering the Ruth First memorial lecture at Wits, National Union of Mineworkers (NUMSA) Secretary General, Irvin Jim, charged that the ANC and the government, after 20 years of democracy, were undermining the values and essence of the Freedom Charter in adopting the National Development Plan (NDP).

“The Freedom Charter says the people shall govern. I would argue that in South Africa today the people are not governing. How many of you have been called to council meetings on the allocation of budgets at a local government level? And every year the finance minister tables big budgets before us. If we are not active in budgets on a local level how can we influence the national budget?” Jim told the Wits audience.

Jim went on to assert, “We have been promised many big things. Now there are attempts to replace the Freedom Charter of Ruth First with its polar opposite, the National Development Plan.”

The NDP was endorsed at the ANC’s 2012 elective conference in Mangaung and was described by President Zuma in his June SONA as the key to government’s plan of action for the next five years. In August, Minister of Finance, Nhlanhla Nene, in his medium-term budget speech, said that all budgeting aimed to meet the goals of the NDP.

NUMSA has always argued that the NDP is “right wing” and in direct conflict with the Freedom Charter and the plan is certainly one of the causes of internal friction within Cosatu.

“It is us or the NDP,” Numsa declared in 2013 and in November 2014 the Alliance indicated its position when NUMSA was expelled from Cosatu. The expulsion – which came after NUMSA had refused to campaign for the ANC in the 2014 election – was one of the most significant political events of the year (apart from the one million or so votes the EFF garnered in the May elections).

In December Numsa was part of the launch of the United Front, an umbrella coalition of left activist forces including social movements, trade unions, civic, student and youth organisations and whose main focus of disdain is the tripartite alliance and President Jacob Zuma in particular. The United Front has resolved to campaign this year hoping to capture the imagination and attention of those South Africans who are disillusioned with the ruling party.

Exactly how the ANC is going to fold its NDP rhetoric around the values of Freedom Charter is going to be an interesting exercise in creative speak. After Saturday we will all have a clearer notion of how the party hopes to pull it off.

“Anybody who has no history can easily say this is what should be happening. We will be reminding people of their history. They don’t know the journey and the complexity of the journey. Freedom is not a destination. It is a journey. Not a journey without problems, but a journey with problems that must be confronted as they manifest and that is where we are,” said Mantashe.

In the meantime, the obstacles in the party’s more immediate and short-term journey – the organising of its 103rd birthday party in Zillestan – appear to have been ironed out. Officials have the keys to the Cape Town International Stadium, buses and taxis have been arranged, posters have been put up and everyone is beginning to “feel” the party spirit that will spill over into the streets on Saturday.

The potential clash between the annual Minstrel Parade and the ANC birthday celebrations have also been avoided. The Minstrels have now agreed to celebrate on 17 January and Mantashe made a point yesterday of thanking organisers “for not allowing themselves to be manipulated.”

There was a festive atmosphere at the President Hotel in Sea Point on Wednesday where members of the ANC NEC met to thrash out the 8 January statement. Tourists draped in wet towels – some wearing only their bathing costumes – darted between ANC big guns, many resplendent in a variety of ANC-branded clothing from golf shirt to dungarees and skin-tight pencil dresses. ANC Treasurer-General, Dr Zweli Mkize, looked particularly trim and fetching in a black, short-sleeved safari suit.

Media who were invited to a 10am photo opportunity and who were warned not to be late waited for over an hour as delegates trickled in. There was a short burst of applause as President Zuma scuttled past tourists eating a languid breakfast on the hotel terrace before he dashed through the security scanners.

Party heavyweights – President Zuma, Deputy President Cyril Ramphosa and Secretary General Mantashe – have been doing their obligatory and routine meet-and-greets throughout the province, handing out flyers in shopping centres and townships and inviting people to the stadium on Saturday. Smallish crowds have gathered in wait and whether the 52,000-seater stadium will be filled will only be evident on Saturday. But on enemy DA territory there is no doubt the party is pulling out all the stops to get as many people as possible to the venue.

There was one interaction between President Zuma and an elderly Philippi resident earlier this week that should serve as a cautionary lesson in relation to the liability President Zuma has become to the party. However, the story also encapsulates, in some ways, the many successes of the ANC over the past 20 years.

President Zuma, with a relentless summer sun beating down on his white Panama hat, listened intently as the 75-year-old Hilda Sekeleni explained her problems to him. She lived in a two-bedroomed house, she told the president, but she found it difficult to raise her nine grandchildren on her small pension. Interviewed later, Sekeleni said that President Zuma had told her that everything would be “okay”.

Asked whether she believed him, Sekeleni reportedly said, “I want to believe him but I don’t”.

If ever there was proof of the credibility crisis of an ANC with Jacob Zuma at the helm, it was this comment by Sekeleni, a veteran and loyal supporter of the party.

Later, during a radio interview, Lindiwe Zulu, in her capacity as NEC communications sub-committee head, pointed out that Sekeleni’s story also contained the more positive elements of what government had accomplished in the last 20 years. The widow was receiving a state pension and lived in a house provided by government. All of which is true.

Today, 8 January, is the ANC’s birthday and delegations are expected to arrive in Cape Town for a cake cutting ceremony. On Friday the NEC hosts a fundraising dinner at the Cape Town International Conference Centre and on Saturday the party is expected to begin around 6am when stadium gates will open.

There is no doubt that the 103-year-old ANC has much to celebrate and that it can be proud of, and while the party claims to have a vision for 2030 with the NDP, it seems we’re going to be dragged back to 1955 first to recalibrate the political GPS. But no matter the route, one really big obstacle remains squatting in the middle of the road… Nkandla and everything it has come to symbolise. DM

Photo: ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe is seen during a news conference on its NEC meeting and national list conference at Luthuli House in Johannesburg, Tuesday, 28 January 2014. Picture: Werner Beukes/SAPA