That ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe was able to brief journalists on the diagnostic report into the state of troubles of the ANC on Friday evening was the first sign of the tightly fought proxy battles that are unfolding.

There is no organisational report presented at policy conference – that’s what the national conference deals with – but a report detailing the challenges facing the ANC, both from inside and outside, was on the agenda. Entitled “A Diagnostic Organisational Report”, it was prepared amid the toeing and froing over a separate consultative conference called for by veterans and stalwarts, now dubbed “101”, and uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Council.

The ANC decided there would be no such separate consultative conference and the veterans, alongside the MK Council, decided not to participate in the two-day discussion tacked into the policy conference under the heading “organisational renewal and strategy and tactics”, offered as a compromise by the powers that are.

Some of the tensions around this burst into the open during President Jacob Zuma’s off-script remarks, chastising those “who call themselves stalwarts” for operating outside official ANC structures.

“We thought it was very funny so many comrades could sign a petition,” said Zuma, adding later: “We wrote to comrades individually… They don’t even know how their names are there”.

The veterans had wanted only to talk at a high-level, not branches which are regarded as “riff-raff”, said Zuma receiving one of the rare more responsive moments in his just over 100 minute long speech. “I think you should know this because they’ve decided to have their own. Many have controlled ourselves responding to these comrades because some of them are not as strong as they project themselves.”

Behind closed doors the discussion of the diagnostics report became the first proxy battle in a policy conference held under the theme “Let us deepen unity”. Was there a need for it given the veterans are not present? And given it was an organisational overview, traditionally presented to national conference, was there a place for it at policy conference?

It was a tough debate over several hours. In the end the balance of forces, to use ANC lingo, prevailed in favour of those not supportive, or not 100% supportive, of Zuma. And the diagnostics report was presented.

Mantashe acknowledged the tough discussions, without giving away details. “Where I grow up, medicine is not willingly taken when you are sick,” he told journalists on Friday evening.

It’s a tough diagnostic report. But it is one couched in terms that put the blame for the ANC’s troubles on others more often than not. Perceptions of the ANC as “inherently corrupt”, the “growing trust deficit between the people and the movement”, and a decline in the quality of branches and membership are firmly situated in the rhetoric of regime change.

“The offensive from external forces, with the regime change agenda at its core, is real,” says the diagnostic report, detailing a combination of “soft and hard forms of the attack with the potential to return southern Africa into its Cold War era of conflict”.

And so protests like #FeesMustFall or #ZumaMustFall, but also the police killings of 34 Marikana miners take on a different spin.

While the student protests may have started off with legitimate grievances, their character changed to destruction of property, explained Mantashe, adding later the demographics of the anti-Zuma marches, was telling. And with regards to Marikana, the narrative “normally focus on police brutality, not as an attempt to undermine security and provoke action”.

According to the diagnostic report, the ANC’s factionalism and in-fighting had prevented the organisation from conducting “an objective analysis of the protests that border on being a revolt against the government and the ANC”.

“Some sections of the ANC that are impatient and wanting to see the back of the president immediately feel justified in joining the Zuma Must Fall marches, or vote with the opposition in the motion of no confidence in the president of the country”. Others “that project themselves as sole protectors of the president” make “reckless” statements in his defence.

A similar factional dynamic played itself out over the Nkandla debacle, according to the report. The March 2016 Constitutional Court ruling that Zuma must repay a percentage of the security upgrades at his rural homestead in line with the public protector’s remedial action – binding unless taken to court on review – had been the same decision the ANC had come to three years earlier.

“However, because that view was perceived to be a attempt by some to trap the president into an admission of guilt, no firm decision could be taken. Our failure to take decisive decisions creates an environment for judicial overreach. That must change,” states the diagnostic report, silent again on the role played by the top politician at the centre of the controversy.

It earlier argued the ANC “ultimately, we fall prey to the external forces and weaken the movement ourselves. This situation confuses society, and the movement slides into decline”.

Part of that dynamic, according to the diagnostics report but also raised by Zuma in his political overview, was the “negative” statements by ANC leaders and members about their own organisation. That negativity is impacting the organisation as opposition forces communicate ANC weaknesses “in a way that appears to be coherent and, therefore, convince society that our movement can not pull itself out to the deep hole”.

And this leaves the ANC open to opposition forces and regime change. And when under threat, traditionally the ANC closes ranks in a show of unity.

While regime change rhetoric features large in the document, it argues it cannot necessarily be linked to perceptions or reality of corruption – or as a response to “any discomfort with the influence of the Gupta family” or white monopoly capital.

“We must own up, individual comrades should do so by providing reputable explanations, as a few have done. Blatant denial lacks credibility in the eyes of society,” according to the diagnostics report.

It’s an interesting take and, as with everything, the devil in the detail. What would be a “reputable explanation”? That a Home Affairs minister relies on the ministerial discretion granted in law to ensure members of the Gupta family are naturalised before meeting the residency criteria?

When asked about the Guptas, Mantashe replied:

“Should we deport them?… But as a political party we can’t do that. That’s a function of government… Government and the state must deal with this.”

And so the search for solutions and unity in the governing ANC continues. DM

Photo: Jacob Zuma, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Cyril Ramaphosa at the ANC Policy Conference (Ihsaan Haffejjee).