Fences in the Nasrec Expo Centre have been set up in such a way that there is no chance for journalists to interact with ANC delegates. Even the buses and luxury cars are parked in fenced-off areas where they cannot potentially become the target of sneering reports about the conspicuous wealth and consumption of comrades, as had happened at past conferences.

There is a barrier around the area where delegates meet, eat, socialise and buy party paraphernalia.

Delegates are forbidden to interact with journalists, although every so often leaders vetted by the party’s communication team are allowed to step through a heavily guarded gap in the fence to the television and radio studios, or the media lounge, on the other side.

Late on Sunday afternoon, the third day of the conference, hacks were invited inside. Golf carts and minibuses were used to ferry them securely through the social area where delegates sat chatting at tables or shopped for party souvenirs. No interaction with delegates was allowed, and marshals and private security guards kept a close watch.

Think North Korea.

State Security Minister David Mahlobo, by chance (or, on second thought, maybe not by chance), was spotted casually hanging out en route to the party’s Progressive Business Forum business lounge where Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa was due to do his usual conference walkabout to chat to those staffing the business exhibitor stalls. It’s also a media photo opportunity.

(On the way back, the drivers decided that instead of driving the 200 metres or so through the conference venue, they’d rather do one or two kays around the venue to prevent journalists from even viewing the delegates.)

Incidentally, this distance the party has put between its conference and the media, the most extreme to date at a national-level conference, is symbolic of the party’s drift away from society in general. Infighting and incessant navel-gazing (a full two days of it, at this conference) mean the party needs more and more private space, but there is also an arrogance and unwilingness to account for this move.

General Secretary Gwede Mantashe dissected these issues, among others, in his extraordinary diagnostic report presented to the conference on the first day.

Ramaphosa has read the report thoroughly and he is painfully aware of this growing distance. He, like many others who would like to see the back of President Jacob Zuma, knows that he needs Zuma’s many detractors outside the party to help him come to power. Zuma has carefully moulded the ANC in his image over the past decade, skilfully tightening his grip by building networks of patronage and fear.

The phrase “radical economic transformation” has in the past few months in the run-up to the policy conference become a battle cry of the Zuma camp, which wants to see former African Union Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma elected president at the party’s December conference.

Ramaphosa uses the phrase sparingly and carefully qualifies it each time. He wants, at most, a fine-tuning of existing policies, and he wants buy-in from all races, classes and sectors of society, and perhaps also some singing of Kumbaya.

Zuma’s propagandists are less willing to compromise – they want an overhaul of the whole economy to benefit more black people, including the expropriation of land and the nationalisation of banks.

Given the proximity of many of the economic cluster ministers to the Gupta family, radical economic transformation has also come to represent a state capturist agenda, at least in the public perception.

Ramaphosa told journalists after his business lounge walkabout that some branches want not just “radical economic transformation”, but “radical socio-economic transformation”.

He made sure to emphasise that the call came from the branches, giving it legitimacy and playing to the same grassroots gallery Zuma aimed to appeal to in his opening speech on Friday.

The process has been “bottoms-up (sic) rather than top-down”, Ramaphosa said, before expressing his surprise at the brilliance of the humble branch delegates. They “continue to be just mind-boggling in the way that they are very clear of policy issues”, he said, perhaps not meaning to sound quite as patronising as he did.

This clarity, he said, is not only ideological and political, but also substantive and has to do with issues related to the economy. “Many of them are saying don’t just call it radical economic transformation. What the ANC is about is to change and improve the social condition of our people, and they say we must refer to it as radical socio-economic transformation. So as the leadership we are here to listen, to imbibe what our delegates are saying. Our branch delegates are well-armed with the experience of our people, the poverty our people are going through, the unemployment, the inequality.”

Ramaphosa, successfully faking a smile, said he was “highly elated” at just how “infused with ideas” everyone was. “I, really, I’m in high spirits, I’m in good spirits, and let me say even the delegates here are in good spirits.”

There are no divisions, only unity of purpose, he said.

But he did discreetly gloat about an issue the delegates were divided on, and on which his camp scored a first-round victory.

This issue is the bunfight over Mantashe’s diagnostic report, which outlines problems in the party, including the way the Gupta family, good friends of Zuma and his family, has captured the state to make money. Ramaphosa implied that the resistance to the diagnostic report was petty, saying:

“This is a document that was approved by the NEC (National Executive Committee). Initially some delegates said no, it should not be presented, but finally it was agreed that it should be presented, [and] it should also form the basis to enrich the discussions that were going to ensue.”

At the 2012 national policy conference at Gallagher Estate in Midrand, a 30-minute drive north from Nasrec, social and economic transformation was identified as the goal for the “second phase of the transition”, which at the end of that conference prevailed over the “second transition” the Zuma camp was hoping for. The term refers to the need to achieve social transformation and economic freedom in the next five decades, with political freedom already having been achieved in the first two decades after the 1994 democratic elections.

While “radical socio-economic transformation” as a slogan is decidedly clumsy, from the Ramaphosa camp’s perspective it’s a clever move. The Zuma camp would have to really reach to disagree with it, and should they fail, adjusting their slogan to concede to the Ramaphosa camp’s way of putting it would not seem like too big a loss of face. In fact, they could spin it as having been their slogan all along.

Expect a lot of hair-splitting and phrase-turning on this issue over the next three days, which have been set aside for the actual policy discussions. Ultimately the outcome of this proxy battle would be spun as a win for all, much like what happened five years ago at Gallagher. DM

Photo: Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa at the ANC policy conference. (Ihsaan Haffejjee)