ANC Leadership Race: Eastern Cape hands key victory to Ramaphosa

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Ramaphosa, in his closing speech – even before the conference started, organisers let slip that he’d be the one to speak because they expected a win for his camp – called for unity. As if to rub things in, he extended a greeting to alliance leaders and traditional leaders in attendance – labour federation Cosatu and the SA Communist Party no longer appear at events where Zuma is present.

He spoke as much to those inside the ANC as those outside – as if on an early campaign rally for 2019, and speaking to those in the party who reckon he, much better than Dlamini-Zuma, could save the party from electoral defeat.

The chair-throwing and fights that were shown on television and social media, he said, “is not the behaviour that is expected of the members of the ANC”.

Allowing violence as a way of resolving differences “is what puts the ANC into disrepute”, and going to the courts was no real solution either. The party should learn to deal with its own problems, he said.

“The real tragedy is that the ANC remains divided and today we are trying to pick up the pieces and unite the ANC,” he said. “The ANC in the end becomes the victim. The ANC becomes the one that is more injured than anyone when healing is necessary,” he said.

Rather than celebrating victory, the winning camp should work at uniting the party, he said.

The party could not unite the country when the party itself was divided. A laudable message, but some of Masualle’s supporters would call this ironic. Masualle has been credited with uniting the Eastern Cape for the just over seven years that he’s been chairing. This is evidenced by the fact that the party’s 2013 conference did not have the same degree of havoc as this weekend’s – although admittedly it didn’t take place in a highly contested national conference year either.

Some within the party say Mantashe was planning to use Masualle – who flip-flopped on his support for both Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa – for his unity project, but that his ticket was “hijacked” by Dlamini-Zuma supporters like Lungisa.

The test could possibly be whether Masualle remains premier until his term ends in 2019, or whether the newly elected Eastern Cape ANC leadership replaces him with a sympathiser, as happened in KwaZulu-Natal after the 2015 conference.

Also, there is the factor of Lungisa.

Party spokesperson and NEC member Zizi Kodwa blamed “outside interests” for the chaos seen at the Eastern Cape conference. Some might think he is referring to state capture or perhaps the Gupta family, but the former ANC Youth League spokesperson must know it’s much closer than that.

Kodwa was part of the project that set up the league’s network that helped Zuma come to power in 2007. Even now, the league is a useful campaign tool for Zuma’s preferred successor, Dlamini-Zuma. Note, for instance, the way it is allowed to speak out in favour of Dlamini-Zuma nationally and in KwaZulu-Natal without strictly being subjected to the same discipline as ANC leaders themselves.

Even though the provincial youth league was disbanded a year ago, and even though he’s too old on paper to be a leader, Lungisa’s name has been rumoured as one of the main instigators at the conference. A few months ago he enjoyed Zuma’s overt support to be elected as Nelson Mandela Bay regional chair, but was removed from the position shortly after by Mantashe because it was against party rules for a PEC member to stand in the region.

Lungisa’s luck was even lower this time, but he had to try, and try he did. His future, and the future of many others in his camp, was at stake. DM

Photo: The newly elected chairman of the Eastern Cape ANC, Oscar Mabuyane, with the ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday, 1 October 2o17, East London. (Photo by the ANC Twitter feed)