South Africa

South Africa

ANC’s 106th: Birthday cake approaching, it is still about unity – and KZN

ANC’s 106th: Birthday cake approaching, it is still about unity – and KZN

Newly-elected ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa’s face is plastered on posters around East London, ahead of the party’s birthday rally this weekend, which will ring in a new year. The ANC’s problems of 2017 are, however, far from over, and this week will be crucial in setting the tone for the party desperately in need of clear direction. By CARIEN DU PLESSIS.

When it finds itself in times of trouble, the ANC often draws on the wisdom of its founding fathers. Last year it commemorated the former party president Oliver Tambo as a symbol of unity, and this year the newly-elected party officials are celebrating the party’s birthday on Monday by laying wreaths at the graves of four former party presidents – a step beyond just the usual cake-cutting that happens when the party’s birthday doesn’t coincide with the celebration rally, which is set to take place on Saturday in East London.

ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa will find himself in Pietermaritzburg on Monday morning by the gravesite of the party’s fourth president, Josiah Gumede. At the same time his deputy, Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza, will be at Chief Albert Luthuli’s grave by his museum in Groutville. All the officials would then  lay the wreath on the grave of John Langalibalele, in Inanda, followed by lunch with the family of Pixley ka Isaka Seme – in Ethekwini. 

Only after these events will they cut the cake in East London.

Monday’s programme is as interesting as it is important for the ANC. Usually, when the party is planning a rally, it would concentrate the whole week’s efforts mobilising in the hosting province. Already party loudmouths, like Police Minister Fikile Mbalula, are there; but this prelude of paying homage to the four presidents in KwaZulu-Natal is somewhat unusual, in recent times at least.

Ramaphosa told journalists on Sunday this was “so that we can go and give a report on the conference that we have just held, and inform the great leaders of our movement that we held a conference.

“It was a very successful conference, a conference that arrived at radical decisions on a number of issues that are going to transform the lives of our people. We will also be reporting to the great leaders of our movement that a new leadership has been elected, and in a way, in a very symbolic way, we will present that leadership to our great leaders in a true African tradition, so that they can get blessings from the great leaders.”

The newly-elected ANC leaders need all the blessings they can get as the party finds itself dealing with business unusual. According to the Sunday Times and the City Press, part of the visit in KwaZulu-Natal centred around discussions on how to get President Jacob Zuma (who is from this province) to step down, now that he’s out of the ANC presidency.

There could be some truth to this, although the focus for now is more likely to be on how to keep the party together and on convening the new national executive committee (NEC) for a meeting. Here, out of the 80 additional members, the powerful 20-member national working committee (NWC) is set to be elected. The NWC meets weekly and carries out decisions and instructions from the NEC in between meetings. It’s this committee that could ultimately be crucial in steering processes related to the possible recall of Zuma or any immediate action against state capture (Sunday Times also reported that Ramaphosa, in his first speech at an ANC birthday rally on Saturday, “is likely to flag a special prosecution process on state capture independent of any commission of inquiry” as it has become apparent that Zuma wants to use court processes and appeals to frustrate the investigation called for by former public protector Thuli Madonsela).

The visit to KwaZulu-Natal serves perhaps a bigger purpose. The ANC’s 54th national conference at the Nasrec Expo Centre is barely two-and-a-half-weeks’ history, and party leaders and organisers in this, the ANC’s biggest province, are still licking their wounds. After its decade in power in the ANC with Zuma at the helm, some of the biggest losers come from this province, which was effectively fractured in two, or even possibly three, camps in the run-up to last year’s conference.

None of the candidates from KwaZulu-Natal, angling for a position on the top six, managed to make it. These included presidential hopeful Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, who is an ordinary national executive committee additional member and parliamentary backbencher now, Minister of Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa, who ran for party chair on her slate, former provincial premier Senzo Mchunu, who ran on Ramaphosa’s ticket and missed the secretary-general position by just over a dozen votes, and another presidential hopeful and a failed “unity” or third way candidate, former party treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize.

Much of the party’s electoral support in the past decade has come from KwaZulu-Natal, which, under Zuma’s leadership, grew its ANC votes even as most other provinces showed decline. The divisions here don’t bode well for future election campaigns.

The five men in the ANC’s new top six (deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte was attending a church service in the Eastern Cape) stopped off at the Royal Palace in KwaNongoma on Sunday, ahead of the wreath-laying, to pay a visit to King Goodwill Zwelithini. Before the conference, Ramaphosa visited the king and promised to follow up, but unlike Mkhize, who also visited the Royal Palace ahead of the conference, neither him nor any of the ANC officials wore traditional skins for the meeting. A video clip uploaded by @myANC on Twitter shows Sihle Zikalala, the chairperson of the ANC’s disbanded provincial executive committee, also at the meeting and greeting Ramaphosa warmly. Ironically, Zikalala’s PEC previously refused to formally host Ramaphosa in the province for any pre-conference campaigns, and his involvement in the visit to the province by the ANC officials could indicate that there are talks in the offing on how to keep the party together.

Xolani Dube, from the Durban-based Xubera Institute for Research and Development, believes it’s unlikely that Zuma’s supporters would split from the ANC should the party push for him to resign.

But there are indications that Zuma would fight back, resorting to parallel structures to do so (remember the Friends of Jacob Zuma in the run-up to the party’s 2007 Polokwane conference?), and Ramaphosa might be aiming to contain this, Dube said.

On Friday at a march organised by Umbimbi Lwamabutho, an obscure Pietermaritzburg-based organisation supported by the pro-Zuma Black First Land First grouping, Zuma himself, in his capacity as president of the country, greeted the marchers at the Durban City Hall (“All darkies are welcome to participate,” the invite read) to accept their memorandum conveying their message of “LAND FIRST, BLACK UNITY and NO To Regime Change – HandsoffZuma”.

Dube remarked that the organisation used the image of Shaka Zulu on its invite apparently without the necessary permission from the king. In contrast, Ramaphosa actively sought the king’s blessing during his visit on Sunday.

“If they get acceptance from the king, they would be able to operate in the province. None of the subjects would then say the NEC is not welcome in KZN,” Dube says, adding that King Zwelithini was “the entry point to the hearts of the people” in KwaZulu-Natal, which still straddles feudalism and modernity.

Former ANC leaders like Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki didn’t pay similar visits, and Zuma’s visits ran out before the party’s 2012 Mangaung conference as he and the king reportedly had a fall-out, Dube said.

Ramaphosa’s visit was therefore significant, and “about the neutralisation of any dissent, and also for Cyril to appeal to the king for authority in the province”.

However, even as the party celebrates its birthday, the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans association leadership is set to meet at Luthuli House, and hold a press conference thereafter.

Spokesperson Carl Niehaus on Sunday issued press release stating:

“The media briefing will, among other matters, deal with the outcomes of the ANC’s National Elective Conference, and unfortunate rumours about pressure to recall President Jacob Zuma as President of South Africa.”

With this amount of push-back, it seems likely that Zuma’s recall could eventually happen in the form of another vote of no confidence in Parliament rather than a voluntary step-down.

But before all that, there is birthday cake to be had. DM

Photo: Former ANC president Jacob Zuma and the current ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa at the opening of the 54th ANC conference in Nasrec, 16 December 2017 (Ihsaan Haffejee)

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