While 2018 was supposed to be the ANC’s first year post-Nasrec, what we have seen is a solidification of Nasrec-style factionalism. In other words, there is still intense contestation for political power. While it still appears that President Cyril Ramaphosa has, generally speaking, been able to start consolidating power, there are indications that his opponents are fighting back.

There is one singular event that captures the importance of the list conference process for the ANC. It is the photograph of ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule meeting with former president Jacob Zuma and others. It now appears that that meeting was all about making arrangements for the list conference process. The reasons for this are pretty clear. During the final months of Zuma’s time as President his opponents used the fact that they held the balance of power in the ANC’s National Assembly caucus to weaken him, to push back on issues like the SABC and Eskom.

If Ramaphosa’s opponents are able to win this process for the new parliament, they would be able to do the same to him. They would also be in a position to severely limit his choice when it comes to appointing Ministers to Cabinet, as he has to choose all of them from MPs in the National Assembly, bar two.

There are other reasons why this process is so important too. In each of the provinces of the ANC there are power blocs and other groupings of the ambitious, who would like to take power in some way or another. The Northern Cape ANC’s list conference this weekend was nearly stopped. A group of people went to court to in order to stop the meeting from happening – they lost, but their intentions are hardly squashed now. The divisions in the Western Cape are, as usual for the ANC, pretty stark, with some people trying to frustrate the ambitions of the provincial secretary there, Faiez Jacobs.

However, some of the important indications of what is happening may be in other places around the primary characters of our politics. For example, one of the key questions around the ANC at this moment must be how much power Deputy President David Mabuza actually has. This is because he is trying to make the very difficult move from being a provincial power baron to a national political figure, something that has not been achieved successfully in the ANC very often in the past (Magashule is trying to do the same thing, but with much less success).

Mabuza is also someone accused of betraying what was known as the “Premier League” just before Nasrec, but merely tolerated by the Ramaphosa camp because they needed him in 2017. This means that if, for example, a large number of branches in Mpumalanga don’t nominate him for the position of deputy president, it is obvious that he has problems. If he is nominated by the vast majority of branches and provinces to the position, then clearly he is making progress in retaining his original constituency.

The situation in the Free State is also fascinating. While Magashule obviously cannot go to Parliament (the position of secretary-general is considered “fulltime” by the ANC’s constitution) it will be important to how much real power he still holds in the Free State. If he is able to make his will felt during this process, then he too is making progress in his power game.

North West also has important dynamics at play. The situation there is further complicated by the fact that there is a provincial task team in place, and the presence of Supra Mahumapelo. His own, defeated, court action that saw him challenging the national assembly decision to disband his provincial executive committee shows that he has not accepted defeat. In some ways, for him, the list process is the ultimate chance to stage a comeback.

But the lists also hold electoral consequences. It is likely that there will be a controversy if people accused of corruption get top positions on the list. In North West, where there are signs that the ANC is losing support, this could be important. A list seen as dominated by people who are viewed as corrupt or unattractive to voters in other ways could have consequences for the final outcome. The same could be true for the Western Cape. There are some in the ANC who believe that they stand a chance of unseating the DA there. But for that to happen, a choice of leaders able to attract votes will be needed.

To complicate things further, under the ANC’s own processes, it is the NEC which finally appoints premiers to provinces (or, more accurately, decides who the premiers will be, before the ANC-deployed members of the Provincial Legislature vote them into office). Which means even within all of the provincial politicking, it is still in the NEC that the real fight may happen.

The same is also true for the list process as a whole. The ANC will hold a national list conference closer to the elections that will make the ultimate decisions around who will be placed where. This means that to make predictions could be almost impossible. It is also difficult, at this stage, to make any judgements about the provincial processes, simply because they are so many with different dynamics within each one.

But what is clear is that the person who has the most to win or lose from this is Ramaphosa himself. If he, and those around him, are able to be seen to gain from this process, if “their” people dominate the ANC’s National Assembly caucus, he will have a much freer hand in appointing his Cabinet, and the political freedom to move more decisively. Were he to prevail, it is likely that the clean-up at the state-owned entities, the changes in governance more generally, could continue, and perhaps gain more momentum. It could also mean greater changes to governance, and how things are done.

But, should Ramaphosa’s side lose, this would mean that there would be more arguments, more disputes, more roadblocks for his agenda. Which means, surely, that this is the most important political process that is underway in South Africa at the moment. DM