In December 2012, the Free State ANC missed out on fully participating in the Mangaung national centenary conference because its June 2012 provincial conference, which re-elected Ace Magashule to the post of provincial chairperson he’d held since 1998, was declared unlawful and invalid and was set aside by the Constitutional Court.

In Ramakatsa v Magashule, seven applicants led by Mpho Ramakatsa took Magashule, the Free State ANC executive and the national ANC to court for unresolved complaints of irregularities like vote-buying and branch-rigging in the processes towards the June 2012 Free State ANC conference.

“The importance of the requirement that members of political parties should not be governed by an irregularly elected leadership cannot be over-emphasised,” said Constitutional Court Judge Zac Yacoob in the judgment on 18 December 2012 that dealt with Section 19 of the Constitution on political rights, including the right to participate in the activities of a political party.

As Yacoob said later in the ruling: “There should be little doubt that the right to participate in the activities of a political party imposes a duty on every political party to act lawfully and in accordance with its own constitution.”

The ANC party constitution was not at issue, but rather the governing party’s failure to deal with grievances arising from a flawed process that involved inquorate branch meetings, the exclusions of some members and the admission of non-members and the establishment of parallel structure.

At the December 2017 Nasrec ANC national conference it was déjà vu as the Free State provincial executive committee was barred from voting status at the Nasrec ANC national conference after the Bloemfontein High Court declared invalid the Free State ANC conference that had, again, elected Magashule at a meeting held months after its 2017 due date amid a series of grievances over processes.

Alongside the Free State executive, members of the KwaZulu-Natal executive also lost voting delegate status following a Pietermaritzburg High Court ruling, as did delegates from Bojanala in North West.

And although Magashule was elected as ANC secretary-general, and moved into his new offices as governing party CEO at Luthuli House, his grip on the Free State has not loosened, according to the political grapevine.

It is perhaps for this reason that the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture in March had to postpone testimony from former Free State MEC Mxolisi Dukwana after documents requested six months ago still had not been made available.

“I’m surprised that there is still information that he has not obtained from the provincial government which he wants for the purpose of assisting the commission and that this is the case for about six months after the request was made,” said Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo in March, according to EWN.

In October 2018 City Press quoted Dukwana as saying Magashule had taken him to the Gupta Saxonwold compound where he’d been offered an immediate R2-million sweetener to sign a contract that would have benefited the Guptas, as Magashule sat in the same room while monthly payments were also promised.

Magashule has denied this and other claims. Coincidentally, Dukwana was once closely allied to Magashule, who since 2009 was also Free State premier, until February 2012 when he was dumped in a provincial executive reshuffle in favour of what the DA described as a more politically pliant loyalist.

But it was also in the Free State that the Vrede Dairy Farm project with the Guptas unfolded while Mosebenzi Zwane was agriculture MEC, before being appointed as mineral resources minister in the Cabinet of former president Jacob Zuma. Two whistle-blowers have paid a heavy price – Moses Chaka was killed, while Doctor Radebe finds himself ostracised and threatened.

More details of Magashule’s iron fist in the affairs of the Free State are detailed in Gangster State by Pieter-Louis Myburgh.

On Sunday the ANC in a statement dismissed news reports based on the book as “fake” news:

“The African National Congress rejects today’s vicious attack on our secretary-general (SG), as well as all the other lies, fake news and propaganda attacks that we are being subjected to, with the utter contempt that these deserve. The ANC says: HANDS OFF OUR SG!”

Magashule’s political career and Jacob Zuma are intricately tied. Magashule had to wait to become Free State premier until Zuma’s 2009 ascendancy to the Union Buildings. Until then the man supporters greet with a trademark rolling call of “Aaaace, Aaaace” had always been pipped to the post, from 1998 when he became provincial ANC chairperson, as others were appointed premier, including Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, Winkie Direko and Beatrice Marshoff. These appointment decisions came despite the ANC’s opposition to two centres of power, or having different persons as party chairperson and premier or mayor.

With Zuma in the Union Buildings following the 2009 elections – he had been elected party president at the 2007 Polokwane ANC conference – there appeared to be a symbiotic relationship between the premier and the new president. That was observed in a side event at the 2012 ANC centenary celebrations that brought the governing party and heavyweights to its birthplace, Mangaung, both for the 100 birthday and the January 8th statement that traditionally sets out the ANC priorities for the year.

Between the party presidency and the government presidency, Zuma’s attendance at the opening of an early childhood development centre fell through the cracks. Magashule seemed to have promised the president’s presence and, when the diary mishap was clear, stepped in: he was going to fetch the president. And he did.

Magashule, with North West ANC chairperson and one-time premier Supra Mahumapelo and ex-Mpumalanga premier David “DD” Mabuza, now deputy president, represented the so-called “Premier League” lobbying group. Not an official ANC structure, it nevertheless held sway in the backroom machinations of the governing party in the Zuma years.

But these ties had started to be forged even before. The ANC had a torrid time from factionalism to fake intelligence plots like the Browse Mole report in the run-up to its 2007 Polokwane national conference. It was in those years that the strategy and tactics to disrupt branches and to manipulate quorums, membership numbers and to influence the nomination of candidates and delegates by circulating slates – predetermined lists of candidates – emerged.

The ANC Youth League, headed at the time by Julius Malema before his 2012 expulsion, had a key role in this. But so did Zuma supporters, including Magashule.

Some of that disruption and weakness of branches, even though the ANC touts this as its fundamental building block, was politely reflected in the organisational report presented to the 2007 Polokwane ANC national conferences by then secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe.

“The fact that many branches have great difficulties in quorating reveals that the recruitment of members is often delinked from the political work of the branch. For some, ‘belonging to a branch’ means no more than possessing a membership card and paying annual dues, and at the most attending a branch meeting once every now and then,” said the organisational report.

“In many cases, membership becomes active during branch general meetings convened for the purposes of nominations, elections or reportbacks, but is dormant in between, with little participation in sustained activities and ongoing branch work.”

The Free State ANC under Magashule, then some nine years in the post of provincial party chairperson, emerges in another court case – Vakele Mayekiso and seven others vs Elias (Ace) Magashule and 132 others. The judgment of the Bloemfontein High Court in March 2009 relates to declaratory orders related to a December 2007 order after prior litigation over claims of irregularities and disputes involving Motheo, Fezile Dabi and Lejweleputswa regional committees.

This judgment is an indication that manipulation of ANC lists of candidates for internal office and other internal process has a long history in the Free State.

At the 2017 Nasrec ANC national conference there was that moment when the voting results were announced for the position of secretary-general. Supporters of Senzo Mchunu lifted the KwaZulu-Natal politician on their shoulders, ready to carry him to the stage, when it was Magashule who already was up front. It had been close, with just 24 votes separating Magashule’s 2,360 from Mchunu’s 2‚336.

But it was enough. And Magashule moved from the Free State to Luthuli House into the administrative and organisational hub of the governing ANC – and into the storm around the widely criticised ANC 2019 election candidates lists.

Like Magashule, the tale of those ANC election lists is not yet quite done. DM