While the South African population is best described as youthful, those who occupy the ANC’s leadership positions are growing old, and there is evidence that those harbouring leadership aspirations attempt to manipulate definitions of age to their own advantage.

This makes the ANC even more remote from those whose votes it claims to want. But this age gap is not confined to the ANC, and the current generation of older leaders within all the political parties has similar problems or may soon face pressure to accept younger voices. 

Last week, the ANC’s national spokesperson, Pule Mabe, was criticised for arguing, first in a National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting and then in public, that the party’s definition of “youth” should go up to the age of 50. He said that while the United Nations defines “youth” as someone under 25, in both Zimbabwe and China, leaders who were much older than 50 held leadership positions in political “youth” formations.

At the same time, the Mpumalanga ANC said it was supporting ANC Treasurer Paul Mashatile for the position of deputy ANC leader in the name of a “generational mix”. President Cyril Ramaphosa is 69, while Mashatile is 60.

Within this is another important aspect of context: under the new rules for the leadership contests outlined by the ANC’s Electoral Committee (chaired by former president Kgalema Motlanthe), someone can only be nominated for a position on the NEC if they have been a member of the ANC for 10 years. The aim of this is to prevent newcomers from joining the ANC and then immediately jumping into the leadership contestation. 

It also surely prevents outsiders from trying to claim the party at any point in the future (and perhaps even precludes Julius Malema from rejoining the ANC in a leadership position in years to come).

But it also prevents younger people from contesting for top positions.

Those who claim that people over the age of 60 can be a part of a “generational mix” simply use this provision in an attempt to create space for themselves. To make such a claim is a naked power grab.

Within the ANC, the issue of a “generational mix” has been a thorny issue for many years.

More than a decade ago, Malema, as leader of the ANC Youth League, argued that Fikile Mbalula should be ANC secretary-general in the name of the very same “generational mix”. And one could go back to the 1940s when Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu started pushing the ANC towards becoming a mass movement while they were very young.

It is clear these days, however, that the ANC has failed to manage the regeneration of its ranks.

A brief look at the Cabinet reveals that many people have been there for a long time. Angie Motshekga is now in her 13th year as basic education minister, Naledi Pandor first became a Cabinet minister in 2004, along with Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, who is now the National Assembly Speaker.

While people under the age of 40 in a Cabinet anywhere are perhaps still on the rare side, what marks our situation as different is that there are so many people who have been in top positions for so long.

And it is not just the Cabinet.

There are other political positions which suggest that people sit at the top table for many years.

Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi was the leader of the IFP for 46 years, Helen Zille, now the chair of the DA’s Federal Council, was elected as DA leader in 2007, and Zwelinzima Vavi, now the general secretary of Saftu, was elected as general secretary of Cosatu in 1999.

This suggests that there is a group of people in important leadership positions who do not make way for a new generation, sometimes just moving around without leaving the stage. And that this is not limited to one political party or one political ideology.

There are important reasons for this.

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No life without politics

For some, there may simply be no life without politics — it is their reason for being. For others, economic reasons are a concern. Such is the nature of our economy, and the fact that there are so few opportunities available to so few people, that some leaders may feel they have to stay in office simply to survive or provide for their families.

This is likely to have altered the nature of our politics.

For example, one of the reasons that Mosiuoa Lekota has clung to power for so long as the leader of Cope may simply be to receive a salary. This could have led to the tension between himself and others in Cope’s leadership, and thus the very public acts of physical violence between Cope members.

It is probable that there are similar dynamics in other organisations: as people refuse to leave office, tensions build up around them.

There are other consequences. The longer someone is in a position of political leadership, the more social distance between them and voters.

To put it another way: if you have been a Cabinet minister for 20 years, you may never have experienced load shedding in your home. You may not know what it is like to be stuck in a car with your young child during a cash-in-transit heist. Or have any idea what living through a hard lockdown is like with no income and many people to provide for. Or have waited in a queue for days just to see a doctor.

The monopoly of power by the aged has the obvious impact of preventing younger people from coming through, and thus few fresh ideas are ever proposed.

So, as our voting population is now fairly young, the age gap between the governors and the governed is turning into a massive chasm of growing political significance.

For example, younger leaders in the ANC may believe that Cogta Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma (age 73) is simply too old to win the votes of people who are much younger than her. She could give the impression that she is out of touch with their concerns.

This would lead to it getting fewer votes than it would with someone who is perceived as younger and better able to relate to voters.

The importance of the leader of a political party during an election cannot be overestimated. The best efforts of campaigners on the ground can be undone in an instant by one moment of a leader appearing out of touch. Thus, it is a huge risk for the ANC to go with an older leader.

It is likely that one of the reasons that some ANC members and leaders feel they must support a younger person for the position of deputy leader is precisely to deal with this point.

Justice Minister Ronald Lamola (who entered the Cabinet in 2019, 15 years after Pandor and Mapisa-Nqakula) could argue that he has a better understanding of the concerns of young people, and thus his inclusion would be a proper form of the generational mix.

But even if Lamola, or another younger person, is elected to that position, it does not mean that the problem is going to go away. One of the reasons for what appears to be a political stasis is simply that people will not leave the stage. They refuse to give up and retire gracefully. As a result, the next generation’s patience is running out for its term, and will also hold on to office when its time comes, perpetuating the problem.

This is likely to increase the tensions within the party and they could boil over in unpredictable ways. As more people feel they will never get a chance at high office they will move against the older leaders simply out of self-interest. And the older leaders will fight back, increasing the tension and the resultant division.

This suggests that if the ANC (and other political organisations) do not find a way to resolve this issue, simply because those at the top refuse to move on, they will be fighting eternal internal battles. DM