Jacob Zuma has stabbed the ANC in the belly by hijacking the Umkhonto weSizwe name and logo and campaigning against the ANC in the May 2024 general elections.
He has single-handedly removed ANC from power, taking more than two million votes from it, placing the ANC vote below 50% and forcing it into coalition at the national level for the first time since 1994. Zuma is definitely working to kill the ANC. As to whether he can be successful, only time will tell.
From nearly two decades ago, Zuma has been harmful to the ANC after he was arrested over the alleged rape of Fezekile Kuzwayo, the daughter of his late prison comrade, Judson Kuzwayo.
He was also implicated in fraud and money laundering alongside Shabir Shaik. ANC disciplinary processes have been wanting, falling short of stopping ill-discipline, unethical behaviour and outright corruption of ANC leaders and members.
Endorsed by the ANC
Luthuli House saw nothing wrong in Zuma’s rape case. The ANC Women’s League under Bathabile Dlamini saw nothing wrong either.
The more Zuma did wrong, the more ANC branches promoted him to higher office, and ultimately elected him as party president at the Polokwane conference.
Yet the National Prosecuting Authority under Mokotedi Mpshe gave frivolous reasons for leaving Zuma out of proceedings when they were charging Shabir Shaik. This indicated that NPA was compromised before being wholly captured under Shaun Abrahams.
Zuma was neither good for the country nor the ANC.
But the parliamentary electoral laws, in terms of the 1996 Electoral Act, empowered party headquarters at the expense of the citizens and the format of the ANC branch delegates’ conference empowered delegates at the expense of members. Zuma was elected despite the clearly apparent flaws in his behaviour.
Once elected at Polokwane, he replaced all the people he did not like in state institutions, starting with incumbent president Thabo Mbeki.
He dissolved the Directorate of Special Operations, known as Scorpions, in 2008 and replaced it with the Hawks. He replaced disgraced commissioner of police Jackie Selebi with Bheki Cele and appointed Richard Mdluli as chief of crime intelligence.
All the appointments were endorsed and supported by the ANC leadership, which supported all this wrongdoing under the pretext of being disciplined according to democratic centralism – a Soviet Union-type process in which the leader must be supported without defiance until being removed from office.
All state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were destroyed under Zuma’s presidency, under public enterprises ministers Lyn Brown and Malusi Gigaba respectively. ANC structures were paralysed and could not remove Zuma until the Nasrec Conference of 2017 that elected Ramaphosa as ANC president.
State Capture inquiry
Zuma was compelled by the ANC leadership under Ramaphosa to commission the State Capture inquiry. Advocate Thuli Madonsela had recommended that as outgoing president, Zuma should not appoint the presiding judge for the commission of inquiry since he was conflicted.
Against his will, Zuma delegated the responsibility of appointing the presiding judge to then chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, who appointed then deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo as chair for the State Capture commission in 2018.
Zondo listened to more than 300 witnesses including government officials, state-owned enterprise officials, business people and the general public, all testifying to how the Gupta family and the Watson family had wrongfully benefited from the state institutions at the behest of Zuma’s state machinery.
The witnesses that appeared at the State Capture inquiry included Themba Maseko, who used to head the GCIS, Mcebisi Jonas, the former deputy finance minister, former president Zuma, former deputy president Ramaphosa, Brian Molefe (the former Transnet and Eskom CEO), Siyabonga Gama, former Transnet CEO, Lucky Montana, former Prasa CEO, Tom Moyane, the former SARS commissioner, and the late Dudu Myeni, the former SAA chairperson.
A total of 94 ANC members were implicated in wrongdoing, unethical behaviour and corruption, among them National Chairperson Gwede Mantashe, former minister of sport Zizi Kodwa and former deputy defence minister Thabang Makwetla. The ANC leadership under Ramaphosa failed to sanction those implicated, such as Mantashe, Kodwa and Makwetla. Implicated individuals remained on the ANC candidate lists for the May 2024 general elections.
Clandestine MK party formation
As a former intelligence officer, Zuma formed his own political party in a clandestine manner, right under the nose of ANC HQ and security services. His uMkhonto Wesizwe party (MK party) was conceived early in 2023, but established in September 2023 by Jabulani Khumalo, from Zuma’s home district in KwaZulu-Natal, Nkandla.
The MK party was publicised in December 2023, three months after its establishment, outside the minimum two weeks allowed for challenging party registration. Khumalo has been removed as MK party leader from Cipro (Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office), allegedly through forged signatures by Zuma’s daughters Duduzile Zuma and Thabisile Khumalo. The fraud case against Zuma and his daughters is still active.
ANC Luthuli House was sleeping on duty by not challenging the use of the MK name and logo within two weeks from the 7 September 2023 registration date. On 16 December 2023, when Zuma announced he would be leading the MK Party to the general elections, only then did Luthuli House wake up. This was more than three months after the MK party’s registration – too late.
Whether Luthuli House under ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula was unaware of the seriousness of the matter, or whether it was complicit in sabotaging the ANC, only the heavens can tell ... but nothing can be ruled out.
By the time Zuma was pronounced leader of MK, it was too late to challenge the use of MK as a symbol for a new political party before the general elections. The Electoral Commission appears to be neutral or paralysed in allowing the use of the name and logo of MK – known since 1961 as an ANC brand – to be used by somebody outside the ANC. This was disingenuous of the Electoral Court and the Electoral Commission, although it is technically possible they were legally and constitutionally correct.
Massive KZN support
At the end of it all, Zuma ran for elections against the ANC using the MK logo, knowing very well it belonged to the ANC. By hijacking the MK name and logo, Zuma got massive support from former ANC voters in KZN, Gauteng and Mpumalanga, especially from isiZulu-speaking members.
What is also apparent is that former Zuma supporters inside the ANC who belonged to the Radical Economic Transformation faction (RET) and from other splinter parties then joined Zuma’s new MK Party. Former MK Military Veterans Association members under the late Kebby Maphatsoe, such as Des van Rooyen, the former finance minister, then formed the crux of the MK party. Some disgruntled MK liberation war veterans also joined the MK party, hoping for jobs in Parliament and to secure themselves lucrative pensions.
The MK party became the largest party in KwaZulu-Natal, the home base of former president Zuma, bypassing ANC, IFP, DA and EFF. With the second-largest population in South Africa after Gauteng, KZN is largely responsible for the ANC losing its outright majority in the 2024 general elections.
To a high degree, the title “uMkhonto Wesizwe party” covered the most serious tribalist rift in ANC – and in South Africa generally – since ANC was formed in 1912, with Zuma primarily responsible.
Ravaged EFF
The MK party also ravaged EFF support, relegating it to the fourth-largest party after the 2024 general elections. Could this be the beginning of the decline of the EFF? This was the first time the EFF vote went down since its establishment more than 10 years ago. Political parties that depend on flamboyant personalities usually collapse when such individuals move on.
After the resignation of Floyd Shivambu from EFF – as its former deputy president, lieutenant commander-in-chief and its parliamentary chief whip – and his joining MK party, there are no guarantees for the survival of the EFF from now on. This might be the beginning of the fall of the EFF. Only time will tell whether the MK party fortunes depend solely on Zuma while EFF party fortunes have depended on both Julius Malema and Shivambu.
Zuma and Malema are dictatorial in character and remove people at will, without consultation. These two parties will not last long without these leaders.
Voting fodder
Thanks to the flawed parliamentary electoral system in place since 1996, what is important in all this swapping and changing of MPs from one party to another is that we as voters, the citizens of South Africa, are not consulted or considered. When Mzwandile Manyi moved from ANC to African Transformation Movement, then from ATM to EFF and now from EFF to the MK party, voters were not consulted on his position as an MP.
In this top-down, undemocratic electoral system in which MPs and provincial councillors are appointees of the hierarchy of political parties, the citizens of South Africa are just taken as voting fodder.
The MK party removed 18 parliamentarians, according to spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela, without consultation with voters, and replaced them with supporters of Zuma such as Brian Molefe and Lucky Montana. Thanks to our flawed parliamentary electoral system that empowers party headquarters, we the voters remain disempowered in a classical Stalinist manner.
From his training in the Soviet Union and his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zuma understands the mechanics of this from top to bottom.
Until we completely reform the parliamentary electoral system and establish one person one vote for electing members of Parliament, electing the president, electing the premiers and mayors, we will continue to have such shenanigans.
It is our responsibility not to accept being treated as rubbish. DM