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Ace Magashule is busy burning the bridges around him.
This weekend’s ANC NEC meeting will be a reckoning for Ace Magashule and others at his camp.
First published in the weekly Daily Maverick 168.
For several months, the ANC has given its secretary general, Ace Magashule, more time than rope as he has waged a campaign of defiance against standing aside, but now he may have hanged himself politically.
This weekend, the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) will have to decide when to implement the Integrity Commission’s report on the “step aside” rule.
“Ace has burned his bridges a lot,” said a senior party official, adding: “He is overestimating his support.”
He went too far by stating on Gagasi FM last week that the top six party officials did not have the authority to tell the parliamentary committee how to vote in an inquiry into the fitness of Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane to hold office. Magashule refused to relay the line to the caucus and let the party chairman, Gwede Mantashe, hold the whip. A majority of ANC MPs voted in favor of the motion, weakening a secretary general aligned with the faction against it.
And, by contradicting Mantashe, he has moved El Tigre, the nom de guerre of the party’s national president, who is also the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy.
By going up against the Top Six, Magashule has isolated himself, opening up the attack at this weekend’s NEC meeting, where the final guidelines from Motlanthe’s integrity panel will be discussed. The ANC’s NEC already adopted the guidelines at its February 2021 meeting. President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his closing address, at the February meeting said that officials would “process all Integrity Committee reports … before the NEC “and would return with a full report within a month.
“Meanwhile, the NEC calls on affected members to act in the interests of protecting and enhancing the integrity and credibility of the organization and to voluntarily step aside in accordance with the recommendations of the Integrity Commission and the conference resolution. “.
This weekend will be a day of reckoning for Magashule and other ANC members, such as Deputy Finance Minister David Masondo, whom the Commission has asked to step down.
“The man is alone among the officers and even in the NEC … Obviously, people like Bongani Bongo remain loyal. They support you because they know that your situation is linked to theirs; if he goes, then they are exposed, ”said an NEC member who did not want to be identified.
Magashule has argued that it would be up to the branches of the ANC to decide his fate, but party leaders have spoiled it. “The ANC constitution is very clear that the NEC is the highest decision-making body between conferences. So there is no other structure that can change a NEC decision, ”said the NEC member.
In a sign of growing impatience, the party’s top public intellectual and NEC member, Joel Netshitenzhe, warned of the significance of Magashule’s actions in an essay published in the Daily Maverick this week. “Many party members questioned, do we still have an organization?” Netshitenzhe wrote. “The national president of the ANC communicated the decision of the Top Six to the parliamentary group. However, according to the secretary general, this could be challenged as ‘ANC officials are not a structure in terms of our constitution’ … There are times when any leader can make mistakes or speak ill. What is worrying is that this has become a hallmark of the secretary-general’s public pronouncements on difficult issues facing the movement, ”the Netshitenzhe essay reads.
Mantashe, along with NEC Netshitenzhe members Mondli Gungubele and Enoch Godongwana, could be the party’s tiger gang to deliver the coup – the resolution that Magashule should face disciplinary action for refusing to step aside after the Integrity Commission will rule in December that it should.
He faces 74 counts of corruption and fraud in the Free State R230 million asbestos roof audit case.
It is likely to continue to dig in its heels and use a loophole in the guidelines set by a panel led by President Kgalema Motlanthe, assisted by former ANC General Treasurer Mathews Phosa. Motlanthe undertook to develop the passing guidelines aside and also to reformulate the terms of reference for the Integrity Commission.
Its terms of reference were simple: it was a body of moral persuasion rather than legal judgment. It has no power of execution, so people can ignore its recommendations. Magashule has gone further in challenging the Commission.
If you still refuse to step aside, after NEC’s review of the integrity reports this weekend, Rule 25.70 applies. “That is a disciplinary hearing … The Integrity Commission will present all its reports … on a case-by-case basis. The NEC will then consider those reports. If you fully embrace them, everyone involved will be asked to step aside. If not, the ANC should institute a disciplinary hearing, ”said another NEC member. The guidelines also address an issue that Magashule supporters have raised: It is unfair to have to step aside when legal processes can take years to conclude.
The guidelines say that the NEC or a Provincial Executive Committee will review suspensions annually. Therefore, they put the power in the hands of the Secretary General or a provincial secretary to carry out the recommendations. But this does not prevent the NEC from taking action: “The guidelines say that the SG carries out the implementation of the recommendation to ‘step aside’ on behalf of the NEC … There is no confusion there as the SG and the provincial secretaries are the heads of administration. So in this case, it is the NEC that will ask the SG to step aside, ”said a member of the NEC.
Magashule’s party filibuster may have worked a month ago to buy more time for him, but his challenge now could be his downfall.
“Magashule defines itself outside of the leadership collective. We have to agree not to talk about unity in the abstract, ”Godongwana said in an interview on 702 this week. He said that the Defend Our Democracy movement had to be supported. Voters would defect from the ANC if it was found to undermine the Constitution.
Defend Our Democracy, Save SA’s successor, includes ANC veterans, civil society and prominent individuals. He opposes the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) faction aligned with Zuma and Magashule.
The struggle is now known as counterrevolution.
Magashule, along with ANC MPs Supra Mahumapelo and Bongani Bongo, MKMVA leader Kebby Maphatsoe, Eastern Cape regional leader Andile Lungisa and others associated with former President Jacob Zuma, have long been regarded as a “counterattack. “, but the language to define them now is transformed into a warning of a” counterrevolution. “
In his essay, Netshitenzhe linked them to Jonas Savimbi and Afonso Dhlakama, “who destabilized Angola and Mozambique, with the support of the former SA Defense Force,” concluding that “South Africans, including the mass of ANC members, did not can allow progress since 2017 [Ramaphosa’s reform era] to be squandered, and for the constitutional order to be subverted. The campaign against this assault on our democracy must intensify ”.
Magashule is now seen by senior leaders not simply as a backslider but as a danger to the stability of the ANC in government.
If suspended, Magashule will have time to mobilize support, although it will not be able to use the ANC platforms. At the same time, it would considerably weaken his faction, because his office is in charge of audits of all party branches across the country. Without their hands on the levers of power, the Magashule faction could be neutralized.
His close relationship with Zuma is unlikely to help him.
Comrades in arms
On Thursday, the Constitutional Court reserved judgment in a lawsuit by the State Capture Investigation Commission to jail Zuma for two years for contempt of court.
“This is an extreme case of contempt; we have not come across something like this,” the Commission’s attorney, attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, told the court.
When asked by Judge Nonkosi Mhlantla if a directive to comply with the order to appear before the Commission was not a more pragmatic option, Ngcukaitobi said: “Just allow the abuse of this court to continue. A custodial sentence is the only solution. “
Regardless of the way the court decides, Zuma will campaign against his decision. After the hearing, he released an eight-page statement on his social media. He threatened an insurrection and once again hurled insults at the judiciary, in particular Constitutional Court judge Dhaya Pillay, who sat on the court this week.
In the statement, he almost incited the judges: “I will serve the prison sentence imposed by the Constitutional Court [judgment is still reserved] which has already become the focal point of the Defend Our Democracy campaign ”.
He said the campaign, launched last week by ANC veterans and other leaders, is “dangerous for democracy.”
“I do not see any constitutional crisis when I accept the statutory sanction that may accompany my conscientious objection to the conduct of certain judges,” Zuma wrote.
His campaign is on the wane as only a handful of supporters turned up in the rain for a demonstration organized by Niehaus in the courtroom on Thursday, and the imposition of a jail sentence will set him on fire.
And now, the former president’s campaign will join Magashule’s against any attempt to discipline him or cause him to resign until his trial is complete.
The two together will organize under the banner of radical economic transformation and take their twin campaign to the party’s national general council meeting, which is still scheduled for this year. The mid-term meeting between electoral conferences is intended to assess the ANC’s progress in implementing its resolutions, but it could turn into a major political headache for the country.
To counter Zuma’s challenge to the courts, Ramaphosa is expected to reaffirm the ANC’s support for the judiciary at the NEC meeting.
A NEC member who supports Ramaphosa said: “The President will reaffirm our support for the Constitution and the rule of law. Also our conviction and support for an independent judiciary ”. DM168
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available for free to savvy Pick n Pay shoppers at these Pick n Pay. stories.
