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ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla) / Former President Jacob Zuma. (Photo: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
As in 2007, the media and the general public seem to be caught up in the propaganda of warring factions, so it is important to dig deeper into the issues and unravel the current “balance of forces.”
First published in the weekly Daily Maverick 168.
The 2007 ANC conference in Polokwane is widely regarded as a watershed moment for several reasons. Not only did it mark an abrupt change in the way the ruling party chose its leaders after its removal, it also saw the incumbent president’s humiliating defeat by the very deputy he had fired just two years earlier.
Until the day of the vote at the conference, Thabo Mbeki’s main activist, the late former Deputy Defense Minister Mluleki George, kept declaring aloud that: “Singaphezulu. We overtake you, comrades ”.
For the hundreds of journalists who covered the event, the political conferences had become a speculative game in which all factions claimed to be in the lead in terms of popular support. Propaganda mattered in the psychological battle.
When George gathered delegates supporting Mbeki on a sports field next to the giant tent that housed the conference on the Turfloop campus of Limpopo University, he tried to demonstrate his rallying cry: that Mbeki had the overwhelming support of the delegates. . But it soon became clear that, judging by the numbers gathered, this was not the case.
After the impromptu rally, we as journalists asked George the obvious question: where were the supporters?
The silver-tongued George retort was that many more supporters of his campaign feared being victims of their home provinces, which overwhelmingly supported Jacob Zuma. These secret voters, we were told, would appear at the voting booths and vote for Mbeki.
The argument seemed plausible, given the tension that preceded that conference, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s base of operations.
Popular support
But it soon became clear that this would not happen when the then president of the Zuma-supporting ANC Youth League, Fikile Mbalula, called his own meeting of delegates at the entrance of the conference venue to counter George’s earlier effort. From a numbers perspective, it was clear that Zuma had popular support.
The 60:40 ratio of the conference result was the result of Zuma’s impressive campaign. Upon entering the conference, she could count on the ANC Youth League, the ANC Women’s League, and alliance partners of the ruling party, the Communist Party of South Africa and the Cosatu labor federation, among her sponsors.
Not only did he have the overwhelming support of his home province, but he had managed to divide the mighty Eastern Cape in half.
This background is relevant as the ANC appears to be heading for another hotly contested conference in 2022. As in 2007, the media and the general public seem to be caught up in the propaganda of warring factions, so it is important Deepen the subject. problems and decompress the current “balance of forces”.
A popular narrative that has spread is that the embattled ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule has overwhelming support from ANC structures. To back up this claim, his supporters have strongly called on the ANC to hold an early conference.
The delay of the ANC’s National General Council (NGC), a mid-term meeting to assess the implementation of previous congress resolutions, has been used as a ruse to suggest that President Cyril Ramaphosa is avoiding possible humiliation. It happened to Mbeki in 2005 when the NGC overturned Zuma’s “cast aside” as the party’s vice president.
But last week paints a different picture. Magashule is in a much more precarious situation than he and his followers want to admit. You have less than a month to resign after the NEC directs you to do so.
The leak of a recording in which some of his sponsors at the ANC NEC state that they “have taken care of us” was a sobering admission that he appears to have lost the fight, at least for now. Last weekend’s meeting further proved that Ramaphosa has the upper hand. Gwen Ramokgopa’s successful vote of 53 votes to Ayanda Dlodlo’s 39 as replacement for Ambassador to the United States Nomaindia Mfeketo on the ANC’s national working committee also highlights this point. Ramokgopa was favored by the Ramaphosa supporters, while Dlodlo was backed by the Magashule faction.
Strong punch
The annulment of the 2018 Free State provincial conference by the supreme court this week is also a blow to Magashule. Without solid backing from his home province, he has little chance of convincing others to be the launch pad for his 2022 campaign to overthrow Ramaphosa.
In addition to the shaky support of the ANC Women’s League, Magashule does not have the backing of Cosatu and the SACP. The Youth League is in disarray and cannot count on it. More importantly, Magashule cannot claim to have the overwhelming support of the major provinces, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga, without which its prospects appear even darker.
Some have tried to compare Magashule’s circumstances with Zuma’s prior to the Polokwane conference. Well, both are currently facing fraud and corruption charges in separate cases. They also have a propensity to lash out at the judiciary and have organized the same band of dodgy characters behind them. But the similarities end there. DM168
Sibusiso Ngalwa is the political editor of Newzroom Africa and president of Sanef.
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.
