GARETH VAN ONSELEN: How Zuma has destroyed ANC collective leadership

The ANC in general and Jacob Zuma in particular have always boasted about internal party discipline and the wisdom of collective leadership. It is the difference between the ANC and other liberation movements, they claim. The thin green, yellow and black line.

In May 2008, Zuma said of the meltdown across our northern border: "The ANC and SA cannot go the Zimbabwean way … [although I] cannot sit here and judge my colleagues in Zanu (PF), the ANC has a different culture. The ANC believes in collective leadership.

"There will be no Zanufication here," he declared.

But the president’s decision to reshuffle his Cabinet and, in doing so, fire the finance minister and his deputy, has initiated something of a mini financial crisis; one of many within a far bigger and long-lasting economic emergency.

As a result, ratings agency S&P Global Ratings has downgraded SA’s credit rating to "junk" status (a clumsy term for a profound problem) and Moody’s put SA on review for a downgrade. Fitch has yet to respond. The implications, if two ratings agencies downgrade SA to "junk" status, will be serious indeed.

High unemployment remains the disturbing backdrop, while projected economic growth is stuck at about 0.3%. SARS, the lifeblood of SA’s fiscal framework, announced a revenue collection shortfall of R30bn. But of all this, it is the ANC’s fractured internal politics that seems to have made the biggest impact.

S&P’s statement reads: "The downgrade reflects our view that the divisions in the ANC-led government that have led to changes in the executive leadership, including the finance minister, have put policy continuity at risk."

Trevor Ncube tweeted in December last year, pre-empting events to come: "Many South African friends ask me, ‘Why did Zimbabweans allow Mugabe to destroy the country?’ My answer: ‘It was a process not an event’."

And so it would seem there are indeed grounds now to compare SA with Zimbabwe, and that a powerful contributing factor is Jacob Zuma and the failure of the ANC’s much vaunted collective leadership.

The divisions are now palpable. Never mind the alliance, the NEC, the NWC or the ANC national caucus, the party’s top six leaders have split, with the likes of Gwede Mantashe and Zweli Mkhize issuing powerful rebukes of Zuma’s actions. Even Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, in a rare display of conviction, has condemned the reshuffle. 

Mkhize put it like this: “The briefing by the president left a distinct impression that the ANC is no longer the centre and thus depriving the leadership collective of its responsibly to advise politically on executive matters.”

Ramaphosa echoed that sentiment. “It was just a process of informing us of his decision,” he said. "It was not a consultation because he (Zuma) came with a ready-made list.”

The idea of collective ANC leadership is now farce, and it has been so for some considerable time.

Its precepts, everything from keeping disagreements behind closed doors to cadre deployment, and falling in line with party decisions for the good of the movement, are in tatters. In their place, open dissent and disdain.

Zuma has always fashioned himself as a disciplined and loyal ANC cadre who serves at the discretion of the party.

As far back as 1997, he put it like this: "As a collective, the ANC identifies a task that needs to be performed and then deploys a suitable person for that particular task. A disciplined cadre of the movement will abide by the decision."

But no more. His decisions are clearly not ANC decisions. The collective has been subsumed by the individual.

On this front, there is a story the ANC might want to bring to Zuma’s attention. On November 17 1996 the ANC suffered something of a provincial revolt after taking a decision to remove Mosiuoa Lekota from his position as Free State premier.

At the time Zuma was the ANC’s national chairman and was sent to speak to delegates at an ANC regional meeting in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal.

Several times that year, Lekota had exercised his constitutional prerogative to hire and fire MECs unilaterally, which had led to friction with ANC Free State chairman Pat Matosa, who Business Day said was Lekota’s then "arch-enemy" in the province.

Lekota had done so without consulting the ANC — a cardinal sin.

Lekota’s removal saw substantial fallout. ANC branch structures protested and Zuma was called in to resolve the dispute. As national chairman his primary goal was to re-enforce the ANC’s policy of cadre redeployment and, with it, the principle that party members are accountable first and foremost to the ANC.

And so it was that Zuma told delegates in Durban, "Once you begin to feel you are above the ANC, you are in trouble."

The Eastern Province Herald reported on the meeting as follows: "ANC leaders in government should not regard SA’s Constitution as being ‘more important’ than the ANC because this would land them in trouble, ANC national chairman Jacob Zuma said [in Durban] yesterday."

The Natal Witness quotes Zuma as saying: "No political force can destroy the ANC — it is only the ANC that can destroy itself."

According to the paper, Zuma said the ANC was "more important" than the Constitution and that it was there only "to regulate matters".

The Eastern Province Herald went on to report Zuma later told delegates that "ANC members should note what happened in the Free State" and that it was "vital to rid the party of interorganisational conflict" — the origin of the now infamous Zuma quote where he puts the ANC above the Constitution.

Back then, in the good old days, when ANC discipline was king and collective leadership ruled, he adopted an entirely different attitude to internal dissent and what was deemed to be rogue leadership.

Back then, the ANC came first. Today, however, Zuma comes first.

Not much was made of Zuma’s remark at the time, but it was put to Lekota himself in a December 1996 interview with the Irish academic, Padraig O’Malley.

In response to O’Malley’s remark that ANC members "are more or less like puppets of the ANC and accountable to the national leadership of the ANC", Lekota said, "Jacob Zuma made a statement two weeks ago I think in Durban in which he said the ANC is above the Constitution of the country. I think it’s an absolute disaster."

Then he delivered his rationale. Today, it stands as one of the great political observations, given that it came from someone inside the movement. He said: "It’s not been challenged, which in itself is sad and very unfortunate. I think in the coming period we are going to have to answer to that because if that statement is going to be the guiding light for the ANC then I think we are completely on the wrong route, completely.

"I cannot see that SA can be different from so many of the African countries which have got excellent documents on paper but when it comes to practice it’s completely something different. I think if in the end that is really what we have fought for or what we are expected to have fought for and so on, then freedom will never really dawn on our side."

How right he has been proven. If decay is the sort of process Ncube alludes to, Lekota was there right at the start.

But O’Malley didn’t leave it at that. He put the same issue to Zuma himself, in a separate interview in December 1996. Zuma’s response is telling, and worth dwelling on in light of recent developments.

"I don’t know why you should be surprised," Zuma said, "There is no premier who is a premier out of nowhere. They are all coming from the political party. They are answerable and accountable to the party, including the president and everybody else. The president of this country is the president of the ANC. No one person can be above the ANC. He can’t be."

Zuma continued to elaborate on his thinking. "You then have the constitutional process wherein once a premier is elected by the ANC majority in the legislature, not just the legislature in general terms, by the ANC majority, without the ANC majority it would not have an ANC premier; once then he is elected we have given him a confidence that he can form an executive. He does so. He has no right to do whatever he wants."

Finally, Zuma then turned to the problem he saw Lekota as constituting for the party:

"Then you have a problem where the premier fights with other leaders, there is infighting for two-and-a-half years. He is not capable as a leader to solve the problem and lead, he is part of the problem, he leads a faction against another faction. You can’t say he is a provincial leader, he is a faction leader within the ANC. The ANC intervenes to try to talk to them to make them talk. For two-and-a-half years they can’t just solve the problem. Now no ANC is going to leave that situation to continue because finally that kind of infighting undermines the ANC at the end, not an individual. It therefore undermines the government of the ANC. They stand in public, swear at each other, do all sorts of things. Now no ANC could stand for that."

How ironic this all seems in light of Zuma today. You can agree or not with the ANC’s policies of cadre deployment and collective leadership, but from inside its own universe Zuma is today what Lekota was to the ANC in 1996. Only the ANC cannot send Zuma, the enforcer, to solve the problem. He is the problem. And because he has so systematically stripped the party of its ability to lead, there is no internal counterbalance. Zuma has arguable destroyed the ANC’s pride and joy — collective leadership.

Lekota saw the consequences of this in 1996. Later in that same interview, he said: "I think all of us need to take very seriously the implications of this and we must do so with foresight, understanding full well that once one brick on the foundation of any building was skewed one way or the other the rest of the building will never become straight. It will continue to be even more skewed the higher the building goes."

The building has now reached its zenith. And it’s not a pretty sight; decaying, weak and teetering in the wind, its foundations rotted away. A monument to one man. When he occupied the lower floors, Zuma believed in collective leadership. Today, from the top, he can see only the great construction below him. And he believes it, like the Constitution, belongs to him alone.

Robert Mugabe has a similar tower across the great, grey, greasy Limpopo river. If Zuma looks hard enough, he will be able to see him in the distance, waving and smiling.