South Africans are observing closely and with deep interest as the fragmented ANC hurtles towards its elective conference in December.
The party’s political calendar is packed with at least another seven provincial congresses, each expected to elect new leadership — a constitutional obligation of the ANC that will set the tone and influence the outcome of its succession debate.
The embarrassingly chaotic scenes seen during the Eastern Cape conference this past weekend are suggestive of what can be expected in the months ahead. It also paints a vivid picture of the factional tactics within the ANC, not least of which include the resurgence of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s CR-2022 campaign.
At a glance, CR-2022 sets the stage for the obvious aspirations of Ramaphosa for a second term as ANC president. But hanging on his coattails are party hopefuls who without Ramaphosa will struggle to harness the votes required to land a coveted seat on the national executive committee (NEC), the party’s highest decision-making body between national conferences.
The stark irony of this hostile internal party landscape is that it has become more deeply entrenched since Ramaphosa called for an end to factional party politics after his election as head of the ANC in 2017. He made the call for party unity as early as his inaugural address to the NEC in 2018.
Slate politics became entrenched during former president Jacob Zuma’s term in office. This in turn coerced the ANC elite to bend to Zuma’s will on state capture to preserve their coveted seats in cabinet, parliament and the NEC.
The resultant lack of disciplined governance and impunity opened the vaults of the state fiscus, allowing hundreds of billions of rand to be fleeced from government coffers at the expense — and inevitable demise — of what were once viable and profitable state-owned enterprises.
The Herculean challenge that Ramaphosa now urgently needs to confront is to bring unity as promised.
The outlook looks disturbing for the ANC, and by extension for the country, after his supporters celebrated a landslide pro-Ramaphosa “slate” victory at the Eastern Cape provincial congress this week.
While the outcome of the ANC’s provincial and regional conferences thus far does technically conform to democratic process, all have produced a faction-based winner-takes-all result, including Mpumalanga and eThekwini.
The problem the ANC under Ramaphosa faces is complex. Talk is cheap and it was easy for him to proclaim that factions must die, but it is not easily achieved in the context of extreme levels of inequality in SA. A winner-takes-all approach means tenders, jobs, prosperity and elite schools for the children of the chosen ANC leaders, almost to the complete exclusion of leaders from a faction that finds itself out in the cold.
It is this continued battle for the fractured heart and soul of the ANC that rings alarm bells that the party has not learnt from its recent history and, more terrifyingly, that the return of state capture remains an ever-present threat should it elect the wrong leader.
The other reason we care about whether the ANC is divided or not is that a ruling party broken along divergent lines harms SA’s fragile economic prospects as the government moves slower in pushing through much-needed reforms just so that everyone is happy.
What’s more, the party’s internal strife spilt over into the worst security crisis in postapartheid SA in July 2021 when thousands of people took to the streets of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, burning commercial buildings and looting shopping malls. In fact, a panel appointed by Ramaphosa to probe the unrest identified the ANC’s infighting as the biggest threat to national security.
It is the same factional battles that allowed some ministers who were caught napping during the unrest to keep their jobs as Ramaphosa, due to his weaker position in the party, refrained from taking a tougher stance and instead rewarded some with promotions.
When he took over the reins in 2017, Ramaphosa raised the prospect of a united ANC that will get to work, revive the economy and put millions of South Africans into jobs. That hope is barely flickering.
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