President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday all but conceded his party’s efforts to eliminate factionalism have not yielded the required results, likening the ANC to a house “on fire”.
The president admonished delegates at the party’s just-ended Mpumalanga provincial elective conference to desist from infighting and promoting factions.
This ironically as the faction backing his second term made a clean sweep of all the leadership position in the provincial executive.
Before the conference, factionalism in Mpumalanga caused the torching of the provincial headquarters in Mbombela and a failed interdict of the meeting.
These events are a metaphor for the state of the ANC, whose house is “on fire”, Ramaphosa said.
“What we need is a strong ANC where the leaders are not consumed by fighting among themselves for power and resources…. People will never have confidence in us as long they see us fight among ourselves over access to resources that belong to them,” the president said.
He said the province and the party should focus on renewal and unity within the party.
“We must rid ourselves of self-serving individuals who want an ANC that serves their interests. The ANC must always come first and individual interest must come second,” he said.
Flanked by the provincial executive committee (PEC) and national executive committee (NEC) deployees to the province, Ramaphosa said he endorses the PEC.
He warned that fractional battles within the party threaten its ambitions of retaining power in the 2024 elections.
‘Lose elections’
“In the end, when everything is stripped down, I have found that our squabbles, our divisions, our fights are around ... power and access to resources. If we want to lose the elections, the best thing that we can do is to continue squabbling among us and we will lose power,” he said.
“We will lose elections because we are fighting among ourselves.”
The elective conference, in which the Ramaphosa-aligned faction emerged victorious, has bolstered his chances of returning for a second term as party president when the ANC elects new national leaders at the end of the year.
Though nominations for leadership positions ahead of the national conference will only open in August once all provinces have held their respective conferences, lobbying for candidates for national leadership has already begun.
Mpumalanga is the first of eight provinces to elect new leaders in the lead-up to the December conference. It will be followed by the Eastern Cape in April that is also expected to endorse a second Ramaphosa candidacy.
The election of the new PEC, led by Ramaphosa supporter Mandla Ndlovu, shifted the political dynamics of the province against Deputy President David Mabuza, who has been wielding significant influence in the province for decades, even after his departure for the deputy presidency in 2017.
Ndlovu’s faction, popularly known in the province as “force”, won a clean sweep against the Mabuza-allied Ngci faction. It included the election of murder accused Mandla Msibi as treasurer.
Mabuza’s ghost
After the announcement of the defeat of Ndlovu’s rival, Lucky Ndinisa, delegates celebrated, saying they have been “liberated” from Mabuza.
Speaking after his election, Ndlovu brushed off claims that the ghost of Mabuza still lingers over the province.
He again threw his weight behind Ramaphosa, defending his earlier public calls for the president to accept nomination from ANC branches to return for a second term.
Mpumalanga, under Mabuza and as the ANC’s second-largest voting bloc, was critical to Ramaphosa’s election over Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the party president in 2017.
Meanwhile, Mpumalanga is expected to back NEC member and justice minister Ronald Lamola’s ambitions to be deputy president of the ANC. Lamola, who hails from Bushbuckridge in the Ehlanzeni district, is set to contest for the position of deputy president against treasurer-general Paul Mashatile.
“Whether we bring back Mabuza or Lamola, the fact remains that the position [of deputy president] belongs to Mpumalanga,” a senior Mpumalanga provincial executive member told Business Day.
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