Extract ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule’s not-so-secret guerrilla warfare against President Cyril Ramaphosa over the direction of the ANC and the government echoes an earlier, and equally gripping, saga of intrigue that once ruled SA's political headlines. Magashule may find the long and pointless rebellion of the notorious Dr No, apartheid high priest Andries Treurnicht, to be a cautionary tale. This is especially as Treurnicht, ever the ideological purist, lost out to the forces of reform and reality that would ultimately give way to a democratic SA. His was a show of thunder and fury, signifying not much at all.
At the time, though, in the 1970s and ’80s, for all of 20 years, Treurnicht bestrode the South African political stage, an ominous presence who lobbed verbal grenades at the reformers, fighting a to-the-death battle for grand apartheid. And for petty apartheid, too, down to whites-only benches and no mixed sport.
A dapper and even dashing figure (a colleague remarked that he had the shiniest shoes in parliament), Treurnicht was a compelling public speaker, a former dominee whose gloomy oratory was much helped by no inclination to compromise.
For the press at the time, both English and Afrikaans, Treurnicht was manna from heaven, the story that kept giving. For example, when then prime minister John Vorster tried to cosy up to the likes of Hastings Banda in Malawi, Treurnicht would have none of it. Similarly, when Vorster’s National Party (NP) started to relax on aspects of petty apartheid, Treurnicht dug in his heels, pointing out that without petty apartheid there would soon be no apartheid at all. This was an unwelcome message to Vorster and his fellow Nats, for whom apartheid was increasingly more a problem than a solution.
Sabotaging reform
Vorster, and after him PW Botha, were all too aware that apartheid in its purest ideological variety made no sense, and that a growing economy dictated a shared racial future. Treurnicht, on the other hand, built a career out of standing on ideological principle and doing what he could to sabotage reform from the sidelines. Sound familiar? Little wonder, then, that he acquired the nickname Dr No.
While some may object to the comparison of Treurnicht, a politician who devoted his entire adult life to the pursuit of the subjugation of a people, to Magashule, a stalwart of the liberation movement that sought to undo Treurnicht’s work, they share a confrontational style, a rigid allegiance to their particular ideologies without regard for pragmatic concerns, and an ongoing feud, amounting to sabotage, with the leaders who by necessity have had to follow a more compromised course.
Without pushing the comparison too far, one nonetheless sees a neat parallel in Treurnicht’s ideological rigidity and Magashule’s professed purity on matters of policy and principle. Take the latest bust-up, involving Magashule reportedly being party to doctoring an ANC statement on the Reserve Bank’s mandate. Yes, there is an ANC conference resolution to nationalise the Bank. But it’s not going to happen, and there are good reasons for that – the survival of a viable economy being not least among them.
But for Treurnicht, and for Magashule after him, policy purity trumps pragmatism.
Take that other ANC ideological blind spot, land. Apart from there being good reasons to not amend the constitution to allow land to be taken without compensation, there are other national priorities, such as urban poverty and unemployment. Being in government, rather than manipulating from behind expensive shades from an office in Luthuli House, requires hard choices and trade-offs. It’s just not as simple as blithely implementing decisions of compromised policy committees in anonymous party structures.
Ramaphosa knows this, probably better than any other leader SA has in the democratic era. Like Vorster and Botha well before him, he is having to deal in the real world, with real bankers and decisionmakers. Yet he must constantly look over his shoulder, always mindful of the power of the party and the policy hardliners who seem to people its upper ranks.
Danger to society
So what to do with a Magashule who, like Treurnicht before him, has his own power base, and his own agenda?
Treurnicht went from being an editor to a politician, and the pundits thought at first he would “find a home” in the ultraright Herstigte Nasionale Party. To their surprise, he joined the NP, and won election in the Waterberg constituency in 1971. But he remained an opposition voice within his own party. He was fobbed off with minor cabinet portfolios, like sport, which he managed to turn into headline-hogging controversies week after week. Put in a position of real responsibility, as deputy minister of national education, his ideological insistence on teaching in Afrikaans in township schools was a direct trigger for the Soweto uprising of 1976.
In or out of office, Treurnicht was a danger to society, a loose cannon and a liability.
The much-hyped clashes with the leadership (sound familiar?) that were meant to bring him to heel never seemed to happen. Instead, Treurnicht was emboldened by the support of the conservative rump of the NP in the Transvaal, and it was thought to be just a matter of time before he went from provincial leader to national leader, and therefore prime minister. But when the spoils of high office are so close at hand, duplicity thrives, and thus it was that “principle”-driven Treurnicht lost out in successive battles to the reformers, and became a has-been. And perhaps we will see the same thing happening to Magashule, in his insistence on the primacy of the liberation struggle over the sobering business of governing a country in a competitive and rapidly changing world.
Left behind
Unlike the two of them, Ramaphosa cannot permit himself the luxury of striking a trendy liberation pose and spitting into the policy wind. He has to make do with a world that couldn’t give two hoots for Luthuli House's sensitivities, but is easily alarmed by its more reckless inclinations.
Interestingly, what counted against Treurnicht, as may in time also apply to Magashule, was a growing feeling that his resistance to the broader historical flow had limited impact, and diminishing resonance. While Dr No preached his message of division and separation, society moved on. Candidates he backed, even in conservative constituencies, started to fare badly in by-elections: his fire and brimstone message lost its political zing.
No amount of “quantity easing” is going to replace SA’s need for investment, for confidence in our leaders and in our society in general. Treurnicht tried putting a finger in the hole in the dyke that was apartheid by saying no whenever he could. The conservatives in his party applauded him and perhaps that applause closed his ears to more deserving voices beyond the confines of his caucus.
Similarly, Magashule may want to guard against being so seized with his one-man rebellion that he fails to notice that society, and perhaps even the ANC, have moved on. What else could Ramaphosa’s Nasrec 2017 win have signified, if not that?
• Bulger is a Sunday Times executive editor
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