President Jacob Zuma is now more powerful than the ANC and its constitution. The moment of crisis for the party has come and gone. Zuma has prevailed and the ANC’s top leadership have been defeated.
Granted, the protests against Zuma’s decision to shaft former finance minister Pravin Gordhan were muted and phrased in the vaguest of terms.
The ANC’s deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, its secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, and its treasurer, Zweli Mkhize, all spoke out against the decision, saying it appeared that Zuma’s reshuffle ignored the ANC’s proposals in favour of a list “from somewhere else”.
But, by ANC standards, such a public airing of disagreement was unprecedented.
The party’s integrity commission, its allies in the SACP and Cosatu, its veterans and several other prominent members all publicly called on Zuma to quit.
So there was a showdown of sorts within the ANC. Its national working committee met to decide what to do.
Its decision was that Zuma had the right to do what he pleased and that the ANC fully supported the new ministers he had appointed.
Yes, there was a gentle chiding, but this was not over Zuma’s decision to fire Gordhan. It was over his decision to use a dodgy intelligence report as the basis for the decision.
The integrity commission withdrew its letter calling on Zuma to quit because, apparently, it had not followed procedure.
And the ANC said it would meet with its alliance partners to discuss their calls on Zuma to quit.
In short, Zuma runs the ANC, not the other way around.
What this means is pretty frightening. He will emerge emboldened and he will use his power to ensure that his chosen successor, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, takes over from him. He will rule from the shadows beyond his term.
The implications are serious for the ANC. It has handed yet another political peach to the opposition, which thrives on the continuation of Zuma’s ragged running of the state. It will face a further loss of support in the 2019 election and will almost certainly lose Gauteng.
Mantashe’s assurances that the ANC will see to it that the country’s financial institutions are not “tampered with” rings hollow. Zuma has been given the green light to proceed with his state capture agenda and you can be sure that it is a matter of time before financial institutions are bent to his will.
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