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south africa The ANC’s toughest
election ever – in December 2007
It will be the fiercest-fought election the African
National Congress has faced since coming
to power in 2004: it is the ANC’s National
Conference in December 2007 that will elect the
party president and the party’s Presidential flagbearer
in the 2009 elections.
schism in the party
Even the most conservative African National Congress
activists admit that a schism has developed in the
party between supporters of President Thabo Mbeki and
those of sacked Deputy President Jacob Zuma. Yet they
cannot agree about why the schism has developed and
whose fault it is. Zuma’s fans are the usual opponents
of President Mbeki’s conventional economic policies: the
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the
South African Communist Party (SACP). He also attracts
support from the poor and working class, frustrated by the
slow pace of service delivery, growing unemployment and
rising crime.
Most controversially there is the Zulu factor: Zuma, the
cattle herder from Inkandla, is tremendously popular in
his own kwaZulu/Natal (KZN) province. He addresses
rallies and even courtrooms in isiZulu and enthusiastically
attends provincial functions in traditional garb. Zulus
make up some 24 per cent of South Africa’s population.
Yet Zuma cannot play the Zulu card too strongly for fear
of alienating his support among the Xhosa (18 per cent),
Sesotho (7.9), Sepedi (9.4), Setswana (8.2) and other
groups such as whites (9.6), coloured (8.9) and Indians
(2.5). He would never be forgiven for dividing the ANC
on ethnic lines, a core strategy of the old National Party
regime; and arithmetically it would make no sense.
Zuma’s best chance is to hold a broad pro-poor alliance –
without alienating business. When asked by journalist RW
Johnson for his own – as opposed to the ANC’s – political
views, Zuma replied: ‘You could say I have a passion for the
poor. I’m not happy that after more than 10 years in power
that so many of our people are still living in shacks. And
far more needs to be done to help poor rural people. The
Bantustans were abolished but nothing has been done to
replace the money they brought into the rural areas.’
Those concerns resonate with South Africans. For many,
Zuma symbolises the South African struggle: growing up
in poverty without formal education, he learned English
from his fellow prisoners on Robben Island. He then
rose to head ANC intelligence and, after 1994, took the
lead in negotiating a truce between the ANC and Chief
Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party.
Opposing the Zuma camp are Mbeki’s core supporters in
the cabinet, the 60-strong National Executive Committee,
the 25-strong National Working Committee and groups
throughout the ANC’s 365 branches. Mbeki is preferred by
the prosperous and those who run businesses, people who
mostly view a Zuma presidency with undisguised horror.
Yet Zuma seems to be winning the propaganda battle
in the private media, which carried a tide of anti-Mbeki
stories, fuelled by public rows between the factions. Last
month, former Premier of Limpopo province Ngoako
Ramatlhodi turned up at the Free State Provincial
General Council and accused Mbeki of crippling the ANC.
A few weeks later, Billy Masetlha, the sacked Director of
the National Intelligence Agency, told ANC Youth League
members that the ANC was in the wrong hands and was
dominated by a narrow group of ‘ten people’. There are
many other politicians who would relish a chance to settle
scores with Mbeki.
Hearts, minds and votes
There are two levels to the battle: the tactical one of
influencing the hearts and minds of media, unions
and political rallies; and the strategic one of winning the
vote at the ANC’s National Conference in December 2007.
It is the ANC’s National Deployment Committee (NDC),
currently weighted in favour of Mbeki, which decides the
candidates nominated at the conference. In theory the
NDC could keep Zuma off the ballot, but it will be the
delegates from the ANC’s 365 branches across South Africa
who cast the votes to elect the party’s next President.
Those delegates will represent the ANC’s 150,000-200,000
paid-up members, but there will be much surveillance if
not outright intervention from the centre as to how the
branches choose delegates.
Zuma’s advantage is that for the present his is the only
hat in the ring. Other candidates for the ANC’s presidential
nomination – such as former ANC Secretary General Cyril
Ramaphosa, Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota and
Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni – will only emerge
in the coming months.
For now, Zuma is way ahead in the public recognition.
As soon as Justice Herbert Msimang threw out the state’s
corruption case against him on 20 September, mass
demonstrations of support broke out. Hours later, Zuma
was hoisted onto the stage at Cosatu’s national conference
and presented by union leaders as the country’s next
president. Yet the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is
still investigating Zuma’s affairs and will almost certainly
bring new corruption charges against him. Any failure to
do so will be seen as accepting Zuma’s argument that there
was a political conspiracy against him orchestrated by NPA
Director Bulelani Ngcuka.
Well-orchestrated pro-Zuma conference speeches and
demonstrations accompanied two successive attempts to
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