Eusebius McKaiser: Pyrrhic victory looms for ANC faction

Eusebius McKaiser. File picture: Jason Boud

Eusebius McKaiser. File picture: Jason Boud

Published Oct 24, 2016

Share

The recent spate of anti-Zuma speeches are merely tactical moves in a game of political warfare, writes Eusebius McKaiser.

Jackson Mthembu isn’t a fool. He obviously knows there are internal structures and processes within the ANC through which members and leaders of the party can raise concerns about the movement.

That's trite. The question is why he's choosing to go public, as a very senior member of the party (he's the ANC chief whip in Parliament), and calling on the entire leadership of the ANC to resign in light of the local government election results, and subsequent examples of abuse of state resources for factional battles, such as the weak and unconvincing fraud charges against Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

There are, in my view, two sets of reasons that explain Mthembu’s newfound zeal and brand-new backbone.

First, factional battles are a numbers game. Mthembu’s public confidence is a reflection of a critical mass of leaders within the ANC and the tripartite alliance having had enough of President Zuma and his looting friends.

Mthembu’s timing is well chosen. He knows that almost every SACP leader and a significant number of ANC national executive committee members (many wearing both hats, of course) accept that the ANC, as a political party, could collapse if Zuma isn’t politically neutralised as a matter of great, and prudential, urgency.

If there’s one criticism of yesterday's newspapers, which otherwise were brilliant in helping us understand in greater detail what's going on inside a rotting ANC-led state, it is the inadvertent centre stage that Mthembu took on some front pages.

The truth is that Mthembu isn’t a lone ranger. It's precisely because the anti-Zuma grouping is becoming bigger by the day that Mthembu knows it's low risk to speak out. He's speaking not only for himself but on behalf of a critical mass of leaders who are finally, if rather belatedly, getting the point of the electoral backlash the ANC suffered in the local government elections.

The second reason for Mthembu’s urgency and zeal complement the first and shouldn’t be misread as contradicting the first. It's hoped that by speaking out so strongly against the abuse of state resources for narrow political and predatory purposes on the part of Zuma and his friends, more people can find the courage to join the anti-Zuma grouping.

This makes Mthembu’s utterances not so much the speech acts of a naughty child airing the family’s dirty laundry while jeering neighbours are laughing - as ANC spokesperson Zizi Kodwa implies with his desperate plea that these issues be discussed only inside the party - but rather a tactical move to embolden those who lack the courage to speak about against Zuma.

Simply put, Mthembu is hoping that his role-modelling of criticism of the highest leadership of the party will catch on.And by including himself in that criticism as a leader within the party he avoids being susceptible to the retort: “Why didn’t you speak out while you were still in a senior leadership position?”, as has been asked of some older party leaders who waited until their political careers were over before speaking out.

Does this mean President Zuma is at risk of being recalled by the ANC? Not any time soon. He benefits from the lack of consensus among his critics about what a new slate of top six officials to rebuild the party might look like.

When Thabo Mbeki was recalled there was already, leading up to that moment, consensus about a replacement candidate. Not so now. And that's an externality that Zuma is benefiting from.

But his days are numbered. Every day that passes brings his enemies closer to one another, and pragmatism will result in political foes within the alliance strategically co-operating to halt the looting and to prevent major electoral losses in 2019.

Zuma would be silly to be complacent. As the anti-Zuma camp gets its ducks in a row, so he and his looting friends will have less and less time and space to continue overeating at the trough.

But for the ANC there's a long road ahead before the organisation is in healthy political shape again. The truth is that Zuma is but a symptom of a failure to instil a political culture that engenders deep and selfless commitment to public service in ANC cadres.

Mthembu isn’t a political saint. There aren’t saints in politics. Politics is about power: amassing it and wielding it. And many in the anti-Zuma camp are corrupt too and simply sad that they’re not closer to the largesse.

And so the motivations behind these seemingly brave speech acts aren’t moral; rather, they're tactical moves in a game of political warfare.

That’s an important qualification when interpreting Mthembu and others. It means that even if Zuma goes tomorrow, a Zuma doppelganger could enter the state and continue a pattern of patronage, corruption, abuse of state resources for political ends and so on.

The more fundamental challenge for the ANC is to imbue the organisation with a new set of political values that accept the self-interested nature of career politicians as a universal reality, but values that maximise the potential for developing ANC cadres who can be seconded to the state and entrusted to deliver on the policy promises of the party.

How likely is that in the short to medium term? Not very. I’m afraid the rot's so deep that it will take monumental patience and effort to learn new ways of being.

The ANC remains in serious trouble, and the winners of the internal political war might not have much of a party to work with when it's all over. The victory might yet be pyrrhic.

* Eusebius McKaiser is the best-selling author of A Bantu In My Bathroom and Could I Vote DA? A Voter’s Dilemma. His new book - Run, Racist, Run: Journeys Into The Heart Of Racism - is now available nationwide, and online through Amazon.

* The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.

THE STAR

Related Topics: