In the absence of acute internal political managemen, the ANC's succession race will be divisive and possibly organisationally destructive, writes Dumisani Hlophe.
The ANC faces a serious balancing act en route to its December elective conference and beyond. On the one hand, it needs to allow for open internal leadership contestation. This is a normal internal democratic process. However, such contestation is likely to be divisive.
On the other hand, the ANC needs to emerge as a very united and cohesive organisation to enable it to contest national and local elections effectively.
It should be increasingly clear among the contending political leadership cliques within the ANC that all of them need the ANC. A strong ANC for that matter.
The ANC is the only vehicle that will help the contending leadership forces realise their ambitions and aspirations.
These may be driven by the quest to satisfy the socio-economic needs of the masses.
Yet they may also be personal or group interests. Whatever the intentions: individual, collective or for society, the ANC provides the main vehicle for such contending factions to realise their goals.
Victorious cliques within the ANC will not realise their intentions if the whole ANC is weak.
The Tshwane ANC provides a good lesson. The vicious mayoral contestation within the ANC weeks before the local government elections led to the party losing the Tshwane Metro.
Similarly, the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro was partly lost due to infighting within the ANC.
Despite these lessons, the Kwa-Zulu-Natal ANC leadership is embroiled in an internal legal wrangle over legitimate leadership.
The case threatens to divide KwaZulu-Natal and the national office. The sum of all this is a further weakened ANC, with the risk of losing further elections.
Internal political struggles will remain an essential element of the party. As long as there is a symbiotic relationship between leadership positions and participation in senior state positions and distribution of resources, power battles will remain a core feature, particularly at the leadership level.
The ANC’s challenge in this regard, is twofold: firstly, to ensure internal power contestation is not destructive to the party as an organisation; and secondly, to determine how the organisation undertakes and manages leadership succession.
That is, applying political management that regulates internal dynamics, including power struggles, while maximising the ANC’s cohesiveness and discipline.
The former would seek to infuse a sense of inclusivity, among contending forces, while the latter could be geared to strengthening the collective ANC to fight elections.
In the absence of acute internal political management in the ANC, the 2017 political leadership contestation will be divisive and possibly organisationally destructive. This is mainly because leadership succession is little managed; it is fought on the basis of personality basis, using personal character assassination and devoid of policy and ideological debates.
The ANC’s preferred narrative of “collective leadership” is not useful in managing leadership power struggles and their inherently divisive effects. It allows cliques and factions to assume a centre stage in leadership succession.
The campaigners, rather than the individuals seeking leadership positions, dominate the succession race.
In the process, factions mushroom from all over, advancing one individual or another.
Thus, upon the conclusion of the electoral conference, the new leader is beholden to one faction or another, rather than the organisational collective.
The faction-driven leadership campaigns would make it difficult for the new leader to emerge as a statesman/woman post the elective conference.
The new leader would remain submerged within the faction that catapulted him or her into the leadership position.
The losing faction would not really accept defeat and work together with the victorious clique.
Instead it is likely to go underground, regroup and resume its campaign, albeit in different forms.
In an open democratic South Africa, individual leaders are increasingly expected to lead from the front, rather than being submerged in some “collective leadership” of some sort or another.
When the ANC lost three metros in the last local government elections, much discussion took place around the leadership of Jacob Zuma.
Similarly much discussion took place about the “imposition” of Thoko Didiza on the Tshwane ANC and its subsequent loss of the metro.
In fact there was much grumbling within the ANC when the national executive committee decided to assume collective leadership responsibility over the loss of key metros during the local government elections.
Increasingly there is an expectation that the ANC leader will stand out above the rest and be held accountable as such.
This is mainly based on the assumption that the ANC may still emerge as the ruling party in the 2019 national and provincial elections.
Hence the generic interest by many in society, beyond ANC members and voting delegates, about who becomes the leader of the ANC.
This is one reason the ANC could create opportunities for the contending candidates to come out and articulate themselves on their preferred means to advance the ANC and the national agenda.
This could be done at the party’s national policy conference.
Essentially, given the ANC's status as the ruling party, the leadership succession programme ought to balance the party’s internal democracy processes while building confidence in the party from the broader society.
An isolated concentration on ANC branches disregards the fact that more than 10 million people voted for the ANC during national elections.
While the 10 million ANC voters may not participate in internal ANC leadership voting, the succession process should not render them mere spectators.
In the same way that the ANC releases draft strategic documents on the economy, international relations, balance of forces and other strategic issues during the policy conferences, the ANC could also manage strategic leadership and succession issues, particularly with those seeking to occupy the top six positions within the ANC.
In the final analysis, the ANC faces a delicate balancing act: managing internal political leadership struggles while presenting an united front to society. This partly requires that the leaders of the political cliques respect the primacy of the ANC collective as the only vehicle that will enable the realisation of their intentions.
Thus none of the factions should pursue narrow interests while destroying the organisation.
When the ANC strikes this elusive balance, it may be possible that it may go to the December elective conference with one consensually chosen presidential candidate.
After all, what will be the point of a factional victory when the collective ANC loses general elections?
* Hlophe is a governance specialist at the Unisa School of Governance. He writes in his personal capacity.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.