Nkosikhulule Nyembezi
CAPE TOWN - ANC politicians, who know full well that the election into senior leadership positions of corruption-accused politicians is inconsistent with the message that the party is currently undergoing renewal, tell themselves that they are performing a service when they bite their tongues.
They recognise the danger of the insistence otherwise by different factions in the party. They have not spoken against those who orchestrated the election at recently held conferences of corruption-accused eThekwini regional chairperson Zandile Gumede, murder-accused Mpumalanga provincial treasurer Mandla Msibi, and several others before them.
Yet, they call themselves heroes and bearers of hope for the prosperity of our constitutional democracy.
Their thinking goes something like this: If they speak the truth and curse the king-makers and the kingpins, they will just lose to — and be replaced by — other, lesser ANC cadres who genuinely believe the big lie, who truly revere the corrupt politicians and who would tug the country into a pit of florid craziness from which there might be no extraction. They are saving us.
It is a comprehensible calculation, an artful rationalisation. It is also a moral surrender whose logic fades as it grinds on and grinds them down.
Did you watch or read about delegates’ onstage theatrical performances at the Mpumalanga provincial conference and the eThekwini conference this month? What a horror show that was.
Both Msibi and Gumede (who were elected in their absence) never squirmed, never shouted, never broke a sweat.
To their considerable credit, neither did Zweli Mkhize, Bathabile Dlamini, Ace Magashule, and many others whose influence on the eThekwini conference proceedings has been criticised by people like KwaZulu-Natal’s ANC chairperson Sihle Zikalala as both undesirable and unwelcome.
I mean, the substance of it. The message. In the middle of this chaos, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa has been introspective and has let all in the party know that he was aware of what was at play, appealing to delegates in Mpumalanga to revisit their decision on Msibi, which followed immediately that of Newcastle’s Ntuthuko Mahlaba as eMalahleni regional chair in KwaZulu-Natal despite being convicted for assault. Ramaphosa did curse the king-makers.
Signals of an aggressive rejection of the ANC’s step-aside position are now everywhere as the outcomes of the latest leadership elections show direct defiance of Ramaphosa, who champions the position, along with the renewal programme.
Take the example of Zama Sokhabase, an Executive Committee member in eThekwini Municipality, who read Gumede’s letter of acceptance for the nomination, which was greeted with applause by her faction.
He put no qualifications on that. No limits. By that logic, if the king-makers nominate a kingpin horse, conference delegates will not say nay. They will just neigh.
It would be a sound as dignified as any they are making now in the government institutions failing to deliver services to communities because they are strangled by corrupt king-makers and kingpins. Ramaphosa’s title in the ANC is party leader. That last word is a joke in the face of events paving the way and the shaping up of the profile of delegates to the party national conference in December. He is not leading. He is following — and he is being yanked in unconscionable directions.
I say to the ANC politicians biting their tongues on this political indiscipline: It is one thing to tailor your position on party renewal and the rationale for waiting for formal outcomes of formal investigations into allegations of corruption before acting against the implicated party members or tweak your statements about trade per your voters’ shifting sentiments.
That is an acceptable part and parcel of democracy. It is another to coddle and abet a would-be corruption and murder convict and indulge their supporters’ cries that the current party president is illegitimate for upholding the rule of law and the interests of justice. That guts democracy.
And it is the point at which a real patriot inside and outside ANC structures must ask of themselves in response to the current wayward trends of electing party leaders: Am I making a forgiveable compromise to do some good down the line? Or am I lost?
I thought about that as I read recent media reports on Zweli Mkhize’s battles to clear his name on corruption allegations as he contests for the party presidency. I have spent time with Mkhize before, as I have with several other leaders vying for senior party leadership positions, and always found him to be sensible, sensitive, and intelligent. He has not been openly demagoguery, in the least, and he did not exhibit any desire to be.
But then, I guess, he examined the political landscape more closely — and began making his calculations when he interacted with ANC delegates ahead of their respective regional conferences. Zikalala dislikes the calculations.
Why? Zikalala got his hands on a private poll from a research tank consultant that shows that 82 percent of the party’s primary voters have a favourable view of Mkhize, and 70 percent think that Ramaphosa is misusing the step-aside rule to sideline leaders like Mkhize instead of excising delinquent politicians in his CR17 camp.
News reports of interviews with some conference delegates supporting individuals facing criminal charges revealed sprinkled touches of rejection of the step-aside rule into their pitch.
When pressed on whether they subscribed to the belief that the Ramaphosa faction is misusing the step-aside rule to sideline opponents, they bobbed, weaved, hemmed, hawed, and talked about the importance of recognising and addressing delegates’ lack of faith in the processes and outcomes of internal party disciplinary structures as well as in the country’s criminal justice system.
Faction members across the board expressed concerns about the real possibility of prosecution of individuals who used state resources to benefit ANC election machinery and its patronage networks by securing powerful individuals in the party and government positions.
No. Wrong. This is where Ramaphosa is an exemplary leader in calling for introspection over those who are quiet and not enforcing the step-aside rule.
When ANC factions engage in a kind of magical thinking that violates the very compact on which civic life and democracy depend, you confront that. You illuminate them. You do not murmur some mealy-mouthed version of “I see your point, chief” or “I respect your perspective, comrade.”
That is the job of ANC delegates who voted for questionable candidates.
Does this latest trend in the ANC survival politics, which have become mutually exclusive to the survival of our nation, leave you as depressed about politics in our rainbow nation as it does me?
I’m looking for hope and heroes, and I’m coming up painfully short.
Nyembezi is a policy analyst and human rights activist
Cape Times