Johannesburg - Factionalism within the ruling ANC appears to have become the most thorny issue which is ravaging the soul of the party as it gears up to its elective conference towards the end of this year.
It remains to be seen how party president Jacob Zuma will deal with the issue at the ANC’s 105th anniversary celebrations at Orlando Stadium in Soweto on Sunday when he delivers the party’s traditional January 8 statement, outlining the party’s policy priorities for the year.
Factional battles which are tearing the ANC apart are proving to be so insurmountable that the party’s top brass could not even agree on a clear plan to deal with the issue during the party’s national executive committee (NEC) meeting this week.
The Sunday Independent understands from a source that after some deliberations on the issue, the NEC is said to have resigned itself to the fact that it would be difficult to curb the problem when the stakes are so high as this is the
election year.
The ANC is due to hold its elective conference in December, when party deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa is due to slug it out for the presidential position with AU Commission chairwoman Nkosasana Dlamini Zuma.
Without a clear plan on how to deal with factionalism, the NEC is said to have deferred the matter until such time that a clear strategy would have been devised to curb it.
“Factionalism becomes a matter of rhetoric because everybody is saying this and that, and pushing their candidates,” said the source.
“It was just an agreement that we need to agree on the principles. As you know, you can’t proclaim unity because the stakes are very high. Talk of unity is a song that everybody is singing without practising it.”
The build-up to Zuma’s last January 8 statement as ANC president has been punctuated by calls for unity amid fears of ructions that could result in yet another breakaway after the party’s national elective conference in December.
Zuma’s rise to power was marked by similar rumpus and divisions in the party which saw his leadership transition begin with an ANC splinter party - Cope.
It is also under Zuma’s ANC presidency that former youth leader Julius Malema was expelled before he led another splinter group which resulted in the EFF.
ANC leaders have been on a frantic drive this week to paper over the cracks and project a united front at Orlando Stadium today.
Party leaders criss-crossed Gauteng townships to mobilise support after the ANC suffered a bruising local government election loss in the key metros in the province for the first time.
ANC NEC member and Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba told the party’s Joe Slovo branch in Yeoville on Friday that this time the ANC leadership transition must not result in members leaving the party.
“If anything, unlike in Polokwane and in Mangaung (2007 and 2012 conferences) when the 2017 national conference comes to an end, there must be nobody who has resolved to leave the ANC,” Gigaba said.
He was flanked by fellow NEC members Fikile Xasa and Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom.
Hanekom was lauded for his courageous leadership after he reportedly led a charge calling for Zuma to step down in the ANC NEC last December.
Sasabona Manganye, zonal secretary of the ANC in the Joburg inner city and a leader of #OccupyLuthuliHouse,
which also called on Zuma to step down, said officials were not ashamed to be associated with Hanekom and his
leadership.
“Comrade Derek Hanekom, I am told that you are representing the inner city very well in the NEC, we commend you for that,” he said to loud cheers.
Hanekom, for his part, steered clear of making any controversial comments, but spoke about revolutionary leaders and icons of the ANC in whose footsteps many wanted to walk.
Gigaba warned that with the stakes raised in the ANC leadership election year, political and memorial lectures are going to be held even for the living.
“And those memorial lectures are, almost without exception, going to be used to project individuals and to insult others in the name of the heroes and heroines of our movement,” he added.
The SACP has also waded in on the issue of factionalism as its senior leader called on the ANC on Friday to dismantle the so-called premier league faction, which is believed to be driving the campaign to install Dlamini Zuma as the party’s next president.
In a hard-hitting address at the 22nd commemoration of the late SACP leader Joe Slovo in Soweto, SACP second deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila said that unity of the ruling party was non-negotiable.
The party has been battling factions over who should succeed Zuma as ANC leader when he steps down in December.
The SACP and Cosatu want Ramaphosa to succeed Zuma, while another
grouping, led by the premiers of Mpumalanga, Free State and North West, and the party’s youth and women’s leagues, want Dlamini Zuma for the top job. Zuma is viewed as supporting the latter grouping.
Mapaila said the communist party wanted to be in alliance with the
movement, and not its factions. “No matter how strong a faction in the movement is, we can never enter into alliance with a faction - that is why we
have called on our movement to deal decisively with factions inside the movement, for instance, to dismantle, henceforth, the faction called the premier league.
“That one at least is known, and those comrades have never denied it. Why is the leadership unable to confront this faction and dismantle it?” he said.
According to him, the faction should not exist because “it puts us in a dilemma as to who we relate to. We don’t want to relate to factions, but with our movement and all democratic organs of our movement”.
Ramaphosa, who led an ANC delegation at the event, also weighed in on the issue as he lashed out at what he described as a social ill.
He said the ANC was “riddled with factions, and even leaders are leaders of factions”.
He called on ANC branches to be proactive and stand up against what was happening in the movement.
The deputy president’s sentiments were echoed by Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor, who reminded those in attendance that the fate of the ANC lay in their hands.
“Leaders won’t rescue the movement,” she said, adding that power lay in the ANC branches. Pandor’s rallying cry was: “Use that power to rescue the movement."
Mapaila said the SACP would not allow the country to reverse the progress of the past two decades, but warned of the emergence of a “reckless demagogue inside the movement, and conservative populism that is bringing this country backwards, including bringing about issues of tribalism and regionalism”.
The primary task of the ANC, he said, was to unite the African people. “The masses have expressed a view about our movement, all of us must undergo a deep self-introspection. And when we undergo this, we must never hold the movement hostage for the interest of one individual or a few individuals. We must be firm in this regard.
"The movement must find mechanisms so that all of us can comply with its values and discipline.”
He said the national democratic revolution was under threat because of individuals who saw the movement as a “vehicle for self-enrichment and enrichment of their families and their friends”.
The president, he said, needed to use his prerogative to unite, strengthen and advance the revolution.
Mapaila also warned against divisions and patronage, where individuals were being "worshipped".
In the lead-up to this year’s January 8 statement, unlike in many previous years, the ANC had a rather subdued campaign to drum up support for its 105th anniversary celebrations at Orlando Stadium.
Most of the public campaigns were left until late in the week, with Ramaphosa being the notable figure doing door-to-door campaigns. Barring his appearance on Vilakazi Street on Friday, Zuma seemed to have been largely missing in action.
The Sunday Independent understands that Zuma’s peripheral role in the campaigns was a strategy aimed at avoiding the possibility of a hostile reception he was likely to get in Gauteng. The Gauteng ANC, under the leadership of Paul Mashatile, is known to be antagonistic to Zuma.