Saki Macozoma chronicles his journey out of the ANC into the Congress of the People. Mandy Rossouw reports
A key narrative of this year’s election is one of journeys out of the ANC into a new political home. One of the most significant of these is Saki Macozoma’s.
In the early Nineties he was the voice of the ANC helping the exiled movement to settle into the country it would soon govern.
A darling of Nelson Mandela, he was swiftly elevated to Parliament where he was appointed as chair of committees, a politically powerful job. It was recognition of his skill and also of his activism. Macozoma spent five years on Robben Island and cut his teeth in the burning streets of the mid-Seventies.
After Parliament business beckoned and Macozoma was appointed Transnet boss, from where he stepped into high corporate life. Today he is deputy chair of Standard Bank and holds a fist of directorships and leadership positions, among them chair of Business Leadership SA. We meet at a coffee shop across the road from the bank’s headquarters in Johannesburg.
I am surprised by the logic and rationality of Macozoma as we share lunch. He is clear about his decisions; there are no pensive moments or quiet reflections.
He chooses a meal of chicken breasts and still water — food as unfussy and unemotional as the conversation. I had expected greater sadness after the end of a 30-year relationship. Perhaps this is because the break-up’s been coming for more than a year now.
“If I look back to the formation of the ANC [government], the first danger signs I saw was around 1995. I was heading the ANC selection commission for local government and I was exposed to the extent that people were willing to wreck the organisation for positions. There were even physical assaults and things of this nature and it became clear to me then that the ANC [must do] something about the issue of what we call careerism today.”
Party members started seeing the ANC as a vehicle to wealth, he says, which led to the proliferation of corruption. “If you take people like [Nelson] Mandela and Thabo [Mbeki], they really tried to warn people about the dangers of this. It was always said we needed a political school. Secretary general after secretary general said we must do these things. It didn’t happen. In the end I think one of the things that sidetracked the ANC was governance. The [national] executive committee has been taken up by matters of governance rather than issues of the organisation.”
Another warning bell was when a judicial commission of inquiry into senior ANC members Mo Shaik and Mac Maharaj accused then national director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka (a close friend of Macozoma’s) of being a spy.
These allegations led to the establishment of the Hefer commission, which found there was no credible basis for such allegations.
“There were few people in the ANC who stood up and said this is wrong and Bulelani lost his job. Then it occurred to me that there were deeper problems in the ANC than I thought.”
In 2005 Macozoma noticed a car parked outside his home, obviously monitoring his movements. They were amateur intelligence agents, there on an unauthorised recce. He blew the whistle on what was to become known as the hoax email saga in which the factionalism in the ANC was laid bare.
Macozoma was accused of being part of a group of senior ANC Âmembers who were plotting to ensure ANC president Jacob Zuma did not become president. The evidence presented for this plot was a set of ham-fisted and fake email correspondence, obtained through the national intelligence agency (NIA).
“The secretary general, Kgalema [Motlanthe] at that time, put it into the public domain even though his common sense would have told him it was a hoax. And even after repeated attempts to try to defuse the situation, it became very clear to me that there was no room for someone like me in the ANC.”
It’s one of the few moments in the interview when Macozoma’s pain is palpable.
“There is a lot of emotion when your comrades turn against you [because] they don’t agree with your view. When they concoct hoax emails that are obviously untrue and then use that as evidence against you, that is really painful to go through.”
At the Polokwane conference in 2007 Macozoma did not make the cut for the top executive of the ruling party and the wedge between him and his movement widened. He was appalled when former youth league leader Fikile Mbalula was kidnapped and forced into an initiation school in the Western Cape. Macozoma said this was not done in the interests of culture but because people wanted him out of the way.
‘The ANC never said a word. And then, of course, there was the recall of Thabo Mbeki. So it became clear to me that there was no way in which the ANC could be reformed from within.”
His wife, Yolisa, was one of the first prominent people to help fundÂraise for Cope and eventually she convinced him to come out in support. He laughs as he tells me: “She was never a member of the ANC; I tried to convince her all these years but I couldn’t convince her.” She was the person who eventually persuaded him to jump ship. I ask him why it took so long.
“It would not have been in the interest of Cope to have a lot of Âpeople who were in the ANC and seen to be Mbeki supporters. Cope is not an extension of Thabo Mbeki, nor it is an extension of the fight in the ANC between Mbeki and Zuma supporters.
“It has to have a life of its own, a programme of its own and Âleadership of its own. To some extent that has been achieved and it is now appropriate for me to come out in support.”
Macozoma will not rally for Cope or take a position; his role is largely symbolic and advisory. Clearly, politics is no longer his life or his passion.
When ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe was asked a few weeks ago about whether Macozoma is still an ANC member, he answered that as far as the ANC was concerned Macozoma was already working for Cope. How did this make Macozoma feel?
“I stopped feeling for the ANC. Why should I stay in the ANC if this is what they do? If they say to people ‘we don’t care, let them do what they want’. I have never seen an attitude like that build an organisation, not even a burial society.”
The ANC may be in for a surprise on election day, says Macozoma. “They are dying a natural death by this arrogance. You don’t shout people down; you win them over with ideas. People are outraged by the ANC, by the swearing, the Âcomments —
“We don’t have to have a Âhegemony now; you need effective government. I don’t believe we need weak coalitions like in Italy. I think the idea of fighting for the political soul of the ANC must be shaken out of our political life and we must accept the DA might one day win elections. Cope might win elections. As long as there is no movement away from constitutional provisions.”