Crucial meetings: The ANC top six comprises (from left) Jessie Duarte, Ace Magashule, Gwede Mantashe, Cyril
Ramaphosa, David Mabuza and Paul Mashatile . (Delwyn Verasamy)
As ANC secretary general Ace Magashule prepares to face the governing party’s integrity committee this weekend, ANC branches are scrambling to get their members registered by 15 December — the cut-off date for them to be included at its crucial regional and provincial conferences that kick off next month.
Although President Cyril Ramaphosa has won the latest battle in the fight to cleanse the party of corruption-accused leaders, with its top leadership reaffirming the decision to force them to step aside from their party and state posts, the fight now moves to the conferences.
The 20 regional and provincial conferences were given the go-ahead by the party’s national executive committee (NEC), which wrapped up a three-day virtual meeting on Tuesday.
The NEC meeting, at which supporters of the ANC secretary general had hoped to halt moves to force him to stand aside, confirmed its August decision to implement the rule, in line with the resolutions of its 54th national conference in December 2017. It decided that the party’s top six officials would now draft guidelines for implementing the decision, which has threatened to split the party, and present them to the ANC national working committee (NWC) and the NEC when they meet again next year.
In his closing address to the NEC meeting, Ramaphosa announced that Magashule, who is out on bail after being arrested over the R255-million Free State asbestos audit scandal, would appear before the party’s integrity commission on 12 December. Magashule has previously declared that he would not step aside, but the integrity commission will make recommendations to the leadership as to what action to take regarding the secretary general.
The decision is a blow not only to Magashule, the former Free State premier, but also to his supporters, who had hoped to force the NEC to reconsider the “stand aside” decision, based on five legal opinions secured by Magashule’s office, which said it was not legally implementable. They had also hoped to force Ramaphosa to appear before the integrity commission over the funding of his 2017 campaign for the ANC presidency, should the bid to prevent Magashule from being forced to account for the Free State looting fail.
Their threats of anarchy in the streets over the arrest of Magashule — and the burning of ANC paraphernalia outside his court appearance last month — also appear to have backfired, with the NEC formally condemning the actions of the protesters and calling them to order.
Magashule’s supporters also lost a bid to host the party’s 8 January celebrations in Mangaung — he had announced outside court that it would be doing so — with the NEC deciding to hold the event virtually and in Limpopo. Magashule’s faction had hoped to use the event both to harass Ramaphosa and to stage a show of support for the embattled secretary general in his home territory, and to whip up support for him ahead of his February court appearance.
Ramaphosa used his political report at the start of the meeting — which was broadcast, an unusual move for the governing party — to “draw a line in the sand” over the implementation of both the conference resolutions and the “stand aside” rule.
Ramaphosa’s supporters managed to dismiss the argument that the legal opinions against the “stand aside” rule meant the conference resolution could not be implemented until the ANC constitution was amended. Instead, the NEC decided that the officials should draft guidelines for implementing the decision, which would then be ratified by the NWC and NEC.
Ramaphosa said the officials would have to meet with the party’s provincial secretaries and the secretaries of its women’s and youth leagues, which were also battling to implement the “stand aside” rule. He said the lower structures experienced “precisely the same challenges” as the NEC. “We need to integrate the experience of all the structures of our movement in arriving at a cogent … position,” Ramaphosa said.
Zuma attended the virtual NEC meeting, in a seeming display of support for Magashule. Former president Thabo Mbeki also participated, a move of some significance — it was the first NEC meeting he had attended since being recalled in September 2008.
Ramaphosa said the NEC had condemned the burning of ANC regalia and the verbal attacks on the party’s leadership outside Magashule’s court appearance last month. He called on all ANC members to refrain from such behaviour. “It is not acceptable, and it must stop,” he said.
Ramaphosa said predictions that the NEC meeting would disintegrate into chaos because of the admittedly severe divisions over the issue had not materialised.
He said the ANC was a voluntary organisation, and that, although it had secured legal opinions on the “stand aside” rule, it had a moral obligation to implement the resolution.
The formal statement released by the NEC said that although it “noted” the legal opinions secured by Magashule’s office, which were “important as background information”, the resolutions would be implemented.
The fight for control of the governing party will now move from the NEC — which will meet again only next year — to the party’s provincial and regional structures, 17 of which will hold their elective conferences by April, ahead of the party’s next national general council meeting.
Among the first will be eThekwini, where corruption accused former mayor Zandile Gumede is preparing to contest the post of chairperson again. The KwaZulu-Natal leadership disbanded the eThekwini region.
North West, currently under curatorship, will also go to a conference in January. The Magashule faction in the province hopes to re-elect Supra Mahumapelo as chairperson and take back control of the province it lost when the NEC dissolved the provincial executive council and recalled Mahumapelo as premier.
Magashule’s office — and his role in it if he survives his weekend engagement with the integrity commission — will be central to the conference processes because the running of the party structures falls under his mandate. If Magashule is removed, the bulk of the tasks of overseeing the membership audits and signing off on the branch general meetings (BGMs) and the conference outcomes will fall to his deputy, Jessie Duarte, and national chairperson Gwede Mantashe.
The NEC also authorised the “reinforcement” of the NEC deployees to the provinces. Part of their mandate is to oversee BGMs and regional and provincial conferences, together with the officials of the secretary general’s office.
The NEC has given members until 15 December to update their memberships using the ANC’s online system, introduced to prevent the gatekeeping and membership fraud that marred its 2017 and 2012 conferences. Significantly, the NEC instructed the ANC’s provincial and regional leaders that no structures should be disbanded, to prevent gatekeeping by regional or provincial leaders wanting to manipulate the process ahead of the conferences by collapsing the branches dominated by the rival faction.
[/membership]