Former President Jacob Zuma flanked by rovincial chairperson Sihle Zikalala. (Photo by Deaan Vivier/Beeld/Gallo Images via Getty Images)
The ANC’s persistence in enforcing its step-aside rule, its attitude towards former president Jacob Zuma and the distance between the party and the Zulu king are some of the issues featuring on a laundry list compiled by the province’s regional secretaries who met to form a united front going into KwaZulu-Natal’s conference set for July.
The newly-elected secretaries in KwaZulu-Natal’s 11 regions also met to establish a forum that will set the criteria for those wanting endorsements ahead of the conference.
Sources told the Mail & Guardian that the secretaries held their initial talks last week.
Three regional secretaries who attended the meeting said next on the to-do list is to consolidate their demands and then pick a candidate to back as provincial chairperson Sihle Zikalala’s successor.
“We had to look at the reasons why we are at this point where we have lost support in KZN, what led to this. We dealt with those challenges, now we will deal with solutions and form a programme of action. That programme will then talk to the names of the people who will lead that programme of action so that we don’t dip below 50% in the next elections,” one secretary said.
“That programme will be led by the regional leadership, not any groups or factions. We are trying to eliminate slates because we want to go as a block to the policy and national conferences so that whatever solution we want from these conferences, KZN is united.”
The person who emerges as provincial chair in July must be able to heal the rift between the ANC and the new Zulu king, Misizulu, after months of tension about his coronation, the three insiders said.
Zikalala’s future is uncertain, and ANC members in KwaZulu-Natal are struggling to place him regarding factions loyal to Zuma and President Cyril Ramaphosa. Zikalala’s position has been hard to read; he has often appeared at Zuma family events while also courting those aligned to Ramaphosa.
There have been discussions on whether it is possible to retain Zikalala and provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli, with some arguing that only one of them should return to their post.
The province has walked on eggshells around the issue of Zuma, with both Zikalala and Ntuli being booed during the former president’s court appearances for his corruption case. Last year, the two allegedly approached the ANC’s top six requesting that Zuma receive a presidential pardon after he was convicted of contempt of court by the constitutional court for defying an order to appear before the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture.
The two biggest regions in KwaZulu-Natal, Musa Dladla and eThekwini, were apparently among those in agreement that the implementation of the step-aside rule — which stipulates that those facing criminal charges must step aside from their party positions — must be challenged at the ANC’s policy and election conferences later this year. The Musa Dladla region resolved this issue at its conference in May.
“We also decided as secretaries to talk to KZN leaders who are in the national executive committee [NEC] and present our programmes so that they can assist us in uniting our regions and province,” another regional secretary told the M&G. “This will also help us in case these leaders have their own interests so they don’t caucus in dark corners. What is foremost to many of these regions is the issue of stepping aside and Nxamala [Zuma] and amaNazaretha [church, which had issues with the Covid-19 lockdowns]. These are the issues that cost us as KZN. We have also been affected by the distance between the ANC and the Zulu monarch.”
KwaZulu-Natal was deemed the biggest loser of the 2017 ANC conference at Nasrec when its chosen candidate, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, narrowly lost her bid to become the party’s president.
The province had gone to that conference divided, with a group aligned to Senzo Mchunu taking the then provincial executive committee to court and winning a case to have it nullified just before Nasrec.
Not only did KwaZulu-Natal — the ANC’s biggest province — not manage to get its preferred candidate elected as president, it also failed to have a presence among the ANC’s top officials for this current term.
Now there is a race to undo that, but with multiple leaders expressing a desire to lead in the ANC, the province has been divided on who to back.
NEC member Zweli Mkhize, who has been implicated in corruption, is believed to have won the support of some of these new regional leaders in his bid to become the new ANC president.
Zikalala himself has been touted as a possible secretary general while Ntuli has apparently squashed attempts to have his name thrown in the mix, saying it’s too soon to rise to the national political leadership and that he still had work to do in the province.
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