Police Minister Senzo Mchunu
As the dust settles on the bruising defeat of former ANC KwaZulu-Natal chairperson Sihle Zikalala and his subsequent resignation as premier, the man who once suffered a similar fate at the hands of Zikalala, Senzo Mchunu, says the ousting of his successor has not brought him any pleasure.
Zikalala was defeated by Siboniso Duma at the province’s elective conference in July, and also failed to make the cut for the governing party’s provincial executive committee (PEC).
In an interview with the Mail & Guardian, Mchunu said there was a misconception — illustrated in social media posts, WhatsApp messages he had received and even during the provincial conference itself — that he was happy about Zikalala’s defeat.
“They assumed I was happy. Some of them would send me messages [saying] ‘I am sure you are smiling’,” Mchunu said, adding that the defeat was not something he would have wished on anyone.
One of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s most trusted allies, Mchunu was largely relegated to the political wilderness after his 2015 defeat. Like Zikalala, he was also unable to retain a seat in the PEC at the time. After the conference, he was booted out of the provincial office and the schism widened between those in the party who supported then president Jacob Zuma, such as Zikalala, and those who wanted an alternative leader.
It was a time of political upheaval in KwaZulu-Natal, characterised by such an alarming number of political killings that caretaker premier Willies Mchunu established the Moerane Commission to investigate the causes.
Mchunu’s time as the head honcho in the province and the influence that comes with it is long gone. This was evident when his wife Thembeka, who was in the running for chairperson of the Musa Dladla region, was beaten by latecomer Musa Cebekhulu.
Mchunu, who sat in a lowly corner as an invited national executive committee (NEC) member at the KwaZulu-Natal June conference as delegates chanted for Zikalala’s removal, said he thought about what happened in 2015 versus what “was happening now” and what it all meant for the ANC.
“I sat there with one wish that whatever the outcome is, there must be some kind of deep dive renewal among all of us in KZN as members of the ANC, so that once more the ANC can fly higher just like it did over the years up to the 2009 elections. I was looking [and] listening [to] the proceedings … whether via comments or individuals shouting.”
Mchunu argues that during his 15-year stint as one of two provincial secretaries, the leaders at the time brought stability to KwaZulu-Natal, which he attributes to its strong electoral results in 2009 and 2014.
“That is why, from 2003 up till 2012, the ANC in KZN was hailed for unity. It was stability that brought unity. The structural set-up and the mechanical set-up. It was how you structure the ANC rather than individuals that would come in and go. After a long time we not only got experience but the organisation stabilised, which was beneficial to the ANC,” he said.
“It was the strength of the ANC from one level to the other in terms of results of both 2009 in particular and 2014 as well. But 2009 was sweet. If you look at that beyond 2015, there have been many changes. There was one conference declared null and void as an interim committee … You then began the period of instability and therefore what did it do to unity?”
In the 2009 national elections, the ANC graduated from the opposition benches in KwaZulu-Natal to become the majority party, garnering 62.95% of the vote from 46.98% in the previous vote. But it regressed to 54.22% at the 2019 elections under the Zikalala-led administration.
The unity Mchunu speaks of was the result of a 13-hour meeting between Zweli Mkhize, Sbu Ndebele and himself which collapsed the various political blocks. As a result, Mchunu said, the province performed well “until something came that disturbed that kind of unity”.
Although the high court in Pietermaritzburg declared the conference at which Mchunu was deposed, null and void, his time in the top political echelons in KwaZulu-Natal had come to a close. Just months after the 2015 conference was declared unlawful by the courts, the province, with the aid of the Zuma-led national working committee, pressured Mchunu to step down in 2016.
The feud between factions loyal to Mchunu and those loyal to Zikilala culminated in the boycott of the ANC ward councillor selection process, the alleged assassination of candidates and a public spat between supporters of the two leaders, as reported by the M&G at the time.
Although Mchunu has lost favour in some regions, there are still murmurs among some in the ANC about a possible second shot at the post of national secretary general, a position he narrowly lost to Ace Magashule in 2017.
“In the context of thinking positively and wanting to make a difference at whatever role, including the role you would have thought you would never play a role in … I would think positively about the call to make myself available if it does happen,” he said.
Mchunu’s role as head of organising places him in a favourable position for ascendance. But he and several other Ramaphosa allies have been accused of meddling in recent provincial and regional conferences to ensure that the president makes it back for another term as ANC leader, an allegation he denies.
Mchunu is also charged with ensuring that the membership system runs smoothly and oversees branch general meetings at which leaders are nominated. But the new membership system has been blamed for the numerous disputes and chaotic scenes that have plagued recent ANC provincial and regional conferences.
The new digital online system was introduced in 2019 to try to curb the problem of gatekeeping, but some people claim to have been denied membership as a result. Under the system, a branch is allowed two scanners and those in charge of them are trained at the ANC’s Luthuli House national headquarters. They are tasked with scanning each member’s identity document before branch meetings. The scanners are used to verify a member’s ID and their ANC membership.
Mchunu conceded that some branch secretaries had found devious means of practising gatekeeping in their own selfish interests. At least two staff members at Luthuli House who were found to have colluded with provinces to manipulate membership were fired.
With the ANC expected to close its new membership registration ahead of its December national conference, Mchunu said his office would tighten the system to guard against manipulation. He said one of the pitfalls in the system was that it allowed for the manual scanning of members’ old identity documents and some branch members had manipulated this to harvest the IDs of people who had not attended meetings.
“They just flooded the manual scan … That is why people believe that the system doesn’t work. It’s not the system,” he said, adding that the NEC had agreed that manual scanning during branch meetings be done away with.
“We have banned manual scanning except in approved cases … We do have manipulators, we do have people who have lost respect for the ANC,” he said, adding that branch secretaries would no longer be allowed to keep people in the queue for more than 14 days.
“You must process people as soon as they arrive. What we no longer want and are not going to tolerate is branch secretaries [who] keep you waiting and waiting for more than 14 days, which is actually gatekeeping. That will make our system gain the integrity that it deserves.”
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