Standard Bank has flagged a “stealthy” run at the ANC presidency by treasurer general Paul Mashatile.
Standard Bank has flagged a “stealthy” run at the ANC presidency by treasurer general Paul Mashatile, who it believes may be able to benefit from the scandals faced by incumbent Cyril Ramaphosa and challenger Zweli Mkhize.
The bank’s political economy analysts also say Mashatile has positioned himself as the perfect “compromise candidate” for president should either Ramaphosa or Mkhize be barred from standing over any fallout from the ANC’s integrity commission (IC) over the Phala Phala and Digital Vibes matters.
The prediction was made this week in a Weekly Talking Point, a briefing to select corporate and institutional clients by Standard Bank’s research department that is not meant to be distributed to the media.
In it, Standard Bank Research political economic analyst Simon Freemantle said Mashatile had also recently been marketing himself to the business community and elsewhere as a “more decisive” leader than Ramaphosa.
Mashatile has accepted nominations to stand as ANC deputy president at its national conference in December, but has also indicated that he will stand as president should Ramaphosa be barred from standing.
In the briefing, the bank predicts that Ramaphosa, having survived the “Phala Phala attacks” at last weekend’s national executive committee (NEC) meeting, is likely to secure a second term.
“This outcome provides a further indication of the president’s political authority within
the NEC — and the related weakness of the RET [radical economic transformation] faction — and validates our long-held view that the Phala Phala matter will not prevent his re-election as party leader next month,” it said.
The president still faced risks related to the report of the parliamentary panel set up to determine if there is a case to impeach him, along with a call for a special NEC ahead of the conference, the bank added.
It said Mashatile’s presidential play had emerged more clearly at the NEC and that any disruption of either Ramaphosa or Mkhize’s bid would “most benefit” Mashatile, who had used his role as acting secretary general to “deepen his base across the party”.
“We believe that the push for the president’s removal at this past NEC meeting was a long-planned strategy by a variety of individuals and factional groupings that have consistently agitated against his political authority and were clustered around [Nkosazana] Dlamini Zuma’s 2017 presidential campaign,” it said.
“Though Mashatile may not be directly associated with such groupings, the reality that he stands to benefit if they succeed in weakening the president creates a tactical (even if
tacit) alliance between them.”
Standard Bank said Mashatile had been “deliberate” in the run up to the NEC meeting in emphasising that the step-aside rule applied not only to those who had been criminally charged, but also to those who the integrity commission found had brought the ANC into disrepute.
Mashatlie’s comments in the media that he would stand as president should Ramaphosa be barred from contesting were part of his “shrewd, and deftly delivered” political strategy, the bank said.
In consolidating the deputy president nomination Mashatile had thus far avoided a direct confrontation with Ramaphosa and had “positioned himself as the president’s natural successor at the next ANC conference in 2027”.
“At the same time, Mashatile has built a broad enough provincial support base to emerge as a compromise candidate for the presidency should president Ramaphosa be ineligible to contest in December; or be forced to step aside at some point during his second term,” it said.
Mashatile’s “firm defence” of the step-aside rule should be seen with this strategy in mind, rather than being driven by his own clear commitment to internal party renewal, the bank said.
“Mashatile has also been quietly lobbying key constituencies, including business, in recent months, arguing that he would be a more decisive leader than President Ramaphosa has been,” it said.
This reflected both Mashatile’s distance from the RET faction in the ANC and his awareness of growing business frustration over the slow pace of Ramaphosa’s economic reform agenda.
Ramaphosa’s allies were likely to make a “spirited rush” to bolster the campaigns of the other candidates for deputy president to prevent Mashatile being elected and weakening the president’s internal party authority, the bank said.
There was also a possibility that Mashatile might contest the presidency from the floor.
“We believe that Mashatile poses a more substantial longer-term challenge to President Ramaphosa than Mkhize does, which may lead the president’s supporters to prefer Mkhize’s potential DP bid to Mashatile’s.”
But such a move would create deep divisions in provinces such as Limpopo and Gauteng, which have been key to the president’s internal party consolidation since 2017.
Whatever the outcome, it was becoming “increasingly clear that Mashatile will be the primary beneficiary of any material Phala Phala fallout”.
In response to questions from Mail & Guardian, Standard Bank chief executive officer Sim Tshabalala said the Weekly Talking Points aimed “to provide high-quality economic, political economy, and asset price analysis to institutional investors”.
It was meant to be circulated to a select group of the bank’s institutional and corporate clients and was not intended for media purposes or to “influence public conversation in any way”.
Tshabalala said Mashatile had not interacted directly with Standard Bank, but had participated in various discussions over the course of this year with business and local and international stakeholders at which he had “presented his views on the economy and on the challenges facing the political system”.
These included a discussion hosted by Chatham House in August.
Tshabalala said Standard Bank had no preferred candidate in the ANC contest, or concerns that the December conference might elect a leadership that was less friendly to the business community.
“Standard Bank has never — and will never — take a partisan political position. We have taken public stances in support of the Constitution or on specific policy issues relating directly to the financial sector — with the prospect of FATF [Financial Action Task Force] grey-listing being a recent example. We will in all likelihood continue to do so,” he said.
“We are always scrupulously careful never to be seen to favour or disfavour any particular party, faction, or individual politician. We are clear that our social function is to offer financial services to all of society — within the law, of course. It would be totally inappropriate and illegitimate for us to take a partisan stance.”
Tshabalala said whoever emerged as ANC leader was bound by its policies, which were “broadly pro-growth,” and which emerged from “quite different processes” to the leadership elections.
The ANC’s economic policy documents aligned with the government’s economic reconstruction and recovery plan which, if implemented, would “provide important support to the country’s economic recovery”.
“Business is a key component of the delivery of this plan too. We do not expect the ANC’s policy agenda to materially change in December from this basis,” he said.
Tshabalala said conversations with investors indicated that they saw the contestation within and between parties as “a normal aspect of democracy”.
“Indeed, this transparent democratic contestation, and growing political sophistication, is perceived as being a positive for the South African investment case,” he said, adding that no investor had expressed concern to him about the consequences of the ANC leadership elections in December.
“Generally in our conversations with investors, they focus on the macroeconomic variables, the structural fundamentals of the economy, and on business climate issues such as, for example, load shedding, issues around the prospect of grey listing, and the challenges facing Transnet,” he said.
Tshabalala said he believed there was “generally too much focus on personalities” in South African political discourse, with a result that “we tend not to see what policies are settled and what choices we actually have”.
“It also makes us vulnerable to being over-influenced by emotions and memories and too little by the facts at hand,” he added.
[/membership]