The Western Cape ANC is under pressure to abandon an unwritten rule that its chairperson be coloured, Rehana Rossouw reports
SENIOR sources in the Western Cape ANC say a major shake-up is required if the party expects to challenge the National Party in 1999 for control of the province.
Following their crushing defeat in urban local government elections in May, the ANC has begun admitting it has crippling weaknesses and little support among the biggest voting bloc in the province — urban, working-class coloured people.
Its biennial conference in September offers an opportunity to rebuild the organisation. But it appears to have sparked a leadership tussle rather than a chance to produce a strategy to increase the party’s popularity in the province.
An internal assessment after the election concluded ANC structures were weak, its political message does not grab voters and its leadership cannot whip the party into shape.
Some regional leaders blame the ANC’s national leadership for the mess in which they find themselves. They complain there is little understanding among national leaders of the peculiarities of the region and far too much interference in decision-making, particularly about who should lead the Western Cape ANC.
“The rot set in way back in 1991 at our first conference when President Nelson Mandela virtually instructed us to vote for Allan Boesak as leader of the province. We weren’t allowed to consider who was the best person for the job,” said a member of the regional executive committee.
“That leadership style is wrong, and it was proven when it didn’t work. You can’t pin all your hopes on a Messiah, you can’t decide that because a person has a certain skin colour and religious background that he is the best person for the job.”
Another executive committee member said he noticed during the run-up to the May elections that ANC leaders did not understand how national politics impacted on the Western Cape electorate.
“It will be an ongoing project to get them to understand the unique aspects of this province. Nationally, voters may welcome redeployment of teachers and affirmative action in the workplace, but those messages have to be amended to find resonance here,” he said.
“Some of our national leaders came to the Cape to address public meetings with quite crude and conservative viewpoints on coloured nationalism. It might have drawn a few laughs but it does nothing to help our cause to eliminate racism in the region.”
The race to find the right leadership for the job by September has completely overshadowed early preparations for the conference. The ANC’s incumbent chair, Reverend Chris Nissen who won the position by default when Boesak stepped down, is not available for re-election.
For some, this creates the opportunity to elect a leader from the ranks of the ANC’s power base in the Cape, its branches in African areas. For others, the race is on to find someone who will woo coloured voters, preferably an older statesman, fluent in Afrikaans and of sober, Christian habits.
Possible candidates for the position of chairperson include Justice Minister Dullah Omar, national assembly MP Tony Yengeni and health and welfare MPL Ebrahim Rasool.
“The National Party has a white premier, Hernus Kriel, and a white leader in the province, Dawie de Villiers. That proves ethnicity is not an important factor for the electorate,” said a senior ANC member who favours the election of an African leader.
“Coloured voters are incredibly conservative and deeply racist. They really believe that their houses, jobs and schools are going to be taken away by the ANC and given to blacks. That’s why we need leadership that can reassure them that the ANC is a party for them as well,” was another viewpoint.
Then there are those who believe what is required is a leadership team, who can be everything to all potential voters and reflects whatever programme of action is drafted by conference.
“The ANC has been extremely successful in putting a lid on the potential for racial polarisation in the ranks, but it is starting to break out,” warned a senior Khayelitsha member. “It hasn’t been raised in meetings yet, but some of our members are starting to say that they’ve lost hope of coloureds ever supporting the ANC and the leadership should reflect its paid-up, committed members.
“This situation isn’t helped by the caucuses, cliques and factions which always emerge on the eve of conference. There are already people going around the townships urging people to vote for them and pouring mud on the integrity of other possible leaders.
“These tussles must not be allowed to cloud the fundamental question at conference: what has the ANC done wrong up to now in the Western Cape and what should it do to win 1999?
“The leadership squabbles should be properly managed so that it does not break out and destroy the little that is left of the ANC in the Cape. It has the potential to split the organisation in two.”