The presdent’s handling of the leadership issue is an indication that the ANC is asserting the importance of the organisation over the individual.Stefaans Brmmer and Marion Edmunds report
PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela’s weekend statement to his party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) was less a reflection on Thabo Mbeki’s chances to be his political heir than a lifting of the lid on a carefully managed process to find the next deputy president – and eventually Mbeki’s successor as president.
The Mail & Guardian learned from a well- placed government official this week that Mandela recently called in Mbeki and then Jacob Zuma, the man many see as the African National Congress’s and the country’s deputy president under Mbeki, to tell them an alternative candidate to Zuma – someone not seen to be as close to Mbeki – should be found.
Mandela’s pre-emptive action to avoid a divisive race for the second highest office in the party next year when he retires as ANC president, and in the country when he leaves office in 1999, corroborates the view that Mandela’s statement to the ANC NEC, that he had not “anointed” Mbeki as it was a decision for party structures, was above all a statement reasserting the primacy of the party. It may have been a subtle warning to, among others, those who might have thought their political futures depended on the fortunes of Mbeki.
Mandela’s representative Parks Mankahlana said it was wrong to see the statement as a withdrawal of support. “Madiba’s main worry has been that he doesn’t want Thabo to be seen [in a leadership position] by his grace, as Thabo’s authority would then be questionable. Thabo must be seen to be riding to the presidency on his own.”
The government official said: “Some time ago Mandela called in Mbeki and said, `Let’s deal with the issue of the deputy presidency. I don’t want it to be someone close to you, because – although it’s untrue – there is this image that people get hired or fired because they are close to you.'”
The official said Mbeki agreed there was an “image problem” and that a process to canvass ANC structures for an independent candidate – and young enough so that he or she could be groomed to take over from Mbeki after he had served “one or two terms” as president – could be identified. Zuma, who has been very close to Mbeki during their shared years in exile, was disqualified on both counts.
Mandela then called in Zuma, breaking the news to him. Mandela suggested outgoing ANC secretary-general Cyril Ramaphosa as a candidate, but did not pursue it when “everyone said, `No, he’s out or on his way out.'”
The official said another name was “given to” Mandela after more consultation. He did not say who it was.
Ramaphosa, the man who was until earlier this year seen as the main challenger to Mbeki himself, was reluctant to talk directly about Mandela’s NEC statement this week, but sketched the context like this: “Mandela was asserting the centrality of the ANC again, submerging himself and other personalities to the ANC … He was emphasising the importance of the organisations above the individual.
“This is a central thread that runs through all the developments within the ANC this year – through Rocky Malebane-Metsing, through Bantu, through Winnie … The ANC is reasserting itself as an organisation … and it feels good to be in that type of ANC.”
Ramaphosa spoke as if perhaps it was not so good, at one point after 1994, to be in the ANC. Earlier reports told of a feeling that the ANC lost some of its soul and spirit under the pressures of its new role in government. At the time South African Communist Party veteran and NEC member Jeremy Cronin was one of the few to say publicly that the party needed resuscitation and that the government, with its operators, bureaucrats and consultants, was setting the agenda, not Shell House.
Cronin this week said the party was back on its feet. “Two major position papers have emerged and they are very much ANC papers, with a fair amount of political stocktaking, rather than governmental and technical reviews … The party is returning to strategic political and programmatic discussions … Mandela was reaffirming collective leadership and saying that nobody, including the president, was above the party structures.”
This would please Cronin, who does not have a position in government; it would please Ramaphosa, who has been alienated from government and is unlikely to return; and it would please Mandela himself, who is taking stock and wanting to leave as his legacy a united party, free from leadership divisions and faction fighting.
It is just as well Mandela has made the statement now, as he has recently been clumsy in the way he positioned himself in relation to key appointments. His open support for new Chief Justice Ishmail Mohamed, for example, was controversial because it appeared to be undermining the appointment procedure. Similarly his easy devolution of responsibilities to Mbeki was beginning to be viewed by some commentators in the same light.
Mankahlana this week denied there were any serious divisions in the ANC, but acknowledged there was a problem surrounding the perception of factions backing different candidates for leadership positions.