African National Congress leaders are meeting over four days next week to try to revitalise party strategy and firm up ailing provincial leaderships after local government elections yielded a number of disappointing results.
Their unhappiness centres mainly on the outcome of voting last month in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. ANC leadership in these two provinces will be called on to explain the party’s poor showings there. ANC sources predict that the position of the party’s Western Cape provincial chair, Ebrahim Rasool, is under threat. KwaZulu-Natal ANC leader S’bu Ndebele may also face censure at the meeting.
The lekgotla, which will bring together all members of the ANC national executive committee at an undisclosed venue, is likely to set a date for the election of provincial leaderships in Gauteng and Free State. The two provinces currently have interim party leadership structures imposed by the national executive committee in May last year following infighting among elected provincial leaders.
Elections for ANC provincial executive committees in the other seven provinces are also expected to be confirmed for June this year. The ANC leadership lekgotla precedes a similar meeting of government ministers and top government officials set for later this month and a long-awaited summit of the tripartite alliance that will bring together the national leaderships of the ANC, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party.
Next week’s ANC leadership meeting is, therefore, likely to set policy and tone for the new year after what most observers consider was an awful year for President Thabo Mbeki and his government in 2000. In local government elections, the ANC won only one out of the nine district councils in KwaZulu-Natal,with the others going to the Inkatha Freedom Party.
The IFP also won 28 local councils, adding former ANC-run municipalities such as Ladysmith, Greytown and Newcastle to its tally. And, against expectations, the ANC failed to win a two-thirds majority in Durban Metro. In the Western Cape, the ANC won only three municipalities and one district council out of the 30 local governments in the province. But, with a number of hung local governments, the ANC still does not have a final tally of councils it controls.
Senior ANC members in the Western Cape say local party structures are currently plagued by tension and infighting. There are expectations that the national ANC leadership may deploy someone from national structures to head the party in the province because most potential contenders for the provincial party leadership are associated with factionalism in the province.
“This would enhance the ability of the party to take on the Democratic Alliance [government in the province],” said one party member. Unhappiness in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape also results from a widespread view that the party’s local election strategies were ill-conceived. Moreover, Ndebele’s threat against KwaZulu-Natal residents who voted for the DA and other parties has caused unhappiness in the party’s provincial structures.
In the Western Cape a poster campaign linking support for the DA to support for Israel on grounds that DA leader Tony Leon is Jewish has also given rise to concern within the ANC. The party denied any involvement in the posters, but there are worries that individual ANC members were responsible for it. The ANC’s lacklustre campaign in the Western Cape, which involved hurried, last-minute appearances by Mbeki, the party president, has also caused discontent.
There is a growing feeling in KwaZulu-Natal that Ndebele could be edged out by the more “level-headed” deputy chair Zweli Mkhize when the party’s provincial executive is chosen in June. The last election for the provincial party chair was a closely contested affair between the two men.
The ANC’s northern structures in the province have been plagued with infighting, which contributed to it losing strongholds such as Newcastle to Inkatha in last month’s local government elections. Disillusioned party members in the area attribute the loss to the failure of the party’s provincial leadership to defuse the conflict in the area.
These issues are bound to surface at the party’s national leadership meeting next week.
Cloupous Nsibande, convener of the ANC’s interim structure in Gauteng, and Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi feel that one of the major causes for concern arising out of the local government elections was the lower voter turnout among younger voters, particularly in the 18 to 28 age group.
Gauteng had one of the lowest voter turnouts (43%) of all nine provinces, and was second only to the Northern Province, which drew 42% of voters to the polling stations. Nsibande says the youth have lost direction as a result of the high rate of unemployment. Former Gauteng chair of the ANC Mathole Motshekga feels that a lack of delivery of services kept ANC supporters away from the polls.
Senior ANC members in KwaZulu-Natal also believe that controversial stances adopted by Mbeki and other national leaders on issues such as HIV/Aids were used effectively by the opposition to build an anti-ANC vote. The ANC is understood to be compiling a list of constituencies that are predominantly white, Indian or coloured and where the party polled a reasonable number of votes with a view to consolidating support in these areas.
Nsibande concedes that the “DA has done well it has made some inroads”. But senior ANC members believe the DA does not constitute an immediate potential threat to the ANC’s mainly black support base.