With only one veteran premier, Gauteng’s Mbhazima Shilowa, left in office after the April elections, the African National Congress has battled inexperience and careerism for most of 2004.
President Thabo Mbeki runs a managerial administration, so premiers not only have to translate policy into programmes, they are also kept to strict implementation deadlines. And the ruling party is also suffering from the ”dented ego” syndrome, where leaders who had expected high national or provincial office and did not get appointed, now snipe at incumbents.
”We took a deep dive after those announcements before we normalised again and since then it has been a stop-start approach for most leaders battling to familiarise themselves with their new positions,” said an ANC provincial leader.
Internecine battles in the Eastern Cape have left the party as disunited as it was before the appointment of the compromise candidate, Nosimo Balindlela in April. The provincial chairperson, Enoch Godongwana, was axed as provincial minister of finance and economics and has now quit provincial politics.
In the Free State, Premier Beatrice Marshoff was always going to have a tough time as did her predecessors Mosiuoa Lekota and Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri. The party’s provincial chairperson, Ace Magashule, is a perennial grassroots favourite who has never quite cut it with party chiefs who decide on premier appointments.
In May, after Marshoff’s appointment, the provincial ANC accused her of not consulting it and of seeing herself as only accountable to Mbeki.
Marshoff has had a stormy time, lacking the trust of bureaucrats and of provincial ministers. Some heads of department resigned because they were ”tired of being remote-controlled” by her office while others rejected her redeploying them to different departments and took her to court for that.
The ANC in the province has complained that because it lacks the confidence of its head office it has not been able to intervene in the running of provincial affairs.
”Unlike in other provinces where the organisation has full authority to guide governance and advise the premier and local governments, everything that we do here is viewed with suspicion by the national office,” said a provincial executive member.
In November Essop Pahad was dispatched to the Free State, where he talked tough with Marshoff and Magashule, warning both that their strategies would weaken the ANC ahead of local elections next year.
While Mbeki was commended for appointing four women premiers, most are political lightweights with little historical support in the provinces they now administer.
Some are now faced with ”male party bullies” who regard themselves as the custodians of the organisational soul, according to a woman activist.
None of the women premiers appointed were also party chairpersons. This contrast with their male counterparts: the Western Cape’s Ebrahim Rasool, KwaZulu-Natal’s S’bu Ndebele and Shilowa.
While post-apartheid battles in Gauteng forced the ANC to break the link between party chairpersonship and an appointment as premier, the flip side of that decision is that political headaches arise when the incumbent does not enjoy the support of the provincial leadership.
The possibility of another such headache has now been raised in the Northern Cape, where former provincial minister John Block has been returned as party chair after the provincial conference early this month.
Block dislodged Premier Dipuo Peters, who had been acting chair.
The Western Cape ANC has not yet overcome factionalism. The provincial congress was supposed to be held this month, but has been postponed to next year. The official explanation is that branches must still get their houses in order, but there are indications that the postponement was the result of key factions wanting to fortify their bases before the congress.
Only the Northern Cape and Gauteng have so far held their conferences, and all provinces said their deadline for holding them was between March and April next year. The exception is the Eastern Cape, which will hold its conference in 2006. The gatherings will be key to developing a strategy for the municipal elections next year.
Struggle for support in Gauteng strongholds
The African National Congress in Gauteng has expressed concern that it has lost support among its strongholds in the townships. The organisation made this assessment in its organisational report to its provincial congress last week.
”In 2004, over 270 000 fewer people voted for the ANC than in 1999. This is a concern in a province where the population grew by 4% per annum in the past five years. The reasons for this have to be thoroughly studied and answers found as part of the preparations for 2005 local government elections.” Gauteng is regarded as one of the ANC’s most powerful provinces in terms of its organisation, yet its membership only stands at about 50 000. The province had set itself the target of achieving ANC membership of at least 1% of the provincial population, which stands at 8,8-million.
The target is 88 000 members, which the organisation says will not be difficult to achieve given that the province easily mobilised 100 000 supporters to attend the Siyanqoba Rally at the FNB stadium just before the elections was.
The ANC says these were not card-carrying members but members who rally behind the movement in campaign times.
”Our primary problem is, therefore, not recruiting new members. It is more about retaining existing membership and giving them tasks so that they remain active … In the past three years we have been able to grow well over 100 000, but could retain only 58 223. We cannot account for 50 000 members.”
The ANC’s record membership in the province was in 1994 when it was 215 000. The organisation says the possible explanation is that this growth was the result of the euphoria generated by the first democratic elections. — Rapule Tabane