Fifteen months after then newly sworn in Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool proclaimed, ”The circus is over!”, it is the provincial African National Congress that looks sorely in need of a ringmaster.
A sequence of tender scandals is destabilising the Cape Town City Council; executive mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo and Rasool are skirmishing openly, and the battle over provincial Cabinet positions continues to bring serious internal tensions into the open.
All this comes against a backdrop of heightened anxiety over ethnicity within the party. Mfeketo’s perceived defence of her media adviser, Blackman Ngoro, who in an online column described coloureds as culturally inferior to blacks, has brought to a head divisions over race and electoral strategy in the party, and infuriated many voters.
Only three years ago, the focus was on the musical chairs of Peter Marais and Gerald Morkel, who swapped the premier’s and mayor’s posts amid the political break-up of the Democratic Alliance and the brief resurgence of the New National Party.
With preparations for local government elections in full swing, it is now the ANC that risks losing its hardest won prize.
The party’s national leadership is clearly concerned; it called a meeting with the provincial executive — dubbed the ”Top Five” — and Rasool this week, the fourth intervention in as many months. The recent national general council noted that ”access to and control of public resources” had raised the ”demon of factionalism” in the province where ”tenders and contracts account for at least some of the problems”.
But ANC provincial brass is shrugging off the storm of bad news as ”propaganda”, aimed at under-mining the party.
And, for now, the mayor seems to be coming out on top; unlike Rasool, whose lack of political authority leaves him with limited room to manoeuvre. Mfeketo has the backing of the party. ”Some of the things done to the mayor have been unfair,” said ANC provincial chairperson James Ngculu. ”We are fully behind her.”
Yet, as public outrage about lack of action over Ngoro continues to simmer, Mfeketo this week maintained Ngoro’s comments had been aimed at opening debate. This, effectively, has pre-empted next Friday’s council investigative inquiry, which may find there’s room for disciplinary steps. ”This is own goal stuff. This is brilliant. This is Gerald Morkel and Peter Marais all over,” said one senior Cape Town councillor.
The ANC did not win Cape Town through the ballots; it gained control through floor-crossing in October 2002.
While the party brass appear to be unshaken in the belief that they can win at the polls for the first time, many in the rank and file, and observers sympathetic to the ANC, are doubtful amid ongoing tensions between factions. A round of brutal exchanges is anticipated ahead of the nomination process for council positions.
Apathy among ANC members about their party appears to be taking hold: only about a tenth of delegates showed up for last Saturday’s ANC regional general council meeting in Worcester. ”If people just don’t come, it’s an indication of where their heads are at. People are voting with their feet,” said an ANC insider. Said another: ”The ANC is shooting itself in the foot.”
It is understood that the tripartite alliance structures have so far been ignored in ANC preparations for the municipal poll, including workshops and establishing the list committees.
To win support, the government must show delivery; protests against the lack of services have not abated. While the provincial Cabinet lekgotla met this week to review challenges and set new delivery targets, the council hit the townships on Wednesday.
Two days after night soil buckets were dumped in the streets of Philippi, Mfeketo promised her personal commitment to deliver services at the launch of ”Sakha iKapa [Building the Cape]”, the plan to deliver 260 000 houses by 2015.
The council ferried scores of its employees, dressed in special-issue white overalls, to the township in luxury buses for the occasion. It is unclear how this plan will be financed; nor is the plan contained in the council’s Integrated Development Plan.
Meanwhile, the council’s tender woes continue. Last week it emerged that Mfeketo’s brother was appointed as a top manager in the municipal police.
Opposition political parties are set to make the most of this failure of governance. It is understood that the Independent Democrats have already started discussions with disenchanted councillors, particularly in the Western Cape rural hinterland.
A senior DA member says council failure to deliver services alongside inefficiencies has ”sparked anger across the board, from Joe Slovo to Mitchell’s Plain”. And as many of the old Nats who defected to the ANC are feeling increasingly left in the cold, an upset in the current power balance may be in the making.
Two upcoming by-elections — one in veteran ANC council politician Saleem Mowzer’s ward in Athlone and the other in Ward 21 in Cape Town’s northern areas — are regarded as difficult but key tests for the DA. If they are won, indications are good for a local government win.
The ANC holds a precarious 101 of 200 council seats — it has lost three senior councillors — while the DA has 69, and 22 seats are shared between various political parties such as the Independent Democrats and African Christian Democratic Party. The remaining five NNP councillors end their careers as the party will cease to exist after the local government elections.
At least three of the five NNP members in the provincial legislature are set to join the ANC during next month’s defection period. This will ensure an ongoing ANC majority: it currently holds 19 of 42 seats. Even if disaffected Independent Democrat minister of provincial legislature Lennit Max — who has stalled his disciplinary proceedings for seven months — takes his seat to the DA, it will not change the balance of power in the legislature.
With the provincial legislature apparently not up for grabs, all eyes are on the local government election.