When does political lobbying against an opponent become a political conspiracy? Put differently, if we accept that President Thabo Mbeki is opposed to Jacob Zuma succeeding him, is there evidence to suggest that he has improperly intervened to make sure Zuma is not the next president?
Or are we dealing here with stock-standard politics: factions jockeying for influence and control of the ruling African National Congress, which has always been a broad church, the history of which has been the management of inherent tension?
Mbeki has proposed that the best way to get to the truth is to set up an internal tripartite alliance commission of inquiry.
Firstly, I do not believe there is any merit to the arguments of those who suggest a political conspiracy. But the president’s response, to call for a commission, smacks of a revenge-driven desire to reach an outcome he knows; that the commission will not find any evidence of a plot.
At the heart of the battle for the soul of the ANC is not a choice between Zuma or Mbeki. The battle is about influence and control of the appropriate economic policy models for the country.
Mbeki launched an assault on critics of the conservative macro- economic policy (growth, employment and redistribution), calling them ultra-leftists who caused confusion in the movement and presented themselves as the true custodians of South Africa’s poor working class.
If he sought to stigmatise and marginalise the left lobby, the president succeeded, because by the end of the same year at the ANC national conference in 2002 in Stellenbosch, almost all candidates nominated by the left for inclusion in the ANC national executive committee were defeated. To my mind that would have been the result of intense and legitimate lobbying.
Those wounds have never healed and when Zuma addressed South African Communist Party meetings in 2002 and suggested that the left should have its own voice in Parliament to counter the neo-liberal forces in the Democratic Alliance and within the ANC, the left saw a messiah.
So when the word leaked of the criminal investigation by Scorpions of a man who represented the best hope it had of influencing post-Mbeki economic policies, it smelt a rat. And it still does.
In its circles, Mbeki is a Machiavellian schemer who has systematically purged Mathews Phosa, Cyril Ramaphosa, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Tokyo Sexwale. Zuma is seen as the next casualty on the list. After all, he had been forced to publicly deny any presidential ambitions in 2001.
The latest accusation is that Mbeki has used the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to harass and caricature Zuma as a corrupt leader. The link is tenuous and the facts presented by the NPA are convincing enough to warrant a date in the courts.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) says the NPA’s now infamous statement, that there was a prima facie case against Zuma, but it would not prosecute, was meant to cast aspersions on his character without having to prove anything.
That may have been the result, but how do you prove it was part of a plot?
It is well known that a group of ANC national executive committee members (Mbeki supporters) do not believe that Zuma should be the next president. They believe that the hard work they have put into developing a vision of the ANC to be a credible, internationally regarded, corruption-free, modern party cannot be left to Zuma and some of those who surround him.
Buoyed by a desire to defy negative stereotypes about African liberation movements and the wish to be taken seriously by the international community, Mbeki’s elite group believe a Zuma presidency would feed into the stereotypes.
They are convinced that it would be a truly banana republic with people of questionable repute, such as Schabir Shaik, running the country.
And, indeed, one can safely assume that because of that, they are hard at work to make sure that either Mbeki returns as ANC president or that they find an acceptable candidate.
It is power battles at play, but it does not amount to anything darkly conspiratorial. The left is currently on the power fringes and it is clawing its way back using Zuma.
The comeback was enhanced by the national general council resolutions where most of Mbeki’s party reform proposals were rejected. The left knows that its shouts of conspiracy are nonsense, but it works for its members.
It is clear that Mbeki’s commission proposal is a desperate move to contain the left’s momentum, which is seriously harming the president’s legacy. There are no conspiracies and even Cosatu, the SACP and the youth league know it, but they are desperately close to out-lobbying Mbeki and, if conspiracy theories buoy the masses, they will use it.
So, save us the trouble of a commission of inquiry. The real battle is about control of the country’s political and economic direction — and Mbeki must face up to that.