African National Congress president Thabo Mbeki believes his deputy, Jacob Zuma, will exhaust himself politically before the crucial 2007 ANC congress, and plans to weaken him by constantly beating an anti-corruption drum.
Senior party sources said this was the core of Mbeki’s counter-strategy in the vicious battle over the presidential succession.
Almost every speech Mbeki now delivers highlights corruption as a cancer that could destroy the ruling party. His speeches and columns on the ANC website, ANC Today, regularly allude to the principled and moral leadership provided by past ANC leaders who were not interested in material gain.
Mbeki must have taken comfort from last week’s Research Service survey, which found that 60% of South Africans from all walks of life back his handling of the Zuma affair.
The litmus test of his leadership, however, will come from within the party, more specifically from the branches, which ultimately elect the party president.
Zuma has embarked on a thinly veiled crusade, criss-crossing the country and addressing ANC meetings where supporters have punted him as the next president and pledged to support him in his upcoming corruption trial.
At these events he takes indirect aim at Mbeki by alluding to unnamed intellectual leaders who are intolerant of criticism and ANC leaders who do not want to step down, against the will of the ANC membership. The themes were again repeated in an address this week at the University of Johannesburg.
At a memorial service for former ANC president Oliver Tambo last week, Mbeki said he doubted whether Tambo would have tolerated corruption and ANC members who were interested only in wealth accumulation.
Those close to him insisted he was not prepared to trade public insinuations with Zuma. However, they said he would concen- trate on whipping up anti-corruption sentiment at the national, provincial and regional levels of the ANC, indirectly projecting Zuma as a leader who was seeking popular tolerance for his corrupt activities.
Once the anti-graft message started sinking in, Zuma would run out of an audience willing to listen to his self-portrayal as a victim.
”Generally Zuma will find it difficult to run with the same victim message for the whole period until 2007. People will want more substance. He will find himself increasingly isolated,” said a member of Mbeki’s inner circle.
Mbeki’s supporters also believe that Zuma’s support draws on anti-Mbeki feeling which will dissipate once it becomes clear that he does not plan to contest the ANC presidency in 2007.
”This is not realy a pro-Zuma issue,” said a senior tripartite alliance leader. ”Mbeki’s technocratic and intellectual style of leadership, not to mention his decision to dismiss Zuma, is isolating him. People have found a figurehead in Zuma around whom to weave their fight.”
Also central to Mbeki’s counter-strategy is his hold on state power, and particularly his authority to appoint mayors, premiers, Cabinet members and the heads of statutory bodies such as the National Prosecuting Authority.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions recently cautioned against such centralisation. ”A proper balance should be found between the president’s executive powers and the role and structures of the movement,” it said. ”In the long run, a democratic process for selecting and appointing leaders will go a long way to defeating cronyism, politics of patronage and careerism. The current practice sits uncomfortably with internal democratic process and may unintentionally stifle debate within the movement, due to reluctance to tamper with career prospects.”
Although on the defensive, Mbeki has support in some provinces.
”Jacob Zuma will never find the same protests [against his dismissal as national deputy president] in the Western Cape, that I can confirm,” said a senior provincial ANC leader.
In the OR Tambo region in the Eastern Cape — one of the province’s largest, with the weight to swing provincial votes — ANC regional secretary Siyakolwa Mlamli said the party’s membership was torn.
”They love the president because he was born here, but they sympathise with Zuma,” Mlamli said. The Eastern Cape has historically backed Zuma.
In the Free State, the Mail & Guardian spoke to five regional secretaries who, while reluctant to speak in detail, said members understood that maintaining the president’s dignity was the foremost concern.