‘I fear we will live to regret the 2007 conference,” a senior African National Congress figure told the Mail & Guardian this week.
He was referring to the fevered atmosphere of power-lust, greed, fear, revenge and conspiracy gripping the party as a consequence of the battle between Jacob Zuma’s supporters and detractors.
Zuma’s ebullient resurgence as the leading presidential candidate after his rape acquittal — despite his pending corruption trial — has plunged the party into its worst -crisis since 1994.
Voices at the ANC’s centre seeking to reassert the movement’s historical values are all but drowned in the clamour of those who feel power within their grasp — and the blizzard of leaks and lobbying from those out to stop Zuma at almost any cost.
Moves to promote a special national conference to address the crisis ahead of the 2007 meeting are especially dangerous. They are a thinly disguised bid to settle the leadership battle now, while Zuma is on a roll and before his corruption trial can hurt him.
There is a serious risk that Zuma’s backers will use populist tactics to drive home their advantage.
Tacticians in his camp have skilfully fostered the idea of a conspiracy against him — without providing much proof. But there is enough circumstantial evidence for the notion to take root, to the extent that it has become a shield against real scrutiny of his fitness for presidential office.
The anti-Zuma camp has played into this by refusing to confront Zuma directly on matters of principle and policy, and gambling on complex legal actions underpinned by an ill-disguised smear campaign.
The leaking of Kate Zuma’s suicide note, accusing Zuma of abusing her throughout their 24-year marriage, is the latest in such tactics. For six years, while Zuma was considered inside the ANC tent, this information was suppressed; now it comes out (the Presidency has denied playing any role in the leak).
As a result, it will be largely discounted — even though it provides further evidence of the misogyny indicated by his rape trial and may raise further questions about his HIV status.
The squeals of outrage from Zuma’s supporters are somewhat hollow — after all, they leaked the infamous Winnie Mandela letter in 2001, alleging sexual predation by President Thabo Mbeki.
But the polarisation and persona-lisation of the succession struggle has obscured the fact that Zuma is neither the problem nor the solution — he is the symptom. Central to the party crisis is a popular revolt against Mbeki, which is mostly his fault.
Mbeki’s sustained mismanagement of discontent in the party has made Zuma a rallying point for his diverse but powerful enemies.
The divisions are rooted in political factions formed in exile and in the stresses generated by moving from liberation movement to government. But they have been fuelled by Mbeki’s remote and exclusive style of leadership. He has centralised power, ruthlessly dispatched potential rivals and refused to compromise on key policies. Power under Mbeki has gravitated from society and party to state, from local and provincial spheres to national, from judiciary and legislature to executive, and from Cabinet to Presidency, writes Anthony Butler, University of Cape Town political scientist.
“These institutional and political developments make the office of state president almost the only prize worth winning. Everyone wants a piece of the next president. No one dare leave such a powerful office to rivals,” he notes.
Mbeki could have avoided alienating large sections of the ANC’s mass base by maintaining what commentator Xolela Mangcu calls the politics of direct address, an explicit affirmation of the movement’s -idealism, which marked much of its history. Instead, Mangcu argues, Mbeki has promoted a consumerist, technocratic culture that pits people against each other.
The revolt at the party’s national general conference last year should have been a wake-up call for the president. He could have undertaken a sober assessment of the contradictions generated by 12 years of ANC rule, recognising that these would dominate the succession battle if not admitted and addressed.
Instead, there was a secret National Intelligence Agency project that led to the sacking of the agency’s director general, and may yet detonate in the president’s face.
The torch-bearers for the myth and meaning of the ANC’s struggle are becoming thin on the ground. The Rivonia generation is dying off. The inziles have been marginalised.
In the driving seat are the power-brokers and their intelligence networks, the ideologues, and the money-men and their marionettes.