So we are all supposed to withdraw quietly now and heave huge sighs of relief. The national executive committee (NEC) of the African National Congress has assured us: there is no leadership tussle; succession is a foreign concept, only applicable to dynasties and inimical to the ANC.
ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe apparently does not believe President Thabo Mbeki has usurped his powers and reduced him to an administrative clerk. Mbeki apparently never voiced preference for a female successor — the media must have misquoted him again. He merely reiterated the ANC’s long-standing gender policy.
That is what the ANC leadership will have us believe. Does the party leadership really think anyone will? Notwithstanding the public relations exercise, the succession battle (or whatever you choose to call it) rages on unabated. And it is intense, malicious and personal.
What is the point of the NEC imposing the arbitrary date of May 2007 to begin discussing the leadership issue when it knows most of its members will not heed that injunction and, indeed, are already canvassing furiously? Mbeki has confirmed long-held suspicions that he does not want Jacob Zuma to succeed him, by calling for a woman to do so. Zuma’s supporters are strident in their preference and “unstoppable”, to quote Congress of South African Trade Unions secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi.
At every trade union, communist and youth gathering, Zuma is paraded and fêted like the future president he wants to be. To pretend otherwise is delusional, and all the protagonists know it.
The ANC is behaving as though political divisions are something to be ashamed of. But debate and dissent are normal in democratic political parties.
It was Gauteng, one of the party’s most influential provinces — not the media, the “third force” or the CIA — which first suggested in 2003 that the succession issue should be debated and managed well in advance. The ANC should acknowledge that the race is on and that it is normal for politicians to have ambitions. It is asking for more trouble by stigmatising ambition in an environment where political conspiracies abound.
The way to deal with suspicions of subterfuge and cloak-and-dagger dealing is to bring the whole succession debate into the open. Let people declare their candidacy and canvass openly for support and, instead of trying to stifle campaigning, set limits on the way it is conducted. If Mbeki believes in a female presidency, he should not be afraid to stand on a podium and defend the call. If he has a specific candidate in mind, let him say so.
It is embarrassing to see the president backtracking on his vision for South Africa, as he did at the NEC meeting.
Ours may be a young democracy, but it is maturing. The ANC’s succession debate should contribute to that vital process, not set it back.
Conspiracy theories
Hillary Clinton may have started the trend with claims of a “vast rightwing conspiracy” aimed at ending her husband’s presidency, but South Africans are now the most enthusiastic exponents of the tactic.
The conspiracy gambit, made fashionable here by Jacob Zuma, is a neat instance of another bit of American street-wisdom put to work: the best defence is a good offence.
Zuma claims at every turn that corruption charges against him were trumped up as part of a political conspiracy aimed at blocking his succession to the presidency. Zuma wants us to forget about the facts, to look away from his grubby dealings with Schabir Shaik and poor judgement in matters of personal morality. He wants us to look instead at the great, nebulous conspiracy that he hints at, but of which he refuses to provide forensic detail.
President Thabo Mbeki claims to be the victim of a conspiracy by ultra-leftists using Zuma’s name. ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe believes media reports of his business interests are a conspiracy. It should be remembered that when Roger Kebble was charged with fraud, he and his son Brett also cried conspiracy.
And police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi has now adopted a similar line. When the Mail & Guardian reported last week that he had a questionable relationship with Brett Kebble’s associates Glenn Agliotti and Clinton Nassif, both of whom have featured in police and Scorpions investigations into a range of alleged crimes, Selebi’s spin team told anyone who would listen that this was all part of a conspiracy designed to weaken him in his battle with the Scorpions, and that our report was no more than a reflection of the unfolding battle within the ANC.
Like Zuma, Selebi does not want us to look at the facts: he maintains a friendship with, and accepts gifts from, a man who lives under a constant cloud of suspicion, a man who has been fingered in a significant fraud; someone who was helping the country’s biggest-ever white-collar criminal, Brett Kebble, to advance his cause.
Those are the facts, and he should speak to them instead of raising smokescreens about conspiracies, or threatening to arrest the people he believes are our sources. He should speak to the facts, because in the end, the facts will speak for themselves.