The formalisation of a proposal for ANC president Thabo Mbeki to serve a third term as the party’s president, and the public condemnation of his deputy and aspirant successor, Jacob Zuma, by an ANC provincial chairperson marks the intensification of the succession battle in a direction that should worry Zuma.
The ANC has warned that lobbying for positions for the ANC’s national conference in December next year may only start in 2007. However various incidents last week indicate that the quiet jostling and repositioning by rival factions has already started.
The proposal that Mbeki stay for a third term — which was introduced at the ANC’s Eastern Cape congress last week — contradicts the official stance of the ANC Youth League that Zuma take over the ANC leadership at the Limpopo conference next year.
In what is seen as an attempt to strengthen his position, Mbeki has in the past few months visited the provincial executive committees of the North West, Eastern Cape and Western Cape, and will be visiting the Free State provincial executive committee on Saturday. These are all swing provinces that had not yet thrown their weight behind a candidate.
Each of the visits so far has borne positive political outcomes for him.
After he visited the Western Cape provincial executive committee, he was made an additional member of the provincial committee. This would give him a platform to attend and influence all debates in that province. Shortly before the North West visit, a document was distributed in the province calling for the cancellation of dual membership of the national committees of the SACP and the ANC, a move aimed primarily at SACP secretary general Blade Nzimande. Nzimande, a key thinker in the Zuma camp, was accused in the document of aligning himself with ANC national executive committee decisions and then criticising them in his role as the leader of the SACP.
The Eastern Cape resolution urges Mbeki to stay for another term as ANC president.
Mbeki has not accepted or rejected the offer but he has made it clear he does not want another term as president of the country, which would have entailed changing the Constitution.
Mbeki visited the Eastern Cape three times before last week’s congress, twice on ANC business and once on government business. Significantly, Zuma has not visited any provincial committees in that period. He has addressed public meetings in various provinces but has not done any work inside influential ANC structures.
Zuma was rebuffed publicly by a provincial leader last week when Limpopo premier and ANC provincial chairperson Sello Moloto accused him of elevating his personal problems into national problems, saying the ANC could not be held ransom by private matters. The platform at which Moloto made the remarks was also illustrative of how even Zuma’s allies are on the back foot.
Moloto spoke in the presence of Mbeki at the SACP ”Political School”, the party’s ideological discussion forum. The SACP national office had advised the provincial structure to postpone the workshop but the province ignored it. In addition to Moloto, SACP provincial secretary Justice Pitso has also been a critic of the national office and has sided with the ANC when it has clashed with the SACP. It was therefore no surprise that Moloto drafted him into his provincial Cabinet two weeks ago when he fired two provincial ministers. His appointment was interpreted as a reward for his opposition to Nzimande.
The Mail & Guardian has learned that the SACP national office rejected the initial programme for the workshop, which proposed speakers such as Deputy Finance Minister Jabu Moleketi, an outspoken critic of the SACP. Meanwhile, SACP spokesperson Malesela Maleka said the ”Political School” did not comply with guidelines set out by the central committee and was therefore not an official SACP event. He said the issue was an internal matter that the party was dealing with. Nzimande’s supporters believe that Mbeki’s sudden interest in SACP events is aimed at undermining Nzimande’s influence in the party.
They told the M&G that Mbeki was following up on his closing remarks at the October ANC national executive committee meeting where he said the ANC needed to go on a political campaign to counter the serious dangers posed by Nzimande’s positions.
Meanwhile, an ANC national executive committee member has warned that a third term for Mbeki could revive ethnic concerns about the domination of ANC leadership by the same group. The national executive committee member said Mbeki’s comment last week that ”the best members” of the movement always came from Eastern Cape was ”dangerous” because it ”promotes ethnicity”. ”We need to accept the reality that, if we want to build a united nation, we need to allow other people from other provinces to lead the ANC and government,” a national executive committee member said.
Additional reporting by Mbuyisi Mgibisa