Zuma doesn’t need ‘short cut’

ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial secretary and pro-Jacob Zuma strongman Senzo Mchunu this week sought to quell rumours that Zuma supporters within party structures would seek to dislodge President Thabo Mbeki from the Union Buildings if their man ascended to the organisation’s presidency.

In an interview with the Mail & Guardian he painted a picture of a more ‘synergised” relationship between the government and the party, which, some political analysts believe, Mbeki may find untenable — but will have to live with if he wants to ensure his political survival.

Commenting on recent reports that the Zuma camp, if victorious, was considering either pushing through a parliamentary vote of no-confidence in the president if he didn’t call for an early election, or would seek an early election through the dissolution of Parliament, Mchunu said this was ‘undesirable” and tantamount to ‘plotting a coup d’état”.

‘There is nothing to suggest that Zuma will feel pressure about wanting to be president of the country in any other way but a normal way. I don’t think that Zuma would want to seek short cuts and unprecedented ways of becoming president of the country. He doesn’t want that sort of stink to surround him becoming president,” said Mchunu, who dismissed the speculation as ‘irresponsible” discussions ‘people have in bars and watering holes”.

Zuma emerged as the frontrunner in the race for the ANC presidency after a preliminary round of provincial nominations, which saw him take 2 270 votes compared with Mbeki’s 1 396.

‘This won’t be an issue discussed by the provincial executive, by Cosatu or any of the organised structures of the ANC. We are not discussing that, and the issue shouldn’t be elevated,” said Mchunu.

With the current debate raging over returning the ANC as the centre of power and Zuma supporters unequivocal that there should not be two centres of power, Mchunu acknowledged that a Zuma victory would create a scenario very different from an earlier precedent when Mbeki was president of the ANC while Nelson Mandela was head of state.

But he dispelled the notion that a groundswell of calls for early elections from the party’s rank-and-file, which appear increasingly disenchanted with Mbeki’s leadership, might precipitate matters: ‘There is absolutely no chance of [an attempt to call an early election] prevailing at all.”

Mchunu, who has held discussions with the other provinces, says ‘everybody seems to agree that this is undesirable”.

The party was equipped to handle the short-term separation of powers if Zuma were to win: ‘The ANC is highly organised as an organisation. That issue of Mbeki being president of the country and not being president of the ANC is possible to manage. In this example, the ANC president may not be president of the country, but the ANC is the ruling party. So we can’t have the president sitting coldly in the Union Buildings.

‘There are ministers in the Cabinet who are not on the national executive committee, so we have called extended ANC meetings and lekgotlas to bring them closer to the ruling party.

‘We need more frequent and regular meetings between the two. There is a directive that the national working committee sits every two weeks, so maybe every second week the president of the country will have to sit in on these meetings and update the working committee.”