‘A potential for crisis’

With little more than a few days to go before the ANC conference, the cleft in the party appears to be deepening and sniping between factions more acrimonious and personal. After interviews with party ‘elders’ last week, the Mail & Guardian asked four more senior leaders to reflect on the state of the ANC and its clouded future

Saki Macozoma Businessman and NEC member

I’m concerned about the ossification of positions. In my view, what exists in the ANC are not ideological positions. I’ve never heard Jacob Zuma say he would change anything other than style and approach. There are some ideological differences among alliance partners, but the real divisions are around political management, rather than content.

Political management has to do with the entire system from national to province to local. And all of these elements bring their own peculiar problems to the table. In the provinces, a lot of people have a sense of grievance that they haven’t been given recognition. Take Ace Magashule in the Free State; he’s been leading the province all this time, but he hasn’t been given the responsibility for running things. People like this throw in their lot with Zuma or vote for themselves and for their issues.

In rural districts there’s a slightly different dynamic. In Pondoland, when a person is an Mbeki supporter, he or she is told: “You’re being investigated.”

It’s not a question of comrades sitting round a table; it’s a question of how people perceive their interests and how they think they are threatened.

The problem with the current political management is lack of inclusiveness. To be heard is a major factor.

We are dealing with an aberration that has potential for crisis after Limpopo. There is a danger that positions will ossify further — move to 2009 and we’ll have a repeat with twice the intensity.

If there is a perception of reprisals in the first three months after the conference, the ANC could descend into serious infighting. The first thing the new NEC will have to do is embark on a strategy for healing the party, and a start must be made in the movement’s January 8 statement, not through rallies.

Every NEC member should be assigned to a place where they must go and explain to members the process of healing.

Whoever wins, there will be bruised people in all directions. If the sign that comes of out of Polokwane is one of triumphalism, there will be more heat, which will spill over into reprisals. And if that happens, the ANC will find it very difficult to hold together.

Two centres of power is partly a fiction constructed by people who are trying to wrest power from Thabo Mbeki. The secretary general is the CEO of the ANC. Anything that has to do with policy should come from that office. The SG will never and should never be in government.

I think the NEC could be balanced much better. A lot of people are due for retirement, and this could open up space.

In some quarters there is a view that no businessperson should be in the NEC; they are creating a monster by defining business as anathema to development and the progressive movement. But if there is a hounding out, people will organise to protect themselves. They aren’t going to go away, and to the extent that they want to organise, they will organise.

What the other elders said