The countdown to the most fiercely contested battle in the ANC in more than 50 years has started.
And, not surprisingly for the competitors, the final stretch has been spiced up with the inevitable — dirty talk and mud-slinging in the bedroom.
Shortly after the provincial nomination conferences declared Jacob Zuma the frontrunner in the presidential race, the Thabo Mbeki lobbyists launched a campaign to demonstrate Zuma’s alleged moral bankruptcy. Their first shot was predictable. It was aimed at his comments during the trial in which he was accused of raping the 32-year-old daughter of an old friend and comrade. It was pointed out that Zuma abused his position as a “father figure” to the accuser for sexual favours because he knew that she needed assistance.
ANC Women’s League members who don’t support their organisation’s decision to nominate Zuma are telling their peers that “their daughters are not safe” under a Zuma presidency. “How can you trust a man who says to avoid HIV just take a shower?” a league member asked.
Zuma’s trusted aide, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, hit back, saying those who are now pushing for gender parity are “legendary womanisers who want the 50/50 representation so they can take advantage of the women they voted into power”.
The Mbeki lobbyists have retorted that Vavi had an affair with his current wife while he was still married to the first one. “How can you trust a man who does that?” Mbeki’s female supporters whisper.
But the lowest blow taken so far is the document being circulated to newsrooms detailing the events around the death of Zuma’s wife of 24 years, Kate Zuma.
She died after taking an overdose in 2000. The painful circumstances of her death, including her suicide note, were copied this week to newsrooms, apparently in an attempt to discredit the ANC deputy president and paint him as a unsympathetic husband and a bad father.
The South African government quickly responded, saying the move is linked to the Special Browse Mole report. It was obvious, though, that it was leaked now to serve as a reminder to those who had forgotten some of Zuma’s past sins, especially when it came to women.
Employing sleaze to get votes is nothing new in politics, but for the first time the competing groups in the ANC have sunk to these lows and all in the glaring eye of the public.
Zwelinzima Vavi says:
Those who point a finger at Zuma’s credibility regarding women’s rights have three fingers pointing back at them.
Responding to the uproar over his comments about “legendary womanisers” in the ANC, he says those who accuse Zuma of having a questionable background when it comes to relations with women are themselves “the worst abusers of women’s rights”.
“Some of them are legendary womanisers who jump on the bandwagon to advance their own narrow interests.”
Vavi insists that he will not apologise for his statement because it was “blown out of proportion to put me on the back foot and to put the Zuma effort on the back foot”.
If this comment was made in a different environment and not in the highly contested terrain, such as the ANC presidential campaign, no one would have said anything about it, he claims.
“It is a sick, sick organisation we are in and it should be sorted out after the conference.
“The only reason they come up with these things is to clinch an elite pact, not to empower those women; it is opportunistic.”
Asked for a definition, Vavi says a womaniser is a man who has countless relationships with women and uses sex to exercise his power. Womanisers, he says, take advantage of the vulnerability of women, often demanding sex before they promote women. “I’m not saying this happens in our government, it is happening in society and government is part of society, isn’t it?”
Frene Ginwala responds:
This is what happens when men are fighting for political power — they trample on women’s achievements and say women use sexual favours to get where they want to be, says this ANC national executive member and former parliamentary speaker.
His comments “endangered” the gender parity policy that will be promoted at the ANC elective conference. “He has not thought through what he said. Since [the comments] there has been a lot of qualifications and explanations, but
not one of them even noted what that statement revealed about their attitude towards women.”
In an interview with the Mail & Guardian, Ginwala takes issue with the fact that Vavi’s comments referred to “men in the Mbeki camp”.
“There are many legendary womanisers in Cosatu and the Zuma camp as well. They choose not to notice this and don’t act against these womanisers, they only bring it out when it suits them.”
She points to Cosatu’s own lack of action to help female empowerment. “Cosatu’s leadership is not filled with lots of female leaders either. And in the wage agreement Cosatu insisted on a blanket increase for all workers and did not think about women, who make up most of the lower-paid workers.”