The dust had hardly settled after the ANC’s great Polokwane indaba when some people began toying with the idea that the ANC would put its deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe, up as its presidential candidate for the 2009 general election. Lies are being peddled that ANC president Jacob Zuma has been banging tables reprimanding those he perceives to be back-stabbing him. This is reminiscent of the rumours spread about Zuma in the period leading to the Stellenbosch conference in 2002 when Zuma was alleged to be conspiring to unseat Mbeki.
As these rumours, conspiracy theories and fabrications continue to be peddled, the picture portrayed is of an ANC divided, bickering over positions, fulfilling the prophesy that the Polokwane election had nothing to do with the ANC as an organisation, but was about self-interested individuals seeking state positions to attain power, privilege and material advantage. Hence others have been arguing, gleefully, that the ”Zuma camp” is about to implode.
What this will do is divide the ANC presidency and set the leadership on a wild goose chase for conspirators. It will also weaken Motlanthe and turn him into a lame-duck deputy trying to convince the president and the leadership that there is no truth to the lie. ANC leaders would thus be consumed in perpetual mutual suspicion, which would render the organisation ineffective.
The ANC president has been candid in addressing the questions of unity in the ANC post-Polokwane. At the first national executive committee (NEC) meeting, the NEC lekgotla and the January 8 rally in Atteridgeville, he spoke extensively about unity and correctly issued a warning against those who peddle lies and gossip about the organisation and other members, and promised strong action against these tendencies. He has been urging groups to dissolve and unite behind the leadership and implement the organisation’s programme.
It is important for ANC leaders both to heed this message and to reinforce it. Collectively, ANC members are duty-bound to make the Zuma presidency succeed, as we did with presidents before him.
It is not uncommon during periods of political and leadership change that there are some who feel anxious, uncertain and threatened. Change elicits those feelings and, depending on how it is managed, this may lead to some instability. The challenge for the leadership is to assist the membership, and society, to feel comfortable about the changes, both substantive and cosmetic, and to support them.
Political change in a democracy is expected, or at least should be. Change is not always about what each person may want. Both the ANC and South Africa expect that from time to time there will be new leaders who will want to make their mark and change the way things are done.
In the case of the ANC, the outcome of the Polokwane conference articulated the dialectic of ”continuity and change”. Zuma has been part of the top ANC leadership for decades, having joined the ANC before it was banned in 1961; his election represents continuity. He has been at the helm of the ANC through its phases of struggle. He has served under Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. For the past decade he has been ANC deputy president, having been the chairperson and the deputy secretary general before that. He has been at every ANC conference during the past four or so decades. He is not new to the ANC and the national conference did not adopt drastically new policy positions.
Yet his election represents change — it is the first experience of the ANC since democracy was attained in 1994 that a sitting president of the ANC and the country is unseated as party president while he will remain the country’s president for a period of more than a year. Zuma represents a new experience in leadership. He must introduce freshness in leading the ANC, the tripartite alliance and South Africa. He must do things anew, while not departing from how his predecessors have led the ANC and held its banner aloft.
Malusi Gigaba is an ANC NEC member and deputy minister of home affairs