Luthuli House has stepped into the chronically faction-ridden Western Cape ANC, raising the possibility that the provincial leadership will be replaced by a nationally appointed task team.
Provincial leaders believe the most limited intervention possible will be the deployment of senior national leaders with a mandate to create unity within the organisation before next year’s general election.
The ANC’s Western Cape executive committee met senior officials of the party’s national working committee, including secretary general Gwede Mantashe and treasurer Matthews Phosa, in Cape Town on Monday.
Also at the meeting were ANC provincial chair James Ngculu, secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha and deputy secretary Max Ozinsky.
The meeting lasted just 20 minutes. Provincial leaders were told only that their fate would be announced after the next national executive committee (NEC) meeting July 11 to 13.
Provincial ANC spokesperson Garth Strachan declined to comment, as did Mantashe, and Phosa referred queries to ANC spokesperson Jessie Duarte, who said she could not comment until after the NEC meeting.
Others suggested the NEC will be told that infighting has now reached such damaging proportions that there is little hope of victory in the 2009 Western Cape election.
They would probably also be reminded of the stabbing of Skwatsha at a meeting in Worcester last month as grounds for intervention.
Said one prominent party figure supportive of provincial Premier Ebrahim Rasool: ”The DA is romping to victory because Helen Zille is focused and not fighting factional battles within her organisation.
”The ANC in the province is so damaged and the leadership is too entrenched in their fight to see this. The NEC has to remove or at least reshuffle the current leaders,” said the source.
A provincial leader said morale was low in ANC branches, while regions had not held annual general meetings because branches were disorganised and consumed by infighting.
”Until Rasool, Skwatsha and Ngculu sit down and resolve their differences, they’re killing the ANC in the province. The NEC has no choice but to drastically intervene.”
A senior Western Cape leader said Luthuli House could suspend the elected provincial leadership and replace it with a task team or redeploy some provincial leaders elsewhere. A third option was to announce a reshuffle of the provincial leaders in the hope of creating some unity.
”If they appoint a task team and suspend the provincial executive committee it will be a major vote of no confidence in the provincial leadership. Taking such radical action so shortly before a general election could really harm the organisation,” the leader said.
”It’s more likely that they will redeploy people or announce a reshuffle of the provincial leadership or they will deploy staff from Luthuli House to come and take over the leadership here.
”National leaders like Mantashe, [NEC member] Jeremy Cronin or deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe are seen as unbiased and could do the job.”
The most public battle has long been between supporters of Skwatsha and those of Rasool, but in the run-up to the party’s provincial conference, new fault-lines have emerged.
Ngculu is nominally a Rasool ally and while some in the party believe he will contest the provincial leadership himself, others suggest he has no ambition to be premier.
But public works MEC Marius Fransman does have such ambitions and is backed by the influential MP Lerumo Kalako and others who believe he can deliver coloured votes.
Once a key Rasool supporter, Fransman has moved strongly to assert his own leadership claim.
Cosatu was sharply critical of the divided Western Cape ANC at its own provincial executive committee meeting last week and proposed a compromise ”top five” including Rasool as provincial treasurer and his rival Skwatsha.
The document identifies three ”camps” in the ANC, saying that none ”inspire the kind of confidence that is needed to inspire the nation or drive a programme that wins us the elections”.
The ”Rasool/Ngculu camp”, it says, ”came together to support Mbeki, and even though they were antagonistic to each other, it seems their common interest in business may have united them. They are both extremely well connected to business and will advance the issues of particular business interests ahead of the focus of the people.”
Of the Skwatsha-aligned grouping, Cosatu wrote, ”[they have] not been able to advance great unity in the organisation. They do, however, agree with Cosatu on the need for the alliance to be part of the political centre defining government policy.
”They are supportive of the Cosatu stance on Jacob Zuma — this is the group we should … encourage our members to support.”
The third group identified in the document is the apparent alliance between Fransman and Kalako. Cosatu proposes Fransman’s exclusion from the ANC leadership.