African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma used his imbizo in Gauteng last week to brief ANC branches on the party’s reaction to the breakaway faction. But he also managed the carefully arranged platform to launch a door-to-door mobilisation of support and to keep the media in tow.
Zuma played the man of the people, excelling in using his charisma to get the people on his side. In the Lusaka section of Kagiso township he tried to speak seSotho, referring to his attempts as ”Zutho” — a mixture of isiZulu and seSotho. At one point he got stuck in the middle of a sentence and turned to provincial chairperson Paul Mashatile for help with the seSotho translation of the word ”conditions”, to his supporters’ delight.
He had been encouraging supporters to talk freely about conditions in their community. At the end of his talk, the crowd erupted into Zuma’s trademark song — Umshini Wami — and almost everyone, including the elderly, was dancing.
Zuma was guided in Lusaka by provincial deputy chairperson Nomvula Mokonyane, who was in her home town. He assured the community that he was one of them, that he was merely ”a volunteer of the ANC” and that he and the community needed to pull together in next year’s elections.
He greeted the elderly by shaking hands as they sat in an area prepared especially for them — part of the strategy to treat them with respect and send a message that they also play an important role in the elections.
Msholozi’s supporters waited patiently for his address, while he held a meeting with branch members, excluding the media from what the party’s regional leaders called ”a private ANC meeting”.
After the meeting Mokonyane instructed a woman in an ANC T-shirt to get a group of supporters to sing a song called i-ANC yiyo yodwa ephethe i-Freedom Charter (The Freedom Charter Belongs to the ANC Only) — a response to former party chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota’s charge that the ANC has deviated from the principles of the 53-year-old charter.
He accused the Lekota faction of refusing to let go of power. ”We don’t have traditional leaders in the ANC and no one is born to be the leader of the party.”
But he also told his supporters that it is not a good idea to speak about Lekota and former Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa ”because they’ll think they’re important”.
Zuma then moved to Toekomsrus in Randfontein, where he might have disappointed his supporters by cutting short his visit because of the ANC’s emergency national executive committee meeting, but they trust he will come back to them.
”I’m feeling bad about it,” he said, explaining why the imbizo could not proceed as planned. He is the main person the community wants to talk to when the imbizo takes place next month.
Using the media to the ANC’s advantage seems to be one of the party’s strategies in the build-up to next year’s elections.
Mokonyane — a good organiser, judging by how she rescued journalists from the unfriendly security personnel — reminded regional ANC leaders who kept fighting for space with the media that the event was not about them, but about the people getting a chance to speak to Zuma. And they got the message.
Mokonyane was holding a list of house numbers — the few that would be blessed by Zuma’s presence — indicating that the imbizo had been carefully choreographed.
The media was helped to the front, with constant calls by almost everyone for cameras to be prioritised — a change of tactic from the resistance journalists met at the beginning of the day from the police, the ANC regional members and Zuma’s security personnel.
Our photographer was even held by the hand and ushered through to the front of a packed Toekomsrus hall.
And the last request from the tough Mokonyane: ”Ishmael, get a list of all the media people who’ve been with us on this campaign trail so we can send them information on what else we’re doing.”
It seems this is the renewal of a cosy relationship between the media and the ANC.