The Shikota movement exists only because of one man: African National Congress president Jacob Zuma. Remove him from the equation and the new party will not get out of the starting blocks.
Shikota styles itself on everything it believes Zuma lacks, including moral authority, leadership with a conscience, commitment to the rule of law and respect for women’s rights.
The decision has created a poser for the ANC, which must hope that voters will ask for much more than a list of grievances against Zuma. The ANC can either hope that this Shikota message will not be enough to dislodge long-held faith in the ANC. Or else it should seriously entertain removing Zuma as a candidate and rip the heart out of Shikota’s campaign.
Proceeding with Zuma is not about a choice of personalities but a policy position from the Polokwane conference where it was decided that whoever is the party president should also be the country’s president to avoid a damaging contest between Luthuli House and the state house.
The ruling party has locked itself into this inflexible position and has to deal with the consequences.
I attended the Shikota convention last week and it was clear to me that beyond the points about a change to the electoral system, what really unites it is its distrust and lack of confidence in Zuma’s leadership.
The reason the Shikota message finds fertile ground among many who are not ANC activists is that it accentuates and reminds us about the ANC president’s conservative views about women, as articulated during the rape trial, the clamour to circumvent his legal woes through a ”political solution”, his failure to publicly reprimand ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and the fact that he faces the prospect of being convicted of fraud and corruption.
In short, even if it has no policies of its own, Shikota presents itself as a cleaner, morally upright and acceptable version of the ANC.
This evidently will be at the heart of its canvassing.
A possible solution for the ANC to counter the usage of Zuma as a rallying point would be to find a way to replace him with his deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe.
In the absence of Zuma and Malema, who is there to throw brickbats at in the ANC? Motlanthe?
Now there’s a man to neutralise and take the steam out of Shikota!
Motlanthe has steered a steady course between the warring factions of the ANC and retains respect among all. His moderate line was again demonstrated this week when, in the face of Zuma calling Shikota leaders hypocrites and snakes, he called for them to be persuaded to come back to the ANC.
But the odds of him being preferred ahead of Zuma are complicated by the Polokwane resolution and the fact that too many people have invested time and effort into a Zuma presidency and are prepared to ”kill” for Zuma.
Many in Luthuli House also argue that the ”masses of our people” are not interested in Zuma’s moral character and dismiss it as a middle-class concern.
So president Zuma it is; even as it looks certain that he will lead the ANC to an electoral victory but potentially with its narrowest margin in the post-apartheid epoch.