Matuma Letsoalo interviewed ANC Youth League president Julius Malema on the new succession battle in the tripartite alliance
You came down hard on Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi this week for saying Jacob Zuma should stand for two terms as the country’s president. Why?
We don’t have a problem with Zuma standing for two terms. We’re saying we need to avoid that discussion now because he has just been sworn in. Succession is very divisive. If a new name is introduced at an early stage, we run the risk of being divided.
Why should Cosatu, as an ANC ally, not have a view on the succession?
Cosatu has always had a view and that’s always been welcomed by the movement. We’re just cautioning; we’re not fighting with anybody. We know what succession has done; it took us seven to eight years debating who should succeed [Thabo] Mbeki. We saw the administration getting divided with people paying loyalty to this or that individual, services not being delivered because people were concentrating on lobbying.
When should the succession debate start?
Three to four years after Zuma’s been in office. It can only start a year before we hold our next national congress.
It’s been suggested that a second term for Zuma is being raised because some in the alliance don’t want Kgalema Motlanthe to succeed him.
If that’s their view, it’s welcomed. We’re not going to respond to rumours because none of the alliance partners have ever pronounced like that. If they [allies] didn’t want Kgalema, they would have pronounced on that. All of us know that if people want Zuma, you can’t use any constitutional clause to prevent him. If that’s the will of the people, no one can stop that, not even Kgalema. But equally, if people want a different candidate, Zuma cannot impose himself on them.
The youth league has always argued that the ANC deputy president should take over as party and the national president. Is this still the case?
That’s not relevant now. It’s going to create another unnecessary tension. The term of the president is still new; there’s no need for us to be debating who we want.
Does the youth league believe Zuma should serve two terms?
We’ve never discussed that. We’ll discuss it after four years of Zuma’s term in office.
There are perceptions that ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe, not Zuma, runs the country.
That’s how it’s supposed to be; the ANC must run the country. Polokwane said ANC is the political centre and all those who go to government are deployees. They must account to Luthuli House. That’s what we missed in the past 15 years.
This doesn’t suggest Zuma is being undermined. In fact, it reinforces Zuma’s presidency because he is part of the people who are at Luthuli House. Whatever Mantashe is communicating, people know that’s an ANC position.
We’re moving from an era where people are loyal to an individual. People deployed in government must be loyal to the party. That’s why we are more than happy when the ANC intervenes now and then when ministers do not carry the mandate of the ANC. People don’t say minister so and so is failing us; they say the ANC government is failing us.
How do you draw the line between the activities of government and those of the ANC?
A political party contests elections and sends deployees to government. To us, the government is machinery we use to implement our policies. It cannot be that there’s a competition between government and the ANC.