A showdown is looming between the leftist and nationalist factions when the ANC’s national general council (NGC), its highest policy meeting between national conferences, kicks off in Durban in September.
The first salvoes were fired this week when the ANC and its youth league released documents on key issues the conference will debate, including divisive leadership struggles in the movement, nationalisation and proposals for a media tribunal.
The public faces of the two warring groups are Gwede Mantashe, the ANC secretary general, and Julius Malema, the ANC Youth League president.
The simmering tension between delegates aligned, on the one hand, with Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP), who now have generous representation in all levels of the ANC, and, on the other, with the youth league, is expected to erupt at the council, the first mass gathering of the ruling party since the 2007 elective conference in Polokwane.
At the council, scheduled from September 20 to 24, Malema will test support among the 2Â 000 delegates for his plan to nationalise the mining industry, and the youth league plans to challenge Mantashe’s dual role in the tripartite alliance. He has taken heavy flak for serving as both ANC secretary general and chairperson of the SACP.
The youth league will remind delegates of the SACP congress in December last year at which Malema was booed by delegates. According to the league, Mantashe, wearing his SACP cap, did not adequately defend their president. The aim is to force Mantashe to choose between the two positions.
But the council will have its eyes firmly set on the 2012 elective conference. Mantashe’s supporters want him re-elected as secretary general and the league wants to ensure the election of Fikile Mbalula, the deputy police minister. The youth league seeks to weaken Mantashe before 2012 by forcing him to choose between his positions.
More autonomy
At the league’s own national general council, which starts on August 24, it will push for more autonomy from the ANC. Its leaders recently voiced dissatisfaction with the way Mantashe, in his capacity as secretary general, tried to intervene in the battle between them and the provincial league leaders in Limpopo.
But the leftist faction in the ANC will not take the planned offensive against Mantashe lying down. They intend to raise the ANC’s seemingly lackadaisical approach to corruption allegations made against its leaders and to complain about the slow implementation of the industrial policy adopted last year.
Mantashe told the Mail & Guardian the council would serve as a “political school” where policies would be debated.
But the council cannot change policies or resolutions adopted by the five-yearly national conference.
“The primary task of the NGC is to do a mid-term review in terms of work done to implement the conference resolutions,” he said.
Some of these would include examining the viability of a media tribunal, which would have the power to sanction newspapers and journalists who stepped out of line.
The youth league has placed its controversial nationalisation proposal on the council agenda and this will form part of the discussion about economic transformation.
The council can instruct the ANC to conduct more research and formulate a resolution for the next national conference in Mangaung, but it cannot take binding policy decisions.
But it could take an unexpected direction. At the last council meeting, in Tshwane in 2005, a carefully orchestrated move by delegates cast Jacob Zuma as the victim of machinations by then-president Thabo Mbeki and effectively launched Zuma’s campaign for the leadership.
Elections are generally not held at an NGC. If there are vacancies on the national executive committee they are filled by co-option.
Although delegates may bring issues to the council that are not within the ambit of the meeting, they must alert the secretary general three months in advance.