When the ANC does a stocktake of the past two-and-a-half years, one of the crucial questions that must be answered is whether the centre has held since the stormy Polokwane conference in 2007.
During quite a weak presentation of the party’s strategy and tactics document this week, ANC political subcommittee head Tony Yengeni said the doomsayers had warned that the skies would fall and that the economy would collapse if Jacob Zuma became president.
Indeed, that has not come to pass. Though largely inflating his role in the drama of former president Thabo Mbeki’s recall, former presidency director general Frank Chikane detailed how the country was on the brink of the abyss as, in their haste to see his back, those who wanted Mbeki out disregarded all protocol and regulations that ought to be accorded a sitting president.
During that time of unplanned transition, many commentators kept on asking: Is the centre of the party holding, and who is holding it together? Was it Zuma, Kgalema Motlanthe, Gwede Mantashe or even the verbose Mathews Phosa?
The answer was clearly Mantashe, who became not only central to facilitating the smooth transition of the interim Motlanthe government but was also instrumental in finalising the Cabinet appointments when Zuma took over last year.
But can we still say, with conviction, that the same holds?
The secretary general of the ANC has in the past few weeks been seized with the task of resolving internal wrangling in the youth league, which has seen the Eastern Cape provincial conference being postponed four times.
His intervention in the dispute between the national leadership of the league and former Limpopo chairperson Lehlogonolo Masoga ended chaotically, with Masoga ignoring Mantashe. He then resorted to the courts, and the Julius Malema-led national executive committee used that opportunity to expel him from the party, an eventuality Mantashe had tried to avoid.
Limpopo currently has a parallel youth league leadership structure, which seemingly enjoys the backing of Mantashe’s communist friends. The North West also held a bitterly fought provincial conference, whose outcome might still be the subject of litigation. The youth league leadership nationally has questioned his impartiality, implying that he treated Masoga with kid gloves when the ANC has regulations clearly stipulating that anyone who takes the party to court should be expelled from it.
In any event, the party’s national working committee has taken the matter out of Mantashe’s hands — probably because he was not seen as impartial and also because, frankly, he had failed to stem the tide of infighting.
But you have to feel for him, because it is evident that once some individuals in the league had taken a decision that they wanted a former youth leader to occupy the secretary general position in 2012, the clock started ticking for him.
The issue of his wearing two hats — as chairperson of the South African Communist Party and secretary general of the ruling party — was raised as a problem, and his divided allegiance and indecisiveness were highlighted when Malema being heckled by SACP members in Limpopo was used as proof that Mantashe was “looking both ways” (with credit to David Cameron). When Malema was disciplined by the party, the attitudes of his supporters hardened, believing as they did that Mantashe was behind the charges.
He will obviously argue strenuously that he has managed both posts with integrity and with not a whiff of preferring one over the other. But it is too late now to profess neutrality. That’s not to say he isn’t neutral but that he has been successfully painted as such. At least one official structure of the youth league (Mpumalanga) has already taken a resolution that it doesn’t want him back in the position come 2012.
From now on, he has to watch his back while trying to manage the hands-on running of the party’s affairs. But he still enjoys a lot of support in the party, as well as in the SACP and Cosatu, whose position is that the attack on Mantashe is primarily led by tenderpreneurs who see him as an obstacle to their wheeling and dealing and who are also intent on marginalising the left from the leadership of the ANC.
Some in the left have privately whispered their disquiet with Zuma for not openly defending Mantashe against his attackers. Zuma has, as usual, stayed above the fray — perhaps a well-advised move, given that the youth league also no longer has the hots for him and he could be vulnerable.
But, make no mistake, the knives will be out for Mantashe at this national general council. His critics will ask where he was during the series of service-delivery protests across the country. Which hat did he wear during the bitter public spat between the nationalists in the ANC and the alliance partners? And was he even-handed in his handling of matters brought to his office?