The name of the game is unity, President Jacob Zuma told delegates at the ANC Western Cape provincial conference last weekend.
Slates will no longer be allowed. Delegates must vote for whoever they feel will be the best ANC office bearer, not because the candidate forms part of a particular slate.
The ruling party creates slates (or lists) that include the candidates who will contest the top five positions up for grabs at an ANC conference, or the top six in the ANC’s national conference. But the practice creates problems in the Western Cape, Zuma told delegates at the Cape Town International Convention Centre last week.
“We discuss the names before the serious problems facing the ANC in the province, which is the actual purpose of such conferences,” he said. “That is the sickness that kills this organisation,” he said.
But like a parent who tells a child “don’t do what I do, do what I say”, Zuma’s words rang hollow, because it was the practice of slates as we now know it that led to his own election as ANC president.
Slates rose to prominence at the ANC’s elective conference in Polokwane in 2007 when, for the first time, the ANC had two lists for leadership candidates. On the first, now iconic slate were the names of Zuma, deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe, secretary general Gwede Mantashe, his deputy, Thandi Modise, chairperson Baleka Mbete and treasurer general Mathews Phosa.
At Polokwane Zuma’s lieutenants, Fikile Mbalula (now sports minister) and Zizi Kodwa (now presidential communications adviser), distributed small pieces of paper with the names the delegates supporting Zuma had to vote for. Later a similar process was followed to vote for additional members. It was intended to avoid confusion, because the voting fodder could not be assumed to know who they were supposed to vote for.
Two slates
In provinces this not-so-proud tradition continued and now no ANC conference takes place without two slates that pit one set of delegates against another. If you support the candidate who is the face of the slate — normally the chairperson — your vote for the rest is automatic, because you can’t choose him or her without choosing the rest of the slate.
Being included on a slate is an honour and puts you on the road to high state office. But it comes with a heavy responsibility: to lobby for votes and help with fundraising, because without boozy parties and fancy hotel stays for the more uppity delegates, the dream of being elected will remain just that: a dream.
How do you get on to a slate? Usually the face of the slate is the one who, with his or her lobby group, identifies individuals who will help him or her to get elected. Each comrade needs to make known what benefit he or she can bring to the campaign. Some will be chosen because they claim to be able to secure the support of a constituency.
But, as a result of disgruntlement, often a name will jump from one slate to another, as in the case of Ayanda Matiti, the chairperson of the ANC Youth League in the Eastern Cape.
Matiti originally supported incumbent Youth League president Julius Malema, but when he asked for the spot of secretary general on the Malema slate for the coming conference, Malema refused, so Matiti jumped ship.
Alliances of convenience are becoming a common factor in slates and they can backfire badly. In the other embattled province where the ANC met last week, the North West reinstated former chairperson Supra Mahumapelo as its leader.
Mahumapelo, called by some the “black Jesus”, was the face of the slate. But the North West developed three sets of candidates for leader and eventually two had to merge to elbow out the leadership of Mmoloki Pheelwane, who competed with Mahumapelo at the polls.
Zuma’s attempt to eradicate slates will be as successful as Malema’s attempt to nationalise the mines. The names on the slates may change, but the tradition is cast in stone.