With opposition parties boasting young
The ANC’s dismal local elections performance has fuelled calls for the party’s old guard to step aside and make way for a new generation of young leaders.
Factions in the ruling party this week confirmed that the election results have reignited the succession debate ahead of the party’s 2017 elective conference.
One group, which backs African Union Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the next ANC president, is touting Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba as her deputy and Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula or Gauteng Premier David Makhura as a replacement for Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s current secretary general.
This group believes that Dlamini-Zuma as party president would best bridge the transition between the old and the new guard – but, after that, they want Gigaba to take over the reins.
“When you have a society that is young, the organisation needs to be young. We need new ideas to reposition the organisation,” said ANC Youth League secretary general Njabulo Nzuza.
The ruling party suffered a major blow in this year’s local government elections, managing just 54.5% of this year’s vote against the 62% it won in 2011 and losing control of key metros such as Tshwane, Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay.
This weekend’s meeting of the party’s national executive committee (NEC) in Pretoria is likely to be heated as the party’s poor election showing is set to take centre stage, with the blame game shifting between President Jacob Zuma and the Gauteng provincial leadership in particular.
The Mail & Guardian has been told that the group touting Gigaba and Mbalula wants Mantashe as party chairperson.
Nzuza mentioned Mbalula, Gigaba, Deputy Trade and Industry Minister Mzwandile Masina (who is also the ANC’s Ekurhuleni mayoral candidate) and ANC KwaZulu-Natal chair Sihle Zikalala as some of the young leaders who were ready to lead the ANC.
Gigaba and Mbalula both previously served as youth league presidents. They have also served in the ANC’s national working committee and on the NEC.
Gigaba’s spokesperson, Mayihlome Tshwete, said the minister would not discuss succession because the process of nominating leaders was not yet open. Mbalula refused to comment.
Zikalala said the intention of bringing younger people into the leadership structure is valid.
A senior government official, asked about party discussion involving the new generation, said: “The generational mix of Mbalula, Malusi, Zikalala and Makhura is dynamic. They can work well together.”
The inclusion of Gigaba as a potential deputy president and Mbalula as secretary general is expected to cause divisions in Dlamini-Zuma’s faction, which is largely driven by the “premier league”. This grouping consists of the premiers of the North West (Supra Mahumapelo), Mpumalanga (David Mabuza) and the Free State (Ace Magashule). If this faction gets its way, Mabuza would be the deputy president and Magashule chairperson.
The M&G spoke to five senior ANC leaders – three NEC members and two provincial executive committee members – who confirmed the renewed push to get former youth league leaders to play a more active role in the party’s leadership.
This can be seen as a strategy to reverse the party’s declining electoral support and a bid to match the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), both of which are led by young leaders – Mmusi Maimane (36) and Julius Malema (35).
An NEC member agreed that the older generation in the ANC needed to make way for young leaders to take the party forward, but warned against people who were “controlled by the Guptas”.
A second NEC member said: “There must be a new generation to take us forward. It happens in all organisations.” He emphasised the need for a proper debate about who would take over, but added: “Once you start putting names [forward], you invite problems.”
Other former youth league leaders who are being touted for the top six positions include Febe Potgieter-Gqubule and Pule Mabe, as deputy secretary general and treasurer general respectively. Mabe enjoys support from the faction seeking to have Cyril Ramaphosa take over from Zuma.
The Ramaphosa faction wants Gauteng leader Paul Mashatile as national chairperson of the party – something that may prove tough amid calls to tackle the Gauteng executive for the ANC’s poor showing in three metros as well as Mogale City.
The “young lions” lobbyists also insist that 60% of the party’s NEC members must be younger people. The term “young lions” refers to those who were deployed by ANC president Oliver Tambo in 1985 to make the country ungovernable, and later came to refer to the youth league.
The discussion about bringing young faces into the party’s leadership comes amid a strong push for Zuma to step down after the ANC’s humiliating performance in last week’s polls.
Committee members are expected to discuss the EFF’s demand for the ANC to remove Zuma in exchange for its support to retain the key metros.
The EFF also wants the ANC to implement land expropriation without compensation and has told the DA to proclaim its support for this policy publicly.
Zuma’s supporters in the NEC, who are in the majority, are once again likely to shoot down calls for his removal. Despite lobbying for new blood in the party leadership, Nzuza dismissed calls for Zuma to step down as “opportunistic”.
“That’s nonsense. Zuma was not contesting local government elections. What has emerged here is the white supremacy liberal agenda. You can’t say because we lost [metros and municipalities], you blame the president.”
Although Mantashe would not comment on calls for Zuma’s removal, he said: “The national executive will break into commissions to discuss all concerns and, once done, we will go back to voters with a message that says ‘we have heard you.’”
An NEC member, who asked to remain anonymous, said he supported including young leaders in the ANC’s top structures but warned that this process should not be self-serving. He questioned, for example, why Mbalula was named as a possible candidate for the position of secretary general when he had made “no impact” during the party’s election campaign.
Mbalula was roped in at the last minute to salvage the ANC’s election campaign, which had faltered under Nomvula Mokonyane.
Mbalula’s backers said he had, in fact, reduced the damage that could have been caused by the “smart and convincing campaign” by Malema and the EFF.
Although Mbalula was brought in at the 11th hour, he managed to fill the Ellis Park and Johannesburg stadiums for the Siyanqoba (Victory) rally two weeks ago.
Another NEC member said the ANC needed to regain lost ground after last week’s poll. “Our own mistakes cost us the election. Even when we say we need to include young people and we don’t fix those mistakes, it will still be a problem.”
ANC runs its gaze to small councils
With the ANC on the brink of losing control of some major metros, a battle is raging for control of several hung municipalities it had billed as “strategic” prior to last week’s local government elections.
The party has to seal coalition deals if it has any hope of reclaiming authority over the collective budget of at least R143-billion.
In reaction to the election result this week, former Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni equated the shift to losing control of the country’s finances. “The ANC lost ‘control’ of about 85% of the municipal budget. That’s huge by any imagination. Basically, we lost economic power. Sad but true, no matter how you spin it,” he wrote in a social media post this week.
The ANC announced its mayoral candidates in June and listed Mbombela in Mpumalanga, Madibeng and Bonjala in North West, Waterberg in Limpopo, Emfuleni in the Sedibeng district of Gauteng and Sol Plaatje in the Northern Cape among the councils it viewed as key.
Although the ANC clinched the most votes in these municipalities, it failed to do so in other strategic councils such as Metsimaholo in the Free State, Nama Khoi (which includes Springbok) in the Northern Cape, Rustenburg in North West and Mogale City on Johannesburg’s West Rand. These hung councils collectively spent more than R6-billion last year, according to their respective budgets.
The party’s list of 62 strategic councils included district and local municipalities in areas such as Rustenburg, Mahikeng and Tlokwe in North West. Although the district municipalities have control over relatively small areas and their spending, the local municipalities earmarked by the ANC are mostly small towns with bigger budgets. It now has to negotiate swiftly in these areas to cut deals that will see it retain control of the purse strings — and it appears to be looking to some strange bedfellows for help.
“The Freedom Front Plus is very popular at the moment,” said Pieter Mulder, FF+ co-founder and current leader.
“Suddenly we have letters from the ANC and DA [Democratic Alliance], and we’ve met with the UDM [United Democratic Movement]. We are in talks with all of them but will do what’s in the best interests of our voters. We don’t want to make local deals. They’ve offered the speaker position in a small town, but we want a position in the metros in exchange for that.”
In a message sent to Gauteng journalists this week setting out coalition options in these hung municipalities, the ANC highlighted a mixed basket of partnership options.
In Metsimaholo, where the ANC won 19 seats, the party said it could work with either the DA with its 12 seats, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) with eight seats, the FF+ with one seat or the Metsimaholo Community Association (MCA) with two seats, it said.
The MCA emerged after a wave of violent protests in Zamdela, near Sasolburg, three years ago. Demonstrations flared up in opposition to the proposed merger of Metsimaholo and Ngwathe, which would have seen the municipal headquarters moved to Parys. The MCA now holds kingmaker status in the council and the seats needed by the ANC to remain in power.
The ANC missive suggested it could go with pretty much anyone in its quest for one extra seat in Rustenburg — either the steadily growing and relatively unknown African Independent Congress, the UDM, the FF+ or the EFF. Rustenburg was one of the most hotly contested areas in this election, with its annual budget of about R3-billion. It’s also the birthplace of the EFF and the site of the 2012 Marikana massacre, which significantly dented ANC support in the area.
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the FF+ and the EFF were listed as potential coalition partners in Mogale City — an area that covers much of Johannesburg’s wealthy western suburbs and that has a budget of just under R3-billion. The governing party needs just one more seat, and will probably approach either the IFP or the FF+ for a coalition, given that relations with the EFF remain frosty.
The ANC’s bid for control of these strategic hung councils comes on the back of the economic pain it suffered after losing its grip of key metros last week. It failed to win an outright majority in Tshwane, Johannesburg and the industrial centres of Nelson Mandela Bay and Ekurhuleni. These metros have budgets ranging from R11-billion to R50-billion and collectively control more than R137-billion in public funds.