Power play: Danny Jordaan’s
Former Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Danny Jordaan’s determination to dismantle the dominant “Stalini” faction in that ANC region cost the governing party in the local government election.
A case study of state capture at local government level fingers a faction run by former Nelson Mandela Bay regional chairperson Nceba Faku and other Eastern Cape ANC leaders as the ones to blame for the election defeat.
The Democratic Alliance took control of the coastal city metro in a coalition council after the ANC won just over 40% of the vote.
The research, commissioned by Pravin Gordhan when he was co-operative governance minister, was carried out by the Public Affairs Research Institute, an independent institution affiliated to the University of the Witwatersrand.
“The election was sabotaged … in the final run-up to voting day, the Stalini group and province-aligned forces actively sabotaged the election,” report author Crispian Olver told the Mail & Guardian this week.
The faction is named after a popular meeting spot called Stalini, a community hall in Port Elizabeth’s Zwide township, where powerful ANC leaders in the city and their allies in the South African Communist Party and trade unions allegedly conspired to take control of the metro’s budget and tender processes.
Olver’s report focused on the capture of the metro’s human settlements department and on irregular tenders and deals struck between ANC politicians and Port Elizabeth businesspeople.
Most of the deals relate to the Integrated Public Transport System, the construction of the Nelson Mandela Bay stadium and to its management. A civil case to recoup R300-million from the people involved in these deals will be heard in the high court this year.
Olver’s report was finalised and handed to the department of co-operative governance and local government at the end of December.
In his findings, Olver suggests the decision by national ANC leaders to appoint Jordaan as mayor 15 months before elections led to the destabilisation of the dominant faction and their links to state resources.
“The new mayor wasted no time in laying down the law, publicly telling the provincial ANC leadership not to meddle in his administration,” the report reads.
After Jordaan took up office, the political staff in his predecessor Ben Fihla’s office were fired or negotiated early departures, “thereby disrupting old networks and communication lines to the ANC regional office”, the report continued.
A battle for power took place in the regional task team deployed by Luthuli House to replace the region when it was disbanded in May 2015.
Jordaan reconstituted the mayoral committee and national ANC leaders deployed a new deputy mayor, chief whip and speaker of council. Ten senior managers were also forced out through contract renegotiations, resignations and terminations. The city manager accepted a severance package of R1-million.
“The RTT [regional task team deployed by Luthuli House] was a highly contested space, and there were still active factions operating with it. This was fuelled by an ongoing contestation for power by the Stalini faction and other provincially-aligned forces,” Olver wrote.
A day before the election, Jordaan acknowledged the divisions in the region but dismissed suggestions that it could affect the ANC’s performance.
“Some of the [Stalini faction] were so invested in their own agenda, that they could not see their camp succeeding. They would rather let the ANC lose the metro, which they did,” Olver said this week.
“I was amazed that in the lead-up to the election, half of the organisation in the region had demobilised – they decided not to campaign.”
Regional task team member Andile Lungisa said there is some truth to claims that the ousted regional leaders conspired against Jordaan’s campaign.
“The changes they made [in the region] had a major impact. We should have focused on elections. What preoccupied our comrades was the issues of changes in the region, those effecting the changes and those who are resisting changes,” he said.
Lungisa said a late start to the party’s election campaign and limited resources also contributed to the party losing the metro. But he emphasised that the disbandment of regional structures did not end the factional dispute.
Instead, branches became a proxy battleground.
“The branches were still active and they [the disbanded regional leadership] still have an influence. Because, if we take you out without taking your laptop, you’ll still use your laptop at night,” he mused.
Olver had been tasked with providing an assessment of the party’s potential performance more than six months before the elections, and predicted a significant loss of support.
The ANC’s Eastern Cape secretary Oscar Mabuyane dismissed Olver’s state capture report as baseless and suggested it would be ignored by provincial officials.
“That is ridiculous. These are wild, baseless allegations. It is loose cannon-ism at its best,” he told the M&G. “It’s something we didn’t take seriously – the report. We once met with him and expressed our concerns about his allegations. It’s unfortunate that senior ANC comrades like him can go around looking for scapegoats when things don’t go right,” Mabuyane said.
Jordaan and Faku declined to comment because they had not yet seen Olver’s report.