Former and current ANC KwaZulu-Natal chairs Senzo Mchunu and Sihle Zikalala have spoken about the infighting in provincial structures.
This week ANC national spokesperson Zizi Kodwa underlined the “sacrosanct principle” that the “branches are the basic unit” of the party and that aspirant leaders hoping to contest the succession battle at its elective conference in December must be nominated after rigorous and independent-minded discussions at that level.
Kodwa was speaking at a “no-holds-barred” meeting between the media and ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe and his deputy, Jessie Duarte. Kodwa’s view was supported by both. Mantashe reiterated the ANC “tradition” of nominating leaders and mentioned the party’s document Through the Eye of the Needle, which defines ethical standards for office bearers.
The message was clear: slates would not be countenanced and branches – rather than ANC leaders, the party’s various leagues or its alliance partners – would be key to who leads the ANC.
Yet a Mail & Guardian investigation suggests the party’s branches are easily influenced by money, violence or the manipulation of internal processes by faction leaders who act contrary to democratic principles. It also suggests that members’ independent minds have been compromised by the personal interests of careerists, the conflation of party and state and the patronage systems that follow.
These trends are especially stark in KwaZulu-Natal, seen as a stronghold for President Jacob Zuma. The province’s heft in the ANC mirrors Zuma’s own ascendency.
When membership figures were audited in June 2012, before the ANC’s Mangaung elective conference, KwaZulu-Natal accounted for 331 820 of the total membership of 1 220 057. The second-placed Eastern Cape had 187 585 members and the Northern Cape 36 428.
By sheer weight of numbers, KwaZulu-Natal looks like the tail that wags the ANC dog. What happens there is a portent of the ANC’s future if “alien tendencies” are not urgently addressed.
Party structures in the province have been mired in infighting that led to the validity of its 2015 provincial conference being contested in court. Political assassinations continue unabated. Several stalwarts have been purged from the party. One insider described an attitude of “short-termism so prevalent that members are thinking in five-year terms, to ‘eat’ as much as they can, rather than building the organisation”.
These trends have long been recognised by the leadership. According to the minutes of a May 2015 provincial executive committee (PEC) meeting, the then provincial chairperson, Senzo Mchunu, noted that “branches are only active on occasions such as conferences” and that the party was “experiencing low levels of discipline … characterised by violent actions and disruptions of ANC constitutional meetings” where members are “uncontrollable”.
Sihle Zikalala, then the provincial secretary, reiterated this in his organisational review, noting that the “prevailing tendency of using violence … includes attacking deployees or members who have a different view”. In one case, the setting alight of the eMalahleni regional offices in Newcastle “seem[ed] to be directed at destroying the membership files of the ANC”.
Zikalala highlighted the situation in eThekwini – the largest region by membership in the country – where there were several aborted regional conferences amid claims of money being used for “vote-banking” (buying votes to create a voting bloc) and the “mobilisation of people to storm and hold ANC meetings at ransom” by members of the PEC, branch chairpersons and secretaries.
At a September 2015 PEC meeting, two months before KwaZulu-Natal’s conference, which was bitterly contested by the pro-Zuma Zikalala and the incumbent Mchunu, Zikalala “acknowledged that … the challenges of divisions are emanating from the PEC”.
Zikalala won the election, but the outcome was disputed in court by disgruntled ANC members who claimed to represent about 40% of provincial structures. Many supplied confirming affidavits.
The applicants alleged that 24 ANC branches were deprived of delegates, 31 branches were allocated more delegates than they were entitled to and eight branches arrived at the conference venue in Pietermaritzburg to find “bogus” or “duplicate” delegates “who had not been lawfully elected … but were recognised by the credentials committee”.
The provincial leadership has rejected these claims.
A high-ranking member who was part of Zuma’s campaign to become ANC president in 2007 said nationwide rot set in after that.
“By the time we went to [the 2012 national elective conference in] Mangaung, the party was already damaged.
“I would say that the type of fraud being talked about [in the KwaZulu-Natal ANC court case] started in 2008 at the elective conference of the ANC Youth League in Mangaung, when they couldn’t adopt credentials [the numbers of delegates who qualified to attend and vote] for four days,” the member said.
“This was followed by the North West provincial conference later, where we heard similar noises, and the Eastern Cape after that.
“Something had poisoned the organisation of the ANC … A politics of desperation had taken root. A lack of [ANC] values was weakening systems of the organisation, and fraud and fraudsters were coming to the fore.”
The applicants in the KwaZulu-Natal case also alleged that branch meetings to decide on conference delegates and nominate candidates to lead the province were compromised by leaders and deployees who acted in Zikalala’s interest and contrary to ANC processes.
Representatives of eThekwini’s ward 72 branch wrote to provincial leaders complaining of intimidation, “gatekeeping” and the presence of Durban metro police, South African Police Service members and private security personnel who “stormed” out of a car armed with “automatic rifles”. The private security guards, the ward 72 members allege, “refused to allow them to enter the venue” despite their having valid membership documents.
The ward 13 branch in eThekwini lodged a complaint with provincial leaders that the credentials and verification of members was not done and that non-members of the ANC had been allowed to vote.
“You have a mafia-style rule on the internal processes of the ANC where you don’t uphold the rules and guidelines of the movement but act like a mafia in your interests and that of your faction. The party is in decline,” said an ANC insider.
Gatekeeping is not new, said another ANC member who, until the local government elections last year, held a top position in the Msunduzi municipality (Pietermaritzburg): “Before Polokwane I was known to support [former president Thabo] Mbeki and one day I found that I was no longer a member of my branch, despite being paid up.
“This is an authoritarian ANC, where dissenting views are not allowed. If you don’t toe the line of those with power, you may get killed. If you contest positions, you may get killed,” he said.
The current ANC purged losers in election contests, rather than attempting to grow the organisation through reconciliation, he said.
A high-ranking ANC member talked of “gaping wounds … so deep they are paralysing the movement”. He said careerists were using the ANC for self-interest: “It’s as if we are in a ship and everyone is dancing on the deck, but nobody is checking on the engine to ensure we arrive at our destination.”
Factionalism has long riven KwaZulu-Natal. Power consolidation is based on gaining control of the party’s regions. Regional control allows ANC leaders to use municipal positions to offer jobs, finances and tenders to cadres to ensure support for themselves and leaders at provincial and national level, according to ANC members.
Zikalala highlighted this in various reports to the KwaZulu-Natal PEC, saying this ill-discipline arose from “the season of regional conferences” held in late 2014.
The outcome of the Lower South Coast region poll was appealed all the way to Luthuli House but Mantashe refused a rerun. Other regional results were accepted but tensions flared between the new regional leadership and the old guard in municipal positions, who still controlled state purse strings.
In the Jozini municipality, Zikalala noted, there were “perceptions that some councillors were making it difficult for the council to function as part of fighting against the outcome of the regional conference”.
He conceded in the May 2015 PEC meeting that the party had to “draw a line between the role and relationship of ANC structures and those of government, in particular regional executive committees and [municipal] councils”.
Such turbulence in the ANC’s largest and most influential province shows the party struggling to self-correct ahead of December’s national elective conference.
Money and patronage, intimidation, political murders and anti-democratic practices all have an effect. Even Zuma supporters such as Moses Mabhida regional secretary Mzi Zuma (a relation of the president) say: “We have to do more. We are the second-biggest region in the province, we have a big say in provincial and national conferences and we contribute numbers to the outcome of elections, but policy? We have more to do. We have to convert that quantity into quality.”