Reaching out: There is a move to accommodate both Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa in the ANC top six.
Supporters of both ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma have indicated their willingness to compromise on their preferred leadership for the party, in a bid to have an uncontested top-six leadership election at the party’s December elective conference.
The compromise would see both Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma serve in the top six leadership, though which of them would be president has not yet been negotiated.
The chairs of all ANC provinces and leagues have already met three times this year. Their next meeting was due to take place at the national policy conference, but was postponed by the convenor of the grouping, Eastern Cape ANC chair Phumulo Masualle.
“We are converging on that perspective; that let’s explore rather a more united way of handling this matter than we usually do,” Masualle said on the sidelines of the policy conference. “In the past, this belief that you can galvanise as much support for your candidate and come descend on others hasn’t yielded us any unity for the organisation,” he added.
The meetings by chairpersons have been mandated by the ANC’s national executive committee to avoid a bruising leadership contest in December, which threatens to split the party.
The ANC has experienced two splits since it came into power in 1994. The first led to the formation of the Congress of the People (Cope) by supporters of former president Thabo Mbeki, who was defeated by Jacob Zuma in 2007.
The second time was in 2011 when former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema and other youth league members formed the Economic Freedom Fighters.
Political observers have warned of a third split if Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa go head to head in December.
ANC Northern Cape chairperson Zamani Saul said ANC leaders were cognisant of the looming split and were determined to avoid it.
“There’s a general commitment from all of us as chairs that … we must come up with an uncontested leadership, and we must use the national conference as a platform to galvanise and unite the ANC towards the 2019 general elections,” Saul told the M&G on Monday.
While his province has taken a resolution to back Ramaphosa as the next ANC leader, Saul said leaders were working hard to ensure the top-six election was not contested.
“There’s a great possibility that we might have an uncontested top six. All of us are working flat out to ensure that we find each other, then there can be contestation with regard to additional members,” Saul said.
But the trade-offs in leadership positions have not yet been finalised. Youth League president Collen Maine said at the first three meetings the grouping did not discuss which leaders they wanted in the positions of president and deputy.
“We have not gotten into substantive issues of dealing with the leadership question. We agreed that in the next meeting we will talk to each other about that,” Maine told the M&G.
ANC Limpopo chairperson Stan Mathabatha, who is seen to be backing Ramaphosa, told the M&G that the negotiations and compromises would be “very critical”.
“When you go to conference, you shall have had a meeting of minds of the leadership from various provinces. Currently it’s still early days, we’re still having radically different views on the issues but I am convinced that by December this year we shall have found each other,” Mathabatha said.
Gauteng ANC chairperson Paul Mashatile said the point of the meetings was to prevent a complete “breakdown” of the ANC. He said the chairpersons wanted to move away from the “winner takes all” approach.
“We want to emphasise consensus and unity as opposed to ‘winner takes all’. We want to move away from the politics of slates because we think where the ANC is today, if we don’t fight to unite it, with a united leadership, it can be destroyed. It can break down,” Mashatile told the M&G.
But Maine cautioned against raising expectations for the meeting as “there’s no commitment from some chairpersons and secretaries. Some have never attended the meetings. So it raises questions of us agreeing on what we want to do [about leadership],” he said.
He also warned against the top leadership of the party being decided by its provincial chairpersons and leagues. He said that privilege belonged with the ANC branches.
“As the structure we must stop arrogating to ourselves the status of branches of the ANC. The final arbiter on who must lead the ANC is the branches. We should not want to suppress their views. It’s important for us to guide the branches,” Maine said.
“All the lobbying groups needs to come together and there should be compromises made for the ANC to move forward,” he concluded.