Wardship: ANC Gauteng chair Panyaza Lesufi (above) and KwaZulu-Natal ANC leaders are to get nannies. Photo: Luba Lesolle/Getty Images
Thursday.
Reconfiguration is the euphemistic order of the day, here in the Kingdom, as the ANC tries to work out how to recover from the hammering it took at the polls on 29 May last year.
The provincial leadership in general — and chairperson Siboniso Duma and secretary Bheki Mtolo in particular — have had a target on their backs since the news broke that they had led the ANC to its worst showing in the province since 1994.
The ANC went from running KwaZulu-Natal for 20 years to being an also-ran — a minor player still in the game by virtue of the cabinet seats its national leadership offered the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in return for including Duma and his comrades in its government of provincial unity.
The loss in the province also fed into the party’s failure to make 50%+1 nationally — rather heavily, one might add — as did the ANC in Gauteng’s dismal performance in another one-time stronghold of the former liberation movement.
The ANC Gauteng leadership, headed by Panyaza Lesufi,i, have also been dead men (and women) walking, politically speaking, since they presided over the ANC’s loss of its majority in that province.
Lesufi managed to cling to the premiership by constituting a minority government with the Patriotic Alliance, the IFP and Rise Mzansi, but the ANC’s blunders in Gauteng have left the party headquarters with little option but to act ahead of the 2026 local government elections.
The national executive committee has been mulling over how to rebuild in the two provinces — and deal with their problematic leadership — for months, with a final decision deferred from one NEC meeting to the next NEC meeting.
Options have ranged from dissolution — firing the provincial executive committees (PECs) in their entirety and starting again from scratch — to augmenting them, which effectively means taking away their powers while leaving them in place,
but under supervision; or allowing them to carry on regardless.
Each has its dangers, but the election results last May were a pretty clear indicator of the direction things would take if either of the PECs was left to continue doing its own thing without serious intervention, so the choices were narrowed down to two pretty much immediately.
Dissolution, the option favoured by ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula, was seen as a step too far by his rivals, who have linked it — unsurprisingly — to the party’s succession when Cyril Ramaphosa’s second term as party president comes to an end in December 2027.
The departure of the bulk of Jacob Zuma’s supporters to the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party appeared to have done nothing to reduce the factionalism in the ANC, and the rival groupings are already lining up behind their presidential favourites.
Instead of focusing on the more immediate and important tasks ahead — consolidation and trying not to lose the local government elections next year — the comrades are already eyeing who takes control of the party in 2027.
Fixing broken infrastructure and a severely damaged party appear, once again, to be of less significance to those who have remained in the ANC than ensuring that the leader of their personal — make that factional — choice gets to become president when Ramaphosa’s time is up.
Old habits die hard and as a result the decision has been continually deferred ever since the reality of the 29 May debacle set in, another political football in the ANC’s game of thrones.
Last weekend the NEC finally came to a decision.
Well, almost.
The provinces won’t be disbanded or dissolved but will be reconfigured, a hybrid, which, according to Mbalula, will see them staying where they are but acting under the supervision of deployees.
Their job will be to “strengthen” the ANC in the province, a polite way to say that they will be the ones calling the shots between now and the time new leadership gets elected in the two provinces.
Who gets deployed to each province still has to be finalised.
Lists have been drawn up and names like Mike Mabuyakhulu and Bathabile Dlamini are among those being thrown around as potential conveners for the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
Neither could really be described as a messiah — politically or otherwise — but the ANC, like the rest of us, has to work with what it has.
Like everything in the party, the deployments will be viewed through a factional lens and will be as hard fought as the reconfiguration decision taken by the NEC.
So Panyaza and Mtolo will have to wait till Monday to find out who it is they will be taking orders from.
Welcome to life under political (adult) supervision.