SIPHAMANDLA ZONDI
Like the 2017 national conference, the just-adjourned ANC elective conference has posed a few crucial questions about how KwaZulu-Natal positions itself on critical matters of the ANC leadership and strategy. How do we explain the failure of the KZN ANC to win the presidency of the ANC? How is this generally understood? Does it even matter at all?
These questions arise because ANC constituencies have made the election of their representatives as one of seven officials a matter of strategic significance in the internal balance of power.
It is because for almost a year now, internal ANC debates and mobilisation have focused on this issue of lobbying for inclusion into the Top 6, which after the adoption of a constitutional amendment at the last conference, has become the Top 7.
Some provincial conferences, such as in Limpopo and Eastern Cape, became a launching pad for campaigns for the inclusion of favoured representatives in the then Top 6. Some provincial conferences, like in KZN and Gauteng, had these undertones present, while details were not quite clear.
While the constitution of the ANC does give significant constitutional powers to the National Executive Committee, the focus is on the top 7 officials of the NEC. The group of officials has been accorded political significance by virtue of the conduct of previous officials. Since 1993, these officials have used their offices to position themselves as key leaders in ANC politics and society in general. They used to be a mouthpiece to demonstrate wisdom. They tend to build a strong profile for themselves, enabling them to become part of the small group of powerful political elite in the country.
When candidates from KwaZulu-Natal failed to make it into the Top 6 in 2017, it seemed like a major indictment on the leadership of the Provincial Executive Council (PEC), led by Sihle Zikalala. It seemed that they had let down the biggest province in the ANC. It was not clear as to which province of those which had representation in the Top 6 (Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State, and Eastern Cape) deserved this less than the big KZN province. But the point was that KZN ANC expected to be represented.
In 2017, the non-election of Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma was placed at the door of the PEC, not her failure to attract enough numbers or the differences in the size of the campaign budget between her and President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Perhaps, having had representation in the Top 6 since 2002 had created expectations that the KZN province would continue to have its people in the Top 6. So, going into the 2022 conference, some expected it to retain at least one seat in the Top 7 as if some (form of) entitlement.
Dlamini Zuma was loosely associated with the push for socio-economic transformation, not because she had a record of accomplishing such but because it was a branding of those that preferred her over Ramaphosa. The idea came from a resolution of the ANC conference on radical socio-economic transformation. As a campaign brand, it became an identification of a faction that became known as the Radical Economic Transformation (RET).
Ramaphosa’s branding was fighting corruption and state capture, again, not because he had a track record in this, but because it was an agenda the ANC decided to focus on after being rocked by corruption scandals that seriously threatened its state power.
In the recent conference, the province put forward Zweli Mkhize as a candidate to challenge Ramaphosa without a distinct agenda but an ANC resolution to pursue unity and renewal. Ramaphosa had come to own this resolution by virtue of being president of the term, expected to deliver on this resolution. So, nothing substantive distinguishing the two candidates going to national conference.
It is not fully clear what the province said Mkhize had to offer that Ramaphosa, as an incumbent, did not already offer. This is because an incumbent always has an advantage in a contest. To defeat them, it must be either due to their failures or a superior mobilisation by their challenger.
It was not explained what about Mkhize’s leadership approach and style the province would be sold to other provinces, to join in booting Ramaphosa out. It was incumbent upon the province to reason out its choice, given that it was rare for the ANC. It was a bit clear what failures the KZN ANC wanted to associate with Ramaphosa in relation to the 2017 mandate.
There was a lot of horse-trading right up to the second day of the conference, as reported, but it was not clear what was to persuade Limpopo, Eastern and Mpumalanga, for instance, to vote for Mkhize over the incumbent president.
As it can be seen even on social media posts of provinces and regions and delegates, an impression that KZN was simply forcing a “Zulu” onto others was allowed to take root. This may have not been true, but it spread in the context of the last decade of difficulties that placed Zulu nationalism at the centre of our politics. The perception of KZN as a home of Zulu ultra-nationalism and even tribalism within the ANC is old and has gained traction in the past decade or so. It does not have to be true in order to grow. It is an impression similar to the idea of Xhosa-Nostra in the early 2000s.
The association of that nationalism with stubbornness, arrogance, rigid thinking, warrior politics and hegemonic tendencies did find expression in the run-up to and during this conference. It also became a useful message against a KZN candidate in provinces further north. The fear of the Zulu warrior in broad church politics that espouse horizontal dialogues and constant management of contradictions is real in some circles.
There is no question that the current KZN ANC leadership is militant, a product of the youth league of the 2010s. But while its exuberance is part of the rise of youth in king-makers in internal ANC politics, it can easily mix with perceptions of narrow Zulu nationalism to put some off KZN candidates.
When the president testified of this tribalism during the Human Rights Commission hearing on the 2021 riots, the perception was reinforced. Some took exception to Ramaphosa labelling the 2021 riots an ethnic mobilisation, a statement seen as accusing the province of ethnic nationalism or tribalism. But the perception stayed. This did create a bit of discomfort, even in the KZN ANC, which rejected this characterisation of the riots. But this was taken as a fact in other parts of the country and helped to frame the province in chauvinistic terms.
As reported in the media, the leadership of ANC’s Musa Dladla region recently reacted to the celebration of former president Jacob Zuma who, unfortunately, walked in the midst of Ramaphosa presenting the political report at Nasrec as unruly behaviour. It warned its members that the province could lose a lot in this different treatment of the two figures. Indeed, part of the unruly conduct on the floor of the conference was associated with KZN and further cemented this nationalist perception.
This happened against the backdrop of the Zuma Foundation starting a private prosecution of Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma joining three other ANC MPs in voting contrary to the ANC directive in Parliament, a vote seen as meant to attack Ramaphosa politically. Many would have recalled that Ramaphosa testified at the Human Rights Commission earlier that some people had said, quoting them in isiZulu, ngeke sibuswe iVenda (We can’t be governed by a mere MuVenda). As it did during Zuma’s troubles, the ANC had decided to close ranks and quash the looming impeachment processes against Ramaphosa over the Phala Phala saga.
It is possible that the message of KZN was clouded by these suspicions of ethnic chauvinism and arrogance. Or it is simply that some provinces were simply not convinced about Mkhize over Ramaphosa since they have many similarities, including clouds hanging over their heads, commitment to the renewal project, unity and so forth.
Whatever is true, the ANC in KZN, facing a resurgent IFP and loss of support has a huge job going to the 2024 elections. The national leadership of the ANC, which includes many KZN sons and daughters, a good number of which are in the top 10 of the newly elected NEC (showing there is no sidelining of KZN), has a huge task in helping the KZN province lick its wounds and forge ahead. The ANC, as a whole, will lose a lot by losing power in KZN. The defeat of the KZN in ANC elections, as some triumphalists put it, could come back to haunt the ANC.
No wonder the very first provincial visit by the new Secretary-General, Fikile Mbalula, was to the KZN province, where he went to console the family of Mzala Nxumalo’s ANC councillor, who lost her life in a car accident coming back from Nasrec. This may mean Mbalula knows the defeated KZN needs support from the centre. A wounded warrior can easily self-cannibalise unless supported to refocus her attention.
Prof Siphamandla Zondi is the director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg
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