The th!nc Foundation

The election of Jacob Zuma, as President of the ANC in 2007 at its 53 rd Conference, remains one of the most openly contested electoral process the ANC has experienced since its banning. His recall as Deputy President of the country, and at a time when the ANC was facing an internal rebellion against a ‘supposedly centrist’ Thabo Mbeki, created an opportunity sieve for Zuma to earnestly start his ‘campaign’ to be the next President of the ANC and by extension the Republic of South Africa. At the time Zuma was recalled he was the deputy president of the ANC and possessing all rights to organise and address any meeting of the ANC; he thus had free reign over structures of the ANC and could thus influence future elective conferences at all levels of the organisation. It is in the domain of this influence that Zuma amassed unfettered political power, a resource he consolidated from his first day as President of the country.  In the office of the deputy president of the country, Z...

The ANC is once again getting into a succession discourse. The contest for political power within the ANC, if you like, its unofficial ‘primaries’ before the 2019 national elections, is in full swing. The contest will continue the despoliation of the ANC’s liberation movement character without introducing in its stead a party political alternative. In its conduct of the succession discourse the ANC has, and since its unbanning in 1990, been perfecting its new tradition of referencing its past without a commitment to break it asunder and bringing forth a newness that re-creates it as a ‘new liberation’, liberation movement. The ‘new liberation’ is more than just removing the shackles of colonialism and apartheid, but introducing in that whirlpool a trajectory that redefines South Africa as a player in the economic liberation struggle characterised by competition for ‘investor’ legitimation and acceptance. Whilst this competition has become some form of economic spirituality that p...