The ANC succession debate is with us. Again, it is dramatic and seems to be promising a new telenovela after one that starred Deputy Justice Raymond Zondo. The 2021 municipal elections have given the nation a trailer of how South Africans can behave with regards to the ANC as their governing party, in the next general election. Notwithstanding, the results have only reduced ANC seats in municipal councils without removing the ANC from its arguable position as the nexus of politics and the political economy in South Africa. In-ANC succession debates and battles have for a while become news and vectors of all discourse political in South Africa, particularly all its elective conference years since its unbanning. The question of who succeeds Ramaphosa as President of the ANC is as important as who succeeds him as President of the country. 2022 is to Ramaphosa a mid-course review and correction year if we have accepted that in the ANC to serve two-term as its President is a given.
Ramaphosa became leader of the ANC when its divisions were at their worst since the 60:40 Polokwane elective conference outcome. In divisiveness terms, Polokwane remains the watershed and one of the most consequential of ANC conferences to determine its wherewithals of unity, renewability, and rebuildability. It did not only usher in open campaigning for leadership in the ANC but introduced a personality-based mobilization of its members towards and in conferences.
We saw the 'buying branches' and introduction of money into the 'conference delegate complex'. A sect of cash for votes got traction in the Polokwane Conference delegate residences that it created an in-ANC conference political economy. We experienced how an ANC national conference delegate could be weaponized through money into an agent of ANC capture as a prelude to capturing the Executive Authority of the State.
Polokwane created cracks in the ANC elective conference as a celebrated heritage site of democracy by a liberation movement. The historic and organic ANC policy-making paths that could be referenced to branch-level discussions collapsed. 'Members of members' or 'members of mega-financed' lobbies grabbed the policy theatres of the ANC, almost irreversibly. In Polokwane, we saw the formalization of voting slates as the formal recognition of 'a coalition of like-minded in-ANC leaders' who have unfortunately become ' hermetically sealed factions' organised around personalities that bastardised one policy option of the ANC or the other. Ramaphosa himself is, and arguably, a creature of Polokwanism and its later adjuncts Mangaung and NASREC. Like many that will come after him, the advantages associated with polokwanism will make him a beneficiary, even if they abhor it.
The institutional edifice of the ANC is at present a permanently recalibrated machine of political economy interest management. It has become a platform of and for policy options auctioning through the funding of its diverse, and otherwise rentable sub-national leadership whose influence has been demonstrated to be powerfully determinate as to who becomes head of state. With about 4500 municipal wards, mirroring ANC branches, 52 Local Government district jurisdictions including Metropolitan areas, 9 Provinces and an 80 member NEC, a simplistic calculation of what it might cost to buy ANC influence at or en route to the Conference, and at a minimum average payment per delegate, and assuming all branches are in good standing, yields a price tag of not more than R5bn. In geopolitical influence and political economy destiny control terms this translates to roughly $350m. This is by any terms inexpensive a cost for traders in the global hegemony market to raise, with a stroke of currency insider trading on the South African rand, one forex incident will pay for the entire cost This means as an organisation, its renewal, and rebuilding program might have to include how it co-exists with the purchasing power of interests laden coalitions of geopolitical organisations, private sector, capital in general, and other undefined hegemony driven interests.
Despite the ANCs belief that its outmoded rituals of raising people to lead it, the arrogance of a Zuma-for-President campaign towards the Polokwane elective conference has established several conventions that are not only alien to the ANC but in variance with its established rituals. To become a member of the ANC has, and since Polokwane, been reduced to R12 membership fee, more than the known and discounted substantive eye of the needle demands as witnessed at that watershed Conference. The celebrated 'church character' of the ANC has served to make its membership recruitment processes to be vulnerable to take over by rent-seeking characters who are in it for their self-interest. To lament their existence without changing how you ultimately become a member of the ANC is asking or wishing for seawater without salt, whilst knowing the ecosystem therein cannot produce anything but salty water.
Policy wise, Ramaphosa has not changed any of ANC policies, he has in fact accentuated some and repackaged them into a 'new deal', euphemistically called the 'New Dawn'. In the whirlpool of Polokwanism, the Ramaphosa campaign for ANC Presidency came at a time when the integrity of the country's apex Executive Authority office was compromised by its relationship with a family that ran amok and had unbridled access to organs of state as individuals or institutions. The Report of the Commission on State Capture, Corruption and Fraud documents these accesses and related acts that show the 'state of that compromise'.
The embrace that Ramaphosa received as a candidate for ANC Presidency, and by extension that of the country, from the private sector, made him a political brand of choice by many marketing and branding organisations. He became the alternative narrative of and on leadership in South Africa, his campaign represented an outlet for the non-political in society to rally around and fire anchoring messages of a value system South Africaness should be about. In normative terms, his campaign was differently nuanced, at some point it sounded like a campaign for a person to lead an ANC that was de campaigned if he was not part of it. The choice inside the ANC got reduced to him as a leader or the beginning of the end for the liberation movement. Even the ANC's own communications machinery lost control of its would-be President as a pivot with which it could message its policies and hegemony.
Ramaphosa, even before he was confirmed ANC President, he had already become a President that society was prepared to want, irrespective of what the ANC decides in its ritualised elective conference. The Ramaphosa brand was further thrust into Global Power Complexes such as Davos as the next better option since the Mandela-Mbeki transition. Opinion polls measured his popularity against that of the organisation he was leading, and most concluded that with him not being part of the organisation, its electoral fortunes would be severely compromised, and worse than the immediate punishing 2016 Municipal Elections outcomes that defined the ANC's relevance to the urban voter differently. The 2021 Municipal Elections outcome has not yielded a difference but consolidated his second term chances in a coincidentally similar way. He was craftily expunged from the 'nine waisted' years collective, and presented as a 'New Dawn' candidate, notwithstanding him being a catalyst of the ecdysis the ANC would literally undergo, instead of transformation.
In the absence of a sophisticated political education program for its cadres or members, ANC voting delegates would receive the script of what a Ramaphosa Presidency represents from the academic-media complex that remains undergirded by well-resourced think tanks and civil society bodies. The anti-corruption, anti-fraud, and anti-state capture narrative were presented as the key pillar of a future with Ramaphosa as President. The in-ANC integrity management system as represented by the 'step aside' mechanism applied on some of its leadership, and notably its Secretary-General, defined Ramaphosa as one of the bold leaders to confront organizational ills at a time convention would have dictated otherwise. To most middle-class members of society, closest to the Ramaphosa gladiatorial advance at the SG to step aside, was the Thabo Mbeki release of Jacob Zuma as South Africa's Deputy President. The script was similar, save for in the Mbeki case there was no 'in-ANC mechanism' to act at that level, and with Ramaphosa, the 'step aside rule' was in existence despite it being contested. Mobilisation to challenge the ultimate suspension of the SG was not only choked by the COVID19 regulations but by the sheer force of the manufactured correctness of the action in the context of revelations at the Commission on State Capture. Ramaphosa is now presented or has emerged as, which is arguably true, the leader through whom the scourge of corruption could be decisively reversed if he were to be given another chance.
A casual look inside the ANC, after the carelessness of Zweli Mkhize's network or Zweli himself, for a leader that could mount a credible challenge to Ramaphosa for Presidency in 2022 draws a few who might be available to do so, albeit late. Murmurings within the ANC to relaunch a women candidate have drawn out of the hat, Lindiwe Sisulu, a brandable NEC member with a fairly rich background that could be exploited by the new personality-based 'bigger eye of the needle criteria' to select leadership, as a viable option. Those opposed to Ramaphosa are in a tailspin of agreeing on a candidate, and the clock is not only ticking but seems to have passed the time that was required to launch the campaign. If there were to be a candidate, woman or otherwise, what would be the in-ANC issues to justify a need to change Ramaphosa mid the proverbial given two terms tradition. The ANC has long lost the ability to make its leadership contestation to be about policy issues, it has made personalities grow in importance. If a parade of personalities is what this will come down to, those that have thus far raised their hands are 'Zweli Mkhizable', if the media chose not to support them. The personalization of the discourse on the Constitution by Lindiwe Sisulu is a classic case of how Zweli Mkhization can divert the attention of society from dealing with substantive issues raised in a discourse. Who the person is will rule the succession criteria, it would seem.
What has to date disadvantaged prospects of would-be candidates to mount a genuinely credible campaign, is the growing inept communication on what alternative to what Ramaphosa is working on would they bring. Even when they introduce a subject to define their campaign, they seem to undercut themselves by failing to explain their beyond factional battle choices clearly. Their incoherence on RET and related as a policy trajectory to take the country out of the economic growth sinkhole it is in, not only reduces the viability of them being an alternative but erodes public trust and confidence. What those advocating for them running for ANC Presidency have at best done, has presented their value propositions as seemingly contradicting options or shifting to the liberation promise goalposts defined in the Constitution. As long as Radical Economic Transformation, arguably a Ramaphosa challenge embraced brand position is mumbled, confusing, contradictory, incomprehensible, sanctimonious, and somewhat threatening to the economic status quo, it will contribute to their demise as a political cohort to be taken seriously.
The ANC occupies a central position in the political system of South Africa. It is South Africa's largest political party, it has influence over one of Africa's integrated and modern political economies. It is a governing party of a country that boasts one of Africa's modern and large financial services sectors with liquid reserves that have kept the strategic liquid financial assets of the country sustainable. Its internal politics, who succeeds Ramaphosa, its policy direction, and response to any global issue, as we have seen with COVID19 is to the world what Africa is in the main doing, and thus determinate to the pulse of Africa.
Whilst there is a preference to look left, and project an anti-liberal stance, as well as its nostalgic socialist posture whilst managing a profoundly Neo liberal capitalist economy, the ANC has in its election of Ramaphosa as its 5th post-1994 President embraced and confirmed itself as an axis of the reigning international order. This is because Ramaphosa has since his election been its most vocal advocate after the structurally directed Minister of Finance. In fact, the strategic posture of a Ramaphosa leadership of the ANC has to date been one that demonstrates an unequivocal commitment to universal human rights, the rule of law, free markets, and limited state intervention in the socio-economic freedoms of citizens. The arrangements with which South Africa is designed to govern itself, from its monetary and fiscal policy, its macro organisation of the state, functions, and responsibilities of its institutions established to defend the democracy, its social compact management institutions such as NEDLAC, and the justification basis and/or authority of its adjudication power as vested in its court system is about the creation of an open society where the sovereignty of a legal person is as guaranteed as the life of a person. This posture will make it near impossible for anyone that wants to restore the primacy of the state to convince South Africans they have a better value proposition, and more and more ANC members are becoming enrolled in the open society promise. So far echoes from those that oppose a Ramaphosa-represented hegemony over the ANC have been advocating for an order that wants to make current institutions, laws, and technologies to reinforce state control, notwithstanding the haemorrhage state control has suffered through revelations at the Zondo Commission.
In the ANC, the new and ascending youthful of its leadership is only ideological to the extent that ideology advances their political career ambitions, otherwise, their flamboyance and conduct as persons demonstrates a cohort of youth leadership that can only survive in a materialist and profoundly capitalist system anchored on social welfare values. To them, redistribution of wealth in the economy has meanings that are not etched in any economic dogma or ideological pursuit, a continuity risk for the ANC as leader of society beyond the still influential touch of an exiting cohort of 'eye of the needle friendly' leaders. Failure to understand the 2022 succession debates and contestation as the ushering in of a new posture to staying relevant as leader of society by the ANC, might lead to further miscalculations that may end up compromising the capacity of the ANC to at least complete the transformation of the South African society. We have seen how an anti-Mbeki succession had mutated into an identity politics driven agenda that resuscitated the narrow verwoedian nationalist tendencies which an Oliver Tambo leadership of the ANC had succeeded to push its frontiers almost to non-existence. Ramaphosa succession should thus demonstrate that it can be about advancing the role of the ANC as leader of society and not only its memberships.
Whilst the role of establishment owned media, and other information dissemination outlets, is relentless in defending the 'normative' trajectory Ramaphosa has been productised to represent, the best way for the institution of the ANC to counter perversion of its rebuilding and renewal program in the midst of its succession battles, is with better information and political education. If those that plan to be an alternative to a beyond ANC credibility endowed Ramaphosa, they should communicate evidence of new or better credibility to society through the conduct of their in-ANC contestation for Presidency. ANCness as represented by both contesting factions, especially those working to dislodge the incumbent, should demonstrate respect for the public as the ultimate arbiters in how public power as the prize of politics is allocated to political parties. Only then, although still remotely possible given the compressed in-ANC program towards December 2022, will a possibility to mount a successful campaign to truncate a two-term Ramaphosa ANC Presidency.
What is increasingly becoming clear is that the post-2017 NASREC ANC is split into two distinct groups. Inside the groups, there are further splits that might be ideological than the parenting groups that are just political power chasing. In a normal democracy where politics and government are not 'the economy' for those in politics, a new political party would by now have been established to pursue RET if its ideological appeal is as strong as it has divided the ANC. However, the ANC brand, through its nostalgic and earned value in the hearts of South Africans, is what is being contested through the proxy of factions established around personalities. Internal to the ANC the personalities represent various passions of its unity and rebuilding, external to it there are passions of ensuring its extinction as a representation of Africa's foremost institutional repudiator of colonialism and its adjunct apartheid as well as its global outcome white supremacy. The disintegration of the ANC has more than just narrow South African implications to its politics, but geopolitical repercussions that might reverse Africa's courage to consolidate its post-colonial gains as a regional bloc and player on the international might contestation arena.
In-ANC contestation as it is conducted now is a sideshow. It would appear that the contest might soon shift to being about who does Ramaphosa returns with to his second bite at ANC Presidency. He might be the ultimate and 'inconvenient to some' constant in the slates that have started to circulate, that is if the prize is to be a party South African citizens should vote for in 2024. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
🤷🏿♂️Be ngisho nje
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