Walking on a tightrope. The ANC NEC and the 'succession' conundrum.

In his tribute to Essop Pahad, under a hawkish watch of the ANC's most organised formation of elders and veterans outside its Veterans League, the 101 Veterans, Paul Mashatile invoked a Marxist adage to characterise the deeper issues inside his organisation, which are not in our immediate purview.  He said Comrade Essop Pahad is one of the ANC leaders who lived to personify the adage that "to leave error unrefuted is to encourage intellectual immorality". What “errors are left unrefuted which encourage (intellectual) immorality” when we are now waking up to headlines of  “there is a plot to oust me”? Loaded as this adage is, and the context within which it was invoked, it would also be scholarship immorality not to read into it in the wake of a concretising in-ANC post-Ramaphosa succession battle.

Scholarship morality is the urge to express order and arrangement for a general standard by which emerging phenomena can be deciphered. To allow a discourse or phenomenon to go on outside this morality would not be consistent with what Paul Mashatile characterised Essop Pahad to be, one who would not "leave an error unrefuted". As a befitting tribute to Essop Pahad, whom the author engaged with as editor of the Thinker Magazine and one of those in the circle of mentors in the thinking enterprise, this rendition argues that it would be an error not to foreground the truth of a succession battle in the ANC. Not doing so would perpetuate the settling intellectual immorality in matters of ANC politics.  

Succession battles grow in the environment in which they are expressed. They cannot be separated from the basic circumstances of the people concerned. Any pronouncement that there is a plot to oust a leader in pole position to succeed, true or otherwise, is simply a manifestation of the intensity of the behind-the-scenes competition of interests. Such competition exposes all interests not in the purview of society from their false unity anchorage in renewal conditions of generational mix and ethnonationalism. It establishes them in the broader battles of power contestations. Succession battles survive when they have a relationship with challenges all incumbents have, and those which do not wither as stronger nodes establish themselves. This refutes any suggestion that a succession battle is not underway.

In this atmosphere of contests, conspiracy theories about plots to oust one leader or another establishes certain individuals in the natural 'short list' of who to always focus on as personalities representing what would be best for society. At the heart of these contestations are the questions of power with which the allocative prowess of the state could be used to advance interests.  These contestations, and unfortunately so, are never about linking contestants to a vision of a different freedom, democracy, and economic welfare with which a national consciousness of social justice the Constitution has defined could be forged. In ANC parlance, it is difficult to locate the ructions within the broader ideological construct of a National Democratic Revolution if that is still what defines the liberation movement and thus guides its actions.

 

It would be an error not to refute that the succession battle is also not about the 2024 National Elections and, therefore, the list processes that precede it and the coalition permutations after counting. It would also be erroneous to airbrush the Phala Phala cloud upon the incumbent and what its logical implications might mean in the event those reviewing the Public Protector report get a decision which redefines the President in the unfolding power matrices. This has made the current succession battles episodic in how it unfolds and comprehensive in how it designs South African politics thirty years into its democratic order.

  

Manifesting itself through a whirlwind around the person of the Deputy President of the ANC, whose continued leadership of the ANC will represent seamless succession, the interest in dislodging him before the in-ANC list process to determine who goes into Parliament makes the persistent Phala Phala saga a determinant of the first episode in the unfolding succession drama or political thriller. This is simply because if the Public Protector report is reviewed to the effect that President Ramaphosa has a case to answer on the Phala Phala saga, a chain of political power redefining events will tip several dominoes whose end state remains a mystery to many. 

Supposing the Phala Phala PP report is reviewed, and the President must answer questions, the ANC member integrity management mechanism will then be activated to process President Ramaphosa accordingly. Should it determine that he should step aside, or he voluntarily acts as it directs and steps aside, the office of the ANC President will be vacant, and the ANC Constitution will be activated, in which case ANC Deputy President Paul Mashatile will assume office until a properly constituted forum addresses the filling of the vacancy. Unless a Conference is called, the National General Council will be a competent forum to find a conclusion to this matter. In ANC heritage terms, the NGC process will be preceded by RGCs and PGCs of ANC structures, including the leagues. A robust discussion of succession will now be burst open with all NEC and top seven positions arguably up for new contestation. The 2022 Conference will be reviewed in a season of nominating men and women who would be what the 1996 Constitution calls 'freely elected' representatives. 

This scenario will give South Africa a fifth post-1994 ANC President, who might not necessarily be any of the top seven officials, including Paul Mashatile. The new ANC President, which might be Paul Mashatile if the established convention is anything to go by, will be the face of its procurement of state power from the voters. If this scenario obtains, the vortex of in-ANC contestations will redefine South African politics. At risk will be the ANC's hegemony. The 55th ANC National Executive Committee will go in history as the most challenged regarding succession management, sustaining the capability of the ANC to keep state power and its willingness to pursue the objectives the ANC has embraced as defining its right of existence. It is a tightrope few elephants can walk on. CUT!!