Does the MK Party have advantage?

THIS WAS PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY TIMES OF 28 JANUARY 2024

The governing party's response towards the formation of the MK Party has thus far made it play into the hands of its most threatening adversary since 1994. The post-January 08 activities to counter the growing support of MK have come to a "go for Zuma reputation at all costs" and silence the "nywe nywe criticisms of the ANC from within the opposition complex". The ANC's electioneering juggernaut was unleashed to show its public support, as demonstrated in Mbombela Stadium and will be repeated in the Moses Mabhida and FNB Stadiums. Plausible as they are, these strategies need to respond to the source of why the MK Party was formed and why it is becoming attractive to disillusioned activists of the ANC as a liberation movement. 

The fact that the governing party went for the person of Jacob Zuma, with allegations it had defended him before, is making it look desperate. In Sam Shilowa's parlance, complaining of a wild dog you have reared as a puppy makes you a clown, especially when you were warned. This communicates that you will be protected, even if we know you are wrong, as long as you are still one of us. Your wrongness will be allowed to be thus once you become an adversary. These attacks on the person of Zuma beg the question of how innocent are those currently being defended from facing the might of the law or the ANC's own integrity management policy sanctions and disciplinary processes. 

 

What the strategy of going for the person of Jacob Zuma should have noticed is that on media platforms and other spaces of mass communication, bad news about Zuma has no additional value to society. It has been so overdone for "nine wasted years and beyond " that what he says as a victim of the narrative onslaught commands the attention of those living with discontent about service delivery. The propaganda advantages against Zuma the person is growing slimmer as he has been able to weaponise them against his adversaries then and now. Having been in the ANC NEC for a time, almost equalling the average age of the entire ANC leadership at the National, Provincial, and Regional levels, his ability to read and know the endgame of whatever strategy they unleash on him cannot be underestimated. 

 

Facing the ANC will, to a Zuma-led MK Party, be more about working on what it knows are its weaknesses. The more propaganda is unleashed about Zuma, the more his chosen party's ratings as an alternative grow. His choice of Independent African Churches and the Institution of Traditional Leadership as his core areas and platforms of mobilisation has foregrounded the sore spot of a secular state amongst churches and the land dispossession national grievances of traditional leaders. Calling for a review of the judicial, legislative, and executive authority status of traditional leadership institutions will encourage the call to review the entire constitutional order. This may be a masterstroke and explains why Africa's own Gaza, in geostrategic and geopolitical terms, the Cape of Good Hope or the Western Cape, is suddenly a candidate for independent statehood. 

 

Internal to the ANC talks of a coalition with the DA, voting with the DA to impeach the Public Protector for a yet-to-be-resolved case, the Judge Hlophe impeachment vote, as well as other fundamental ANC policy positions neglect, have given leverage to a Zuma-led MK Party. Perhaps the most bitterly humiliating leverage this adversary is yet to take advantage of is electricity load-shedding and the under-reported water crisis. The service delivery and public infrastructure decline realities of South Africa and the successful positioning of the ANC as the nest of corruption by a pre-Zuma decision to campaign for the MK Party narrative makes it difficult to throw these at the ANC's newest political adversary. 

 

The challenge the governing party faces is getting out of the corner it has put itself into on radical economic transformation issues. The best way for the ANC is to regain its liberation movement's moral high ground by moderating its uncompromising march into a neoliberal future without first consolidating its developmental state fundamentals, which its majority constituency is furious about. Its manifesto should respond to the demands of its now contested constituency, the African majority. Closest to the ANC brand as having delivered the freedom that the liberation struggle was about is the MK brand, which was paraded as a force that sent shivers down the spines of those avoiding being its victims. Even the 360-degree turn of attention towards MK by the governing party and the decline in focus on other parties by the academic media complex attests to the disruptive potential of MK. 

 

The MK Party's strategy has always been based on how the ANC will respond to Zuma's decision. His declaring his loyalty to the ANC but not campaigning or voting for it was critical to its strategy against the ANC. This was, by design, supposed to start an internal debate about his reasons for doing so. The discussions would have opened, amongst others, the PhalaPhala issue and potentially triggered the integrity management system's step-aside rule for several of the ANC's NEC members. Logic would have dictated a National General Council or Consultative Conference through which new permutations of the leadership function would have been devised. This has failed in timing terms, as no one is certain when the debate about Zuma's decision will be tabled as an in-ANC agenda item. This rendition submits it will be the cradle of the next in-ANC succession battle. 

 

The answer to whether the MK Party has an advantage is yes. KZN ANC leaders were sufficiently provoked into a counterproductive overreaction which sought to airbrush what they knew of Jacob Zuma in their backyard. They fell into the trap of Zuma bashing when their earlier postures would have pigeonholed him into a protracted engagement while communicating to their constituents to continue voting for the ANC. The reality is that in KZN and beyond, they are now faced with the IFP, The (Magaxa) EFF generation, and MK. 

As the South African political idiom goes, "under threat and pressure, the ANC has always demonstrated a capability to rise to the challenge". Its election juggernaut is still the most oiled, save for its growing inability to bring back discouraged voters. The question is and will always be: what if those leaving are its core strategists to keep the juggernaut potent? CUT!!!