The MK Party, Neh!!!

Until the suspension or firing of Khumalo as the official leader of the MK Party, the party's true character was shrouded in mystery. Zuma's move to position himself as the party's linchpin starkly reflected the widespread dissatisfaction with the post-NASREC 2017 renewal program. The MK Party, with its carefully chosen name, symbols, and core constituency base, appears to be a potent weapon aimed at the governing party in the 2024 national elections. The full extent of its impact remains to be seen. 

 

In the post-1994 era, the ANC is at a pivotal crossroads, teetering between a potentially catastrophic decline and a momentous shift towards a brighter future. The party faces the daunting task of addressing internal strife and rescuing the democratic movement from self-inflicted wounds. The current coalition government scenario necessitates immediate, radical change towards a genuine renewal of the ANC and a significant improvement in cadre behaviour.

 

The ANC's strategic preparedness to counter the burgeoning opposition complex, a variable seemingly worsened by one of its most prominent former leaders, Jacob Zuma, tests the party's resilience. His unprecedented assault on ANC support, particularly in Kwa-Zulu Natal, has been met with a form and character of response from the ANC leadership that is worryingly mismeasured and sub-strategic. The yet-to-be-explained or exposed funding or resourcing architecture behind the MK Party, its readiness for all litigations, and military precision propaganda machinery indicate a long-orchestrated plan. 

 

With its anti-ANC posture, the emergence of the MK Party has not only insulated it from being a target but has also sparked excitement in the opposition rank and file. The possibility of a less than 50% performance by the ANC has become a real prospect, with three political parties led by the governing party's former and significantly popular ANCYL President, Secretary General, and President. The resilience of the ANC's election strategy is now being stretched to its limits, and the resources deployed into the opposition complex are suddenly being weaponised against the same order if the ANC's support is further thinned to open up space for what they are against. 

 

With little evidence that the concentration of liberalism within the ANC is waning, the race and protection of minorities vector of South Africa's liberalism funders has complicated the purpose of reducing the governing party's support to less than 50%. A coalition context would strip the political mandate of its constituency accountability and introduce funders' interests as the new vector of politics. To imagine an anti-Zuma sentiment translating into a pro-ANC one to help intercept the land and radical economic transformation agenda returning to the centre of politics seemed like a fantasy until the fateful December 16 announcement that Jacob Zuma would be the face of the MK Party. 

 

The ANC's election machinery and political juggernaut have always depended on its heritage as a force multiplier, and other parties cannot abrogate themselves any portion thereof. The mere idea of freedom in South Africa and protection of the cardinal freedoms of association, assembly, expression, and speech are constructs associated with what the ANC has been to most voters. At best, their discontent with the ANC is often displayed through abstaining rather than voting it out. The opposition complex has been growing because of voter apathy; for instance, in Tshwane, the ANC won the most wards but could not get the 50% threshold to govern. The Zuma factor joins the Malema factor, eating on new and youth voters he resonates with and depleting those who still vote for what the ANC stands for. 

 

The MK heritage, its rituals, and endearment by a society that is faced with race-defined inequalities is a strategic risk to the governing party complex. It is known that struggle songs that mobilised youth and workers' bravery to fight apartheid were compositions from MK camps and facilitated through the MK underground structures to reach society. The propaganda machinery of the ANC was, for most of its combative history, with the apartheid state etched on the MK enigma to an otherwise misplaced adrenaline of South Africa's black youth. The smash and grabbing of this heritage is a stroke of genius and was unanticipated by the ANC establishment and caretakers of the movement, who are clearly not the establishment. 

 

The truth is that the ANC faces not only the Zuma-Magashule-Malema complex of insider-inspired opposition but multiple liberal order proxy groups, and the comprehensive costs of fighting this election on all fronts are becoming too high. The moral high ground which compensated it has been (self) liquidated by investigation reports on corruption and state capture, the trust deficit with RSA's economic establishment, mistrust by the global liberal orders nexus of western countries, and service delivery dysfunctions such as electricity and water shedding. 

 

What is to be done 

 

A casual diagnosis of what has pushed Zuma this far is the loss of legacy and marginalisation from what he considers his political home. Second to his surname as something to defend, including through the Samsonian method of pulling down the pillars and dying with everyone, is his ANC legacy or the ANC itself. This is a unique opportunity to be seized and broker a 'save-the-ANC' beyond the incumbent's program. The in-ANC divisions and palace wars have little if anything, to do with its policies but more to do with the geopolitical, business, and personal interests of those nodes of the conflict. By creating voter-defined and vote-counting quantified political capital, Zuma will demand a ceasefire from the invisible to society snippers assigned to finish his fragile legacy. The effortless manner in which the MK leader, Khumalo, was allegedly purchased or captured indicates what is inside the party as a grievance. This opening creates space for a merger of MK back into the ANC. CUT!!!