Published in the Sunday Times on 16 January 2024
With Jacob Zuma's decision to openly campaign for the MK Party and
not the ANC, of which he is still a member, an intense debate about whether or
not to put him through the disciplinary process has engulfed the governing
party. Some have suggested that since he has 'walked away' from the ANC, he
does not require attention. Others have proposed a need for a formal response
about the desirability of his continued membership, where the process is
suspension, disciplinary hearing, and then firing. There is also a third view
which argues that he has not violated any of the ANC rules, regulations, and
policies but instead introduced a form of protest to show discontent about the
direction the organisation is taking.
The third view argues that Jacob Zuma has not violated any rules,
regulations, or policies of the ANC but has raised the challenges the
organisation faces. According to this view, Zuma sees the MK Party as a
catalyst the country needs to dislodge the governing party from the quicksand
it is purportedly standing on. What is not clear about the third view is the
extent to which their view is informed by their association with the incumbent
inside the ANC leading coalition and have lost influence as a result of the
2017 and 20220 inside the ANC power relations; or their association with the
new MK Party 'insurgents' who anticipate a reversal of their fortunes if the
ongoing, albeit with discontents, renewal process succeeds; or their possible
marginalisation in the resultant political order a Ramaphosa presidency will
ultimately consolidate and institutionalise.
But
there is this matter of the reasons Jacob Zuma has put forward why he took such
a drastic step, which, it would seem, the ANC does not want to have a formal
discussion or response about. The setting posture is to treat the Zuma support
of MK in isolation to the difficult questions he has raised about the state of
the ANC. The tension of Zuma's exit does not seem to have attracted the vintage
cognitive prowess of the ANC's political mobilisation juggernaut, which was
deployed on the COPE threat. Seemingly, and potentially a strategic
dilemma, the governing party finds itself as a result of previous investment or
overrating of the perception of Zuma's assumed or real constituency before, as
an agent upon which emergent interests converge upon, Zuma can only be left to
the electorate to decide if his choices are political endgame-changing or mean
anything at all.
This
rendition argues that Zuma has since December 16 not criticised the ANC but has
consistently been raising his disapproval of how it handled aspects of the
renewal programme. He selected the platforms and podiums, which include rallies
of a rival political party, to articulate what other senior members of the ANC
are also raising in the platforms and podiums they have created or are curated
therein. Given the 'who I am dealing with' character of the ANC's lady justice,
it is increasingly becoming difficult to be clinical on what constitutes
disrepute in the context of the right to freedom of expression. The unwritten
rule of not criticising the incumbent leadership by past leaders has, for a
while, been violated or disregarded.
The
historical use and weaponisation of platforms to launch campaigns against a
sitting ANC President by former and senior leaders of the ANC has established a
precedent Zuma is arguably reliant upon to justify his actions as a member of
the ANC in good standing. To deal with this, the ANC will have to establish a
comprehensive disciplinary process whose reach might be the "proverbial
methane" rooting out all 'rats' causing the disrepute mayhem. Unless the
member discipline and integrity management system targets the factional lenses
through which ill-discipline is seen, Zuma might be the tip of the iceberg or
the first domino to fall and start the non-stoppable effect. It is not winning
or losing the upcoming elections which are at stake; the prize of such politics
is the cumulative impact of his action on the credibility of the governing
party to continue governing, especially when evidence of service delivery
decline is difficult to ignore.
For
society to understand the true nature of this problem, where senior members
criticise or act against the ANC far much better than the opposition, it is
necessary to recognise that Zuma is the one leader who had the best of it.
Except that this is happening from inside the ANC, and unexpected, it is not a
strange or unusual practice in a democracy that guarantees fundamental human
rights. In the case of Zuma he is raising leadership issues and juxtaposes them
against past decisions of the ANC and common understanding of disrepute to make
his points. There will be moments when the democracy has matured, or the lobby
complexes are strong and entrenched, where MPs will be voting either according
to their conscience or what the dominant lobby has masterminded. The capacity
of the ANC to rain in on those that have a relationship with being rogue has
been tested before, and because of the inconsistent application of in-party
sanctions and other deterrents on those voting against the party, there are
successes either way.
To
illustrate the arrival of brazen lobbying, which South Africa elects to
characterise as state capture, inside the ANC, it does not require a rocket
scientist to notice that the South African Jewish lobby lost the
internal-to-the ANC battle on the ICJ court case against Israel.
Notwithstanding the immorality of not seeing the war on Gaza as genocide, the
pro-Palestine lobby reigned. This is notwithstanding the long-term
ramifications in respect of how the US-Israeli lobby will react after
neutralising what they characterise as the South Africa-induced catastrophe
threatening the existential legitimacy of Israel. These events, including a
litany of rants by former senior leaders, are ushering in a new era of party
politics the ANC has been either slow or reluctant to embrace at the altar of
preserving its arguably irrelevant anti-apartheid struggle form and
character.
The
brute and inconvenient truth is that Jacob Zuma's actions have put the ANC into
disrepute. He is acting in a way that makes him an existential threat to the
electoral prowess the ANC thus far still commands. He is a political tumour
that requires surgical separation from the ANC before the whole body is
contaminated. Either way, politically, he has made a choice against the ANC.
The ANC must withdraw his membership without any hearing. This is
notwithstanding its obligation to institute an internal inquiry reporting to
the NEC on the discontents he and others have and are raising. The election
season is hotting up, party manifestos are going through final edits, and the
momentum is shifting to the side of the voters. He should not be elevated into
a conundrum; he has never been since December 16th.
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