The Tshwane mayor removal is a tip of the iceberg

The edited version, titled "If the ANC centre does not hold anarchy looms," was published in the Sunday Times on 06 October 2024.

The fierce contest to determine who the first citizen of the National Capital City has begun. It is symptomatic of the pending succession battles in several, if not all, political parties. It is not only the position of the Mayor at stake but the resilience of the GNU, an ANC-led coalition to renew South Africa, which is also at stake. At play is an indifferent cohort of in-ANC activists determined to optimise ANC hegemony over the foundational principles of the GNU. Tshwane is an abstraction of the general that is less reported about or publicly debated, yet intense within the ANC. 

It is not a secret that the ANC's heritage of democratic centralism and towing the party line sustains the GNU more than the public posture. The centrality of the political power transferred to the people in 1994 is the ultimate prize pursued by the ANC, despite the ideological inconveniences of flirting with a leader of its opposition complex and a threat to century-old hegemonic hold as the torch bearer of South Africa's liberation. The Tshwane Mayor tension or battle will stress test the post-May 1994 coalition arrangement.

 

With a less than 35% showing in the 2024 provincial elections, a fragile ANC-led national coalition arrangement, and an intricate balance of forces in the City of Tshwane, the political pressure to announce the next mayor has firmly shifted into the domain of the ANC NEC, the highest decision-making body of the ANC. The fragility of the Tshwane ANC support base, given the previous Thoko-Didization of the municipal elections and a brazen posture by the ANC PEC to wrestle the right to interpret the GNU statement of principles, makes an otherwise in-a-succession battle for ANC Presidency NEC vulnerable. 

 

The Tshwane standoff within the ANC, despite it being denied, is the tip of an enormous iceberg the ANC is managing not to crush. The watermarked issue is the 52 regions of the ANC due for elective conferences. Equally, the stability or continuity of the provincial centres of the ANC is inextricably linked to the outcomes of regional conferences. There will thus be undue pressure on PECs to align with the interests of regional political exigencies as political capital to be cashed in. The spectre of political instability in a whirlpool of an ANC renewal process, which refers to the party's internal changes and efforts to regain public trust, and a fierce struggle to come back to the centre by the corruption and state capture marginalised component of the ANC cannot be ruled out as a factor. 

 

There is also a dynamic of MK Party sleepers within regions of the ANC, who might trigger a mass exodus of authentic activists away from the ANC if the regional balance of power dynamics is not properly managed. In vintage ANC response character to situations similar to Tshwane, a call would by now have been made on who the next mayor is. The question is why there is reluctance when the reputational costs of removing the Tshwane Mayor are on such an exponential growth trajectory. 

 

Without its permission or resolution, the ANC's conduct on this matter is laying a foundation for being a profoundly federal organisation with a constellation of progressively growing in independence 52 regions. The Tshwane episode exposes how ANC structures, despite their unitary organisation rhetoric, differ based on the cadence of governance, understanding what the centre has determined, local versus nation-centre interests, and capabilities to calibrate with the strategic calls of the NEC. The extortion associated with the power regions' having on 'wisdom lists' of zonal and branch structures during provincial and national conferences makes the tolerance level of dysfunction in regional structures of the ANC and, by default, local government higher than required. 

 

It is crucial to revisit the rule by branches, most of whose integrity is questionable, as it could be used against the centre's ability to exercise discipline and control once national interest-defined decisions are made. The rise of democratisation as a trend is shaping the world, and South Africa is experiencing the dividend of a no absolute governing power context. However, the democratisation of anarchy might be one of the fundamental and terrifying features the ANC has to deal with. 

 

The decision to remove the mayor in Tshwane erodes the foundations of the ANC's proven strength to hold the country together when it needs a breakthrough. The sheer delay in announcing a new mayor and bickering with ActionSA cannot be matched with the sterling work of threading the brittle GNU it is leading. Investor or otherwise confidence rise indicates part of the correctness of the GNU call by partners to it, notwithstanding its discontent. 

The Gauteng resolve on reconfiguring the form and character of coalitions in the province, plausible as it might be, should display more societal interest than being an axis of political point scoring. The brute truth is that South Africa's liberation promise is about the freedom of 'we the people' from arbitrary authority, essentially from the brute power of the state and, more acutely, the prerogatives of politicians.