President caught between a rock and a hard place

A timid Zuma watches as factions fight to dominate ANC, writes Moipone Malefane

When the ANC's National General Council takes place next month, it will kick off on a tense, if not downright acrimonious, note with the battle lines clearly drawn - not unlike when Thabo Mbeki attended his last NGC as president of the party.

Like Mbeki then, Jacob Zuma is now a president under siege .

Party factions that rallied behind Zuma in their struggle to have Mbeki ousted have turned on each other and hope to use the NGC, to be held in Durban, to test the balance of power ahead of the ultimate showdown in 2012.

And Zuma finds himself trapped in the middle, unable to take any major decisions for fear that he may offend one or the other faction.

He has been seeking for months to reshuffle his cabinet - believing that the likes of the minister of women, youth, children and the disabled, Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya, have not been pulling their weight.

However, perhaps mindful of what happened to Mbeki ahead of the 2005 NGC, Zuma has opted to defer any ministerial changes until after Durban. Back then, weeks before the party faithful gathered in Pretoria to conduct a mid-term review of the ANC's progress in implementing resolutions of the 2002 national conference, Mbeki fired Zuma as his deputy president and sought to have him temporarily relieved of his ANC duties until corruption charges levelled against him were dealt with.

This proved to be a turning point for Mbeki as delegates, representing ANC branches from across the country, openly revolted against him and his national executive committee.

From then on, Mbeki's dream of serving a third term as party president began to fade.

Although the Durban NGC is not an elective conference and has no power to take any policy decisions, there is general consensus that it will be a litmus test for Zuma's ambition of leading the party beyond its centenary year, 2012.

When he defeated Mbeki at Polokwane in 2007, he did so with the support of the left - Cosatu and the SACP - as well as the ANC Youth League and other so-called "nationalist" groupings who felt aggrieved by Mbeki. But the left and nationalists are now at each other's throats, and Zuma finds himself in the awkward position of trying to appease both camps.

As the NGC approaches, the left - especially Cosatu - is increasingly critical of the government and sections of the ruling party. Delivering the Ruth First Memorial Lecture in Johannesburg on Tuesday, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi tore into the government for failing to develop a sustainable economic growth strategy and reduce unemployment.

"Can you believe that the government only produced its industrial action plan in April 2010? All these years we have been negotiating trade deals not informed by what we want to achieve. Scandalous!" said Vavi.

The tension between Zuma and the Cosatu leader was visible during a civil servants' protest in Cape Town last week when Vavi compared the president's salary with the pay packets of public sector workers.

An angry Zuma reacted by accusing Cosatu of making a "political statement".

While careful not to alienate any of the camps that delivered the Union Buildings to him, Zuma has been trying to assure the public that he is not a weak president who is held hostage by unions and the youth league. His response to Vavi's salary utterances was intended to send this message. He did the same with Julius Malema earlier this year when the youth league president publicly questioned Zuma's leadership style.

At the NGC, the left will also be pushing for a tougher government and ANC stance on corruption. The nationalists - led by the ANC Youth League - will want the NGC and Zuma's government to adopt the nationalisation of mines as policy.

The two sides are also likely to battle it out over proposals to instil discipline and root out "new tendencies" of leaders using money to buy votes at ANC conferences.

In true Zuma fashion, the president has frustrated both sides by being noncommittal on most of these issues. What is becoming certain is that none of the factions believes it is still in Zuma's inner circle. He is now said to be closer to the Gupta family - which has business ties with his children - than to ANC alliance leaders.

Since the Polokwane conference, the ANC has been toying with the idea of setting up its own daily newspaper. The Gupta family is launching a newspaper next month, New Age, apparently with Zuma's blessing and seemingly without input from the left.

But he cannot afford to distance himself from ANC groups - particularly if he is serious about serving a second term.

Given all the anger towards him, he is fortunate that none of the factions have agreed on an alternative presidential candidate. The names being bandied about include those of deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe, ANC treasurer-general Mathews Phosa and minister of human settlements Tokyo Sexwale. But none of them enjoys the sort of support that would make him confident of putting up his hand - as Zuma did in 2005 - at the forthcoming NGC.

What we are likely to see at the NGC are the two sides testing each other's muscle, not just on policy matters, but also around the office of the secretary-general. The incumbent, Gwede Mantashe, is under fire from nationalists, who see him - by virtue of his SACP chairmanship - as embedded with the left.

Malema - who wants his predecessor at the youth league, deputy minister of police Fikile Mbalula, elected as ANC secretary-general in 2012, has recently called for a younger generation to take over the party.

Vavi this week suggested that the call for change was motivated by the "race to be rich and, in the process, seeing leadership positions as giving them access to power for narrow accumulation".

The left wants to see Mantashe retain his position, and the SACP has agreed to allow him to step down as chairman in 2012 so that he can retain his ANC post.

Moreover, the left wants Vavi - who has already said he is leaving Cosatu - to be elected into the ANC's "top six" leadership positions. This will be bitterly opposed by the youth league and others with whom he has crossed swords over the years.

All of these battles will play out in Durban, and amid it all Zuma will be treading carefully, hoping not to step on anyone's toes, aware that his performance at the NGC could seal his fate in 2012.