After the victory dance, the headache begins

Zuma's new team faces major challenges ahead of 2014

IT PROMISES to be the mother of all bashes. From the point of view of the ANC's faithful, Luthuli House could not have chosen a more suitable - appropriate, even - city to host this year's birthday celebrations of the governing party.

Durban has an unparalleled reputation, especially at this time of the year, as the country's playground. But it is not the city's sunny but crowded beaches, nor its vibrant nightlife that would make this year's traditional ANC January 8 mass rally - which will actually take place on Saturday January 12 - extra special for many of the party supporters.

The ANC turns 101 on Tuesday, an extremely rare achievement for any organised formation, especially one that spent much of its long existence operating in a highly repressive and hostile environment.

Yet, when the multitudes of ANC supporters turn the Kings Park Rugby Stadium into a sea of black, green and gold (the party's traditional colours), expect the start of a new century for the former liberation movement - and the challenges that this presents to be the furthest thing from the minds of many of them.

The Kings Park gathering will, first and foremost, be a "victory rally" for the supporters of President Jacob Zuma's successful bid to serve a second term as party leader, hence enhancing his chances of remaining at the Union Buildings until May 2019.

Even before it was officially announced at the Mangaung conference last month that Zuma had trounced Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe in the ANC presidential race, some of the president's campaigners were already issuing verbal invitations to the many "victory parties" that would be held in Durban and surrounding areas this week ahead of Saturday's main event.

The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, which is the ruling party's largest province in terms of signed-up membership, had played a central role in having Zuma re-elected. It is therefore natural that party leaders in the province would want to use the gathering to revel in their newly found status as the organisation's kingmakers.

But for Zuma and his new ANC leadership team, which includes unionist-turned-businessman Cyril Ramaphosa as party deputy president, a prolonged victory dance is a luxury they cannot afford.

That is, not if they hope to see the ANC bounce back into shape by the next general elections in 2014.

Despite the outcome of the Mangaung conference elections, in which Zuma won close to 75% of the votes, the ANC remains a deeply divided political party. Left unattended, the fissures, although unlikely to result in the kind of split that led to the formation of the breakaway Congress of the People a year after the 2007 Polokwane conference, could hamper the party's ability to mount an effective election in the face of a resurgent opposition.

Judged by his closing remarks at the Mangaung conference, Zuma seemed to have learnt valuable lessons from the post-Polokwane split. He devoted much of his speech to appealing for unity among party members and also warned his supporters about the dangers of being triumphalist.

"When we emerged from the 52nd national conference in Polokwane, we assumed that we were all in agreement that we would work for unity and collectively understood the democratic principles and internal democracy that prevailed within the movement.

"We did not monitor the process. We must not repeat that mistake. Unity will not happen automatically; we need to work hard for it," he told delegates.

In a bid to assure Motlanthe supporters that there would be no reprisals against those who had opposed his second-term bid, the president then went on to defend the right of every party member to contest ANC elections.

"All members have a right to be nominated for any position in the organisation and to accept or decline that nomination. Therefore, no member or leader of the ANC should be ostracised for exercising their democratic rights as members."

In subsequent media interviews, Zuma assured the South African public that a cabinet reshuffle - which would result in Motlanthe and ministers aligned to him being kicked out - was not on the cards.

But for how long can Zuma resist pressure from some of those who campaigned for him with their eyes firmly on becoming ministers soon after Mangaung?

Is he really that magnanimous that he would allow the likes of Arts and Culture Minister Paul Mashatile and Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula to continue serving in his cabinet after they had made public statements that essentially questioned his capability as a leader?

An equally important question: Do all of those who challenged Zuma and failed in Mangaung still have the appetite to continue serving under him in the government?

For a rich man like Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale, who ran on the Motlanthe ticket as one of the deputy presidential candidates as well as treasurer, serving in the cabinet surely made sense only as a stepping stone to the Union Buildings? Now that his presidential dream has crumbled, is there a reason for him to stay on?

However, even if the ANC maintains "unity" by keeping everybody in their current positions until 2014, it is no guarantee that the party would perform well at the polls and arrest the haemorrhaging of its votes - a phenomenon that was prevalent during the last two elections in 2009 and 2011.

A series of corruption scandals involving senior party leaders, faction fighting and the general mismanagement of public institutions under its control are some of the factors that have contributed to the erosion of the former liberation movement's credibility in the eyes of a growing number of South Africans.

Zuma, Ramaphosa and their new team have just more than a year to clean up the party's image, refocus its structures on fighting the next election, rather than internal ANC conflict, and ensure that it governs effectively.

But with the president's major emphasis in his speeches - prior to and during the Mangaung conference - on "decisive action against ill discipline" in ANC ranks, the ruling party could spend much of the period in the run-up to the general elections consumed by internal struggles that would leave some of its members and traditional voters too disillusioned to back the ANC.