Underwhelming No1 has a mountain to climb this year

President Jacob Zuma may not have found a new song to sing when he presented the ANC's January 8 statement on Sunday, but there's much to be learned from the verses which were missing.

The 105th anniversary speech has largely underwhelmed and been criticised for falling short in troubled times which demand a new tune.

But while the event may have compelled Zuma to sing from the ANC's hymn sheet, it is telling that Zuma was not able to stamp his own message on the day.

This was a different Zuma to the one who spoke in Durban at an ANC Youth League event over the festive season. Then it was a belligerent, defiant Zuma who appeared to set the tone for a year in which he would fight back hard as he railed against "monopoly capital and their friends and their stooges" and who pointedly told his detractors where to get off.

Barring unforeseen changes to the ANC's constitution, this is his final year as ANC president and, perhaps, also as South African president should he be unable to quell the tide rising to unseat him.

Zuma's speech on Sunday was nothing more than a statement of the ANC's National Executive Committee and it was his job to read it out, but he is no stranger to drifting from the script.

The platform that the January 8 speech provided was a rich opportunity for him to stamp his agenda onto that of the party. It is significant that he either chose not to, or was unable to, do so on Sunday. It indicates that the schisms that wrack the party, and which saw Zuma's presidency directly challenged at the end of last year, remain as deep as ever.

Further evidence of this also came in the decision by the ANC Women's League to defy the convention which tries to suppress open succession battles to endorse Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as Zuma's successor against Cyril Ramaphosa's declared candidature.

If the January 8 statement did anything it was to underline the mountain which the ANC - and Zuma - will have to climb in the coming year.