Editorial: Time for ANC to let candidates speak up

The most bizarre aspect of the ANC's leadership race is that, officially, the party keeps insisting that it has not yet begun.

Three potential candidates - Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, outgoing AU Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete - have all given strong signals that they want the job.

But with just less than 12 months to go before the party elects its new leader, they are not allowed to openly campaign for the position.

Given the ANC's dominance in local politics and that - despite its sharp drop in support over the past few years - it is still the most likely party to provide South Africa with the next president in 2019, the directive by Luthuli House that there should be no open campaigning is robbing the country of an opportunity to understand what each candidate stands for.

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The leadership crisis we are in can be directly traced to the fact that, in the run-up to the ANC's conference in 2007, there was little interrogation of what the presidential candidates at the time - Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma - stood for.

The ANC argued that it was not its "tradition" to allow for open and public campaigning by those vying for leadership position.

However, this tradition was developed during the bad old days of the struggle against apartheid when any perceived political differences within the then liberation movement could be easily exploited by the state.

Today the ANC is a government in a democratic society where openness and contestation are important political ingredients for success.

It is therefore high time that the party abandoned its outdated tradition and adopted a policy more suited to the times.

There has been much criticism of the media on the basis that it often refers to Dlamini-Zuma as the president's ex-wife and that it has not interrogated her and Ramaphosa on what they stand for.

But the problem does not lie with journalists, it is with party policy.

Allowed to do so, there is no doubt that Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa can competently speak about their visions for the country.

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The other downside of the current tradition is that, in the absence of Dlamini-Zuma talking about what she stands for, it is easy for her detractors to paint her with the brush of being a candidate who is merely there to protect Zuma's interests.

The accusation may very well be untrue, but it is difficult to know for sure without her being allowed to speak about her attitude on key issues like her ex-husband's legal woes, the alleged Gupta family influence over the state and corruption within government.

Her position is worsened by the fact that, while she is not allowed to go around South Africa telling people why she wants to be the next president, her ex-husband - a highly polarising political figure - has suddenly become very vocal on the need for a woman president.

While all of this would make Ramaphosa's supporters feel emboldened - as they believe support by Zuma is the kiss of death - it has the potential of putting the ANC and the country in the same situation as in 2007: the election of a new leader purely on the basis that they are not the incumbent, rather than what they stand for. South Africa cannot afford to repeat that mistake.