MAKHUDU SEFARA | ANC is self-mutilating ahead of the coming electoral storm

Shortly after being elected secretary-general of the ANC at its 55th national conference at Nasrec in December 2022, Fikile Mbalula relied on his characteristic pop culture reference of “K-Ci and JoJo” to send an important message about party discipline.

“Because of this thing of K-Ci and JoJo and everybody speaking and getting an opinion, then that person must speak in opposition,” he said. While not a beacon of clarity, many of us in attendance understood what he meant. The ANC would not tolerate outspoken opposition from its own officials, and if they wished to be the party’s biggest critics, they had better speak from the opposition benches.

Mbalula characterised the ANC’s biggest challenge as discipline and said that he, as a new SG, would prioritise discipline in order to win the confidence of the voters.

Throughout his political career, Mbalula has mocked both his political opponents and ill-disciplined internal officials as conducting themselves like the R&B duo, walking up and down, singing on stage instead of doing their work and maintaining organisational discipline and decorum.

While he is right that the ANC tends to become its own biggest critic, he hasn’t done much about the vaunted pursuit of discipline. This week, the biggest news item has been the public declaration by ANC heavyweight Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma that money, the root of all evil, was used to elect the current cohort of ANC leaders headed by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Specifically, Dlamini-Zuma fingered Mbalula and international relations minister Ronald Lamola for using about R500m to buy votes to scupper her own march to victory in 2017. And the 2022 elections were not different. I haven’t seen the evidence, and, given what the Special Investigating Unit says without evidence, I am disinclined to believe anything not verifiable.

That said, we all know the ANC has acknowledged the challenge and roped in former president Kgalema Motlanthe to help wean it off the influence of money on elections.

Other parties, like former ANC president Jacob Zuma’s MKP, which is derided as a family stokvel, and Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA, have not had internal electoral contests, thus obviating the challenges that come with money being used to influence outcomes.

What is clear, though, is that Mbalula’s 2022 intention to eliminate self-sabotage and instil discipline remains a pipe dream. Being accused publicly and getting no apology opens up undesirable possibilities that might lock senior officials in a cycle of internal conflict.

Whatever the ANC wants to say ahead of the coming local elections, its own officials are generating sufficient mud to sabotage the party.

Dying with your boots on means trying until the morning of the election to convince those whose minds aren’t made up yet.

Take ANC president Ramaphosa, who is engulfed in rolling battles with opposition parties in his unending impeachment saga, whose genesis is the storage and theft of dollars at his Phala Phala farm. Each time opposition parties file papers or he responds, an image of an ANC president not unlike his infamous predecessor, Zuma, is being cemented in voters’ minds. That he is dragged to court and his shenanigans are debated ad nauseum ahead of the elections is a distraction for anyone with a good message about how the ANC has delivered some semblance of a better life since the last local elections.

Meanwhile, the Makhanda high court has declared the party’s interim leadership structure in the Eastern Cape unlawful, and the party’s defiant dissidents are threatening to file criminal and perjury charges against the leadership. If you add the return of disgraced former minister of communications Dina Pule, any idea of the ANC’s rebirth or renewal has died a stillbirth.

Add, too, ANC chair Gwede Mantashe’s criticism of the party’s partnership with the DA in the government of national unity while conceding that working with the EFF and MKP would mean “the death of the ANC”, and it all conjures up that K-Ci and JoJo mix masala that Mbalula had wanted to eliminate.

Whether Dlamini-Zuma was merely mentioning a self-evident truth about money-for-votes in the ANC, or she knew exactly how damaging and disruptive the claims would be ahead of the elections, we may never know. What we do know is that she is not the only one putting the ANC’s name in the eye of an electoral storm about to hit the party.

The local government elections, set for November 4, present a unique set of challenges that require the ANC to manage the next few weeks in ways the party seems incapable of. Some may say that what the ANC says or does from here until November 4 no longer matters. The damage has been done. But, to be charitable, better late than never? Dying with your boots on means trying until the morning of the election to convince those whose minds aren’t made up yet.

The ANC received 39% in the general election of 2024, after winning 45.59% of the total vote in the 2021 municipal polls. How much lower can it go? Could it precipitate an even bigger crisis of leadership, where some agitate for change on the basis of the municipal election outcome? Or is collective responsibility a way out?

It is possible that Dlamini-Zuma, who lost narrowly to Ramaphosa in 2017, is aware that the current leadership might face a revolt if the ANC receives anything close to 30%. If true, her resurrection of the money-for-votes saga is the proverbial twisting of the knife — what the communists call the sharpening of the contradictions — knowing we are less than 100 days from the polls.

Despite Mbalula’s yearning for discipline, the prevailing narrative is one of a party self-mutilating, a party incapable of eviscerating the K-Ci and JoJo spectacle.