Ace Magashule, I read earlier this week, is about to be presented with a “hard-hitting legal opinion” on his future in the ANC. I assume this means the legal opinion will make a satisfying thud when it hits the wall of the Integrity Commission office at Luthuli House and slides down into the recycling bin.
According to News24, supporters of Cyril Ramaphosa will thrust this opinion at Magashule at an NEC meeting this weekend, much like 19th-century Dutch doctors brandishing cloves of garlic at Transylvanian counts, and will tell him that he will either have to step aside willingly, or face the wrath of the law.
There will then be a short adjournment for laughter, the patting of backs, and general comments along the lines of “You should have seen your face!” and “But seriously, what are we talking about today?”
Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, and, in a stunning break with the past, the ANC will start respecting laws. Perhaps a new Puritanism is creeping into this eternally Catholic party. After all, Andile Lungisa had to spend a whole 75 days in prison. Yes, it’s proportionally less time than Schabir Shaik spent in the slammer (Lungisa served about 10% of his sentence, compared to Shaik’s 15%) but it’s still much more gruelling than the 8% of a sentence served by Tony Yengeni.
It will also be preying ever so gently on Magashule’s mind that the ANC’s military veterans haven’t offered to stage a coup if he is arrested.
On Tuesday, the leader of the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association, Kebby Maphatsoe, explained that, while Zuma was not above the law, former veterans were “not going to be happy” if Zuma was arrested for fleeing the Zondo Commission, adding that coups had “happened in many countries in Africa”, and that “these things” needed to be treated “carefully”.
“These things”, however, don’t seem to include Magashule.
Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, and, in a stunning break with the past, the ANC will start respecting laws.
Granted, the MKVA has a lot on its plate — mostly lukewarm, watery lamb from the lunch buffet — and the only thing it’s capable of fighting these days is cholesterol.
And yes, you have to be careful about yelling “Coup!” in case Carl Niehaus thinks you’re saying “Koo!” and comes scampering over to ask if he can borrow a can of baked beans.
But the fact that the MKVA hasn’t offered Magashule so much as two 28-year-old veterans brandishing pink plastic AK-47s that shoot bubbles, suggests that Ace will have to go elsewhere for his rent-a-crowd.
That falling-out, I suspect, began in October, when the MKVA invited Magashule to a meeting in Durban to hear its demands, one of which was that foreigners should be banned from running businesses in SA.
Being a good politician, Magashule made all the right noises and shook all the right hands. And because he is a good politician in a country whose electorate is still on the fence about the legislated theft of foreigners’ businesses, he proceeded to do exactly nothing.
For the creaky cadres of the MKVA, his refusal to help them launch an ANC-endorsed Kristallnacht was a slap in the face: in early November, the organisation whined that Magashule had abandoned military veterans. Now, when it meets to plan its xenophobic purge, it does so without an Ace up its sleeve.
On Tuesday, The Witness reported that MKVA members had met again, this time at a “posh hotel” in Durban. I don’t want to impugn the reputation of journalists at The Witness, but I find this story highly suspect for one obvious reason: there are no posh hotels in Durban.
So no. There will be no MKVA cavalry charge to save Magashule at the last minute, no thundering line of borrowed BMWs and uniforms hired on credit and buffet plates paid for by Niehaus’s seventh dead parent.
But that’s OK, because Ace doesn’t need an army, because he’s got three things that are infinitely more powerful: a constituency, a hamstrung, vacillating president and, best of all, 26 years of precedent; a quarter of a century of the ANC shaking itself out of its stupor, making a passionate speech about corruption and accountability, giving a great belch, and then slowly sitting back down at the table and reaching for the gravy.
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