CAIPHUS KGOSANA | Lesufi got the job. How much will his ANC fight to keep Gauteng?

The ANC in Gauteng elected a music producer as provincial secretary. Maybe renewal will come in the form of a hit song.

In the 1995 high grossing movie The American President, Michael Douglas puts in an inspiring performance as widowed president Andrew Shephard who falls for a lobbyist while trying to bring important pieces of legislation to Congress.

Towards the end, Shephard, a Democrat, gives a moving speech that helps to sway some key votes in his favour. “America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve got to want it bad because it’s gonna put up a fight,” he tells the White House press corps.

Must have been a different America, though; not the one that elects Trump and overturns Roe v Wade.

Anyway, I thought this part of the speech was also fitting for Gauteng. This province is not easy. The ANC held onto it by a whisker in 2019, only to lose all three metros two years later. At just 18,182km², the province covers only 1.4% of the total land area of SA. But it is home to 25% of the near 60-million people living in the country. Scores of migrants leave neighbouring countries with Gauteng in mind.

It has massive in-migration challenges as both the educated and upwardly mobile, as well as the poorly educated and unskilled, flock to it each year in search of economic opportunities. It is home to a highly opinionated chattering class. When its middle class of all races is not complaining on talk radio, they are at restaurants, in pubs, hosting dinner parties, at work, in church, dropping children off at school, at the gym and other popular gathering spots, moaning about how bad things have become.

The Western Cape was the first province to give the ANC the boot, driven by its unique demography wherein Africans are in the minority. Gauteng is going that route too, and the ANC has every reason to worry about this trend because Africans make up the clear majority here.

The Western Cape was the first province to give the ANC the boot, driven by its unique demography wherein Africans are in the minority. Gauteng is going that route too, and the ANC has every reason to worry about this trend because Africans make up the clear majority here.

So you’d think the party would spend sleepless nights plotting and drawing up political strategies on how to keep a province that counts the national capital, the financial capital and Africa’s richest square mile within its borders.

Any strategy of that sort would naturally begin with the calibre of leader the party puts forward in the province of gold. The corrupt, the dishonest, the weak and the clueless won’t cut it here.

ANC apparatchiks always boast of how theirs is a democratic movement, in which leadership is determined by branch members at elective conferences. This is a ruse. ANC leadership posts are decided by those with the deepest pockets.

When Panyaza Lesufi, who eventually won the chairmanship by a narrow margin at the weekend, goes up against Lebogang Maile, it’s not their leadership qualities and ethics that sets them apart but the war chests of their factions.

Lesufi has done relatively well as education MEC. He has carved an image as Mr Clean with no scandals, but I’m still not convinced he didn’t know about (maybe he did not personally benefit) from that diabolical R400m tender his department issued to decontaminate schools shortly after announcement of the first lockdown.

Maile, the MEC for local government, can also claim he has no corrupt bone in his body, but how his tacit backers — the Alex Mafia — got rich is an open secret. His faction named itself Adiwele — a play on a popular Amapiano song. This may explain why his running mate Thembinkosi “TK” Nciza, a famous music producer, dumped the studio for ANC fatigues. He first emerged in Ekurhuleni as treasurer before being elected secretary a few weeks ago.

Now again to the surprise of many, Nciza has successfully managed to get himself elected provincial secretary; effectively the CEO of the ANC in Gauteng. It’s a big deal. Provincial secretaries — if they play their politics well and choose the right factions — can easily progress towards chairmanship at future conferences.

There are a lot of rumours swirling about how Nciza and those in his circle operate; how he was able to worm his way to the second biggest ANC prize in this province. But they are unprintable. We subscribe to the Press Code.

Lesufi has a major task on his hands trying to convince Gauteng to keep the ANC in power in 2024. The DA, ActionSA, EFF et al have other ideas. They’ve set their sights on either winning it outright or acting as kingmaker. From my view, Lesufi and co will be warming opposition benches in the Gauteng legislature in two years’ time.

To borrow from our fictional president Shephard: Gauteng is not easy, it is advanced citizenship. You’ve got to want it bad because it’s gonna put up a fight.