CAIPHUS KGOSANA | A small province played a big role for the CR22 faction

In the early hours of Sunday morning on the conference floor, former minister Nomvula Mokonyane was about to make the ballot paper as the only candidate for ANC deputy secretary-general when the Northern Cape threw a spanner in the works.

They first nominated Vuyiswa Tulelo, SA ambassador to Vietnam, to contest Mokonyane, but she was not in the room and did not seem to be in the country either. A quick call was made, but she declined the nomination. To be nominated from the floor a candidate needs the support of 25% of delegates, which in this case was more than 1,000 people.

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Unfazed, Northern Cape then proposed former energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson. Pandemonium broke out when she accepted the nomination, and the representative of the elections agency employed by the ANC had a difficult time managing the process. Mokonyane supporters were angry. They had assumed the nominations were closed and she would be elected unopposed.  

The elections agency representative asked those who supported the Joemat-Pettersson nomination to do so by holding up their accreditation tags. A sea of tags went up in the air.

Not only did Joemat-Pettersson make the ballot, but when electoral committee chair Kgalema Motlanthe announced the results on Monday she narrowly lost to Mokonyane by a mere 50 votes.

This was a massive show of force for a province that brought only 249 voting delegates to an elective conference of 4,400. Northern Cape chair Zamani Saul is a staunch Ramaphosa ally. He kept doing the rounds at marquees, set up by broadcasters in the media centre over the weekend, telling news channels he was confident Ramaphosa would be re-elected comfortably. He had no doubt.

Saul was leading the smallest province, but they were punching way above their weight. Intense horse trading had taken place between provinces and regions that support Ramaphosa, and they were confident they could flip the whole thing on its head. When branch nominations were announced before the conference, Mokonyane was leading by a mile. But the CR22 faction was going for a winner-takes-all top 7. And the Northern Cape — having played a leading role — almost went home with not only their favourite president in the bag, but with one of the officials in the top 7 from there. That is big politics from a tiny province.

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KwaZulu-Natal, the province with the biggest delegation, got it wrong and again goes home without an official in the top 7. Such was their factional brinkmanship that they could not bring themselves to back one of their own, Mdumiseni Ntuli, who arrived at Nasrec with the highest branch nominations for the position of secretary-general. All this because he doesn’t agree with their blind loyalty to former president Jacob Zuma.

It was a kamikaze strategy. KZN also hardened attitudes when some of its delegates openly heckled Ramaphosa on the first day of conference. This must have made it difficult to reach out to the other faction and negotiate for positions below president. They gambled it all and lost quite badly.

The Ramaphosa group also benefited from a rookie mistake in Gauteng. Mzwandile Masina and Pule Mabe, both nominated for the position of treasurer-general, left it until late for Masina to step aside in support of Mabe. By the time they announced on Sunday afternoon that they were joining forces, it was too late to communicate this to all their delegates. Mabe got 1,652 votes, Masina received 281. Combined they had 1,933 while Gwen Ramakgopa, the beneficiary of this confusion, won by 1,809 votes. Mind you she was also nominated from the floor and defeated three men who were nominated by branches. The CR22 camp was just showing off.

The same short-sightedness cost them a clean sweep. Had the Eastern Cape convinced Mpumalanga to urge Ronald Lamola to step aside in favour of Oscar Mabuyane, they would have pushed the eventual winner, Paul Mashatile, to an extremely tight margin of three votes. There were 23 abstentions and 10 spoilt ballots in the vote for this position; anything could have happened. Mpumalanga should have traded Lamola for one of the deputy secretary-general positions or treasurer-general.

Ramaphosa has a solid mandate from ANC branches. He should use it to continue the reforms but at a much faster pace. The Phala Phala saga is not over yet, but party faithfuls were willing to overlook it and give him a ticket to continue the work that started five years ago. He must be ruthless in the cabinet reshuffle that will follow this conference. No more Mr Nice Guy at the crucial 2024 election.