LUCKY MATHEBULA | The futility of choking the succession battle within the ANC

In the run-up to the ANC's regional conferences, the national general council, and ultimately the 2027 national conference, there seems to be an attempt to choke the raging succession battle. The ANC is seeing out its president and is thinking of who will succeed him.

The build-up to the 2027 National Elective Conference begins with the 52 regional conferences, followed by the election of branch executive committees. Any candidate worth their salt would be naive to ignore who leads these branches and regions, thus making the succession battle the most current and real activity in the politics of the ANC. The succession battle within the ANC is not a matter to be dismissed lightly. Its implications are far-reaching, and its resolution is of utmost importance.

Historically, the ANC has perpetuated the fallacy that leaders do not raise their hands but are instead raised into the contestation ring. The peddled ritual has been that individual politicians are not expected to see leading the ANC as a vocational or career matter, but more of a calling. In pre-1994 parlance, this might have had some truth, because the risk-reward relationship included the ultimate prize: death. If there was an incentive beyond the freedoms that were fought for, martyrdom ranked the highest, with little to no bottom line or material rewards. 

The 1990-1996 political settlement, a crucial period in South Africa's transition to democracy, culminated in the adoption of the 1996 constitution. This period introduced the dimension of career benefits into ANC politics. Politicians, as individuals or a collective, became a node around which the country's political economy revolved.

In practical terms, as it currently stands, the ANC relies on individuals to exert its leadership influence over South Africa. This is calculated from more than 4,000 ward-based branches, 52 regions, nine provinces, and 80 members of the national executive committee. In a population of 60-million, occupying these positions comes with responsibility and obligations, as well as prestige, for those who make it.

The brute truth is that politics is now a career. People get involved for one incentive or another. To believe in the pre-1994 anti-apartheid struggle's altruism and overall morality of being a liberation movement with a set objective is politically naive. The battle to make a difference in society is one that anyone or any political party can fight.

The concept of our people has long been the almost exclusive domain of the ANC. Still, it has evolved to be available for anyone with a unique value proposition to implement and deliver the promise of liberation outlined in the 1996 constitution. This contestation includes those who want to lead the ANC, thus making internal leadership contests a new and ongoing reality.

It is no longer a secret that the battle to succeed ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa is on. The road to Polokwane, a reference to the 2007 ANC national conference where Jacob Zuma was elected as ANC president, has rendered the ANC NEC or its officials powerless to announce the start of a succession campaign. Internal persuasions, tendencies and factions have taken over this role. Once they are ready with a candidate, the campaign begins, which can range from an hour after the announcement of a new president to the last day before a new one is elected. 

At stake is the power to influence the distributive power of state resources through government, the ultimate prize of politics in a democratic order we have created. Beyond the direct government budget, there are several resources in a R7-trillionplus economy that can be influenced in one way or another. The global reach of being in the executive authority corridors of South Africa has reconfigured views on politics as a vocation, thus the sophisticated succession battles within political parties.

The stability of the ANC between conferences can only be guaranteed by its ability to manage the internal convulsions caused by the political career ambitions of its members and the funded interests of those in charge of South Africa's economic order.

The stability of the ANC between conferences can only be guaranteed by its ability to manage the internal convulsions caused by the political career ambitions of its members and the funded interests of those in charge of South Africa's economic order. The branches and structures that it has put in place to contain potential implosions as it transitions into a modern political party, vulnerable to the demands of new generations of members, must adapt to new conditions.

The historical, and somewhat nostalgic, rhetoric must acknowledge the faltering wills, changing capacities and growing ambitions of the members it has recruited as a post-apartheid entity. 

The ANC needs to recognise that its declining electoral fortunes, which have fallen below 50%, are primarily a result of its inability to adapt to the new political playbook. The order and discipline in its basic units of organisation have been deteriorating. The chaos that resulted from this must not mean the inevitability of political calamity; it must be managed in terms of the demands it makes for the moment. 

The condition of coalition governments, an omnipresent feature in South African politics for a long time to come, is a dynamic that has created outside-ANC structures and arrangements between politicians with an eye to co-governance. Anyone who believes that ANC structures are the only essential levers for succession would have missed the terrain of contestation and become locked into the traditional in-ANC rituals that have been rendered obsolete by a maturing constitutional order and an unfolding multiparty democratic order anchored in proportional representation. The determined threshold to guarantee absolute power to govern has shifted the political landscape. All moments of politics build up to succession.

Under the circumstances, the ANC may want to consider reconfiguring its leadership election process across the board. The somewhat abandoned member integrity management system, a system designed to uphold the ANC’s values and principles by monitoring and regulating the conduct of its members, might be one way to filter behaviour and conduct inconsistent with its chronicled values.

The succession battle should be left to run its race and be normalised as part of internal politics. The quicker the candidates are known and allowed to coexist with the day-to-day programmes of the ANC, the better. If the renewal programme is packaged as part of the requirements to achieve the ultimate prize of internal ANC politics, its leadership, it will spur it to higher levels. 

• Dr FM Lucky Mathebula is head of faculty, people management and founder of The Thinc Foundation, a think-tank based at the Da Vinci Institute

For opinion and analysis consideration, email opinions@timeslive.co.za