JUSTICE MALALA | ANC leaders are in a process they can’t stop

The ANC is in a terrible bind. No matter who emerges as its next leader, they will have a plethora of corruption allegations arrayed against them. 

And that’s because it is impossible to become ANC president without striking a bargain with corrupt national, provincial and regional office-bearers, their equally corrupt bagmen, government officials who do these kingpins’ bidding, and their numerous runners. 

The party’s processes to elect a leader are fuelled by and tied to patronage, bribery and corruption. Merit is meaningless. It’s all about who you can pay to deliver the votes you need to emerge as a winner. 

The tragedy of this situation for the ANC is that this reality is dawning on the South African voter. The rapidly declining voter turnout numbers, plus the precipitous decline in ANC support in 2024, should be making ANC strategists shake with fear. The party is nearly over. 

So whether it’s Paul Mashatile, Senzo Mchunu, Fikile Mbalula, Gwede Mantashe, Panyaza Lesufi, or anyone of the party’s current crop of leaders, they will play by the same rule book. 

Nothing illustrates this reality more than the rise and rise and ignominious fall of the suspended and former police minister Senzo Mchunu.

Mchunu had solid support in the party’s KwaZulu-Natal branches and parts of the general populace. Over the past 30 years he had occupied strategic provincial positions. At some point Mchunu did something brave in the KZN ANC: he walked away from support for the scandal-ridden former party president Jacob Zuma and joined up with the Cyril Ramaphosa faction. 

To win against the Zuma juggernaut, Ramaphosa — with Mchunu as his running mate for the position of secretary-general of the ANC in 2017 — was funded by numerous forces ranging from big business, wealthy individuals and businesspeople at provincial and regional levels who had benefited from government contracts. 

Provincial ANC leaders who supported Ramaphosa mobilised resources to get branch delegates to the national conferences. Their henchmen twisted the arms of those who had benefited from lucrative government work to procure buses, hotel rooms, venues, stipends, and other “necessaries”. 

Zuma’s preferred candidates in the 2017 race had similar backing from the Guptas and others. Zuma had done the same thing in 2007 and 2012. Money oils everything in the ANC. Every vote was cast with a little incentive already paid, or with an eye to future financial and other favours.

This is why talk of a Patrice Motsepe run for the ANC presidency becomes interesting. How would that run differ from Ramaphosa’s, for example? For one, Motsepe need not be beholden to funders as he can easily fund the whole thing himself.

Consider, therefore, the case of Mchunu and the man who claims to have been speaking on his behalf to tenderpreneur, criminal mastermind and attempted murderer Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala. Brown Mogotsi, a North West restaurant owner with seemingly deep contacts in the police ministry and among SAPS leaders, gave the accused Matlala information that indicated the minister had broken up a police unit that was on the trail of this suspect. 

It turns out Mogotsi was a cog — key or not, we don’t know — in the Ramaphosa election machine back in 2017. He was clearly a key player in the Mchunu presidential campaign that was beginning to take shape ahead of the party’s 2027 elective conference. Mogotsi had already received monies (some R110,000, according to KZN provincial police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi) to transport and entertain a Mchunu-supporting delegation to the ANC’s January 8th celebrations. 

There are many in the ANC who play roles similar to Mogotsi’s. They are individuals close to political power. They act as gatekeepers and as intermediaries. They receive and hold the bags of cash. They dispense the bags of cash. They are the actors who, if the police were effective, would be getting a visit from the detectives. 

They won’t though. As we have seen with the Mkhwanazi revelations, the rot is at the very top and throughout the body. 

There are many such individuals right now preparing or paying a branch in Mpumalanga or Eastern Cape to come out in support of a Mashatile, a Mbalula, a Mantashe, a Mchunu, or some other ANC leader. These leaders are in a process they cannot stop. This is how the ANC works. 

This is why talk of a Patrice Motsepe run for the ANC presidency becomes interesting. How would that run differ from Ramaphosa’s, for example? For one, Motsepe need not be beholden to funders as he can easily fund the whole thing himself. Ramaphosa didn’t fund his campaign by himself. 

Would Motsepe’s campaign be clear of the corruption we have seen with others? Can he win without paying the “inducements” others have paid? 

It’s all just speculation, of course, as we can all see that hurdles are already being put in Motsepe’s way. Mbalula said in June that “yes, we (the ANC) eat his money”, but “I don't even know if he is an ANC member”. 

So until a candidate who can rise to the ANC presidency in a completely new way, a way that excludes the corruption that it currently demands, then things will continue in exactly the way they have done in the past 20 years. 

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