ANC splinter group could get out of hand, warns senior party member

The ANC’s dissenting “radical economic transformation” members can no longer be treated as merely a faction, as they have morphed into a potentially formidable splinter group, run from the sixth floor of Luthuli House.

This is according to Lulama Ngcukayitobi, the party’s Eastern Cape secretary, who said the RET faction was now displaying similarities with splinter parties — such as COPE and more recently the EFF.

Ngcukayitobi said it was concerning that prominent members of the RET faction, such as Carl Niehaus, continued to be allowed to work from the office of ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule on the six floor of Luthuli House, where they hatched their anti-Ramaphosa plans.

He said ANC splinter groups, such as COPE and the EFF, were formed right under the noses of other ANC leaders, and there was no reason for the RET forces not to do the same.

The RET faction is comprised of top ANC leaders opposed to the leadership of party president Cyril Ramaphosa. They include Magashule, Tony Yengeni and Mzwandile Masina, who said he believed that Ramaphosa was using state law enforcement agencies to attack former president Jacob Zuma and Magashule.

“The ANC has to confront that particular reality, that both organisations, COPE and the EFF, were formed in the belly of the ANC and, therefore, the ANC should be alive to the risk of keeping such individuals at head office. Working in the office of the SG and pronouncing themselves outside ANC pronouncements,” Ngcukaitobi said on Tuesday.

I’m not busy trying to create a separate grouping or faction, or a different political party as the propaganda narrative is that you guys are trying peddle.

—  Carl Niehaus

“So that RET thing found on the ANC’s sixth floor of Luthuli House is neither a tendency or a faction, but it has grown into a formidable organisation that will contest the ANC. And the ANC should deal with it as an organisation rather than think it is a tendency.”

Ngcikayitodi said he and other party members sympathetic to Ramaphosa would use this weekend’s meeting of the ANC national executive committee, starting on Friday, to show the party how to deal with the RET faction, which he said was openly supporting those implicated in state capture. 

The NEC is the highest decision-making body of the party in between national conferences.

Magashule has previously distanced himself from the RET group and Niehaus.

ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe had not responded to questions at the time of publication.

Ngcukaitobi’s remarks come just days after influential ANC NEC member Joel Netshitenzhe penned a hard-hitting opinion piece about Magashule and the RET faction.

In the piece published by Daily Maverick, Netshitenzhe linked the RET group to Magashule through Niehaus, a staffer in his office, who he says are all part of a wider campaign to undermine ANC structures.

He referred to various instances that pointed to this, including Magashule “sticking out like a sore thumb among his peers” by consistently defining himself outside the ANC structures and its decisions – especially around the “step aside” issue and, more recently, on the parliamentary vote to establish an inquiry into public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office. 

Netshitenzhe also spoke about some of the policies of the RET faction that were in clear contrast to that of the ANC on various issues, including land and state ownership.

This, according to Netshitenzhe, could point to the establishment of a splinter party, seemingly because a grouping associated to the ANC cannot have differing ideologies. 

“It is not the first time that the ANC has experienced the emergence of an organisation within the organisation. As with the PAC in 1958 and the Group of 8 in the 1970s, this ultimately led to rupture. The elephant does take long to turn — or, to use a different metaphor, the fruit was allowed to ripen and drop at the slightest shake of the tree,” Netshitenzhe said in the Daily Maverick piece.

In a video message published on Wednesday afternoon, Niehaus said the RET faction was a grouping of ANC members aimed at defending the Freedom Charter and the policies of the party.

He denied that he was part of those planning to establish yet another ANC splinter group, saying he belonged to no factions.

“I will not waiver from described radical economic transformation as the official policy of the ANC, and I will not waiver to insist that that economic policy must be implemented with speed and urgency,” Niehaus said.

“When I do all of this, I do so as a member of the ANC. Yes, I work in the office the secretary-general, but I’m not busy trying to create a separate grouping or faction, or a different political party as the propaganda narrative is that you guys are trying peddle. I’m doing none of that. I’m simply committed to the principles and policy programmes of the ANC,” he said.