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SELLO HLASA and MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO write that Jacob Zuma’s endorsement of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party creates a dilemma for the ANC: will the expulsion, or even suspension, of the former president be too huge a price to pay or will the party instead opt for expediency above ethics?
The decision by former President Jacob Zuma to publicly campaign for uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party and boldly mobilise for people not to vote for ‘the ANC of [Cyril] Ramaphosa’ has put the ruling party between the devil and the blue sea.
Effectively, Zuma had declared war with the ANC by mobilising multitudes of his supporters within the ranks of the structures of the ANC and its former military wing to swell the ranks of MK Party.
The ANC statement, based on the December 16, 2023 address by Zuma to MK Party at its first public meeting at Ipelegeng Community Centre in Soweto, was muted. Then the ANC said it will issue a statement in that regards.
Subsequently, the ANC issued MK Party with a letter calling it to desist using the name that it claims trademark rights to. However, in contrast to the swiftness with which it moved in expelling its former Secretary General, Ace Magashule, the ANC has not taken any decisive action against Zuma.
Seemingly, the party fear Zuma and his lieutenants’ mobilisation, especially in KZN and in Gauteng. However, Zuma has already cost the ANC dearly with MK Party poking holes in the body of the ANC. There is no likelihood of Zuma’s attack on the ANC stopping. For his part, Zuma claims he wants to save the ANC from a leadership that failed to implement the 2017 National Congress resolution that, amongst other things, called for the nationalisation of the Reserve Bank. But the potential consequences of his actions is weakening the ANC.
The hesitation of the ANC in dealing with Zuma suggests that it believes that either suspending or expelling him will be too huge a price to pay.
This raises ethical dilemmas for an ANC which is increasingly appearing as an organisation that is bereft of ethics and integrity.
The ANC is already perceived as privileging political expediency and self-interests above ethics for its apparent selective use of internal disciplinary processes or its inconsistency in evoking ‘the rule of law’.
If it is seen to be avoiding taking disciplinary action on what is clearly a disciplinary case for political convenience – that is, fear of whatever popular support and mass mobilisation that supposedly gives Zuma an upper card – it is going to be difficult for the ANC to convince people that the same tendency to choose convenience or expediency above fact is not the reason for its failure to root out corruption within its ranks and broader society.
For many people, the ANC is preoccupied with holding on to state power for the survival of its political elite who have become a political class in the vulgar sense of a class that survives and feeds off politics, using the state as a point of accumulation of personal power and wealth.
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The implication of this is that for the ANC political power is a means of self-preservation rather than an instrument of socio-political and economic transformation and development. By implication, there is a view that the social elites and political elites who were in the ANC government, or benefited in one way or another from their affiliations with the ruling party, start or support rival political parties more as a self-serving act of a political class in search of another conduit to living off politics or as platform to revive their political careers.
It all stands to be seen whether a three million membership generated online will translate into three million people at the voting queue. A hyped-up crowd is not as sustainable as a critical mass. Today, when we have a sitting president who is mired in the ‘Phala Phala Farmgate’ and was part of the higher echelons of power in the ruling party throughout the so-called nine wasted years – in addition to the ghost of Marikana – where is the mass that shouted ‘Zuma must fall‘ in response to ‘Nkandlagate’ and state capture?
- Sello Hlasa is a former mayor of Metsimaholo Local Municipality, a public servant and scholar of politics and policy and development studies.
- Mphutlane wa Bofelo is a cultural worker and political theorist who focuses on the interface between politics, governance and development, and strategy and leadership.
