Years of infighting in the ANC spilt into the open spectacularly as hundreds of people took to torching trucks and looting shops and malls after the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma late last Wednesday.
Even as President Cyril Ramaphosa sought to reassure the nation this week that "we will reject violence and chaos, so that we can move forward", he did not once mention Zuma’s name.
"Some have characterised these actions as a form of political protest," he said, before acknowledging that the violence "may indeed have its roots in the pronouncements and activities of individuals with a political purpose".
But he went on to characterise it as "opportunistic acts of criminality, with groups of people instigating chaos merely as a cover for looting and theft".
State security minister Ayanda Dlodlo has confirmed that the intelligence service is investigating the involvement of four former senior officers sympathetic to Zuma in masterminding the actions.
Ramaphosa won the battle at the ANC’s Nasrec conference in December 2017 when he was narrowly elected over Zuma’s preferred candidate, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma. But it’s possible that he hasn’t yet won the war.
This has been evident in the slow pace with which the president has been effecting reforms in the party and the state to stamp out the large-scale looting of government resources that began under his predecessor.
In the end, we’re talking about the ANC’s malfunction. If South Africans are to blame, it is for trusting the ANC
— Ralph Mathekga
It has taken Ramaphosa almost three years to secure enough support in the highly divided national executive committee (NEC) to draw a line in the sand against corruption.
Last August, in a letter addressed to party members, he wrote: "Today, the ANC and its leaders stand accused of corruption. The ANC may not stand alone in the dock, but it does stand as Accused No 1."
This came on the back of revelations that state money meant to fight Covid had been looted, some allegedly by Ramaphosa’s own allies.
Ramaphosa’s letter also set the scene for the National Prosecuting Authority to bring charges against party secretary-general Ace Magashule, leading to his eventual suspension from the ANC.
Zuma, however, hit back, accusing Ramaphosa of playing "right into the hands of those who seek to destroy the ANC and build from its ashes a counterrevolutionary party under the guise of fighting corruption".
In a letter of his own, Zuma said Ramaphosa’s accusation against the ANC had implicated "thousands of innocent members of the ANC who continue to face hunger and dehumanising poverty and [who] have never benefited from corruption".
"You are indeed the first president of the ANC to stand in public and accuse the ANC of criminality."
Underlying this bitterness is, among other things, the fallout from the multibillion-rand arms deal, concluded by the ANC government in the 1990s, which former MP Andrew Feinstein has described as "the point at which the ANC lost its moral compass".
Zuma is facing corruption charges related to the deal, while one of his staunchest allies, ANC NEC member Tony Yengeni, remains the only person to serve jail time for receiving bribes related to the deal as an MP.
They understandably feel hard done by, and claim to have been singled out to carry a responsibility that should be apportioned to the party as a whole.
It was with an alliance of such aggrieved ANC members that Zuma managed to unseat then president Thabo Mbeki in 2007.
Like Ramaphosa now, Mbeki was driving a strong agenda — but it was perceived to be selective (he’s said, for example, to have attempted to protect former police commissioner Jackie Selebi from being jailed for taking a bribe).
"It was all about [political] war," says ANC member and international relations scholar Oscar van Heerden about the aftermath of the Nasrec conference. "It was just battle upon battle upon battle. The first battle was to get rid of Zuma, but he resisted; then we had to fight another battle, with the cabinet; and the reconstitution of the cabinet against Ace and the radical economic transformation forces. It’s just a lot of fighting, and it’s constant."
Van Heerden says most of this happened in the first two years of Ramaphosa’s presidency, until his strengthening of state institutions started to take effect in 2020 and made the job easier.
Zuma was asked to step down barely two months after the Nasrec conference, with ANC strategists at the time citing concerns about the party’s electoral performance under his leadership in the 2016 local government polls. Initially Zuma defied this order and his supporters threatened to take action.
Ultimately, he resigned in a late-night televised speech on February 14 2018, declaring: "No life should be lost in my name. The ANC should never be divided in my name."
He vowed to continue serving the ANC and the country.
There was no widespread violence linked to Zuma’s resignation. But sporadic acts of violence against foreign traders and truck drivers by the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association, which supports Zuma, have been reported in recent years.
As it turns out, trucks were the first to be torched when violence in Zuma’s name broke out in KwaZulu-Natal on Friday.
On taking the reins of the presidency in 2018, Ramaphosa reshuffled the cabinet — but he had to compromise and retain Zuma loyalists such as Bathabile Dlamini. It was only after the 2019 elections, which the ANC won with an increased share of the vote, that Ramaphosa could appoint a cabinet more aligned with his goals of strengthening state institutions and enterprises.
His next battle — and victory — came in May, when the NEC decided to suspend Magashule in line with a 2017 conference resolution that party representatives facing charges of corruption should step aside.
In the immediate aftermath of the Nasrec conference, Magashule had at least 40% of the NEC behind him. Today, that support seems to have dwindled to just a few individuals.
Political analyst and author Ralph Mathekga says there would have been a "serious pushback" against Ramaphosa, and an effort to remove him, if he had effected all his plans more swiftly after the Nasrec conference.
But it’s his view that the various commissions of inquiry dealing with the failure of state institutions, such as the Zondo commission, have now put Ramaphosa in a strong enough position to effect reforms.
"Now his removal is not possible, despite this crisis," Mathekga says.
In fact, Ramaphosa has been strengthened to the point that he looks likely to secure a second term at the ANC’s conference next year.
"Why are people burning down trucks instead of removing him? It’s because it is institutionally and morally difficult to remove him," says Mathekga.
Instead, those who have been accused of corruption now have to "orchestrate a crisis to keep themselves out of jail", he notes, adding that the courts cannot be seen to be swayed by this violence.
Mathekga believes the ANC has been trying to downplay the role of factionalism in the current violence by bringing ordinary South Africans into the fray, and blaming it on tribalism.
"In the end, we’re talking about the ANC’s malfunction," he explains. "If South Africans are to blame, it is for trusting the ANC."
Events of the past weeks have, however, also shown some chinks in Ramaphosa’s armour. He has, for example, contradicted his own cabinet ministers more than once in recent weeks.
Notably, defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula categorically stated over the weekend that there is no war, adding: "I don’t think we have reached a point where the SA National Defence Force should be dragged into what is happening in KwaZulu-Natal."
Days later, Ramaphosa announced the deployment of up to 2,500 soldiers.
Then there’s the sense of lawlessness. On Tuesday morning, on the outskirts of Chatsworth, victory shots rang out as a group of people drunk on looted alcohol partied along to loud music.
A caller to Stephen Grootes’s morning show on SAfm described an atmosphere like Christmas or New Year — except that members of his community were on high alert.
Police and soldiers were nowhere to be seen.
"It’s completely a free-for-all. There is a rip in the fabric of society and I don’t know if [the] government knows where to buy the seams to sew it all together," the caller said.
For now, at least, it’s not clear if Ramaphosa is winning the battle that followed the imprisonment of Zuma — or what such a victory would look like.
Police failure blamed for lawlessness
Communities in KwaZulu-Natal who have been trying to keep themselves and their businesses safe since large-scale looting and violence broke out on Friday have been consistent in pointing a finger at police failure.
That’s on top of news reports of police officers turning a blind eye to the criminality, and TV visuals appearing to show the same.
Political commentator and broadcaster Lukhona Mnguni says: “Police inaction is the actual story in this whole thing.”
According to Mnguni, a caller on his Power FM talk show said the police are demotivated as they have had their overtime pay slashed due to a reduction in budgets. As a result, he says, the police “are on some form of a go-slow”.
They’re also overstretched, given how widespread the looting is.
Opposition parties earlier this year rejected the police’s R96.3bn budget, which included cuts in crime-fighting programmes while allocating an additional R1.7bn to VIP protection services. There will be a further R3.4bn reduction in the budget over the medium term.
At the time, DA MP Andrew Whitfield said some of the VIP budget should be redirected. “It is time to defund the VIPs and take power to the people by supporting community policing and reinforcing frontline officers in communities.”
It is these community policing officers national police commissioner Khehla Sitole called on to help with law enforcement this week.
“Police stations do have the capacity to respond to current situations,” he said at a briefing on Tuesday. He also said an integrated resource committee will ensure equipment shortages, such as of rubber bullets, are identified and that supplies are flown into hotspots where needed.
Police minister Bheki Cele praised police officers for showing restraint and preserving lives.
But one security expert, who did not want to be named, tells the FM the police seem powerless because they’re still “haunted by the psychological ghost of Marikana”, referring to the August 2012 massacre of 34 striking miners, which drew widespread condemnation of the police. “There is definitely a reluctance by police to use lethal force now,” he says.
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