Inside the ANC’s cutthroat power struggles

When Knowledge Sibandze got up one Sunday morning in February to attend a meeting of his ANC branch in Mpumalanga, he didn’t expect to have a brush with death.

"It’s scary to be a member of the ANC lately," he told journalist Mandla Khoza from his hospital bed days later. "When you go to a meeting you risk being beaten, stabbed or shot, or even killed."

Sibandze was lucky, relatively speaking: he was shot in the leg. Recently, though, five people in his province have died, as thugs have used violence to prevent branches from nominating the "wrong" candidates for leadership positions in the provincial elective conferences.

It’s a disturbing sign of how important these seemingly low-level meetings actually are. It’s not just about jockeying for position in provincial executive committees; the branches also nominate candidates for the ANC’s national leadership, which will be decided at its elective conference in December.

One step up from the branches, the party’s regions also punch above their weight. Regional leaders have the power to lobby their branches to support particular candidates for provincial leadership positions — and to support (or withhold support for) particular candidates at the national elective conference.

With Covid and internal party disputes having pushed out the electoral calendar, it means the regional, provincial and national elective conferences will all take place in a single year — upping the ante even further.

"It is cut-throat," says Susan Booysen, author of Precarious Power: Compliance and Discontent Under Ramaphosa’s ANC and emeritus professor at Wits University. "Leaders in regions and provinces are very aware that every branch counts."

It takes just 100 members to form a branch, at an annual membership fee of R20 a person.

But this belies their importance: it is the branch members who nominate candidates for the ANC’s top six positions, as well as for the national executive committee (NEC). The individual branch nominations are consolidated and decided at a provincial general council, held a few weeks before the national conference.

ANC leaders are currently elected by 2% of ANC members while 98% of members are left at home. That is how they capture the ANC. They bribe the 2% of ANC members

—  Omry Makgoale

Branches, too, are represented at the national elective conference: delegation size is worked out according to a formula that takes into account the number of overall delegates who can be accommodated (usually about 4,000 but there has been talk of limiting numbers this year due to Covid), members per province, total number of branches (determined through a membership audit) and the number of audited members per branch.

Branches then choose the delegates who will represent them at the conference. It is here that serious contestation arises: these individuals will vote on behalf of the branch — as a result, they’re often targeted by campaigners. Sponsorship for their hotels, as well as food, drinks and pocket money during the conference, often comes with the expectation that they will vote for particular candidates.

For now, the party is looking to finalise its provincial conferences — aiming for a deadline of end-March — so that membership audits can be completed and the nominations for national leaders can go ahead.

The provinces are running out of time to meet the deadline. So far, only the Northern Cape, the party’s smallest province by membership, has held its elective conference. In Gauteng and the three biggest provinces — KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), the Eastern Cape and Limpopo — the terms of the current leaders are about to expire, so contestation for top provincial positions is already in full swing.

But Mpumalanga, North West, the Free State and the Western Cape are without properly elected leadership at all; they’re run by leaders who have either been appointed or are acting in positions. Mpumalanga, for example, was supposed to elect a successor to former provincial leader David Mabuza in 2018, shortly after he was elevated to the position of deputy president. It has yet to do so.

And in the Free State, the provincial executive committee elected in 2018, after Ace Magashule became party secretary-general, was dissolved by a court last year.

Provincial membership is an important factor in party politics: it determines how many delegates each province can send to the national conference. If those delegates vote as a bloc, the bigger provinces can pack quite a punch. At recent conferences, for example, the buy-in of either the Eastern Cape or KZN was considered central to victory.

The leadership of provinces is important too: though the branches decide on nominations, provincial leaders can lobby them to change their support. In 2017, Mabuza, at the 11th hour, convinced Mpumalanga’s delegates to support the CR17 campaign, handing Cyril Ramaphosa victory — and no doubt securing Mabuza’s own position as his deputy.

Strictly speaking, no-one is supposed to campaign before the provincial councils have finalised their nominations. But some have jumped the gun: at the ANC’s January 8 birthday celebration, for example, Limpopo chair Stan Mathabatha and other regional leaders endorsed Ramaphosa for a second term as ANC leader.

Ramaphosa himself hasn’t at any point denounced the endorsement, but former president Thabo Mbeki this weekend castigated the leaders for speaking out of turn and drawing attention from "national challenges" to the leadership contest.

Also affecting the party’s performance on this count may be that the all-powerful top six has been reduced to just four, with Magashule on suspension since early last year, and his deputy, Jessie Duarte, on sick leave since November.

As the only other full-time ANC official in the top six, party treasurer Paul Mashatile has been shouldering the additional burden — but he’s asked the NEC for increased capacity in the secretary-general’s office.

"There is a lot of work there, so we are looking at how we are going to increase that capacity," he tells the FM. "[The officials] left it at that because they didn’t want to discuss names."

It’s likely that the NEC has avoided naming an acting secretary-general because even that will probably be divisive: the secretary-general oversees branch nominations as well as membership audits, so is crucial for determining who will attend the elective conference.

It is not by chance that the party’s presidency often goes to the leader who has the secretary-general’s support. Consider, for example, Jacob Zuma and then secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe in 2007, and Zuma and Gwede Mantashe in 2012.

So it’s no surprise that the recent suggestion that Ramaphosa loyalist Gwen Ramokgopa take on the duties of secretary-general has encountered pushback from the president’s critics.

As it is, it looks as if Ramaphosa has consolidated his power ahead of December — but his detractors will still hope to stack the top six and 80-strong NEC with their leaders. There, they could frustrate Ramaphosa’s agenda with their numbers.

Of course, administrative disarray may yet derail the timetable — and not just because of Covid and direct infighting. Some insiders blame ANC staffers, who have been on a go-slow after not being paid since last year.

But even this has a factional flavour. Political analyst Xolani Dube of the Xubera Institute for Research & Development, recently told DM168 that some party donors seem to be withholding money that could pay salaries until they know they can influence the elective conference outcomes. The assumption is that this will leave new party leaders beholden to donors when it comes to awarding lucrative contracts — just the kind of thing Ramaphosa’s "renewal" drive is supposed to prevent.

In a bid to prevent entrepreneurs with political interests from "buying" branches — it would cost just R2,000 to pay the membership fees of a 100-member list for a whole year — the party has introduced a new electronic membership system.

The violence at branch meetings is a sign of how important these seemingly low level events are

—  What it means:

But there are concerns that it simply enables other abuses. Eastern Cape premier and provincial party chair Oscar Mabuyane has already complained that some have tried to cheat the system ahead of that province’s elective conference.

When it comes to membership itself, there isn’t recent data available. But figures presented to the NEC almost a year ago showed a big bump in Limpopo membership — taking the province from fourth-largest to second, behind KZN. If these numbers hold ahead of December, it could bode well for Ramaphosa, who has considerable support in Limpopo.

Still, that same report put ANC membership across SA at 1.5-million — but showed that only 42% were members in good standing. So this year’s numbers could differ drastically.

Some, like Umkhonto we Sizwe veteran Omry Makgoale, are concerned about weaknesses in the voting system that allow for the party to be "captured".

For the past six years, he has campaigned for changes to the system to enable ANC members to vote directly, with each member given a vote.

"ANC leaders are currently elected by 2% of ANC members while 98% of members are left at home. That is how they capture the ANC. They bribe the 2% of ANC members attending the elective conference," he says.

Makgoale, along with independent elections consultant and former elections commissioner Terry Tselane, has drawn up a document to be submitted to party structures for possible discussion at the party’s policy conference, due in the middle of the year.

They hope this could lead to the election of more ethical leaders and less gatekeeping at branch level — and, ultimately, to less violence. But with logistics, financial and Covid issues possibly delaying the policy conference to run alongside the elective one, it will be a while yet to see if their proposals are taken on board.