If you’re in a bad mood today and feel like throwing rocks, you’re spoilt for choice. There’s a march of opposition parties to the constitutional court in support of Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement’s application for the coming vote of no-confidence in President Jacob Zuma to be held in secret. There’s another march, for the same reason, and to the same place, by Sipho Pityana’s Save SA movement.
You could also stand outside Eskom’s headquarters in Johannesburg and try to prevent the former CEO, Brian Molefe, from entering the grounds in order to become CEO again today. Or, perhaps, prevent him leaving if you get there too late.
It is too easy to tell you that neither protest matters because they do. It is a way for civil society to put pressure on a powerful government without anyone getting killed. But we must surely know that even if the court rules for Holomisa, ANC MPs are unlikely to accept the opposition’s invitation to topple their president when the vote is brought to parliament. There were vague stories in the weekend papers about the ANC caucus in parliament “dealing” with the president on their own. I wonder what would happen if one of them stood up and called for a vote, and if the secrecy principle had been agreed.
In fact, it would be difficult to hold a secret ballot, even with the court’s approval. If you’re sitting next to or close to someone in the National Assembly you can see which button they press for a vote. You can also see from up in the public gallery.
As for Molefe and the brutality of the politics that ripped him from Eskom and have now put him back, they will only be dealt with when Zuma goes. I have no time for the argument that getting rid of him won’t change things. It would almost instantly change things. That’s both good and bad.
It’s bad because if the wrong person replaces him the president has such wide powers of appointment she or he could easily continue down the road Zuma’s been plodding along all these years. If the right person gets his job, Molefe and the Eskom board would be out of office in an hour. That would be good but, also, bad, because no-one should have the power to do that.
In politics, Zuma’s not doing as badly as people think he is. Yes, Cyril Ramaphosa has chalked up some canny victories. His appearance with Senzo Mchunu (the former KZN ANC leader, whom Zuma shafted but who is still extremely popular), at a church service a week or so ago was inspired. And Ramaphosa got his candidate elected chair of the provincial ANC in the Northern Cape at the weekend. But there’s a long way to go to the December elective conference and if you think South African politics has become rough this year, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
If you’re Ramaphosa, KZN is the province to concentrate on. He appears to have Northern Cape, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Gauteng and, possibly, Limpopo behind him. The Free State and Mpumalanga are solidly for Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
And Zuma’s politics are scary. He campaigns, Zulu-speakers tell me, in “dark Zulu” to crowds far away from reporters and prying eyes. He talks about witches and enemies. This is his territory and very few politicians would take him on in his heartland.
An exception is Mbali Ntuli, a young and deeply courageous woman who campaigns for the Democratic Alliance in northern rural KwaZulu. She won wards in the local government elections last year. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult her task must be and how little the DA appreciates her.
She is about to be disciplined by the party machinery for “liking” a Facebook posting last December which stated that former party leader and now Western Cape premier Helen Zille was a racist. At first the party appeared to ignore it. And then, suddenly, it changed its mind. Bonginkosi Madikizela, the party’s interim leader in the Western Cape, appears to have insisted on the charges and Ntuli being heard. According to a report in City Press yesterday: “The party’s legal commission probed the matter and said: ‘Taking all of the above into consideration, it is recommended that no further action be taken against Ntuli’.” But his line, which I found in City Press’s sister paper, Rapport, was new. And revealing: “Madikizela enjoys Zille’s support and appears to be throwing his weight behind the Western Cape premier’s fightback.”
Zille’s “fightback” in that story presumably is about the aftermath of her Tweets about colonialism, as she has sought to clarify and defend her position. And it seems that now she’s somehow involved in getting Ntuli, with whom she has frequently clashed, into a disciplinary. Zille herself also faces a disciplinary for the colonial Tweets but has much more powerful legal advisers than young Ntuli is able to bring to bear, so it will be months before the Zille matter is heard. And if, as is highly probable, she loses she’ll probably take the party to court.
There’s not much DA leader Mmusi Maimane can do about it. The DA has its processes and if you bend them once you create a dangerous precedent. So while he leads the DA contingent on the multiparty march to the constitutional court today we should forgive him for having his mind elsewhere. Zille’s ability to pull some of the party’s strings from the background weakens his hand ahead of 2019. It is sheer madness.
Zille has a passionate group of supporters. They would rather win the argument about the benefits of colonialism than win the next election. That is, of course, their perfect right. But their numbers are not as great as one would think. There is not a businessman I know anymore who doesn’t think Zille should step down and let Maimane get on with reshaping the party. He is its future, not her.
DA polls, I’m told, have the ANC winning between 51% and 48% of the vote in 2019. They have the EFF scraping over the 10% mark and themselves over the 30% mark. But here’s the thing; in their polling they do better without Zille in the picture than with her. She’s become a liability, in other words. Politics is a cruel life.
As our country rushes down the tubes (taking Molefe back to Eskom alarmingly increases the risk of a Moody’s downgrade) it is just astonishing that a party as full of talent as the DA now find itself hobbled by its internal contradictions.
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