PETER BRUCE: Who would want Mabuza as kingmaker?

I don’t know much about the premier of Mpumalanga, David “DD” Mabuza. There are no biographies about him and if there were honest ones about they would, I suspect, not be very long. Mabuza will, by all accounts, be the “kingmaker” at the ANC’s elective conference in just over two weeks’ time in Johannesburg. There, again by all reliable accounts, he will try to place Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in power as the ruling party’s new president.

His price will be that he becomes her deputy and so, in any future government she may lead, he will be deputy president and if the notion that the party deputy succeeds the president sticks, he will become head of state in 2024 or 2029 at the latest. It is a long game but that’s how you play things in the ANC. It is a party and a government which believes it has all the time in the world.

Last week the Mpumalanga ANC held its provincial general council and pronounced Dlamini-Zuma the winner. She got 123 votes to Cyril Ramaphosa’s 117. But Mabuza had instructed branches to vote instead for “Unity” and after the count 223 people had written “Unity” on their ballot papers. They were counted as abstentions.

Mabuza tried to insist they be counted as votes for a candidate called “Unity” which person, of course, did not exist. But there is little doubt they were meant to imply a vote for Dlamini-Zuma. Mabuza has been nominated a number of times as deputy president under a slate headed by President Jacob Zuma’s former wife. The problem for Mabuza is that he doesn’t have much faith in Dlamini-Zuma’s ability to win a general election and would rather be on Ramaphosa’s slate. But Ramaphosa doesn’t want him.

Ramaphosa, in fact, has himself announced his own “slate” and he already has Naledi Pandor as deputy — all good and well except that she has no chance at all of being voted in as deputy in two weeks’ time. Why Ramaphosa did this is a mystery. Perhaps it was to signal that he is not interested in Mabuza — who has a record of corruption — in his party leadership or possible government.

She must, however, be a tradable proposition and she must also know that. So Ramaphosa has deal room come the congress, perhaps to offer the deputy job to someone who can win him more support at the last moment. But that merely puts him on the same level as Dlamini-Zuma again. She already has that wiggle room. However, the only serious deputy candidate for either Ramaphosa or Dlamini-Zuma is Mabuza. Clever fellow. So why did Ramaphosa paint himself into a corner like that? I hear Zuma was delighted when he heard the news.

Ramaphosa is, for the moment, ahead on delegate votes but KwaZulu, a Zuma stronghold, has yet to show its hand and Dlamini-Zuma is likely to get most of the province when results are announced this week.

Conventional wisdom is that should Dlamini-Zuma win this month then the ANC could quite conceivably slip below 50% of the national vote in general elections in 2019, in about 18 months’ time. It would then be up to a fractious collection of opposition parties — from the Democratic Alliance to the Economic Freedom Fighters, with the United Democratic Movement and the Freedom Front in between — to form a government.

That is not necessarily an exciting prospect. In fact, unless the DA gets its vote up to around 35% it’ll be a mess, without any stable and clear leadership.

For DA leader Mmusi Maimane, the results of the election last week at the big Metsimaholo local election were a mixed bag. Metsimaholo is a large area just south of the Vaal river and includes Sasolburg. The ANC vote collapsed to 34% as it shed votes to the EFF and the DA. But the DA shed votes to its right.

At least Maimane has finally put some policy positions on paper. They are the building blocks for 2019 and I hope he is able to build on them. Writing in yesterday’s Sunday Times, Maimane put some blue water between the DA and the rest. He had a rational six-point plan and you would be able to measure its implementation easily.

First was reform of the state sector, selling off or shutting down nonstrategic state-owned companies (presumably SAA included). Here we should note the introduction of the notion of reform, rather than transformation. It is the way to go. Reform steadies your finances and readies you for growth and job creation. Transformation is a bet that South Africans of one colour can do a better job that those of another, which is, given its record so far, obviously a path to more unemployment and less growth.

Second, Maimane argued for reform (there it is again) of the labour market so school-leavers could find jobs. He even proposes a year of national service (nonmilitary). “A national civilian service year for unemployed matriculants will help provide pathways into formal employment,” he wrote.

Third was to simplify and reform empowerment. “Regulations like the mining charter have shattered investor confidence,” he said. “We need to empower those left behind, not the elite.”

Fourth was to cut corporate taxes, (finally) abolish exchange controls, remove trade barriers and establish export processing zones “to show investors that SA is open for business”.

Fifth would be the introduction of visas on arrival to tourists. This is so obvious it is alarming it has taken the DA so long to espouse it.

And, sixth, the DA would appoint a serious prosecutor to head the National Prosecuting Authority and remove the president’s power to appoint the head of the NPA. Better still, the party would recreate something similar to the now defunct Scorpions, giving prosecutors the power again to run their own investigations rather than having to wait for the police to charge people first, something the ANC went to great lengths to ensure.

If Maimane, as party leader, goes into the 2019 polls as the chief promoter of deep economic reforms he’ll do well. Most of that package would resonate with not only his base but also disillusioned middle-class and budding middle-class ANC voters.

But first we have to get the ANC leadership election out of the way. My heart is with Ramaphosa but I’m still not confident he has it in the bag. There is an army of thieves and looters out to stop him who feel virtually anything is worth doing to do so.

Whether he likes it or not, Mabuza is counted among them. And so is Dlamini-Zuma. She may think that once elected she can break free of them and introduce real change in our political economy but she will find it almost impossible. She is a bureaucrat and what we need is a trailblazer.

In newspaper interviews this morning Dlamini-Zuma is quoted as saying that, under her, the ANC will be resurgent in 2019. “I’m a cadre who has vast experience in government and the country can say when I’m in government this is what I’ve done. South Africans will know that I’m very decisive. I don’t sing about things, I act.”

Thus far she’s said very little about what she would act on. In fact, she has followed her ex-husband’s script to the letter. It doesn’t promise much and I doubt she has the first clue about how to set this economy to rights.