ANC delegates have begun registering for the party’s 55th national conference in Joburg. On Friday morning they will listen to President Cyril Ramaphosa as he sets out the lay of the land in his political report. After his address, they will shuffle off to vote: retain him as party president or choose a new leader? They will also vote for the other top five positions in the party. Later they will vote for the 80 directly elected members of the national executive committee (NEC). Over the next five days the delegates will debate policies. Their resolutions will be announced as the conference proceeds until Tuesday.
Here are the 10 things I believe business should watch out for at the conference:
Succession: The past few weeks have underlined a key weakness in our society — most of us believe that if Ramaphosa goes, it will be curtains for the country.
It is not particularly true, but one should not ignore the sentiment. The hit the rand took on news of the negative parliamentary panel report on Phala Phala illustrates this dilemma.
So, if Ramaphosa’s deputy after this conference is Paul Mashatile, expect that if Ramaphosa stumbles down the line, the man from Alexandra township will be your new president. Whoever wins the deputy presidency is in line for Ramaphosa’s job — and may become an enemy of the president unless an alliance of sorts is struck.
I believe Mashatile will still win the deputy presidency and that Ramaphosa will be re-elected to the top job. That presents a conundrum. Mashatile was quick to call a meeting of the ANC NEC on December 1, the day after the release of the parliamentary report.
Ramaphosa’s campaigners believe he was trying to get the president torpedoed — fast. This enmity will linger. Mdumiseni Ntuli, the former ANC Luthuli House staffer from KwaZulu-Natal, is likely to win the secretary-general’s position. He favours Ramaphosa but has not tethered himself to the president.
Composition of the incoming NEC: Ramaphosa won by a slither (about 51% of the votes) in 2017. In all, the 110-member NEC is made up of the top six officials, the 80 directly elected members, the 18 provincial representatives, six league representatives, and two to four ex officio members such as Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma, and others.
In the 2018 period Ramaphosa claimed to be held back in implementing serious economic reforms by the fact that his faction and the RET/Zuma faction were evenly matched. If in this new iteration, the RET faction is in the majority, Ramaphosa’s reform agenda will stall. That said, my view is that the strength of the RET forces has been overestimated. However, even if Ramaphosa’s supporters win, there will be some seriously bad apples in that NEC.
Everything that happens at this conference will be listened to, and may be instigated by, the rogue intelligence services of the Zuma era
The next six weeks: Ramaphosa, or whoever wins the conference, will have to make bold moves between December 20 and February when the state of the nation address is delivered in parliament. If Ramaphosa stays in power, which is my expectation, he must mount a show of force and remove the incompetents — or at the very least the anti-constitutionalists — from his cabinet.
If Ramaphosa does not excise Lindiwe Sisulu from her position as tourism minister and fire Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma from her local government job, he will be weak, not strategic as he has been claiming he is.
Lawfare: Using and abusing the law to fight internal party battles has become par for the course in the ANC. Already, there are legal challenges to the nomination process from supporters of Sisulu, Dlamini Zuma and Zweli Mkhize. As happened in the 2017 conference, attempts may be made to interdict the conference and stop it from proceeding.
Violence: Zuma has exhorted his followers to shout down Ramaphosa and Mashatile and prevent them from delivering the political report and financial report, respectively, to the conference.
Tensions are high between the two main factions of the party. Twelve years ago, it was ANC Youth League conferences that were marred by violence. Then the phenomenon spread to branch, regional and provincial conferences. Almost inevitably, it has been approaching the national conference. Will this happen?
Policy shifts: One is tempted to flag that the ANC may veer left on policy, but that is a well-known ANC trick that means nothing. The ANC’s policies will always veer left, but the party has been walking right since 1994. Even under Zuma, the self-styled father of radical economic transformation, the party failed to start a state bank, nationalise mines or the Reserve Bank, or do any of the radical-sounding acts it claims to represent.
A security state: In the days before the December 2017 conference, the Zuma administration tried to buy a “grabber” so that it could listen in on conversations at the conference.
South Africa started sliding into a security state when, back in 2008, secret recordings between former National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) head Bulelani Ngcuka and Leonard McCarthy, the head of the Scorpions at the time, were released to undermine charges of corruption laid against Zuma.
Now we have a president who is in legal trouble after being investigated clandestinely by a former head of the intelligence services. The lesson here is this: everything that happens at this conference will be listened to, and may be instigated by, the rogue intelligence services of the Zuma era.
Ramaphosa is on his way out: Ramaphosa is more popular than the ANC. For the party, he now has one job: win the 2024 election. That is just 18 months away. After that, the man will be a total lame duck. His underlings will be jostling to kick him out and keep the stink of Phala Phala away from them.
Populist noise: The ANC’s head of economic transformation, Mmamoloko Kubayi, is new in the job, has a poor grasp of the key issues, and seems to be unaware of even the key ANC thinkers and drafters of the party’s economic policy.
In the past Enoch Godongwana and Tito Mboweni would soothe and finesse policy away from the populists. Kubayi does not have the political muscle or nous to corral the populists. This might allow the populists to run riot in the specialist commissions, creating noise and fear that will rattle the markets.
Cadre deployment: South Africa is in a mess largely because of the ANC’s policy of cadre deployment. Everywhere there is rot, it is because the ANC sought to put in its own people, even when they were unqualified and unsuitable for the jobs, instead of choosing a merit-based system.
In October Ramaphosa’s cabinet adopted a policy framework that dumps cadre deployment, and recommended that “cadre deployment practices must be reconsidered for merit-based recruitment and selection in the public sector”.
If the ANC conference agrees and follows, then, well, South Africa may well have a chance. Hope with me.
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