Risks around the looming elections are mounting.
The ANC national executive committee this week suspended former president Jacob Zuma from the party over his involvement in the creation of the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Party, announced on December 16.
More than two decades of kowtowing to Zuma and giving his interests precedence over those of the country and the ANC has finally come to a halt. All that time it has been clear that he is a corrupt wrecking ball bent on turning South Africa into a failed state in which the rule of law could not be allowed to get in the way of the material ambitions of his family, friends, benefactors and hangers-on.
But his suspension this week might have come too late to defuse the full impact of his last, defiant stand.
ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula conceded on Tuesday that there is a danger of violence erupting during the elections and cool heads will be needed — but these are in short supply in the Zuma camp.
Zuma cannot return to parliament due to the 15-month jail sentence he got in 2021 for contempt of court after he ignored an order to appear before the state capture inquiry. His backers are trying to make out that the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has barred him from contesting the presidency, but it is the constitution and the law that are doing so.
This week a group of so-called religious leaders said that if the IEC failed to “give” Zuma a two-thirds majority, they would “shut South Africa down”. Zuma has never been very good with numbers and his followers clearly have no understanding of how an election works — it’s the electorate, not the IEC, that decides who gets votes and how many.
Zuma has never been very good with numbers and his followers clearly have no understanding of how an election works — it’s the electorate, not the IEC, that decides who gets votes and how many
“The JZ party project aims to cast doubt on our entire constitutional democracy. The ANC categorically rejects the dangerous suggestion that our electoral system can and will be manipulated,” Mbalula told journalists on Tuesday.
“The IEC is one of our most trusted public institutions … The ANC and the people of South Africa will not allow a Renamo/Unita project in our country to discredit democratic outcomes that do not favour them and use violence against the people as a bargaining tool.”
Renamo and Unita are swear words in the ANC lexicon due to the movements’ roles in fighting the party’s allies in Mozambique and Angola respectively.
“This is the fundamental danger of the JZ party project. It targets extremist instincts in our body politic and riles up a political base to foment social unrest,” Mbalula said.
The July 2021 riots and pillaging showed just how damaging Zuma can be when his followers instigate violence on his behalf; the KwaZulu-Natal economy has yet to recover. Worse, there have been few repercussions for those who instigated the violence. A somewhat lame report released by the South African Human Rights Commission this week found there were serious weaknesses in the police response to the unrest.
“The authorities struggled to ensure law enforcement responded effectively to some of the worst riots and looting in the country since the end of apartheid,” the report said.
Zuma and his supporters may on the face of it be contesting an election, but their end goal is to stoke anarchy.
Insiders in the NEC speak of the possibility of the MK Party winning 10-15 seats in parliament — which is about 10-15 more than they would like it to. Therefore, they say, Zuma had to quickly be suspended in a bid to cut off the oxygen he is receiving from ANC structures, particularly in KZN. In the longer term he will probably be expelled, but that messy, drawn-out process will be left until after the elections.
According to the 2019 seat calculation, for the MK Party to win 10 seats in parliament it would require about 500,000 votes, or 2.8% of the national vote.
This result can’t be ruled out; nor can a possible post-election alliance between the MK Party, the EFF and other so-called Left-leaning parties.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his closing address at the NEC meeting, suggested that South Africa’s stance on Gaza could attract retaliation in the form of covert election interference by Israel or its Western backers.
“The fightback may also focus on our domestic politics and our electoral outcomes in order to pursue a regime change agenda … So in the end, comrades, we need to be absolutely vigilant and resolute.”
But given the failure of Ramaphosa’s administration to react appropriately to the threats posed by Zuma in 2021, and the failure of the party over 20 years to acknowledge Zuma as the monster he really is, what chance does it have to counter the shenanigans of Mossad, the CIA or local malcontents?
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