It’s hardly surprising (though still shocking) to learn that Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala of criminal underworld and ANC connections fame was asked to fund a campaign to decide the party’s next president. And why not? He’s a part-owner, it seems, of the glorious movement, a paid-up deacon of the broad church, judging by our new-favourite daytime TV, the double-feature Madlanga commission and parliament’s ad hoc committee.
Sadly, every party reaches its sellout-by date at some point, and why should the ANC be an exception? One of the signs that the writing’s on the wall, and not in a Viva ANC! sort of way, is when a party runs out of leaders.
Ideas, too, are rare because comrades tell each other what they know they want to hear. Who, seriously, would float anything resembling a new idea at an ANC gathering when they’re likely to be voted out at best, ostracised, or worse still blown away in another unsolved political killing? It’s a dangerous place to be. As billionaire Patrice Motsepe remarked, you’d be mad to want to try it.
Yet fools rush in. And make no mistake, the race is on. There’s been a lot of crowing, some joyful and some nervous, that President Cyril Ramaphosa is already a “lame duck” president. I’m afraid things are a lot worse: he’s more the early Christmas turkey who’s already been stuffed, basted and roasted, with only the carving to remain. And in the ANC, where they much prefer a “co-ordinator” to an actual leader, no wonder there’s a feeling just about anyone could end up in the West Wing of the Union Buildings.
And so, the ANC confronts its own “Kortbroek” moment. Not to disrespect Marthinus van Schalkwyk in any way, but the poor man had zero chance after FW de Klerk quit in a huff to appease his own boundless vanity.
De Klerk was arguably the last Nat leader able to wear a Homburg with a straight face, and he had no obvious successor because the party had turned in on itself and no longer attracted the calibre of leaders required, all sensible and competent people having realised its raison d’être had disappeared. And so, with notable exceptions, the best stayed well away from the sinking Nat ship, some of them to take refuge on the Titanic that was the ANC. And now the ANC has hit its own iceberg of reality, the perils of governance leaving a crippling wound.
Knowing the ‘ANC way’ of self-serving tolerance for any behaviour that pays, Mchunu tried to have us picture a relationship with the criminal classes as an essential bloom in the ubuntu bouquet
But wait, help is at hand. We learn that our on-leave police minister Senzo Mchunu, sponsored by Matlala, pictured his own good self as ANC president, elected and crowned at the next national conference in 2027. Probably still does, with those in the know of the ANC (loose) canon insisting that accepting financial assistance from underworld characters is hardly disqualification for the big job. Quite the contrary. OK, on a good day, Mchunu might pass for a retired head of detectives in Empangeni. But president? Nothing personal, but isn’t this just another example of the chasm between the ANC and the rest of the country? A 40% candidate for a 40% majority?
Apparently, though, Mchunu’s just what the ANC wants and needs: a party time-server who knows the “ANC way”. Best still, he comes with a truckload of skeletons, too, his very own Phala Phala. All the better to make him entirely beholden and unable to offer a bold, new path, and instead to mouth shibboleths while ministers do their thing, or not.
Knowing the “ANC way” of self-serving tolerance for any behaviour that pays, Mchunu tried to have us picture a relationship with the criminal classes as an essential bloom in the ubuntu bouquet. Asked at the ad hoc commission by evidence leader Norman Arendse why he had his lawyers go to C-Max prison to procure an affidavit from Matlala to the effect that the two had never met, Mchunu insisted we should be “interested” in what Matlala had to say.
Interested, maybe. Let no detail pass unremarked. But Arendse was puzzled as to why Mchunu had sought an affidavit from a man he’d never met testifying that they’d never met. Who would do that, and who, apart from an ANC hopeful, would pin his career on the word of an underworld kingpin on bail for attempted murder?
Mchunu saw nothing odd about it, another example that there’s the world of the ANC and that of ordinary South Africans.
Ramaphosa, with the various and many roles he has played in the struggle, has been the bridge between the old and the new ANC. The coarsening of our politics, the dominance of social media over verifiable information, and the obvious disappearance of liberal education will write a new chapter. Gangsterism, politics? No dictionary needed. Paul Mashatile? Fikile Mbalula? Senzo Mchunu? Silence! The party will decide. Cat Matlala, anyone?
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