The African National Congress is dealing with the old Chinese curse of living in interesting times. First there are the natural tensions in a party such as the ANC that has so many varied constituencies. There is the unseemly but unavoidable Jacob Zuma mess. There is the succession struggle, which really is two succession struggles — for the party leadership and for the presidency — that might result in the ascension of one individual or two. All of this is playing out in what might sometimes appear to be peripheral ways.
Last week Thabo Mbeki forced out his deputy Minister of Health, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, under what many believe to be the fig leaf of an excuse that she attended an AIDS conference in Spain without Mbeki's knowledge or approval. But making matters more complicated is that Madlala-Routledge has long been a vocal advocate of both a more scientific approach to HIV-AIDS and of more active government interventions in the AIDs crisis that has consumed the country and region. Mbeki's critics therefore aver that the firing is really a clear sign of Mbeki's unwillingness to brook dissent within the government and ANC ranks.
Meanwhile, in timing that some see as suspicious, reports surfaced in the Sunday Times, in a story titled “Manto's Hospital Booze Binge,” that Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang behaved disgracefully after smuggling booze into Cape Town's Medi-Clinic hospital when she was there for shoulder surgery two years ago. Tshabalala-Msimang has demanded a retraction from the paper, which does not appear to be forthcoming. Mbeki, meanwhile, continues to support his loyal health minister, making the Madlala-Routledge mess stand out all the more.
In a recent article in The Mail & Guardian, Bantu Holomisa, the liberation struggle stalwart and one-time ANC loyalist-turned leader (and MP) of the United Democratic Movement (which he founded with Roelf Meyer) discusses the ANC's upcoming national party conference, argues that the ANC needs to move away from faction fighting:
Between now and December, nonANC members of the public will find it difficult to determine what is going on within the ruling party, because the ANC has been quiet on this matter. The people who have been vocal are the ANC Youth League, Cosatu and the SACP, but to what extent do they control or influence the ANC? Time will tell.
In my experience, the ANC has a culture of leadership selection that is rarely understood. This method is generally attributed to the style of the late OR Tambo. We saw this on display in 1994 when then-president Nelson Mandela thought that Cyril Ramaphosa should have become deputy president of the country. But Mandela was advised differently, and Mbeki was chosen. The advice Mandela was given was that Mbeki was always the heir apparent. This culture of selecting the leader seems to have only been known among the exiles. Madiba and those who were in jail or in the country were apparently caught off guard.
Since 1994 certain sections of the ANC have sought to change the way things are done. And to a degree they have succeeded: the leadership that was in exile has split into separate, feuding factions. In the ANC of old the matter would have been handled in a different manner, out of the public eye. But this is not the same ANC.
Members of the party might have their own opinions about who they want to lead them — and they might want to debate succession openly, precisely because they realise that they are no longer in exile and now have influence over government and government policy. They will expect their leaders to take them into their confidence and be open about the direction of both the party and government. The old culture of the leadership prescribing and the members blindly following has been seriously undermined.
Already there are members of the tripartite alliance who are openly campaigning for another ANC president to replace Mbeki. Names mentioned include Zuma, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Kgalema Motlanthe, Joel Netshithenze, Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale. Over the next four months there will be much speculation and horse-trading, but at the conference they will be left with one person to lead the ANC.
Depending on how things play out, the post of deputy president could prove crucial. If Mbeki is elected president, the conference will essentially expect him to groom the deputy president to take over as president of the country in 2009. This way the structures that are campaigning for a change in the culture of leadership by annointment will be comfortable. It would be a neat compromise in line with the recent ANC policy conference resolution.
One of his solutions is to decouple the party from the presidency so that the electorate can choose its own president directly. But clearly Holomisa also sees a systemic culture within the ruling party that serves the party and not the people. “The new executive,” he argues, “will have to bring a new sense of leadership, decisiveness and discipline to halt the current slide into lawlessness.” Holomisa never refers to the recent crisis within Mbeki's health ministry directly, but one imagines that the ongoing turmoil there only confirms Holomisa's suspicions.
