Zuma’s battle to retain ANC membership part of a long game

By Prof Dirk Kotzé

FORMER President Jacob Zuma’s membership of the ANC has become an existential matter for him, even though he is the President of another party - the MK Party. The question is: why has it reached this level of importance for him while he is the leader of another party? Why is it not a contradiction for him?

Lately, especially after the ANC’s National Disciplinary Appeals Committee dismissed his appeal against his expulsion, Zuma has given us some insight into his thinking. But it is arguably not yet comprehensive enough as an explanation. An expanded explanation, therefore, depends on a projection of his arguments and also on the ‘linking of some dots’.

The first relevant point is that membership of the ANC is not for him primarily an organizational matter. It is about his political identity. The ANC gave him a life as a public leader, later as national president and political patriarch of KZN. His ANC, Zulu and personal identities have become intertwined. It defined him in relation to other KZN parties like the IFP, especially in the 1990s. No other party – including the MK Party – can play this role.

Association with the ANC is also his guarantee for being part of the South African political mainstream. Other ANC breakaway parties, such as the PAC, COPE or AIC, have ended as marginalized political entities. The fact that the future of MKP is not yet guaranteed and even the EFF’s current uphill battle are reminders that no party can be compared with the ANC’s status.

Zuma’s contestation of his ANC membership can also be linked to the question of who controls, at the moment, the ANC’s legacy as a liberation movement. It is relevant because, despite the ANC’s setback in the latest national and provincial elections, it still enjoys a significant competitive advantage over the other parties who cannot claim the same historical legacy.

In this light and under the current circumstances, it has developed into a contestation between the ANC and MKP about who controls the armed struggle symbolism. (In 2008, the same dynamics developed with COPE and ownership of the Freedom Charter symbolism.) From Zuma’s point of view, the ANC has modernized and developed into a political party with a prominent liberation history, while the MKP is attached only to a part of the liberation history.

Zuma’s efforts to be attached to the MK symbolism are not new. As ANC President he established the MK’s Veterans’ Association, sang MK songs on stage and was surrounded by persons in MK camouflaged uniforms. He elevated a military culture in the ANC which was less visible during the Mandela and Mbeki eras.

Such an approach was a visual communication strategy to express his radicalism and popularity and meant to create a contrast with Mbeki’s political stature and economic policies (like GEAR) which the Left vehemently opposed to him as a deviation from ANC values and policies. At that stage already, Zuma positioned himself on the Left as a symbol of the “real” ANC.

Coming to the current situation, Zuma’s official argument or explanation for why he should be an ANC member is that he has to “rescue” the ANC led by President Ramaphosa, and take it back to its original character. For him, Ramaphosa continued where Mbeki left as President in 2008. Zuma’s historical mission is to turn the process around and restore the ANC to its original form as a liberation organization. The method he envisages is that the MKP, EFF and ANC must unite. For that to happen, the MKP needs to win the national election, bring the parties together and convert them into the new ANC.

Zuma’s implied logic is that he can do it only if he maintains a direct link with the ANC as a member. As a member and former ANC President, for example, he is an ex officio member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee and can attend its meetings. As a member, he will be able to organize a core of resistance inside the ANC which cannot be done from the outside.

The ANC’s cooperation with the DA in the GNU is for Zuma the clearest indication that the ANC’s character is changing for the worse. In his mind, it amounts to a neo-liberal conspiracy in which private business interests (or the White Monopoly Capital in earlier terms) have “captured” Ramaphosa and the ANC. It waters down, in Zuma’s mind, the values of a national democratic revolution. Zuma believes that black unity (in the form of the progressive caucus plus the ANC) is the preferred direction against the current ANC deviation. The first offensive would therefore be against the GNU in its current form.

What is the sub-text of these developments?

The Radical Economic Transformation (RET) faction, associated with Zuma, has effectively been removed from the ANC by Ramaphosa. This process included the Zondo Commission’s focus on the Zuma years, the ANC National Conference in 2022 which marginalized KZN by not electing anyone in the Top 7, Cabinet changes and new appointments in the criminal justice system, SARS and SOEs which removed Zuma supporters. Zuma’s incarceration was the ultimate public humiliation for KZN and Zuma’s supporters. KZN’s prominence in the ANC also declined when it lost 10% provincial support in the 2019 elections – the same happened in the 2021 local government election, which meant that Zuma’s power base declined. It indicates a gradual decline of Zuma and KZN’s prominence in the ANC, which is a death blow for Zuma’s legacy.

Zuma’s return to KZN depends on restoring the ANC’s power in the province. At the moment it can be done only through the MKP. The strategy is still unclear but it definitely includes Zuma retaining his ANC membership. A first logical option would be a reconstituted KZN provincial coalition government between the MKP and ANC which will eradicate the DA’s influence. The common factor between the two parties will be Zuma’s membership of both.

Prof Dirk Kotzé, Department of Political Sciences, Unisa.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.