Durban - When more than 1 500 delegates descended on Durban’s Olive Convention Centre for the ANC KZN elective conference yesterday, there was a sense of subdued enthusiasm.
The city of Durban, the province’s economic hub, has always been a sense of pride for the ANC, and a means to show the ruling party’s might. But last year, the priceless city nearly got snatched away after the ANC’s poor performance at the local government elections where it recorded a below 50% performance.
The ANC had to enter into a coalition with other parties including the Abantu Batho Congress which is led by businessman Philani Mavundla, a former ANC mayor in Greytown. The coalition arrangement has meant that the ANC does not do anything without the approval of the ABC and other minorities who have indicated that they can pull out of the coalition, which would see the ruling party out of power.
Political analyst Thabani Khumalo said the conference would mark the beginning of the end of the ANC because it had lost its moral standing.
“All the good leaders have been ejected and the ANC has become a cesspool of fraud and corruption where everyone just wants to line their pockets, and the people have had enough,” said Khumalo. He added that regardless of who emerged as chairperson of the ANC they would never save it because it had become a toxic system.
Five names have emerged as candidates for the position of party chairperson in outgoing chairperson Sihle Zikalala, Provincial Executive Committee member Siboniso Duma, treasurer Nomusa Dube Ncube, former KZN Director General Nhlanhla Ngidi and businessman Sandile Zungu.
Many pundits have suggested that Zikalala’s competition will come from Dube-Ncube and Duma because they have been active in ruling party circles and structures for years. The person who emerges victorious from the conference will be the ruling party’s face of its elections campaign in 2024. While the ruling party’s top brass has in the past emphasised that such gatherings are about policy matters, much of the attention is on who emerges as chairperson.
An optimistic provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli told the media on Thursday that they hoped for an early start to ensure that party delegates had sufficient time to discuss policy documents that would likely shape the ANC’s future.
The provincial secretary said they were aware of the dangers of delegates getting preoccupied with electing new leaders, without paying much attention to the ruling party’s discussion documents.
“We want to start early so that by dinner time (Friday evening) the top five officials are elected. This will enable us to sit for commissions that will discuss policy documents on Saturday morning,” said Ntuli.
The provincial secretary said they were concerned about the emergence of different slates that were circulating in the media, questioning their origin and even suggesting that they were meant to divide the ruling party. He admitted that divisions in the ruling party were the primary reason behind the severe losses that the ANC suffered in last year’s local government elections.
“The ANC has no control of the slates that are circulating. What we know is that there are people who survive when the ANC is divided and they know that if KZN is divided they would be able to seize control of South Africa,” Ntuli said.
He added that they had noted last year’s local government results and were concerned about the picture they presented.
According to Ntuli, the outgoing provincial leadership, which was elected in 2018, had sought to deal with the glaring divisions in the build-up to the highly contested 2017 elective conference.
“This outgoing leadership was made up of people that were supporting comrade Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and those supporting comrade Cyril Ramaphosa and we managed to rise above personal preferences to deal with the task at hand, which was to forge unity of the movement,” Ntuli said.
He told the media that the effort had yielded modest success, but also conceded that the Covid-19 lockdown had also impacted on how the party fared in the polls. During the lockdown, the provincial secretary pointed out, many businesses closed, forcing people out of work and service delivery ground to a halt, causing anger and discontent from the public who blamed the ANC for this and sought to punish it at the polls.
Outgoing chairperson Zikalala was expected to deliver the political report marking the start of the conference before the nominated candidates were announced at the plenary session. According to the provincial secretary, the most likely leader to address the gathering from the party’s top brass is Treasurer General Paul Mashatile, although he stressed there was nothing compelling the conference to be addressed by a leader from the top six.
The Independent on Saturday