‘Ramaphosa will not want to take any political risks’: ANC’s Zuma headache here to stay

While his support base could be waning, former president Jacob Zuma remains a polarising political force in the ANC, with KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) viewing him as a powerful symbolic force behind the liberation struggle, leading political analysts said on Sunday.

Weighing in on the impact of Zuma in ANC politics in the aftermath of his special remission of sentence, political analysts Daniel Silke and Andile Swana agreed: despite being a political liability, he was a voter support factor in the KZN.

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“Zuma remains polarising, but his support is regionally linked to KZN and has waned in the rest of the country,” said Silke.

“He does galvanise an anti-Ramaphosa view of the ANC – not that the ruling party supporters are in favour of Zuma, though they can be critical of Ramaphosa.

“And Zuma acts as a conduit for an anti-Ramaphosa faction.

“The ANC is afraid of its own shadow, scared of dealing with Zuma in any meaningful way, continuing to allow him relative free rein, having largely failed to take action against him.”

‘ANC can only blame itself’

Silke said the ANC was afraid to take hard political decisions and afraid to follow up on the state capture accusations, given the slow pace of prosecution or non-existent prosecution, with Zuma being the most implicated.

“This demonstrates an exceptional weakness by the ANC over the years in factional infighting which has torn it apart. They now finding it impossible to adequately deal with issues internally and in government.

“The party can only blame itself in not enforcing the rule of law to prosecute those that have been involved in wrongdoing, with Zuma being evidence of this.

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“The party cannot take decisive action in line with policy and, for that matter, on personalities within the ANC,” Silke said.

“As we move towards elections, Ramaphosa will not want to take any political risks.

“The party cannot take one step forward and two steps back on all issues – rendering it a dysfunctional political party, representing a dysfunctional South Africa.

“Ultimately, the ANC is going to face many accusations on government performance and managing state capture issues, accused of being party to corruption and failing to take action against its most senior members,” said Silke.

Ramaphosa behind Zuma’s release?

By printing T-shirts in support of Ramaphosa in “dealing” with Zuma’s prison sentence, Swana said the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal believed Ramaphosa played “a key political role in offering Zuma a special remission of sentence”.

“We do not know whether Ramaphosa played that role – a role that would fall within the normal system of justice.

“With the ANC being factionalised, we cannot attribute the release from prison of Zuma to Ramaphosa.

“But this does lump Ramaphosa with the Zuma school of thought – making him the target of the DA [Democratic Alliance], saying that he is also supportive of the breakdown of law and order.

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“The idea that there are specific people in the ANC supporting Ramaphosa and Zuma, has already been disclosed,” Swana said.

“We were told in 2007 that Zuma was the greatest campaigner that the ANC has and when he takes over power from former president Thabo Mbeki, he was going to cause the fortunes of the ANC to move higher than the 69%.

“Instead, the graph of the electoral performance of the ANC went down nationally over time when Zuma became president of the country.

“But for the first time in KZN, the election of Zuma as president added 1.2 million votes.”

Swana said when Zuma was removed from office, the ANC lost half a million votes.

“He is popular in KZN but not in all other provinces.”