ANC election fever: Let the dirty games begin

Politics is a dirty game. It has been proven time and time again that in politics there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies.

When old friends and struggle pals, the late ANC stalwarts Mluleki George and my old friend Rev Arnold Makhenkesi Stofile, were at each other’s throats, we couldn’t believe it.

The two former United Democratic Front and Mass Democratic Movement Border regional frontmen and close allies of Thabo Mbeki both served jail time for their activities and returned to continue with the fight. But suddenly they became political foes over who should be the ANC chief in the Eastern Cape.

Similarly, their seniors and fellow comrades, Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, became sworn enemies. Their story of exile friendship and Polokwane enmity is well recorded.

ANC presidential campaigns

Now, we see a dirty politics game emerging in the current ANC presidential campaigns. Presidential hopefuls Zweli Mkhize, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Lindiwe Sisulu have begun to throw stones at Cyril Ramaphosa.

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Mkhize and NDZ suddenly have issues with the party’s step-aside policy that they never faulted before. It needs no rocket scientist to see that some ANC leaders have turned step aside into a Ramaphosa initiative, notwithstanding the fact that it was a national conference resolution ratified by the party NEC.

Even Ace Magashule thinks that step aside is Ramaphosa’s plot against him. He never imagined the chickens would come home to roost.

Sisulu, daughter of struggle stalwarts Walter and Albertina Sisulu, has a dream of one day becoming the country’s president (a distant possibility) and has become a sudden voice of conscience within the Cabinet. She says the president must take full responsibility for the many lapses of SA’s state security.

Biting the hand that feeds you? If her spirit of dissension was to be used in motions of no confidence within the ANC, we would see Western democracy where parliamentarians do not necessarily have to endorse everything about a president or prime minister.

So, Zuma would have been removed long before with one of those almost a dozen no-confidence motions with ANC backing. There would be no need for the ATM’s Vuyo Zungula to exhaust his resources to run a lone campaign to oust Ramaphosa, either.

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For Sisulu to suggest Ramaphosa must account for the terrorism scare at the weekend is a mouthful from a former intelligence minister who should have fixed the state security apparatus during her tenure. Instead, she was part of the destructive axis that piece by piece destroyed the country’s intelligence set-up to suit Zuma’s political agenda.

That legacy continues to haunt us, as demonstrated by the July 2021 insurrection in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng and, last weekend, the terrorism scare within our borders. To Sisulu’s credit, the buck stops with the president in any country and the State Security Agency (SSA) now falls under the presidency.

When Ramaphosa brought the SSA under his wing, we had high expectations that these lapses would be history – but we were proven wrong.

ALSO READ: Sisulu challenging Ramaphosa more directly than any candidate, say analysts

I also see Paul Mashatile, Ramaphosa’s talisman and the famous defender of the Nasrec outcomes, is now on a double-speak with politicians like Mkhize, NDZ and Sisulu. Mashatile, who wants to be Ramaphosa’s deputy, has said the ANC is not accused No 1 for corruption as Ramaphosa once claimed – years after the president said it.

This is part of the ANC election fever – that dirty game where politicians could even kill to attain power and to keep it for life, if they can.