Current ANC leadership contest is defined by what was, instead of what could be

Because the ANC is the only party to have won all the national elections in the past 28 years, the election of their own organisational office bearers becomes an important national focal point.

Although their overall grip on power has been steadily diminishing with each successive election, they are still in power and this country’s future is still closely linked to whether they return President Cyril Ramaphosa to the presidency or whether a new candidate is elected. Sadly for South Africa, there is nothing new or dynamically different about what’s on offer in terms of candidates.

The party has been threatening to elect a woman leader for a while now but the only women who have put their hands up to go against the incumbent are Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

Dlamini-Zuma has battled the perhaps unfair tag of being a former wife of ex-president Jacob Zuma. While no woman must have her career defined by who she was once married to, in her case it matters for the simple reason that her support base within the ruling party is the exact same support base that her ex-husband was backed by.

ALSO READ: ANC leadership race: Here are the leading contenders for top six positions

This clearly means that if she were to win the presidency, it would come to her with the burden of having to “look after” the interests of the faction that continues to insist state capture is a figment of the imagination of South Africans.

Sisulu, even though she comes from struggle royalty, hasn’t been exactly inspirational in the various roles she has played, having been in government for as long as the ruling party has been in power and a minister in one department or the other for 22 years now. Which is why it seems bitter to suddenly turn on the president at whose pleasure she serves in the Cabinet.

Maybe she is right, Ramaphosa might have hung her out to dry after implementing the ANC resolution to downgrade the country’s embassy in Israel, but that is politics. She had a choice whether to implement the resolution or not. It would not be the first time that government has not implemented the ruling party’s resolution.

The third candidate, Dr Zweli Mkhize, cuts a sad figure in this race because his fall from grace in the ruling party is quite recent and still fresh in people’s minds. His presence on the candidate list for the ANC presidency summarises that the ruling party’s leadership pool is shallow and that all have some skeletons in their closet.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the current leadership contest is that it is defined by what was, instead of what could be. The closing of ranks behind former president Jacob Zuma by the KwaZulu-Natal provincial leadership means the shadow of a president who oversaw the so-called nine wasted years looms large over South Africa’s future.

NOW READ: KZN ANC confident Zweli Mkhize will be the new ANC president

It is sad that all three of the most prominent candidates challenging Ramaphosa have pandered to the faction that does not want justice for the destruction and looting that happened during those nine years. All three candidates and the president were in the executive during those years and it is a terrible indictment on their succession planning that they cannot offer a new alternative.

The promised “new dawn” has failed to break.