Secret ballot will be a futile exercise

President Jacob Zuma is right about one thing: it is the ANC that made him president and it’s only the ANC that can remove him.

What he’s not saying, though, is that the ANC that put him in that position and the ANC that’s failing to do its duty to the country by removing him are two totally different animals.

He rode an anti-Mbeki ticket and was also emboldened by a sympathetic element that sought to portray him as a victim of an aloof Mbeki who was out to get him. In other words, he was the good guy and, as in the movies, the good guy always wins.

Sadly, he has flipped the script and is no longer the good guy. In the eight years between his ascent to power and now, he has grabbed hold of an organisation with a rich struggle history and got it entangled in a web of corruption so deep that to expect any member of that faction to vote with their conscience in the opposition’s bid to remove him is simply expecting the whole lot of them to commit political suicide.

The ANC that voted Zuma into power was in an alliance with two powerful organisations, Cosatu and the SACP. His faction used those organisations to prop him up early on in his presidency but has now chewed both of them and spat them out, along with the rest of the people for whom they no longer have use.

Having packed the national executive committee of the ANC with the captured lot beholden to either him or his benefactors, the Guptas, he has ensured that the tentacles of his grip on the organisation stretch as far as the Cabinet. The bloated executive is packed with his sympathisers whose induction seems to be done at the Saxonwold compound.

The lot that hasn’t been captured are vilified as being in the pockets of the ever-so-powerful white monopoly capital and as a result, portrayed as betraying the masses of this country.

Those who tried to put up some resistance have been isolated. Today, aspersions have been cast on the intentions of Trevor Manuel, Tito Mboweni and even Pravin Gordhan. Any ANC MP who is still gnawed by their conscience to vote with the opposition to remove the president is not only wary of losing their cushy parliamentary job, but will have “delivered their general to the enemy forces”, as Gwede Mantashe likes to say.

The use of the secret ballot in the vote of no confidence against the president should be to protect those members who want to serve the country rather than the party. But the ruling party’s MPs have demonstrated before that their consciences are for sale and they will form a wall around a corrupt leader, allowing the looting to continue unabated.

Expect Baleka Mbete to continue bending to the will of the majority in the National Assembly, who will indeed put up a last-minute battle to avoid the secret ballot, even though the Constitutional Court has ruled that she has the power to decide.

But that’s only to buy that captured faction more time to whip members into shape, just as they welcomed the Constitutional Court case to delay the motion of no confidence until the heat around the reshuffle had cooled down.

Praying they prove me wrong.

Sydney Majoko.