The fight over who gets to jiggle the ANC’s corpse is on

It’s been an interesting month as the race to succeed Jacob Zuma as ANC president slowly comes to the boil.

We’ve had some clever analysts suggesting the best thing for the party would be to formally split up and allow its divergent and bitterly disagreeing parts to go their separate ways. On the other, we’ve seen a suggestion from within the party itself to attempt to patch up all the differences by agreeing before the elective conference that whoever wins between Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will allow the other to be their deputy. We’ve also seen Premier David Mabuza recommend that the party should somehow agree ahead of the conference what the outcome should be.

Needless to say, this last idea is probably the most ridiculous of all. How does “Comrade DD” think this consensus should be reached? On a WhatsApp group?

What all of this points to is that there isn’t a single entity called the ANC any more, and there hasn’t been for a long time. There’s just a big, sprawling group of people who wear the ANC colours while being incapable of agreeing on anything.

These various individuals and groups within the ruling party are constantly pulling in different directions, and are even themselves changing their minds and allegiances from one day to the next. It’s more of a “disorganisation” than the “organisation” the decreasingly optimistic Gwede Mantashe still likes to describe the ANC as.

The preferred label for this fractured state of affairs is “factionalism”, but you could just as easily call it an ongoing cold war. It’s no wonder some analysts have suggested the best thing would be for the various factions in the party to agree on a dignified break-up and have each of them stand for elections on their own, with each “mini-ANC” presenting its ideas and plans in some sort of cohesive form.

Just imagine

Maybe instead of boringly calling themselves “ANC 1, ANC 2 and ANC 3”, they could offer us more quirky, original names in the tradition of hip-hop, such as “ANC West Side”, “ANC East Side” and so on.

Each of these new little ANCs could be clear on what they are offering, such as Dlamini-Zuma’s crew telling us more about what Radical Economic Transformation will be about, while their catchphrase could be: “Yo, we’re the ones blaming White Monopoly Capital for everything.” They’re just as likely to encourage young women to email naked selfies and videos to dimbanyika97@gmail.com in the hope this will keep their “ANC Southside” rival distracted enough on the campaign trail.

Ramaphosa’s crew (when they’re not “R.e.q.u.e.s.t.i.n.g anything”) could in turn attempt to convince us they are the ones still embodying some of the more old-fashioned values of the ANC while perhaps lovingly quoting long extracts from the National Development Plan.

Sadly, the Independent Electoral Commission will only allow one party to appear on the ballot paper using the name and logo of the ANC. Only one party in 2019 will be allowed to call itself the ANC and only one face will be on the ANC’s posters. Fun as it might prove, there can’t be three little ANCs vying for our vote in 2019, and trying to do another Cope-like split – as we now know – doesn’t work. Cope did everything it could to seem like “the ANC in another form” in 2009, but that branding exercise/experiment did not survive much beyond five years.

So, pathetically, this is what most of the ANC’s current political fight has turned into – the right to use the party’s 105-year-old logo and name in 2019, because they are still hoping that is the thing people will vote for when they’re in that cardboard booth on their own.

They’re probably not wrong, either. No one has brand recognition in politics in this country at anything near the level of the ANC, just like most people will order Coca-Cola in a corner cafe or choose an iPhone (if they can afford it) over most other brands.

A dead rose by any other name

The ANC conference in December will not be a fight for the “heart and soul” of the ANC – as the 2007 Polokwane conference was described – because the ANC no longer has a heart and soul. It sold both of those out to various interests a long time ago. As a result, the ANC as a recognisable entity has been dying a slow death for years, but those who are part of its rotting body will be only too happy in 2019 to try to reanimate the corpse and hope the voters don’t notice the stench too much.

It can only continue for so long, though. Pollsters this year have predicted the previously unthinkable: that the previously indomitable ANC will slip below 50% of the vote – down to as low as 47% – meaning the thing we have became so used to calling “the ruling party” will no longer be able to govern on its own, regardless of who it chooses as its party president.

But even 47% of the overall vote is nothing to be sniffed at, and the cold war over the ANC’s shrinking remains will have grown as hot as ever by December.

The current suggested options of splitting up or coming to various pre-conference agreements are probably not going to happen. The more likely outcome is that whichever faction wins will go on a vicious purging campaign to rid the party of whoever it believes does not agree with it or its aims.

The problem with this is that there are factions even within the factions of the ANC and it will be difficult, if not impossible, for either Dlamini-Zuma or Ramaphosa to ever truly know who their friends and foes are. As a result, the party will continue to shed pieces of itself as it continues to rot and grow inevitably smaller.

Not even the enormous power of the ANC name and logo will be enough to save it from itself. At least when you buy Coca-Cola, you can be pretty sure it doesn’t matter who’s in charge of the company, the dark juice will taste much the same. But loyal ANC voters have been served so many different political cocktails over the years that there will come a day when they stop asking for a refill.

And apparently that day is just around the corner.

If you are a fan of either of the candidates you may like to tell yourself that they possess the qualities of leadership to reunite, revitalise and grow this desiccating ANC. Perhaps you believe there’s someone who can once again get the party to start serving “the good stuff”, whatever you think that may be – instead of just finding a way to once again serve themselves.

Maybe you’re right. I’d even like to believe you, because a good, clean, strong ANC has always been the best chance this country has had of pulling us all in the right direction. But nostalgia for what should and could have been is unlikely to be enough, and the reality is that we’re heading into the dawning of messy coalition politics on a national scale – when what each of the parties offers and actually does in the here and now will be a lot more important than grandstanding about what they achieved in the past.

Charles Cilliers