Gloves off in ANC feud

The gloves are coming off as the Cyril Ramaphosa and Jacob Zuma/Ace Magashule camps in the ANC resume their public fight, while the party heads towards its yet-to-be-scheduled national general council (NGC).

Now that the Covid-19 emergency is subsiding, the feuding factions are taking aim at each other, well aware that the NGC meeting could be a “make or break” affair for President Ramaphosa or the radical economic transformation (RET) lobby loyal to Zuma and now fronted by ANC secretary-general Magashule.

If there is a move to oust Ramaphosa, it will come at the NGC and, by the same token, the meeting could be the death knell of the RET faction. Magashule mobilised MK veterans in an impromptu street rally yesterday outside the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal office in Durban a day after Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula lashed out at the Magashule-aligned faction of the military veterans.

He was accompanied by MK Military Veterans’ Association chair, Kebby Maphatsoe. On Monday the two ANC camps faced off in what began as a protest march by a faction of MK military veterans aligned to Magashule. The MK veterans demanded Mbalula be arrested for allowing the country’s rail infrastructure to be looted – but that was merely a pretext for an all-out assault on behalf of the Zuma faction, calling for the resolutions from the Nasrec conference in 2017 to be implemented.

That demand has been the rallying call of the Zuma loyalists since his ousting at Nasrec, An ANC source said the protests by the veterans was neither a coincidence, nor innocent, but a mobilisation by Zuma camp, headed by Magashule.

“Magashule is organising support for himself should he be arrested. He knows that the Hawks are hovering over him and he will need to have a crowd in court,” the source said.

The source said the MK veterans ambitiously wanted to elevate Magashule to take over and lead the Zuma faction because he has no real grassroots support like Zuma.

“With his back against the wall, Ace will be happy to lead the that faction. At the moment they are leaderless and Nkosazana [Dlamini-Zuma] is not a factionalist, they don’t like that,” the ANC source said.

Mbalula called the veterans’ leaders, Kebby Maphatsoe and Carl Niehaus, “thugs” and said he did “not fear them”.

Although he was immediately called to order by the ANC national spokesperson Pule Mabe, he did not withdraw his tweets, nor his media statement in which he continued to lash out at Maphatsoe and Niehaus. Mbalula extended the fight to Magashule and not for the first time.

The two, both from the Free State are sworn enemies who had been at each other’s throats on several occasions. The latest public spat was seen as preparation of the ground for a real battle of the titans towards the next NGC. It was initially scheduled for last June but had to be postponed due to outbreak of Covid-19.

The postponement came as the Magashule group – led by Niehaus – were preparing to turn up the heat on Ramaphosa at the NGC, where they planned to call for a motion of no confidence against him. But the Ramaphosa camp was preparing to defend him.

They maintained that the NGC was not about the change of leadership or elections but to look at party policies and progress made regarding resolutions of the previous conference.

Political analyst Andre Duvenhage said Magashule knew that the police would be after him at some stage, so he began mobilising the ANC youth and women’s leagues in Free State and KwaZulu-Natal.

– ericn@citizen.co.za

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