Inside ‘bare-knuckle’ fight for control of Nelson Mandela’s ANC

Three former South African presidents have criticised and attacked current President Cyril Ramaphosa, as tensions between rival factions within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) come to a head, less than two months prior to the next selection of leaders for the ‘party of Nelson Mandela’.

Former President Jacob Zuma, in a rambling, seemingly personally scribed assault, on Saturday attacked both Ramaphosa, saying he was “corrupt” and a “traitor”, and Chief Justice Raymond Zondo and Zondo’s four-year probe into state capture corruption, in which Zuma is described as the ‘primary author’ of systemic theft of state funds.

Read: The slow death of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress

Almost simultaneously with Zuma’s attack came critiques of the current ANC leadership from both former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe.

Motlanthe made his comments in an address to regional business and community leaders about current challenges which the South African economy is facing, along with leadership shortfalls within the ruling ANC.

Lack of vision

The former president, who followed Mbeki and preceded Zuma, was indirect but indicated that the current ANC leadership “lacked the vision” to allow new elements emergent in the party which would be better able to deal with the country’s many challenges.

The ANC, in short, needed new ideas, said Motlanthe.

Mbeki’s critique was more stinging, having previously supported Ramaphosa’s efforts to “renew” the ANC, Africa’s ‘oldest liberation movement’, by removing corrupt elements in its leadership grouping.

On Saturday, he said that it may be that Ramaphosa may have “too much baggage” to get that job done.

Discussing the three-member advisory panel set up to report back to South Africa’s Parliament on whether Ramaphosa has committed impeachable offences around his Phala Phala game farm ‘scandal’, in which several hundred thousand dollars were alleged to have been “hidden in furniture” on the game farm and then stolen, with a cover-up following that crime, Mbeki asked: “What happens if they (the panel) say he has a case to answer?”

No strong candidates

But Mbeki was criticising others in the ANC leadership than Ramaphosa, in the main, pointing out there are no strong candidates who could replace Ramaphosa as head of the party, and who could also fulfil his ‘renewal’ programme, which the citizens of South Africa, who have suffered much due to corruption in the ruling party and the government it controls, were demanding.

“When you talk renewal of the ANC, you are carrying too much baggage of wrong people,” said Mbeki, almost in a direct comment to Ramaphosa.

“You have to have the courage to face the fact that you have a renewed ANC led by criminals,” added Mbeki, in a clear attack on others in the party’s national executive who stand as named parties by, among others, Zondo in his several state capture reports.

While the attacks on Ramaphosa showed that the ANC continued to be riven by factionalism, and posed questions over his electability in December at the next ANC elective conference to head the party and the state, most of the criticisms from Motlanthe and Mbeki were focused on rectifying their much-beloved party.

Zuma’s assault

While there was widely considered to be some justification in the two past presidents’ comments, most political observers dismissed almost everything Zuma had to say as mere self-justification and the casting of blame onto Ramaphosa for his own failings.

Read: Cracks widen in South African ruling party ANC

Zuma’s assault, in which he also put himself forward for possible election at year’s end as the ANC’s national chair—  something which cannot happen under current ANC rules, as he faces 783 counts of fraud, money-laundering and corruption among other charges— had more to do with Zuma attempting to avoid the tightening grip of being forced to answer for his corruption and mismanagement, than anything Ramaphosa has done wrong.

Zuma seized heavily on the Phala Phala matter, as if Ramaphosa had already been convicted.

But all indications are that Ramaphosa’s calm handling of the issue— with the review panel due to report back to Parliament on any impeachable offences which may be laid at Ramaphosa’s feet by mid-November— has to do with his “plausible deniability” of any wrongdoing involving foreign currency.

In early local reporting, Ramaphosa seemed to have had a major legal problem, but many of the allegations laid against him by Zuma ally Arthur Fraser have not stood up to subsequent scrutiny.

Fraser, once Zuma’s spy boss, is now head of prisons and the person who, the courts have found, illegally gave Zuma early medical release from his 15-month jail term imposed in July last year, and which jailing triggered destructive and deadly riots in Zuma’s Zulu homeland province of KwaZulu-Natal.

Buffalo sale

Fraser alleged “millions” in dollars had been stolen from Ramaphosa’s farm but the real figure has been established with high probability to be US$580,000, the legal proceeds of a sale of a buffalo to a businessman said to be from Chad.

Ramaphosa placed all his business in blind trusts when he assumed the presidency of the ANC in December 2017, and subsequently the country’s presidency a few months later, precisely to avoid the sort of accusations made by Zuma at the weekend.

And South African news organisation News24 has reported that if anyone is to face any formal charges arising from the Phala Phala matter, it is likely to be the head of the presidential protection unit, Major General Wally Rhoode, who is reported to be facing possible suspension for undertaking an off-the-books investigation after Ramaphosa reported the theft of the sale proceeds to the general.

Part of the complaint laid by Fraser against Ramaphosa, and as used by Zuma and others in his ANC ‘radical economic transformation’ faction, was that Ramaphosa had used his influence with Namibian leader Hage Geingob to undertake a “quiet” probe into the alleged role of Namibian citizens in the February 2020 theft.

Reserve Bank probe

But Geingob has furiously refused any part of that construction and specifically denied doing anything illegal to help his fellow Southern African Development Community (SADC) leader.

Police investigations into the issue continue, while the SA Reserve Bank is also probing the Phala Phala matter from the point of view of possible foreign currency violations, with Ramaphosa required to have answered questions but no sign that the Reserve Bank will act against him.

On Sunday night, in his formal response to Zondo’s several reports on what was discovered during his four-year probe of state capture, Ramaphosa laid out a plan to take up the majority of hundreds of recommendations made by the Chief Justice, including steps to ensure “that state capture never happens again”.

With the ANC, as an organisation, having been held liable by Zondo in equal measure with Zuma for state capture corruption that cost the country an estimated $100m, Ramaphosa is referring to a number of those still holding senior position but not charged in the courts to the ANC’s integrity commission.

With that move, along with measures to prevent backroom deals being done to get preferred candidate lists secretly agreed to ahead of party election conferences – which is how Zuma came to power in 2007 – Ramaphosa has turned the heat up dramatically on those who wish to return to the “good old days” within the ANC as under Zuma.

One analyst, assessing the weekend’s developments, with four presidents weighing in on what is driving the factional struggle for control of ‘the party of Madiba’, said it was “like a bare-knuckle bar-room brawl— no-one is holding back any more on either side”.    BY DAILY NATION