Factionalism: does Ramaphosa understand ANC well enough?

President Cyril Ramaphosa has long called for an end to factions in the governing ANC. He made this call to the party’s national executive committee (NEC) upon his election as the party’s president and it was central to his reform agenda.

The NEC is the party’s highest decision-making body between national conferences, and it is that structure that backed former president Jacob Zuma’s recall from high office in 2018. It was also behind ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule stepping aside pending the outcome of a corruption case. But it is also the NEC that Ramaphosa has tried to appease in appointing the national executive after the ANC’s 2017 elective conference, at which he was elected by a small margin.

What Ramaphosa does not seem to see is that most in the ANC agree that he single-handedly delivered the party’s 57% majority in the 2019 general election and the only way for him and the party to reverse an electoral decline in successive elections would be to deliver on his reform agenda.

He acknowledges that where there is political will, there are means, and he publicly acknowledges that losses the ANC suffered in the 2016 municipal polls were the result of an allergy South Africans have developed to corruption.

It must be acknowledged that Ramaphosa has one big problem when confronting the issue of factionalism in the ANC. It could well be that he does not know the ANC well enough. If he did, he would not have expected to win an overwhelming majority upon his election as ANC president and he would not still surround himself with people who struggled to get elected to the party’s NEC in 2017.

Ramaphosa continues to be surrounded by these people who occupy senior positions in his cabinet. The problem the ANC under Ramaphosa has is much more complex. It is easy to say factions must die, but it is not easily done in the context of high levels of inequality in SA.

Without economic liberation, who wins factional battles in the ANC is a powerful decider between the haves and have-nots. Being on the list of a winning faction is the easiest way to win political office in SA.

The ANC, DA or EFF then nominating one as a public representative allows for upward social mobility; it decides where one lives, what car one drives, where one’s children go to school and what hospitals one’s parents are subjected to.

Ramaphosa was also in a faction when he contested for ANC president in 2017, but his faction did not get a clear victory. He has ANC deputy president David Mabuza and treasurer-general Paul Mashatile to thank for coming out on top. Tourism minister Lindiwe Sisulu and water minister Senzo Mchunu were on the Ramaphosa faction’s list to emerge as ANC deputy president and secretary-general in 2017, but they did not.

Under Zuma, the faction was king. What Zuma did not control he destroyed, the ANC Youth League, labour federation Cosatu and the SA Revenue Service being good examples. Under Zuma’s faction, state capture came at the expense of the ANC, as seen in the 2014, 2016 and 2019 election results.

Factional politics will also play a part in the outcome of the 2021 local government election results. A united ANC may help the party recover from electoral losses and prevent further losses, as a result of previous splits from the party.

But the ANC is unlikely to regain its standing as the leader of society if it does not unite the country behind it. It is factional politics that led to the ANC’s loss of Cape Town in 2006, as well as Nelson Mandela Bay, Johannesburg and Tshwane in 2016.

South Africans know that factionalism in the ANC has resulted in poor governance and a breakdown of law and order, making Ramaphosa’s reform agenda central to the fate of the ANC. But for the party to again be relevant, it is Ramaphosa who has got to put the country before the party.

FOR THE PARTY TO AGAIN BE RELEVANT, IT IS RAMAPHOSA WHO HAS GOT TO PUT THE COUNTRY BEFORE THE PARTY