MAKHUDU SEFARA | Even a whiff of corruption must bar contenders for the ANC’s top job

For many of us it’s time for “season’s greetings”, but in the ANC it seems it’s a season for every Tom, Dick and Harry to raise their hands as worthy heirs to lead the troubled party.

Even when the ANC is on its knees, it’s not short of compromised pretenders to the throne. Almost everyone seems to be standing. No criteria. Nothing. Forget that theory about “Through the Eye of the Needle”. Forget everything previously said about creating “A New Cadre”. All of that is in the past.

Now, if you have a bag full of money to buy a few branch leaders, bingo, you are in the running! And if you can string a few sentences together about renewal, you are the man, or woman.

Let’s take stock of the presidential hopefuls: Deputy President Paul Mashatile; ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula; his deputy responsible for international relations, Nomvula Mokonyane; minister of electricity & energy Kgosientsho Ramokgopa; and, of late, parliamentary speaker Thoko Didiza.

Looking at the list, those who truly love the ANC must have butterflies flourishing in their stomachs. Are these the people to save the ANC, whose electoral decline from 56% to 40% has forced it into a marriage of convenience with the DA (which seems to be having its own succession headaches)?

Looking at the list, those who truly love the ANC must have butterflies flourishing in their stomachs. Are these the people to save the ANC, whose electoral decline from 56% to 40% has forced it into a marriage of convenience with the DA (which seems to be having its own succession headaches)? Party leader Cyril Ramaphosa has said it faces an “existential crisis” and that the only appropriate response is, you guessed it, renewal. That’s the zeitgeist.

Renewal, in and of itself, is not a miracle cure for all of the ANC’s woes. But it is spoken of as the panacea of choice for the many challenges that have brought the party to its knees.

Renewal, though, if it became a self-evident truth and not merely a leitmotif in a speech, would enable the ANC, with cap in hand, to ask voters for forgiveness for past sins and a second chance.

We can thank Jacob Zuma, the ANC’s former president and now head of its nemesis, the MK Party, for the long list of aspirant leaders. If such a wrecking ball could use his penchant for singing to make his way to the top of the once proud party, then why not anyone else and their dog? The bar for leadership isn’t set low; it’s missing. It’s stolen.

People who shouldn’t even be considered think of themselves as the epitome of leadership. That is why Mbalula wouldn’t know whether he was sending a Ferrari or a Tazz to resolve a crisis in KwaZulu-Natal, where the ANC suffered its biggest loss of support. This is because leaders and pretenders have figured out how to hoodwink even their secretary-general. Just speak of renewal, even when your actions tell a different story.

When Ramaphosa says don’t flaunt your bling wheels, he may well be referring to Mbalula’s voyage into the heartlands of KwaZulu-Natal in search of votes in a R3m Mercedes; or Ramokgopa wearing a top emblazoned with Michael Kors while doing a television interview, oblivious to what his fashion sense communicates. Or better still, Mashatile confirming he has inherited two houses worth R70m from his super-rich children who receive tenders from the government he serves as deputy president.

ANC members may have behaved during the recently ended national general council (NGC) and gifted Ramaphosa a smug smile, but this doesn’t make the ANC’s problems go away. The biggest of these is corruption.

The question is: why is it unclear to ANC pretenders that the highest revolutionary pursuit is to not make oneself available if one’s candidacy will drag the ANC into the pits?

That anyone with a whiff of corruption around their name could even be considered for the leadership is a fundamental flaw. They would send votes out the window. Ramaphosa sought to goad them in the right direction, telling them that those charged with corruption must willingly step aside instead of waiting for the party to throw the book at them.

For a party not in crisis, this would suffice. But for the ANC, at 40% support and waning, eliminating anything and anyone associated with wrongdoing must be non-negotiable.

The ink had hardly dried on assessments of whether the NGC was a success when Mashatile was thrust onto the front page of Business Day as the EFF sought answers on why the country’s biggest tender — worth R80bn — was awarded to a consortium with which he has close ties. The Sizekhaya consortium includes Khumo Bogatsu, Mashatile’s sister-in-law.

Add to this Mashatile’s comments that the ANC must allow those with money to use it to campaign. He says this is no longer avoidable; it must just be appropriately regulated — whatever that means.

The EFF, smelling the putrid stench around Mashatile, will milk this saga just as it did the rigmarole around Senzo Mchunu, the suspended police minister who is reported to have support from the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal in his ANC presidential campaign.

The question is: why is it unclear to ANC pretenders that the highest revolutionary pursuit is to not make oneself available if one’s candidacy will drag the ANC into the pits? For the ANC’s survival, the door must be shut on compromised pretenders. Is that too much to ask? If it is not done, does that not make nonsense of renewal? Who’s fooling who in this zoo?

If the ANC continues to tinker, to walk on eggshells rather than take decisive steps to embed “renewal” and shed those suspected of corruption, the local government elections will become a bloodbath, the biggest loss it has ever seen.