S’THEMBISO MSOMI | Will vote-buying legacy come back to haunt ANC at the polls?

It is telling that in her retraction of the comments she made about Ronald Lamola and the buying of votes at ANC conferences, party veteran Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma decided to say nothing about similar accusations she made about party secretary-general Fikile Mbalula.

Both Lamola and Mbalula had threatened legal action against the former cabinet minister after Dlamini-Zuma alleged, in an interview with politician-turned-podcaster Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, that Lamola was involved in buying votes at the ANC’s 2017 conference and that Mbalula was seen distributing money to delegates at another national conference five years later.

While Dlamini-Zuma on Tuesday conceded that she had no evidence of Lamola’s wrongdoing and accepted his insistence that it is not his voice on the voice note she had cited as proof of his use of money to prevent her from getting elected as ANC president, she said nothing of Mbalula.

Dlamini-Zuma, who lost the ANC presidential race in December 2017 to the incumbent Cyril Ramaphosa, had alleged in the podcast that vote-buying in the ANC did not end with that conference, but that it persisted at the next conference in 2022 where Mbalula, she claimed, was seen dishing out wads of cash at a clinic close to the conference venue.

Like Lamola, Mbalula has denied the allegations and warned that he may be forced to take legal action if Dlamini-Zuma does not withdraw the claim and apologise.

The ball is now in Mbalula’s court.

But whether he carries through with the threat, hence making history by becoming the first ANC secretary-general to sue a fellow National Executive Committee (NEC) member, remains to be seen.

Also available to him, one assumes, is the option of hauling Dlamini-Zuma through the party’s disciplinary processes on the grounds that she has brought the ANC into disrepute with her remarks.

However, given the fragile state of the ANC as it goes into this year’s local government elections, it is unlikely that Ramaphosa and other party leaders would have an appetite for such a step, which could have huge implications for unity within the NEC.

The party had already demonstrated its aversion to taking a confrontational approach towards Dlamini-Zuma when it failed to act against her when she broke rank and went against the ANC’s line of march during the December 2022 parliamentary vote on whether impeachment proceedings should have been started against Ramaphosa over Phala Phala.

If they couldn’t act then, out of fear that such a move would divide party ranks, why would they act now when they seemingly live in constant fear that some of their prominent leaders may be tempted to defect to their former president Jacob Zuma’s MK Party?

It would be dishonest to claim that the 2018 conference was the first in which money was used to decide key positions in the ANC’s highest decision-making body. However, there is no denying that it was at that conference where the use of money by different factions was most pronounced.

Whatever they decide to do, under normal circumstances the saga would have been a great opportunity for the country’s largest political party to deal with the central point Dlamini-Zuma raised during the podcast: the influence of money in ANC leadership contests.

As the political adage goes, never waste a good crisis.

Instead of being defensive and reacting to her claims by hurling counter-accusations that her own ANC presidential campaign went to the 2018 Nasrec conference with a war-chest, the party should be reflecting on the damage vote buying has done to its quality of leadership as well as its ability to wage coherent political campaigns.

It would be dishonest to claim that the 2018 conference was the first in which money was used to decide key positions in the ANC’s highest decision-making body. However, there is no denying that it was at that conference where the use of money by different factions was most pronounced.

By the next conference, it had become an open secret that “amathuluzi” — “the tools” — a euphemism for money among party cadres, is what a leader needed to make it to the top of the leadership hierarchy.

And the end result has been the weakest party leadership since the ANC’s inception in 1912 — unable to respond adequately to problems facing both the country they govern and the party they run.

It is the NEC elected in Nasrec that presided over the party’s dramatic decline in electoral support in 2024 —losing its absolute majority in the National Assembly as well as in three provinces, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and the Northern Cape. Since that calamity, the NEC has produced no turnaround strategy, only giving lip service to “renewal” and “rejuvenation”.

In a couple of weeks, the country will be heading to the local government elections where a number of important metros are at stake, chief among them, the City of Johannesburg.

While the ANC’s main opponent, the Democratic Alliance, has been clear in its strategy of expanding its national footprint by fielding its former leader Helen Zille as its Johannesburg mayoral candidate in the hope that this would turn voters in its favour, the ANC has been dithering in its response.

Early this year the party decided to break with tradition, saying it will announce its mayoral candidates ahead of November 4 in recognition of the reality that voters want to know who exactly they’ll be voting for if they put their Xs next to the ANC’s logo.

Then last weekend, spooked by in-fighting and allegations of planned defections, the NEC changed its mind again, opting for a confused approach where all those who were interviewed as possible candidates are sent out to canvas for votes.

Hence, in the City of Johannesburg, those who still consider the ANC as an option find themselves in a predicament of putting their crosses next to the party’s name on the ballot box, hoping, say for Rev Frank Chikane, and possibly ending up with either Dada Morero or Loyiso Masuku as mayoral candidates if the party garners enough votes to put forward a name in council.

The party finds itself in this state, it seems, because money, rather than leadership talent, has become a significant factor in who makes it to the very top of the decision-making structures.