Despite having inherited a divided ANC caucus in parliament, outgoing party chief Pemmy Majodina is set to become the first ANC chief whip to finish a five-year term.
The ANC chose Majodina — an outsider elected to parliament from the Eastern Cape, where she had been an MEC — to be its chief whip in 2019.
Five years later, she believes she has rid the caucus of factions, having pushed back against those who tried to make her job difficult.
Majodina took over from the late Jackson Mthembu, who was promoted to a cabinet position after the 2019 general elections.
Even though Majodina believes she has rid the caucus of factions and managed to unite ANC MPs, she doesn’t want to do the job again.
“These five years have been long and trying. I came back to a national parliament I left years ago, and when I came in there were different groups of people. I had to bring together [the various] ANC components,” she said about the divisions in the caucus she was chosen to lead.
Now you become a chief prefect. You have to look after the discipline of elders who are leaders but who misbehave ... so you had to contend with all those things.
— Outgoing chief whip Pemmy Majodina
Divisions in the ANC were heightened after its fractious national conference at Nasrec in December 2017 and the recall of President Jacob Zuma in February 2018.
“Remember, we were coming from the conference — a very bruising conference where you had two groupings or factions of the ANC. Both of them were here.”
Majodina says caucus meetings were so hostile she would have sleepless nights before them over “who’s going to raise what or who’s going to interject when we give a report”.
“Even before you opened your mouth, they would interject and raise something about the agenda,” she said.
Majodina had been an MEC in four different government departments in the Eastern Cape between 2008 and 2019.
“Now you become a chief prefect. You have to look after the discipline of elders who are leaders but who misbehave ... so you had to contend with all those things,” she said.
Being a member of the party’s national executive committee (NEC) and national working committee (NWC) was an advantage and helped her bring the “ANC components” together.
Majodina said she had to learn to work with opposition parties and familiarise herself with their different approaches. She also had to exercise political tolerance and embrace everyone because “we are here as representatives of the people”.
“So how did I become the first chief whip to finish the term? I’m very stubborn. If I believe in something, I believe in it, and I will stamp my authority. I stamped my authority,” she said.
Indeed, Majodina “stamped her authority” so much that ANC national chairperson Gwede Mantashe had to intervene when she was “too harsh” on cabinet ministers who did not answer parliamentary questions on time or did not attend plenary sessions to respond to MPs’ statements.
“Some of them, when we had to vote on critical matters, would stand up and say: ‘No, my conscience says this.’ These were the leaders I led with, and this was a position of the organisation, and yet these people came here and broke ranks. In such cases, I had to stand my ground, be very firm and report [them] to the organisation.”
Majodina also credits former deputy president David Mabuza — a man she describes as very intelligent in his role as leader of government business — for supporting her in getting cabinet ministers into line. “I give honour to him. He was very supportive when I consulted with him. He was not a loud noisemaker, but he worked hard, and very quietly.”
She says she went through trying times, especially when President Cyril Ramaphosa and speaker of the National Assembly Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula faced motions of no confidence, and again when parliament was dealing with the investigation into the Phala Phala saga involving the president. When former defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula became speaker in August 2021, there were individuals, including some from within ANC ranks, who did not want to support her appointment, she reveals.
“I had to be very strict and ensure I did what the ANC said I had to do.”
I had to be very strict and ensure I did what the ANC said I had to do.
But on a political level, Majodina says she found it difficult to work with Ace Magashule, who was then the secretary-general of the ANC.
“If we disagreed, he would mobilise people in this caucus to defy me. He would mobilise certain people to defy me in caucus, but because they were dealing with me, a leader in my own right, I knew how to deal with such tendencies.
“I engaged them head-on!” said Majodina. “Magashule knows wherever he is that he did not find it easy to bulldoze me. I was not an easy person to push around.”
In March 2021, the Sunday Times reported that Magashule had called on ANC MPs to oppose the process to impeach then public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane.
He told the newspaper that “principled” ANC MPs would not vote in support of the motion brought by the DA.
This week, Majodina revealed that, when parliament voted on this matter, she could see 16 MPs aligned to Magashule’s faction participating in the debate logging out of the online platform when it was time to vote.
Her working relationship with Magashule improved just before his suspension from the party.
Majodina was disheartened when the ANC and the EFF could not reach agreement on the proposed amendment of section 25 of the constitution to expressly provide for expropriation without compensation.
“That one is my lowlight — that we should have done better,” she said.
Majodina is, however, proud that parliament passed 103 pieces of legislation over the past five years. She attributes this to MPs’ hard work, despite the Covid-19 disruption in 2020 and 2021, when parliament shut down and later operated virtually.
Majodina said one of the most difficult things she had to deal with during her term was the allegation by Mkhwebane that she and fellow MP Richard Dyantyi demanded bribes to make the section 194 impeachment process against Mkhwebane go away.
She believes she will never be truly vindicated, given that she never got a chance to speak to the late Tina Joemat-Petterson before her mysterious death in June last year.
“I knew nothing about it,” she said, getting emotional. “I still hold a grudge towards Tina. She died before she explained to me why she did that, because I had no clue. I had no clue about all of that, and what was more [hurtful] was that a press conference was called by Mkhwebane [in which she said] that she heard Tina say this.
“I’m not mentioned in the SMSes and I’m not there in the audios. They wanted to pin me down on something that I did not know about, and in South Africa when you are a public rep you go through a public trial. That is the unfortunate part about being a politician — everybody sees you as this corrupt person, but I knew nothing.”
She said she tried several times to meet Joemat-Pettersson to discuss the allegations, but to no avail.
“She ran away. I called Tina and I said: ‘Can we meet?’ She never came. The only thing she gave me was to cry and cry throughout when I asked her: ‘Tina, what is this?’
Majodina said the last time she spoke to Joemat-Pettersson was the day before her death, when she tried to arrange a meeting between the two of them in the speaker’s office.
“I called her in the morning to say: ‘Tomorrow [let’s meet] at the office of the speaker. I will bring a policeman, so that you [can] say this thing in front of the police.’ I was hoping to meet her on [June 6], but then she died on [June 5],” said Majodina.
“She left myself and Dyantyi with a cloud hanging over our heads [in respect of] something that we [had] no clue about. We never sent her anywhere.”
For Majodina, the future ideally doesn’t lie in another term in parliament. She says that, having previously been an MEC in various portfolios, she would like to go back to the Eastern Cape, where she feels she can bring about more meaningful change.
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