The looting, arson and destruction of infrastructure that swept SA this week have not only set back the country's economic recovery, fostered ethnic hostility between different communities and exploded Covid-19 infections, they have also started the great rupture that begins the end of the ANC as the country's dominant party.
ANC leaders during this emergency went to ground, making political calculations to safeguard their own individual political futures, with many hedging their bets that former president Jacob Zuma might still make an ANC comeback, or that his supporters would electorally punish whoever criticises him now.
They reckoned they would be able to claim they had always supported Zuma - just in case Zuma's supporters caused enough chaos for ANC members and supporters to call for a vote of no confidence in President Cyril Ramaphosa and his leadership, and Zuma and his faction, which includes suspended ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, triumphed.
There was a veil of silence. Of course, many ANC leaders outright support Zuma - that is why they did not want to be seen condemning the deliberately created arson, looting and ethnic mobilisation. National and KwaZulu-Natal leaders were spectacularly absent at the height of the looting: no-one was "deployed", in ANC-speak, to the looting hotspots.
Other ANC leaders fear that, if the untouchable Zuma can be sent to jail, they too will end there soon for wrongdoing during the years of impunity under Zuma. They therefore silently stood with Zuma.
But many ANC leaders who stayed silent made their calculations based on the political dynamics before this catastrophic week.
By the time he went to prison, Zuma's national support had long since nose-dived, starting when he lost formal power in the ANC and the government. Losing power in the ANC and the government meant losing the ability to dish out patronage, which quickly evaporated support on the ground.
The violence, looting and arson of the past week will change the ANC forever, but in completely different ways than Zuma's allies may have reckoned: it has hastened the Zuma/Magashule faction's own departure from the ANC
The looting and destruction will diminish Zuma's power, appeal and support among the majority of blacks, rather than strengthening these, as his allies and supporters may have reckoned.
With an economy already devastated after the Covid-19 financial crisis, black people, the black supporters of the ANC, suffered worst, in terms of loss of jobs, public services and health, from this week of looting and arson.
With the stage-managed "uprising", Zuma allies hoped they would force Ramaphosa to pardon the former president, or would compel ANC members to call for a special conference where they would push for a no-confidence vote in Ramaphosa, and oust him.
The Zuma/Magashule faction tried to stage-manage this week's "uprising" to force a takeover of the ANC. But the looting, arson and destruction of infrastructure as a result of their "uprising" achieved a different result to what they intended.
The violence, looting and arson of the past week will change the ANC forever, but in completely different ways than Zuma's allies may have reckoned: it has hastened the Zuma/Magashule faction's own departure from the ANC.
The divide between the constitutionalist, racially inclusive and economic policy-pragmatic Ramaphosa faction and the unconstitutionalist, populist and narrow Africanist Zuma/Magashule faction after this week cannot be bridged any more. It is the violent parting of ways between the Ramaphosa ANC and Zuma/Magashule ANC.
After this week's mayhem, the Zuma/Magashule faction cannot return to the ANC fold.
As for giving Zuma a presidential pardon, after the damage of this week it would be met with extraordinary public anger within and outside the ANC opposition.
Furthermore, giving Zuma a presidential pardon would strengthen the hand of the Zuma/Magashule faction within the ANC - and give them the impetus to successfully call for a special national conference of the ANC, and then vote out Ramaphosa. For his own political survival, it would be foolish of Ramaphosa to give Zuma a pardon.
Another thing; pardoning Zuma would be an endorsement of violence, looting and arson as a successful route to securing political demands, and would continue SA's post-apartheid culture of impunity, lawlessness and violence as an acceptable political weapon.
When the ANC voted for Zuma, a man then under a cloud of corruption allegations, a man who mobilised votes for himself along ethnic lines, and who has outdated and unconstitutional, sexist and patriarchal views, at the party's 2007 Polokwane conference, they in effect signed Africa's oldest liberation movement's loss of power, break-up and electoral demise.
It is just sad that the parting of ways had to be accompanied by such a high cost to SA: the hammering of the economy, the increase in ethnic tensions and the income, infrastructure and lives lost.
• Gumede is associate professor, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand and author of 'Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times' (Tafelberg)
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