Back in the early 1990s when the ANC was still rebuilding its presence in the country following three decades of illegality and exile, its structures in what we now call KwaZulu-Natal were divided into three regions: Southern Natal, the Natal Midlands and the North Coast. The North Coast was the weakest of the three — it was largely under the control of the then KwaZulu homeland government and was a stronghold of the rival IFP.
At times there was unacknowledged rivalry between Southern Natal, which included Durban and surrounding areas, and the Natal Midlands, which encompassed Pietermaritzburg, Richmond and many other areas that were the worst hit by political violence. The rivalry often boiled down to leadership styles in the two regions. Southern Natal had, at different times, leaders such as Mosiuoa Lekota, Jeff Radebe, Jacob Zuma and Sbu Ndebele.
Besides all of them being former Robben Islanders, one thing they had in common was that they generally supported the reconciliatory approach that Nelson Mandela and other national leaders of the party were taking as they sought a negotiated settlement with the National Party regime.
The Midlands, on the other hand, was — for the longest time — under the leadership of Harry Gwala, a firebrand whose experience since his release from the Robben Island in 1988 had made him intensely suspicious of the negotiations process and any attempt to make peace with “the enemy”. Southern Natal activists would often, in private, accuse their Midlands counterparts of not being in tune with the political and policy debates of the time as they were too preoccupied with Gwala’s war talk and his militant brand of politics.
The Natal Midlands, they would often say, had a “baba problem”. By this they meant that party structures in the region were unlikely to develop and mature on their own as long as Gwala played the “father figure” and as long as his views were all that mattered.
Midlands activists, many of whom went on to play important roles in post-apartheid SA, to this day deny that this was the case. They insist that Gwala might have been a strong personality who harboured strong suspicions about the negotiations and the peace process, but he did not play a paternalistic role.
I was reminded of the “baba problem” recently as the news broke of Sihle Zikalala stepping down as KwaZulu-Natal premier following his failure to secure another term as the provincial ANC chair.
Those who follow KwaZulu-Natal ANC politics say many factors contributed to Zikalala’s loss of popularity among ANC branches, but the perception that he had 'turned against Zuma' was the most important
At a media conference to announce his resignation, Zikalala basically blamed his defeat on a whispering campaign in which his rivals branded him as someone who had “betrayed” Zuma by siding with President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Those who follow KwaZulu-Natal ANC politics say many factors contributed to Zikalala’s loss of popularity among ANC branches, but the perception that he had “turned against Zuma” was the most important. In the run-up to the provincial conference, it seemed like it was going to be a two-way race between Zikalala and the then finance MEC Nomusa Dube-Ncube.
But on the day of the conference, both found themselves to be underdogs. While Zikalala did make it to the ballot paper, he lost the post of chair to the then relatively obscure Sboniso Duma. Dube-Ncube didn’t even make the nomination threshold required to get onto the ballot paper.
Both Zikalala and Dube-Ncube failed at the conference largely because they were perceived not to have been sufficiently loyal to Zuma. They were among the provincial politicians who were accused of “shunning” the former president after he lost office in 2018.
Dube-Ncube has since replaced Zikalala as premier, a position she is expected to remain in until the 2024 elections, when, if the ANC wins more than 50% of the provincial votes, she is expected to give way to Duma. As provincial ANC chair Duma, like Zikalala, probably believes that he now calls the shots in the province. Even before he officially becomes premier he’ll probably run the KwaZulu-Natal cabinet, in which he now serves as MEC for economic development, through Dube-Ncube.
He would do well, however, to remember that real power in KwaZulu-Natal resides somewhere else. While the rest of SA might think it disentangled itself from Zuma and his legal problems when he was removed from office in February 2018, the former president still looms exceedingly large in KwaZulu-Natal politics. So Duma will soon face the same issue that confronted Zikalala and Senzo Mchunu before him: toe the Zuma line and keep the job, or be your own man and risk losing it all.
The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal has a baba problem.
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