Politics.za

Following Thabo Mbeki’s criticising of SACP leader Blade Nzimande the Feud That Will Not Die™ now enters another messy chapter. Of course the Young Communists League responded in a quiet and dignified manner which then caused the ANC to criticise them further.

You know I called the end of the tripartite alliance way back in June but it seemed for a brief moment after that proclamation that things might work out but alas I’m sticking with what I said on the 20th June. Even if the alliance still perseveres in public, behind the scenes it seems like it’s not even functioning any more.

In a totally non-suprising move ANC Secretary General Kgalema Motlanthe has denied that he has any presidential aspirations. Mothlanthe’s name was thrown about during the Zuma rape case by some in the SACP as being a replacement candidate should JZ have been found guilty.

Is there anyone in the ANC who is willing to put their neck out there a bit and show some desire to lead or is this really going to turn into a papal election?

A group of the 21 backbench ANC MP’s who have been charged with scamming parliament seem to be getting a little bit hot under the collar that they are being charged while more senior ANC MP such as Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula are allowed to merely pay some form of restitution.

We want to know what criterion was used to decide to prosecute us and not the others. There are 330 names on that list and that issue will have to be raised with the judge if we go to court.

330 names? There are 490 people in national parliament in total! That means over 2/3 of parliamentarians are implicated.

It looks like Richard Diyanti’s move to grab the Cape Town council from the DA might be hitting a few snags. Firstly it seems that there are some in the ANC who are suffering from a bit of ‘democratic remorse’ and are thinking maybe you know they should just respect the outcome of the municipal election.

The second reason why it might hit a snag is oh so ironic. Back in 2002 when the ANC took control of the Cape Town municipality via floor crossing the DA took the ANC to court to try and get seats on the new created executive mayoral committee. If seats were to be given out according to proportion of votes received the DA would have received 4 of the 10 mayoral council seats. Except that the ANC successfully argues that the DA only had to be ‘broadly represented’ and not ‘directly represented’ and they were only given two seats on council and denied any portfolio positions.

And now this same ruling could come back and bite the ANC. According to this ruling the ANC may only be entitled to one or two seats with the ID also receiving a single seat and the DA the rest.

Despite often going head to head with the Presidency and the Minister of Health, Zackie Achmat is still a card carrying member of the ANC. Indeed in my one brief conversation I had with him a while ago he seemed upbeat on the ANC, believing the TAC’s issues with government were more the fault of Mbeki/Msimang than the policy of the ANC itself.

So it’s suprising to see that Achmat (along with the TAC) is so far opposed to Local Government MEC Richard Diyanti’s move to restructure the Cape Town Council calling it “undemocratic”. He even went so far as to call it “the ANC’s attempt at a power grab”, so perhaps he’s grown a bit tiresome of the ANC since I last spoke to him.

But it seems to be getting even worse for Diyanti with SACTWU one of the larger COSATU unions asking to have a meeting with Diyanti to ask about the proposed changes, although I’m unsure of whether they’re actually opposed to the changes or just ticked off because they were not consulted beforehand.

The corruption case against Jacob Zuma has been struck off the court roll!

It seems the prosecution will have to wait until the current appeal against a search and seizure order against Zuma is completed.

The case is not dismissed but the prosecution will now have to refile charges at a later date pending the outcome of the appeal.

For all the talk (by me included) of him being a canny politician Thabo Mbeki is being seriously outmaneuvered here. First he is out of the country during the COSATU congress and now this.

It’s official. Western Cape MEC for Local Government Richard Diyanti has notified Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille thay he intends to reorganise the Cape Town council into an executive committee type system. This system would make the mayor largely ceremonial and place most of the power in a 10 person committee which would comprise of the DA (4 seats), the ANC (4 seats) and the ID (2 seats) although the linked article mentions it might be DA:4/5 ANC:4 ID:1 ACDP:1(?), with the smaller parties (ACDP who may or may not get a seat, FF+, AMP) shut out.

Prior to their election victory the DA claimed preference for the executive committee model when it seemed possible the ID would join them in a coalition. When the ID decided to back the ANC in the mayoral vote the DA were basically left with no choice but to stay with the executive mayoral system or face defeat.

Diyanti justifies the move saying that an executive committee would be more ‘stable’ and the executive committee would be more ‘inclusive’. Which begs the question. So when is Tony Leon (or Joe Seremans considering the ANC’s distate for Leon) getting his ‘inclusive’ cabinet position? Sure the ANC received 69% of the national vote but with the DA that would be an even more inclusive 80%! If Diyanti was so worried about stability he might want to recommend that floor crossing be scrapped as it’s probably the single greatest cause of upheaval in local councils (usually in the ANC’s favour though).

Here’s a telling quote from the ANC’s Max Ozinsky:

The recent local government election did not produce a clear winner and at the moment only half of the voters are represented in the mayoral committee, leaving the other half outside.

Will someone please call a whaaaaambulance? Perhaps someone should remind Max that the ANC were the ones who introduced the executive mayoral committee system in the first place and during their time in power excluded the DA from it. He also doesn’t mention that every single other council in the Western Cape uses the executive mayoral system currently. Max also somehow implies that the ANC is somehow totally shut out of the political process which is not true as while they are not on the mayoral committee they still have 88 votes on the council and also does not consider such facts that the budget that was passed in May was largely drawn up by the previous ANC committee and that the new city manager appointed by the DA, Achmat Ebrahim, was a member of the ANC’s management team.

Business Day had an opinion piece yesterday that called such a move as smelling of ANC desperation. The guys at Commentary say it show’s the disrespect the ANC shows towards the democratic process. DA Mal, who comments on the Commentary thread, seems suprisingly upbeat and indicates he believes this will probably be killed in the courts and should it go through the ANC will suffer in subsequent provincial and local elections.

Now what about the ID? Well give them credit they have been consistent from even before the elections that they preferred an executive committee system and obviously they stand to gain if this change goes through. However if you consider the beatdown the ID took when it sided with the ANC during the council mayoral vote and the near revolt amongst it’s members they will have to be be very careful not to fuel further uprising if they are seen as helping the ANC in this. If the reforms do indeed go through I wouls assume that the ID would be siding more with the DA than the ANC, especially after the DA successfully picked up the council seat in Tafelsig after the ID councillor (Sheval Arendse who then ran under the DA) resigned from the ID in protest of their support of the ANC’s mayoral candidate.

Finally I’d like to mention that as of a month ago in the Eastern Cape, three of the largest municipalities were so rife with infighting in the ANC that they have yet to actually appoint mayors. And yet I have yet to hear of the Eastern Cape provincial government intervening there despite the complete chaos and shambles those councils are in when compared to Cape Town.

Tomorrow sees the start of the COSATU national congress and many are seeing it as being a watershed moment for Zuma with pro-Zuma COSATU Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi set to butt heads against pro-Mbeki COSATU Chairman Willie Madisha. Most are predicting Vavi to come out on top although there is a good chance both men will be retained despite their relationship being described as nothing short of fundamentally broken.

But can there be a single bigger illustration of the Mbeki presidency than the fact that while COSATU argues and deliberates over whether to support him, he himself will be at the UN General Assembly where South Africa is expected to be elected to the Security Council and while that is important there is a reason we have a Minister of Foreign Affairs.

So instead of Mbeki taking the podium to deliver the main address at the COSATU congress which would have given him a prime opportunity to deliver his views to delegates and persuade them to be more on his side, Jacob Zuma will be giving the keynote address. Zuma will no doubt use the speech to lambast government’s response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the centralisation of power (although he was perfectly fine with them while he was in power) and generally rouse up some anti-Mbeki sentiment. I believe this is a wasted opportunity for Mbeki.

Despite me chaving previously called the tripartite alliance a thing of the past it continues to persist despite visible and widening rifts between the ANC, COSATU and SACP. That might be due to the fact (probably well known to all three players) that should SACP/COSATU split, the ANC will still get 60% of the vote.

Now those of you fearing a Zuma lead COSATU/SACP presidency can breathe a bit easier however this highlights a problem trend with the electorate of SA. Despite there being major grievances with the performance of government. people are still reluctant to vote for anyone else, preferring to show their displeasure not via the ballot box but with street protests.

Now this actually suits the ANC. Sure they get some bad press with protestors wailing on about no service delivery, but at the end of the day they are still in power.

Moeletsi Mbeki is the deputy chairperson of the South African Institute of International Affairs as well as a businessman and political analyst. He is also Thabo Mbeki’s younger brother. On certain issues he disagrees with his brother, for instance Moeletsi has described the current form of BEE, where a few politically connected businessmen are involved in the majority of large deals, as worse than colonialism.

Now when it comes to Jacob Zuma and his supporters amongst COSATU and the SACP I have a feeling their thoughts are more in sync. In fact I think Moeletsi might even be echoing the true feelings of Thabo, who has to self censor what he really feels due to his position as head of the ANC, which all but forbids public disagreement between senior members. In a recent interview Moeletsi tore into COSATU and the SACP accusing them of forgetting about their mandate to protect workers by focusing on getting Zuma into power.

Mbeki says Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP) are pre-occupying themselves with the job of one individual instead of addressing the issue of the welfare of the masses. He says the Jacob Zuma corruption trial and whether he becomes the ANC president or not is an ANC matter and not Cosatu’s.

In another interview he states that Zuma, despite having no economic and political policies, is trying to pressure the ANC to elect him president:

If he had better policies he would have produced them long ago, but he hasn’t. He just wants the power.

He also accusses COSATU/SACP of using Zuma as a (seemingly willing) puppet in order to take control of the ANC.

What Cosatu is trying to do is to manipulate the leadership process of the ANC so that it ceases to be a transparent process and so that the leadership is open to appointment by secret groups operating outside the rules of the party
...
The best-case scenario is that they think they will manipulate him and dictate economic policy to him. The more cynical view is that these guys — [Cosatu general secretary] Zwelinzima [Vavi] and [South African Communist Party General Secretary] Blade [Nzimande] — want to put JZ in power because they expect to become ministers in his cabinet.

Update: Richard Calland also writes about COSATU abandoning their mandate to workers.