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The Battle of Nasrec

The 54th national conference of the African National Congress (ANC) – held in December 2017 in the Nasrec conference centre in Johannesburg – was the most fiercely and openly contested elective conference yet held in the history of the organisation. The battle that took place here for the soul of the party revealed the worst that could come out of the ANC. Money is reported to have been openly used to persuade members of the branches to vote for particular candidates.1 The process of nominating candidates for various leadership positions was marred by deliberate disruption; and in the run-up to the conference court interdicts were issued and physical intimidation was resorted to, including public displays of violence,2 at branch, regional and provincial levels of the party. The ANC would never be the same again, nor would South Africans view it and relate to the century-old liberation movement in the same way again.

In the weeks leading up to the Nasrec conference, it was clear that the ANC was in trouble. A growing level of intolerance was evident among party members as they engaged in public spats on the policy direction that the party ought to take. Members traded insults and openly accused one another of hijacking the party for personal gain. The decline in the integrity of the ANC had also divided the party ideologically, and these divisions would later be conveniently exploited by some to pursue factional interests in the party.

The Nasrec conference followed just months after an equally volatile policy conference, which was held in June 2017 at the same venue. When the ANC went into the policy conference, the script that the party sold to the nation emphasised the need for the ANC to engage rigorously on policy so as to enable it to turn the country round and transform the lives of all South Africans, especially the poor and previously disadvantaged. Already at that time, it was public knowledge that former president Jacob Zuma had basically sold the nation to the controversial Gupta family, in the process collecting for himself, his family and cronies some petty cash. The media had just begun publishing the “GuptaLeaks”, a series of revelatory emails detailing how the Gupta family had suborned government ministers, civil servants and even the president himself so as to ensure that lucrative government contracts and tenders were won by or benefited a network of companies associated with or owned by the family.3

In the months leading up to Nasrec, things began to unravel for former president Zuma, who faced mounting criticism from members of the ANC alliance namely the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), about his relationship with the Gupta family. Whether the criticism from the alliance partners was based on principle or on mere political expediency no longer matters.

What can be said with certainty is that Zuma betrayed too many people in quick succession, often dumping friends without giving sufficient notice.

By 2017 Zuma’s compromised leadership was without any doubt becoming increasingly embarrassing to the party, not to mention the country. Every week the media kept revealing damning new instalments of evidence proving Zuma’s involvement in grand corruption.

With his credibility taking a nosedive at a pace never seen before, Zuma fought back. He characterised the negative reports about his leadership as driven by and emanating from so-called white monopoly capital, a term that was widely taken up in the public discourse at the time.4 In Zuma’s version, this racially categorised economic class drew on the support of certain sections of the media and some collaborators within the ANC: a rather improbable alliance. Nevertheless, the term “white monopoly capital” became the subject of intense debates at the June policy conference in 2017.

While the concept of “monopoly capital” had been used by radical, often Marxist academics as far back as the 1970s to characterise the commanding heights of the South African economy under apartheid, its redeployment in recent years turns out to have been engineered by the British PR firm Bell Pottinger, who had been hired by the Gupta family to deflect public criticism from their nefarious business activities.5 When the term was taken up within the ANC, it led to fierce debates, and ideology came to overlay factional disputes and divisions within the party.

The idea of “white monopoly capital” conveniently brought the justification required to elevate factions, based on personal allegiances to particular leaders, into ideological differences within the party. Perhaps this was inevitable. Factions within political groupings need to make sense of themselves to their affiliate members and to outside observers. If factions can be understood as churches, then ideologies represent faith. There is no strong church without a faith; there are no strong factions without ideologies. While members of factions do not usually need much effort to be convinced of the importance and moral basis of their own group, the problem lies with outsiders. They often require a higher level of justification as to why one faction should be seen as more legitimate than another. The factions that existed within the ANC required a much stronger justification for their existence than allegiance to one or other leader. This is where the idea of “white monopoly capital” proved useful, sparking a debate about the necessity or otherwise of radical economic transformation.6

At the centre of the debate, however, was a struggle between two dominant factions within the ANC, battling for legitimacy in the public space. On the one side was the anti-Zuma group, which came to occupy the anti-Zuma space that has existed within the party since he took over leadership of the ANC at the 2007 Polokwane conference. This group defined itself against Zuma by assuming an integrity ticket, openly criticising Zuma’s leadership for having facilitated what has come to be called state capture. This group was led by Ramaphosa, the deputy president, who successfully managed to remain within Zuma’s cabinet while distancing himself from the moral burden of Zuma’s wrongdoings and at the same time branding himself apart from and in contradistinction to Zuma, including as an alternative.

Logically, it is difficult to be an alternative to the system that one is part of and serving under. What Ramaphosa did, however, was to create a safe distance between himself and Zuma. When controversial decisions were taken by Zuma, especially those that negatively affected the private sector, Ramaphosa always responded by speaking to the broader context and diluting the strengths of Zuma’s position while at the same time opening the matter for further deliberation with more nuances. After Zuma’s trusted minerals minister, Mosebenzi Zwane, announced the controversial mining charter in 2017, Ramaphosa quickly moved to allay the fears of the mining industry, distancing himself from the radical charter while opening it up for further negotiations.7

In this way Ramaphosa could also ensure that Zuma would appreciate his service of fending off criticisms from what the president perceived as a hostile private sector while at the same time bringing some legitimacy to the policy positions adopted by Zuma by making them the subject of discussion and negotiation with stakeholders. It was a means of creating a win-win situation for both as they took subtle swipes at each other’s position while retaining an outward sense of collegiality. This is an example of Ramaphosa’s incremental politics, on which I shall elaborate later.

While Ramaphosa was reluctantly assisting the president with some necessary PR work and at the same time nibbling away at Zuma’s integrity whenever the opportunity allowed, Zuma pushed the idea that opposition towards his policies were driven by white monopoly capital and its allies within the ANC and civil society. The problem was exacerbated by some of the chief executives in key sectors such as banking and mining, who openly supported Ramaphosa’s attempt to spin the most optimistic and positive reading of government policy. Where heroes are scarce, the emergence of a potential saviour such as Ramaphosa inevitably sparks unchecked expressions of enthusiasm. Supporting good people in government is a noble thing and the private sector should not shy away from that. However, writing an open fan letter to an ANC presidential candidate, as one executive did, is not the way to go about it. Some business leaders could simply not hide how smitten they were by Ramaphosa or contain their enthusiasm in showing support for him. This happened both before and after Ramaphosa was elected as ANC president at Nasrec.8 But by doing so, business leaders in South Africa actually fuelled the anti-establishment sentiment within the ANC. Because of their revolutionary origins and traditions, liberation parties tend to position themselves against mainstream thinking, particularly against capitalism and its ways of doing things. This is equally true of the ANC, which displays in this way its commitment to correcting the capitalist system and the ills of inequality that come with it.

By the time of the ANC policy conference and elective conference at Nasrec in 2017, therefore, there were two extreme positions that divided the ANC. Those on the Zuma side championed the idea of “white monopoly capital” as the strategic enemy of the ANC. On the other side of the divide were those who have been emboldened to advance the idea that the real enemy of progress in South Africa was corruption among ANC members who had compromised the party by serving their own or sectarian interests. The truth of the matter lies in between the extreme postures taken by the two factions. Although Zuma’s administration did in fact compromise the integrity of the economy and accelerated corruption, not all problems in South Africa under Zuma could be reducible to corruption. As I demonstrated in my first book, When Zuma Goes, there are no leaders within the ANC who can be exonerated from taking collective responsibility for the poor state of affairs that developed within the party and the country. No one within the ANC can claim to be fully beyond reproach. There are differences only in terms of degree of culpability.

Nevertheless, the divisions within the party made for a multifaceted battle at Nasrec. The conference had both a policy and a leadership battle taking place alongside each other. The leadership battle was fought between former president Zuma’s group, with Dlamini-Zuma as their proxy candidate, and the anti-Zuma camp, which ran on an integrity ticket. Ramaphosa emerged as leader of this group, after he faced and fought off challenges from Zweli Mkhize, Lindiwe Sisulu and Mathews Phosa. As I have already mentioned, the anti-Zuma grouping has been in existence as far back as the 2007 Polokwane conference, when Thabo Mbeki lost the leadership battle to Zuma and those who were loyal to Mbeki found themselves out in the cold. Since then, the anti-Zuma camp has taken different forms and has been led by different leaders. Before Ramaphosa, Kgalema Motlanthe unsuccessfully attempted to topple Zuma at the 2012 Mangaung conference, utilising the anti-Zuma ticket. Ironically, the man who would ascend to power at Nasrec was brought back into politics by Zuma as part of his strategy to repel Motlanthe. But after emerging as the leader of the anti-Zuma group at Nasrec, Ramaphosa soon realised that his camp did not have sufficient power to take him all the way to victory. This was an element of the battle that had to do with leadership and it required a different strategy altogether.

The second element of the battle of Nasrec was the policy battle. It is important to note that when it came to the policy battle, it was the Zuma group that won at Nasrec, with Ramaphosa’s group securing only a few disclaimers attached to the end of the policy resolutions that were ultimately adopted by the party. Take, for example, the policy resolution regarding land reform: “Conference resolved that the ANC should, as a matter of policy, pursue expropriation of land without compensation. This should be pursued without destabilising the agricultural sector, without endangering food security in our country and without undermining economic growth and job creation.”9 The first part of the resolution echoes and gives effect to Zuma’s project of so-called radical economic transformation. The second part of the resolution, on the other hand, is a disclaimer, a safety valve that will give Ramaphosa the space to appeal for caution when it comes to setting the pace and scale at which this policy resolution has to be implemented. The rider that the policy of expropriation should “not endanger food security” is a disclaimer that Ramaphosa’s supporters can claim as their push-back against radical populism within the party. Such a compromise must surely paralyse the party: it is still not clear whether the basic thrust of the policy should be to avoid endangering food security by all means or to fast-track land reform while making sure that only acceptable impairments of food security are allowed. The reality is that policies often produce some level of unwanted results. The question is what level of collateral damage is acceptable, and according to whose standard. As it turned out, Nasrec could not resolve the policy squabbles within the ANC. The conference only further institutionalised the long-standing divisions within the party in the form of policy resolutions.

On policy matters, neither of the factions that went into the Nasrec conference could claim an outright victory. When it came to the leadership battle, at least the party presidential race, there was a clear winner. Ramaphosa can be said to have won. However, his victory did not come about in the way in which it was expected. I am convinced that because of a great sense of yearning for leadership change following the Zuma era, South Africans are not willing to appreciate the complexity of the leadership battle that ensued at Nasrec and the manner in which it was decided. True indeed, Ramaphosa won sufficient votes to become the president of the ANC. However, his supporters within the party did not ascend with him to the top positions. It became a very lonely victory as Ramaphosa emerged the winner but found himself surrounded by some very hostile forces. This was a far cry from the hope that Ramaphosa’s victory would represent a clean sweep of the party, indicative of deep changes effected within the ANC.

In the run-up to the elective conference in 2017, various institutions carried out monthly surveys of the unfolding contest between Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma. Throughout this time, I maintained that while Ramaphosa dominated the narratives in the broader public discourse, Dlamini-Zuma was actually in the lead. Most of my colleagues disagreed with me, and they were proved correct. Of concern for me was that, though probably correct, they underestimated the infrastructure and resource base of the Zuma camp and overestimated the likely success of what was a relatively weak campaign pursued by Ramaphosa. It seemed to me that the chances that Ramaphosa would win the race by relying solely on the anti-Zuma support base were very slim.

In fact, Ramaphosa’s victory came about through a strange combination of contradictory agendas knitted together in the eleventh hour with the sole purpose of securing a particular set of leadership results. Since neither faction, the Zuma or the anti-Zuma grouping, held an outright majority, the contest was won by an interest group that managed to subsume and overwhelm both factions. Unlike the two dominant factions within the party, it was the so-called Premier League – comprising former North West premier Supra Mahumapelo, Mpumalanga premier David Mabuza and Free State premier Ace Magashule – that came out of Nasrec with the maximum returns possible. In this way they outsmarted both the Zuma and the anti-Zuma factions, which had entered the conference with firm and uncompromising agendas. The Premier League was more than a faction; it was an interest group capable of exploiting either of the factions that existed. And it exhibited a resolute determination to win the leadership contest, which it in fact did.

The success of the Premier League has fuelled speculation, especially among the two factions, that Nasrec was rigged. There was a strong feeling at the conference that the results of the conference were fiddled with and adjusted, and as a result there were demands for recounts after the results came in.10 One must bear in mind, however, that the suspicion of rigging had been there in the period leading up to the conference. The provincial and regional conferences of the party responsible for preparing the branches for the national conference faced numerous disputes relating to processes of selection and election.

But whatever the truth of these allegations, there is no doubt in my mind that the outcomes of the elections were engineered by the Premier League, particularly in deciding the pecking order of the top six positions. In reaction to former president Zuma’s stubborn resolve to impose Dlamini-Zuma as his faction’s candidate, the Premier League’s power broker, David Mabuza, began to consider packing the top leadership of the ANC with people of his own choice. Had Zuma been more democratic and amicable when it came to deciding who was the rightful bearer of the torch for the Zuma camp, the conference could have turned out very differently. Instead, Mabuza gauged the power play by both the Ramaphosa and Zuma factions and arrived at the conclusion that he could maximise his returns from the conference by playing both factions against each other, weakening them individually and thereby strengthening his position as leader of an interest group. Mabuza realised that Ramaphosa was useful as the president because of his integrity and his ability to help the party win the 2019 general elections. At the same time, Mabuza did not openly state his reservations about supporting Dlamini-Zuma because this would have alienated Zuma, who would have used all the means at his disposal to stymie Mabuza.

Although Ramaphosa waged a morally superior campaign, he still did not have a winning plan. Put differently, Ramaphosa did not have a solid strategy to stop other contenders from winning. In the end, Ramaphosa owed his victory to Mabuza, who elevated him to a winning position that his own poorly performing faction could not have delivered. When the deed was done, the Dlamini-Zuma faction was left in shock and surprise, crying betrayal after realising that Mabuza used them, neutralised them, and also engineered the appointments of the top six leaders. As for the Ramaphosa faction, they simply put on a brave face.

Now that he has weakened the Zuma faction and secured the kind of victory he preferred – standing beside the respectable Ramaphosa instead of the compromised Dlamini-Zuma – Mabuza is probably already thinking beyond the Premier League. It has been murmured in media circles that Mabuza despises the manner in which Zuma embarrassed himself in the revelations about state capture. This is seen as the reason why Mabuza reportedly shunned Dlamini-Zuma’s candidature. Perhaps what it boils down to in the end is that Mabuza opposes the Gupta monopoly on corruption.

The result of the Nasrec battle reveals the complexity of the contradicting agendas that have seized control of the party. Beyond the factions, there are powerful and dangerous interests groups that have gained the upper hand in the ANC. Interest groups are more focused than factions, and they can exist across factions. They are also very adaptable. Furthermore, the politics of interest groups can be more damaging to democracy than haphazard factions. The question that is important to address is how the ANC as a party will proceed in addressing the priorities such as poverty and unemployment, given the proliferation of special interest and factionalism within the party.

Looking at the battle of Nasrec, we should ask how the ANC will carry on in its attempt to consolidate power and avoid losing the 2019 elections. What does Nasrec say about the need for the party to be firm and resolute against corruption? What does Nasrec signify for the policy directions that will be taken by the ANC in the future, and how will opposition parties respond to all this? Ramaphosa’s presidency will have to deal with the interest group politics that have emerged from Nasrec. This is a difficult battle. But with his history of straddling different groups and navigating his way through competing interests, perhaps Ramaphosa will demonstrate his prowess as he steers the party into the future.