NGC MOVES TO POLISH ANC’S IMAGE
Reality check gives more power to integrity commission, but will it follow through?
Amid declining electoral support and falling membership, the ANC was forced at its national general council (NGC) meeting last weekend to quash dissent between its structures and emerge with decisions to arrest the slide. It faces the prospect of a gruelling local government election in 2016.
Some key decisions emerged from the party’s midterm policy review conference.
President Jacob Zuma used the meeting to dismiss the possibility of leading the party for a third term, according to the Mail & Guardian , which spoke to him on the sidelines of the gathering. It is under Zuma’s watch that the party’s fortunes have been in decline, particularly in urban centres.
Election trends paint a worrying picture for the party. It has acknowledged for the first time that while the growth of the DA is in the main at the expense of smaller parties, it is concerned that the party has begun to penetrate its base. It admits the EFF drew most of its voters away from the ANC.
Party support in key metros has declined and voter turnout in ANC strongholds has dropped below that of opposition parties in all provinces except KwaZulu Natal. Party secretary-general Gwede Mantashe says in his organisational report that 40% of the party’s vote came from four provinces and all four had a low voter turnout. In addition, voter turnout in urban areas grew more than in rural areas over 10 years. This implies that the rural vote will carry less weight in the national voter turnout than it has in the past.
This development is a concern since “the rural masses” constitute its solid base.
“Of critical importance to us is that if the ANC declines below 60% in 2016, this would represent a psychological turning point that would be interpreted as an indication of the demise of the movement,” Mantashe says.
Dissent at the meeting over the announcement that its membership had dropped spoke volumes. Zuma, opening the NGC, said party membership had dropped from 1,2m in 2012 to 769 870 in 2015. On Saturday, ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte contradicted Zuma, saying the membership stood at 1,3m, but that this was the “unaudited” figure. On Sunday, Zuma said 769 870 was the audited figure and that membership might be in excess of 1,2m. His attempt at damage control had him fumbling over the numbers as he read them out.
To reverse the decline, the ANC has put in place stringent processes to select councillors and will announce its mayoral candidates ahead of time so that voters are assured of their “credibility”. Traditionally, it has announced its mayoral candidates after the election, but in 2011, after losing the Cape Town metro in 2006, it announced its candidate there for the first time. The party has also turned inward to arrest the slide, admitting that factional battles and perceptions of corruption have tainted its image. These factors have also contributed to the membership decline.
But as the ANC sought to deal with these issues at the NGC, divisions simmered beneath the surface.
A major point of contention was Mantashe’s organisational report, which was brutally frank about the state of the party. The secretary-general, once a key Zuma ally, is now firmly in the camp opposing the president’s loyalists. He is opposed by a group of leaders aligned to Zuma, a faction dubbed the “premier league” which includes the premiers of Mpumalanga, David Mabuza, the Free State, Ace Magashule, and the North West, Supra Mahumapelo. Delegates from these provinces fought aspects of Mantashe’s report at the NGC.
One issue used to attack the report was the integrity commission, a body of senior party leaders which was formed in 2012 to “protect” the image of the party. It is supposed to make sure that “urgent action” is taken against leaders and members of the ANC who face damning allegations.
Mantashe described how the party’s top leadership structure, the national executive committee, had failed to implement decisions of the integrity commission. He noted that leaders implicated felt that they would be “admitting guilt” if, as the commission recommended, they stepped aside.
Top party leaders also used the legal principle of “innocent until proven guilty” to avoid sanction from the commission.
Leaders aligned to Zuma argued in the NGC that allowing the integrity commission to take binding decisions against those implicated in scandals violated the constitution of the country and could be abused by that individual’s political opponents. They feared that the commission could be
WHAT IT MEANS ALARMING DECLINE IN MEMBERSHIP URBAN VOTER TURNOUT HIGHER THAN RURAL AREAS
used in factional fights.
But Gauteng and the Eastern Cape argued that the decision to form the integrity commission and provide it with “teeth” was taken at a national conference of the ANC, its highest decision-making body, and therefore could not be watered down.
In the end, the NGC took a far-reaching decision — that the integrity commission had the power to take binding decisions and should be better resourced.
Another decision was that the “formalisation of lobby groups” and promotion of slates were disciplinary offences. This decision held a veiled reference to the “premier league”.
The battle was described by some as a “proxy” or a scene-setter for the party’s 2017 leadership race, but Magashule quashed this assertion. He said his province had opposed the move to allow the integrity commission to make binding decisions, but the majority view was that it should be allowed to do so.
“We accept the decision taken; it was well balanced between the two views,” he said. The dissenting provinces were allowed to make a submission on their opposition to the move and in the end, it was agreed that the NEC would act as an “appeals body” on decisions taken by the integrity commission.
Resistance to bolstering the powers of the integrity commission was viewed by some as an attempt by certain leaders to shield alleged wrongdoers and preserve patronage and corruption networks.
But whether the decision to give the integrity commission teeth will help restore the party’s image is unclear, particularly as its work theoretically should include cases such as the spending on Zuma’s Nkandla residence. The issue dominated discourse in the build-up to the 2014 election and is likely to dominate headlines before 2016. The matter is going to be the subject of an inquiry by the highest court in the land, the constitutional court. This is after the EFF took Zuma to the court to force him to abide by the recommendations of the public protector and pay back the money spent on “undue benefits” to him and his family in the security upgrades to his residence.
Should the EFF win in court, the effects on the ANC’s election campaign could be harrowing for the party and its image since it has consistently defended Zuma’s approach in dealing with Nkandla.
Another electoral decline for the ANC would give the 2017 election race a unique flavour. The party will actually be forced to ensure that it adheres to its own policy on leadership selection, contained in a document titled “Through the Eye of the Needle”, instead of fighting through slates, patronage and money politics.