The ANC’s three critical fault lines

The formation of a significant breakaway party by Mosiuoa Lekota is playing into three critical fault lines in the ANC:

1. Mbeki vs Zuma
The ANC allowed the political contest between Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki to develop into a full blown war when it could have been nipped in the bud with a private agreement to place the party first.

The consequence was that by the time Polokwane rolled around, the party was deeply divided between supporters of the two leaders. The term “personality cult” comes to mind.

The problem with this approach is that once Zuma had won, there was no place for those who had campaigned to the bitter end for Mbeki to hide. The scars of the Polokwane confrontation run deep and descend through the organisation’s regional and branch structures.

2. Exile vs Internal
Representatives of the ANC’s “internal wing” - the UDF, which mobilised civic, small business and student organisations against apartheid - have always felt a little annoyed with the ANC’s exiled leadership, which returned to the country en masse to take many of the top government and political posts in the organisation.

Internals felt they had endured the brunt of state repression, but were ignored by the post-1994 government. The ANC closed down the UDF and marginalised the once-powerful civic organisations, perhaps anticipating that they could spearhed grassroots protests against service delivery.

Ironically, Mosiuoa Lekota, a former UDF leader who is now leading moves towards a breakaway from the ANC, was one of those who was included by the ANC leadership under Mandela. He was made premier of the Free State and later Defence Minister.

Now that he is out in the cold, he could rekindle his old UDF contacts and build on grassroots organisation against service delivery in an effort to build a “second” mass democratic movement.

3. Ethnic loyalties
Announcing his intention to fight Zuma, Lekota referred extensively to the ethnic flavour of support for Zuma, including T-Shirts reading “100 percent Zulu”.

Mbeki and his government had, without much justification, been labelled the “Xhosa nostra” in reference to Mbeki’s Eastern Cape roots. Although Lekota is not Xhosa, it is noteworthy that the Eastern Cape is likely to be the strongest region for a new breakaway party.

This will reinforce the idea that there is a Zulu vs Xhosa ethnic divergence between Zuma’s ANC and the breakaway movement. This is a very dangerous tendency, which I have warned about in a previous post.