The second coming

Wednesday afternoon at the Rhema Mthatha Christian Church and people are throwing their ANC membership cards into a box placed in front of the stage.

The cheers at this rally for the proposed ANC-splinter party would suggest, as ANC president Jacob Zuma inadvertently has, a second coming. The language evokes resurrection -- of the "old ANC".

About 180 of the nearly 2 000 people who have just heard former ANC chair Mosiuoa "Terror" Lekota speak make their religious confession there and then.

Unemployed Thulani Pungu (26) is one of those who has given up his membership. "I'm tired of being ruled by tyrants … I want to tell the ANC leadership that I will be taking my vote elsewhere because my community is still suffering: we have no water, no toilets and I am sick and tired," he says.

Pungu's disenchantment is echoed by most of the people. The Eastern Cape has consistently been one of the worst-performing provinces with regard to service delivery and not much appears to have changed in Mthatha in the past 15 years: some wit in the CBD has named his wi-fi account "potholes" and the cashier at a local garage begs for R4 from a customer's change.

Although Pungu has already converted, others say they will wait until the national convention on November 2, or December 16, when the party is expected to be announced and they have a better grasp of its policies. But one sentiment appears unanimous: people are ready to take their "moral" version of the ANC with them to this new political party.

The congregation had danced en masse around the hall while waiting for more than two hours for Lekota, singing "Sivuleleni indlela siyavota thina / Sikhombe abantu abanengqondo yokusimela [Give us the right to vote/ Open the way because we have the sense to elect people to represent us]".

Gathered in this warehouse-cum-evangelical edifice in the light industrial area of Southernwood are schoolteachers bunking class, civil servants, businessmen in sharp suits, the unemployed and pensioners. Their disillusionment revolves largely around the closing down of space for divergent voices in the party's political discourse and a growing sense of their marginalisation in the ANC since Polokwane.

For some of the sharper dressed, disenchantment appears to stem more from being sidelined from political structures, which equals no access to government and the attendant bounty of being able to dispense tenders and patronage. One of the main organisers of this rally is Nkosinathi Kuluta, stuck in limbo after an objection from the pro-Zuma OR Tambo region to his being nominated for a mayor's position by the provincial list committee.

Many, such as Hombisa Nonkonyana (36), a schoolteacher who travelled from Mqanduli, near Coffee Bay, says it was the recall of former president Thabo Mbeki that was the final sign that the ANC's new leadership would not tolerate any form of dissent, even constructive: "They wanted to humiliate Mbeki. I thought Mbeki was brilliant as president and I am hopeful that he will be advising the new party if they come to power. South Africa still needs him," she says.

Wantu Baliso (39) is a contractor who provides civil engineering services to the SA National Roads Agency: "We accepted Polokwane but what we have seen since then is not peace-making and unity, but purging of people seen as Mbeki supporters," he says.

"It's been happening ever since: if you're not pro-Zuma and say anything at a meeting you are immediately rejected and shouted down," interjects Mzuyanda Makhonzo (49), a worker at Eskom.

There is a perception, too, that unruly tendencies and "un-ANC behaviour" like disrespect for elders from youth leaders such as Youth League president Julius Malema are allowed to flourish -- something Lekota picks on consistently during his 45-minute address.

Yet the difference between Malema and his predecessor, Fikile Mbalula, appears nothing more than a few layers of clothing and a bared bum, the militant rhetoric is similar.

Where, too, is the difference between Thabo Mbeki's ANC and Zuma's? Zuma has been at pains to assure foreign investors that South Africa's macro-economic policies will not shift dramatically; he did so again this week at the Corporate Council on Africa in Washington, DC.

This appears contrary to 49-year-old businessman and undertaker Thembe Nodada's gripe that the ANC is being "taken over by communists and socialists whose policies we are already seeing".

Zandise Gwele, a former chair of the Mzwandile Piliso branch of the ANC in Mthatha, says the build-up to Polokwane was "a mess of bad behaviour" and the splinter proposal points to the inability of the ANC leadership to heal those wounds.

Gwele (37) says those who went to Polokwane with a pro-Mbeki mandate from their branches (the Eastern Cape had an almost two-thirds pro-Mbeki mandate at Polokwane) are now "shouted down" at meetings and feel "they have no political home any more because there just isn't discussion".

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A Zuma joke..

A man died and went to heaven.

As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him.

He asked, "What are all those clocks?"

St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock.

Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move."

"Oh," said the man, "Whose clock is that?"

"That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."

"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"

St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life."

"Where's Jacob Zuma's?" asked the man.

"Zuma's clock is in God's office. He's using it as a fan."