EDITORIAL: Message to Ramaphosa — RET isn’t dead yet

Even though it was a widely predicted win, Zandile Gumede’s election as chair of the ANC’s eThekwini region was still astonishing for what it says about the rank and file members of SA’s governing party, and their appetite for reform. 

Gumede, you’ll remember, was charged alongside 20 others on 2,786 counts of fraud and corruption in March last year, relating to a R430m solid waste tender during her tenure as mayor of eThekwini.

It’s impossible to see her victory in the ANC regional conference on Sunday — defeating Thabani Nyawose, seen as close to President Cyril Ramaphosa — as anything less than a profound endorsement of corruption by the party leading  SA.

Conversely, it was a thumping repudiation of Ramaphosa’s reform agenda, putting him on terms that the ANC’s radical economic transformation (RET) faction — headlined by Jacob Zuma and Ace Magashule — isn’t as dead and buried as analysts had predicted. 

It’s a view underscored by the election, a week ago, of Mandla Msibi as the ANC’s provincial treasurer in Mpumalanga, even though he’s facing two murder charges. Msibi was subsequently told to step aside, and complied, but the fact that he (and Gumede) even stood for election, and were chosen, tells you all you need to know about the party’s rotten culture.

This is a political party where looting and murder are no impediment to higher office, but rather a commendation. It’s a repudiation of governance, the rule of law, and the constitution, and vindication for critics who argue that the party’s moral centre has decomposed, and is unsalvageable. 

Ramaphosa was feted last year for implementing the “step aside” rule, which obliged ANC members facing serious charges to step down until that case had been decided. That rule is now under fire. Increasingly, Ramaphosa sounds like the teetotal grandfather, warning the teenagers not to open the fourth bottle of whisky but being roundly ignored.

After her election, Gumede fired the first shot across the bows when she told the SABC that the “step aside” rule is “killing our movement”.

“I think the ANC branches can discuss it in December — they have already started talking about it,” she said. 

While she agreed to step aside until her case is heard, it’s evidently not what she, or others in her party, sees as ethically reasonable.

Now, in any reasonable world, the ANC would be punished at the voting booth for  its self-serving decisions. Voters are sick of corruption, even if the ANC’s well-heeled elite gravitate towards it. Ramaphosa may understand this, but clearly few others do. 

In the local elections last year, the ANC’s support in KwaZulu-Natal dropped to 42% and, as commentators like Ferial Haffajee  argue, Gumede’s election may mean that “it’s game over for the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal’s largest city” when elections are held in 2024.

Either way, it’s a direct challenge to Ramaphosa ahead of December’s national elective conference. The coalition of the compromised, coalescing under the RET banner, aren’t rolling over. And they don’t care if they take their party, and the country, down with them.