KEITH GOTTSCHALK: How power has shifted away from Zuma inside the ANC
'While Zuma has a voting majority at the national executive committee, he does not have one at the level of the branches'
The media reported on the national policy conference of the African National Congress (ANC) through the perspective of power struggles. This wasn’t far off the mark. While the ANC’s internal election campaign for its December conference - at which it will elect a new party leader - has not yet officially opened, in reality its party election campaigns are similar to US primaries, which run for an entire year. In fact power politics was underway long before the national policy conference started just outside Johannesburg on June 30th. Before policy motions were submitted, ordinary members are supposed to seek approval from branches. They then purportedly go to regional and finally provincial policy conferences. But the reality was much rougher. The experience in the Western Cape, one of the nine ANC provincial structures, provides a good example. Its provincial policy conference started two hours late, and then had an hour and a half of disguised electioneering for Cyril Ramaphosa – ...
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