Zuma outclassed Malema - analysts

Durban - President Jacob Zuma’s opening speech to the ANC’s national general council (NGC) meeting was a calculated piece of politics that dealt a sturdy blow to Julius Malema and highlighted how the president of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) overplayed his hand, analysts say.

“When it comes to how politically astute this man is, people always underestimate him (Zuma),” political analyst Sipho Seepe told Fin24.com. He likened Malema to former president Thabo Mbeki, who miscalculated Zuma and the ANC.

Without mentioning Malema by name, Zuma was blunt and drew rousing applause for his repeated statements about how juniors in the party had to respect elders.

He also pointedly reminded the ANCYL that it was not an alliance partner of the ANC. It was one of the ANC structures and would, therefore, be subjected to the “revolutionary discipline” that the leadership now had no choice to but to implement in order to stop what he called “worrying tendencies”.

Another of the tendencies Zuma was forthright about was the abuse of lobbying branches and branch members.

While lobbying has been a long-standing democratic practice in the movement, he said that it had been reduced to ambitious leaders instructing branches about who to vote for.

Very dangerous

While the ANCYL has already been quite open about the leaders it wants after the 2012 ANC elective conference, Zuma slammed the so-called slate method of electing leaders. (Leadership is decided upon according to lists of members aligned to certain factions.)

“The slate method is very dangerous. This certainly corrupts the democratic processes of the ANC.

“A new dangerous method of lobbying has also emerged where comrades use money to buy support. We should not have a situation where those who have money turn members of the ANC into commodities – you are playing with people because they are poor,” he said to resounding applause.

Zuma announced that cadres who took internal party disputes to court without resolving them internally would be summarily suspended.

“It is clear that the time has come for the organisation to act. We must take a decision that those who engage in such activities are in fact undermining the organisation and its work… Action must be taken against them.”

Seepe argued that the speech showed a president who was in control and courageous enough to tackle issues and critics head-on.

He thinks the speech will reinforce Zuma’s power for a second term. Zuma painted himself as a leader who respected ANC tradition and processes. He was sure to remind ANC cadres that unlike Mbeki, who had allowed government to drive policy, he honoured the ANC as the political centre, Seepe says.

To reinforce this, Zuma said he had not allowed his Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel to release the much-anticipated document outlining a new economic growth path for the country.

He had wanted the ANC and its NGC meeting to debate and approve this plan before cabinet publicised and implemented it.

Zuma was clear about what the policy process in the ANC was and how ordinary members in the branches had to drive and approve policy (as opposed to government).

This drew much applause from his audience, made up of branches which have been repeatedly told by Cosatu and the ANCYL that the Zuma-led government has done nothing for them.

However, it also underscored how the NGC would not be a place to consider policy changes like Cosatu’s plan for a radical shift in economic policy or the ANCYL’s call to put the nationalisation of mines on the agenda.

Politically shrewd

Seepe said: “The speech left no doubts about the direction of the ANC, about the fact that the president is in control and that this is a president who can lead without antagonising his critics.”

He thinks Zuma’s speech showed a man who was sure about his power base, especially after having made the politically shrewd move of visiting all the ANC branches before the meeting.

Andile Mngxitama, controversial columnist and publisher of the independent journal New Frank Talk series, said Zuma’s speech was to be expected. The big question now, Mngxitama said, is the reaction it would elicit from cadres and from the likes of Malema.

“It seems as though Malema and Mbalula (deputy minister of police and former ANCYL president) over-extended themselves,” said Mngxitama.

He argued that Malema and Mablula’s misguided sense of their pulling power was probably because they were once, during Zuma’s battle for the presidency, powerful spokespeople for the disaffected.

Ultimately, however, Mngxitama was sceptical about whether Zuma’s speech or the Organisational Review to be delivered by ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe will change the fact that policy debates in the ANC. He felt the debates have become a smokescreen for leadership tussles and to protect individuals on a mission to accumulate wealth.

This is, of course, exactly what Mantashe is expected to deal with in his Organisational Review which is, for the first time, being held behind closed doors at this NGC.

The question is how credible Mantashe's lambasting of cadres will be when Zuma’s family, his ministers and their families are continually being linked to lucrative business deals.

 - Fin24.com