ANC Western Cape: New leadership brings diversity and damage control

One of the least helpful but certainly most entertaining responses to the change in ANC leadership in the Western Cape at the weekend was by serial political shapeshifter Badih Chabaan – once of the Africa Muslim Party and currently of the utterly marginal National People's Party. Commenting on a photograph of the top five newly-elected regional leaders posted on Facebook, Chabaan proposed a tantalising wager: “If newly-elected PEC gets more than 33 % in next year's elections I will chop off my cock in public in Adderley Street on a busy Saturday morning”.

It's a pity the ANC in the region is unlikely to garner that much support in the short period of time leading up to the 2016 local elections as it would have been so worth it to watch Chabaan make good on his bet. Perhaps it might motivate the party. However, the surprise change of leadership in the Western Cape at the weekend does suggest that months of quiet canvassing and behind-the-scenes slog work by a so-called splinter in the party – the Unity in Diversity group (UID) – and who sought organisational renewal, has paid off. UID has been lobbying far and wide to rid the party of “power hungry elites, preoccupied with slate politics” and to return power to the party's branches.

Things did not get off to a good start at the weekend when the Western Cape ANC could not find sponsors to pay for the desired venue for the provincial elective conference, the Cape Town International Conference Centre. After an eight hour delay the party's eighth elective conference finally kicked off at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, where it was clear from the start that the 600 delegates were going to vote for change. At some point on Saturday night Fransman stormed out of the venue and threatened to withdraw from the race. It was left to General Noose Zolile of the MK Veterans League to convince him to return.

Fransman and Mjongile were elected to provincial leadership positions in 2011 after a bitter struggle between former Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool and then secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha. At the time Skwatsha refused to stand for nomination claiming that proceedings had been “fraudulent”. The top four positions were unopposed at the time.

At the weekend controversial provincial secretary, Mjongile, was ousted by veteran ANC/SACP activist Faiez Jacobs, who won 338 of a total of 600 votes. Ses'khona People's Movement leader Andile Lili was vying for the position with Jacobs but withdrew in order not to split the vote. The gesture by Lili and Ses'khona is a vote of confidence in Jacobs, who was one of the local leaders able to heal the rift between the local ANC and the movement and which had soured and turned violent with Mjongile in the saddle.

A measure of the support and respect Jacobs enjoys is perhaps encapsulated by comments from some delegates who reportedly sprinted around the campus shouting “Our guy has won, change is here. Our votes are not for sale” after the result had been announced.

Dwindling support, factionalism and various “votes for cash” scandals have dogged Fransman's leadership term and it became clear during preparations for the ANC's 103 birthday celebrations in Cape Town earlier this year that parallel structures were operating outside of the party's formal arrangements for the event. While Minister of Water Affairs and Sanitation, Nomvula Mokonyane – who was part of the organising committee and who is close to Mjongile – embarked on a “formal” programme, an additional process was set up by Luthuli House to meet with branches behind the scenes. These included deliberations with Lili – who enjoys considerable support in the province – and who had been frozen out by Mjongile.

The outcome at the weekend was a strategic vote which is good for continuity considering the short lead-in to the 2016 elections. Fransman as leader will now be surrounded and supported by a new leadership committed to modernising the party as well as returning it to its “non-racial grassroots support” – the branches – in order to grow its dwindling political fortunes in the province. The UID group has also suggested that the ANC is not acting as an effective opposition in the only province in the country not ruled by the party and could learn from the DA's style of opposition in other provinces.

Fransman has, over the past few years, tended to attempt to culturally mobilise coloured voters – including securing support from the Cape Minstrels – a strategy many in the party feel is too narrow and chauvinist for an electorate as diverse and complex as that which resides in the Western Cape. There will also be attempts to foster unity, to not perpetuate a ‘winner takes all’ ethos in the party and for those who have lost positions not to be ‘frozen out’.

Jacobs, whose most recent position was as director for the Western Cape Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent (MISA), an arm of the ministry for co-operative governance and traditional affairs, has deep roots in the region and a long struggle pedigree. He is a hard working and personable leader who is capable of talking across racial, class and cultural divides. He is highly regarded as a leader with integrity.

Jacobs, who was a student activist in the 1980s, led the 1989 high schools defiance campaign in the Western Cape – an extraordinary feat for a teenager – and was also a political detainee. He was recruited to the Ashley Kriel detachment of MK and was involved in serval operations in Mitchells Plain and represented the Western Cape Student Congress at the historic 1989 Conference for a Democratic Future. He has extensive experience also in the trade union movement and was the Western Cape provincial education secretary for Nehawu between 1995 and 1999. Earlier this year he was in the process of drafting a PhD proposal on the ANC and organisational renewal. Jacobs has sought to return “good people” to the party to salvage its tarnished post-democratic reputation.

The other three leaders elected at the weekend are the SACP's Khaya Magaxa as deputy chairperson (replacing Abe Bekeer as Fransman's number two); Maurentia Gillion, former deputy secretary replacing Fezile Calana as provincial treasurer; and Thandi Manikivana as deputy secretary. The new leadership also reflects the diversity and gender parity the party would like to project.

As deputy leader Magaxa, who is the Western Cape SACP's provincial secretary, a member of the ANC provincial executive committee and ANC spokesperson on human settlements in the provincial legislature, brings with him the concerns of the working class. In an interview after the SACP's seventh Provincial Congress, Magaxa said that the party's ultimate goal was “to defeat capitalism and enthrone socialism”.

He might find, however, that his quip during the interview that “I am also proud of Joseph Stalin” and that Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson, George Bush and even Barack Obama were “worse than Stalin” might come back to haunt him in future election campaigns.

“It is annoying to see people link every negative thing in the former Soviet Union to Stalin. But socialism collapsed there after many decades of Stalin’s death. What happened in Soviet Union was not one-dimensional. It was actually multi-dimensional. One of the dimensions was the consistent bureaucratisation of state power. Another dimension to it was the role played by the West. But if you take one dimension and ignore the other, then there is a problem. Throughout the period of its existence, the Soviet Union was under siege by the West... you need to understand that part of the reason it had happened the way it did is because they were trying to tighten screws because they were under siege,” he said.

Well, the ANC is a broad church, they say.

Chabaan (the potential cock chopper) has had dealings with Gillion, a former mayor of the Overberg district municipality. His sour grapes are in no small part perhaps due to the fact that Gillion refused to reinstate acting municipal manager, GW Hermanus, a member of Chabaan's National People's Party, who faced over 40 charges of fraud and sexual harassment in 2010.

In that instance the NPP had formed an alliance with the ANC to secure victory over the Democratic Alliance and Independent Democrats in the region. Gillion refused to bow to pressure from a committee established by the ANC to force her to reinstate Hermanus.

After his election at the weekend, Fransman said it was time that the party reconnected with the the voters of the province. He reiterated the party's need to attract working class voters and said that it hoped to register at least 100,000 voters in the lead up to elections. The party failed to register over one million potential voters for the 2014 elections and voter turnout dropped significantly in traditionally African areas.

There has been some criticism that both Fransman and Jacobs are ‘coloured’ and that this might alienate an ‘African’ constituency but Jacobs is a charismatic and conciliatory leader who has the potential to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters. He brings a much needed gravitas and maturity that has been lacking in the party provincially.

The party, Fransman said this week, would be focussing on the Cape Metro and hoped to wrestle the province and the municipality back from the DA. For the past decade support for the ANC in the region has steadily declined and it has not been able to convince voters of the Western Cape to vote for it since 2009 when it lost the province to the DA. The ANC lost the City of Cape Town to the DA in 2006.

For the ANC this will mean doing the difficult face-to-face slog work of connecting with communities, an intervention that the Unity in Diversity group within the party described as “a key site of renewal that warrants relentless attention by the movement. Politically-vibrant and community-oriented branches can rescue the organisation”. DM

Photo: The new ANC Western Cape leadership – (L-R) Khaya Magaxa, Thandi Manikivana, Marius Fransman, Faiez Jacobs, Maurencia Gillion