Everybody wants to rule the world: Zweli Mkhize’s ‘the more, the merrier’ belies the future ANC reality

While the immediate focus has been on whether either of them could really unseat President Cyril Ramaphosa, these latest developments may in fact reveal a significant departure from the way the ANC worked for decades. It may suggest that the ANC no longer really has “factions”, but now has only “interest groups” which are much more flexible and even more loosely affiliated with stated political beliefs than thought possible. It is not impossible that the party will never have a dominant group again, thus preventing it from forming a plan or an agenda to govern properly in the future.

On Wednesday night, while speaking at a lecture in Durban, Mkhize confirmed that he will contest the ANC’s leadership. On Sunday, the Sunday Times had a long report showing how Mkhize is now challenging the Special Investigating Unit to reveal the information it has about his role in the Digital Vibes scandal.

Key to this is the issue of whether or not Mkhize will even be allowed to contest the leadership in December. If he is criminally charged, he will not be eligible and he is clearly trying to remove this problem.

But that is really the beginning of his problems. Even if Mkhize is, somehow, not formally charged by then, the evidence in the public domain against him is strong. As Daily Maverick Scorpio’s Pieter-Louis Myburgh has detailed many times, Mkhize’s former personal assistant benefitted from the R150-million scandal, as was his family, which ended up receiving some of the money.

Even before Digital Vibes there is strong evidence that Mkhize was involved in other transactions. Again, Daily Maverick Scorpio’s Pieter-Louis Myburgh exposed how money from a PIC deal ended up paying for Mkhize’s townhouse.

Even if Mkhize somehow prevailed in the ANC’s contest, his underhand dealings would surely damage the party’s prospects in the 2024 elections. It is clear that corruption is likely to be a major issue in those polls, perhaps even the dominant issue. And he will be unable to simply claim that Digital Vibes or PIC are not scandals.

South Africans have given the ANC leaders a free pass before – it is unlikely that they will do so ever again.

But much before that, Mkhize would first have to get more support than Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.

And this is where the real problems in the ANC may be revealing themselves.

In the past, and certainly five years ago, it was clear that there often were two major groups in the party, and these were referred to as factions. Hence all the talk about the “RET faction” and the “Ramaphosa faction”.

Now it appears that a process once identified by Dr Ralph Mathekga has gained much momentum. As he explained just months after the 2017 Nasrec conference, the ANC was moving from “factions” to a situation where groups of interests coalesced around each other. These were much more temporary than factions.

And thus there is a lot less stability in the party – instead of two main groups, you have a constantly changing set of groups.