The politics of the lists, or, Why the parliamentary ship is listing

After months of officially-denied rumours, Senzo Mchunu last Monday resigned as premier of KwaZulu-Natal in a move widely expected since the party’s November 2015 provincial conference where he lost the ANC chairperson’s post. In his resignation letter, published in The Times, Mchunu writes, “On Sunday the Secretary-General (of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe) communicated with me in the main on deployment… He specifically explained the decision to me to allow Provincial Government reshuffle and their intention deployment [sic] to the National Assembly”.

Subsequently Business Day reported Mchunu had turned down a move to Parliament. If so, it would be one of the few times an ANC member has turned down redeployment. Others, who fell out politically, or who became problematic over, for example, the use of an official credit card, have accepted redeployment to either the National Assembly or the National Council of Provinces (NCOP).

For this to happen an MP or NCOP delegate must resign to make way for the redeployed person, and the person to be redeployed must be next in line on the list of public elected representatives submitted to the IEC ahead of elections. There is some leeway as either the national list can be amended or the regional list in which provinces sent their party members to serve at national level (the mix of national and regional is determined by a formula on the back of voting support). In a straight-up-and-down filling of a vacancy, ranking of names on the lists is not an issue.

But when going to Parliament is the consolation prize in a political falling out, it’s not quite so simple. The lists must be amended. But that cannot happen for a year after an election, according to Schedule 1A of the 1998 Electoral Act, and then only once a year. Changes can include the ranking of names or even replacing up to 25% of names on the list, according to Section 21 of the schedule.

In the politicking around replacing the Speaker of the Limpopo legislature, Merriam Ramadwa, who had refused to be recalled, this meant waiting until after 20 May 2015 when the lists could be, and were, changed. ANC MP Polly Boshielo resigned in June 2015 after member of the provincial legislature (MPL) Mkhacani Maswanganyi was listed at the top of the amended national ANC list. Boshielo went to Limpopo as Speaker, Maswanganyi was sworn in as MP. And in mid-July 2015 Ramadwa was recalled, according to City Press.

The May 2015 list amendments, published in the Government Gazette, also put Sifiso Buthelezi in second place on the ANC revised national list. The KwaZulu-Natal-born Buthelezi was sworn in at the end of February after communications committee chairwoman Joyce Moloi-Moropa resigned to serve full-time in her job as treasurer of the South African Communist Party (SACP). But the resignation came after she was effectively isolated after a torrid time in that committee’s ANC study group over the SABC’s management and board accountability.

Buthelezi’s arrival sparked rumours he was primed to become deputy finance minister. This after the incumbent Mcebisi Jonas publicly stated that members of the Gupta family had offered him a position as head of the finance portfolio well before the finance ministerial musical chairs over four days in December 2015. However, if there was any plan to have Buthelezi serve in the executive, that would have had to be planned as far back as May 2015 when the lists were amended. Today he serves as ANC MP on the finance committee.

However, the connection between amending lists and deployment to the top level of government is illustrated by how Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane arrived at Parliament. The regional Free State to national list was amended to put him in first spot on 2 September 2015, according to the Government Gazette. Zwane becoming an MP before he became a Cabinet member was key: the two permissible spots from outside Parliament were already held by Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane (11^th on the Gauteng provincial ANC list) and Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko.

At the time City Press reported that Zwane was sworn in as MP a day after the list was amended, but his departure from the Free State executive council, where he served as agriculture MEC, was announced by the provincial ANC on 18 September after Premier Ace Magashule reshuffled his executive. President Jacob Zuma announced Zwane’s appointment as minister on 23 September 2015.

Soon thereafter various media reports emerged about the new minister’s links with the Gupta family – a controversial dairy farming project and as the politician who wrote the letter on the basis of which wedding guests for a Gupta family were allowed to land at the military Waterkloof Air Base.

But more often the redeployment to Parliament is less meteoric, resolving provincial and municipal political pickles.

In early 2013, then Nelson Mandela Bay Metro mayor Zanoxolo Wayile (Cosatu’s Eastern Cape chairperson before that) was redeployed to Parliament. Veteran MP Ben Fihla had resigned from the national legislature to take up the metro’s mayoral chains. But in May 2015 Fihla resigned as mayor of the troubled metro to make way for Danny Jordaan, who was headhunted by the ANC for the mayor’s post. Wayile did not return to Parliament after the May 2014 elections as at position 149 he was too low on the ANC national elections list. According to the Mail & Guardian, Fihla was appointed as special advisor to Eastern Cape Premier Phumulo Masualle.

Two former mayors of Buffalo City metro, Zukisa Faku and Zukiswa Ncitha, are at the National Assembly and NCOP respectively since mid-2015. In March Faku was found guilty of fraud in the East London Magistrate’s Court for clocking up about R15,000 in private purchases on her council credit card. Sentencing procedures were to start on 17 May, although it remains unclear whether this indeed happened. Initially redeployed to the NCOP in June 2015, Faku is now a National Assembly MP, courtesy of the May 2014 election lists where she featured in fifth spot on the Eastern Cape regional list.

Ncitha in June 2015 was nominated as an Eastern Cape NCOP delegate about two weeks after she was removed from her mayor’s job. A year earlier she was arrested in connection with the fraud scandal over a Nelson Mandela memorial and continues to face a fraud trial, alongside others. As an NCOP delegate Ncitha most recently was active on the joint ad hoc committee to select the new National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) board, and in the NCOP committee processing the Expropriation Bill last month.

In 2013 former Limpopo premier Cassel Mathale was redeployed to the National Assembly amid the fractious provincial politics that led to him being asked to resign. He returned as MP in 2014 on the back of seeming popularity, which saw him in 81^st spot on the ANC 2014 national elections list.

Mchunu, the ex-KwaZulu-Natal premier, was in second spot on the ANC provincial list for the 2014 elections, which secures him a seat in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature.

Should it turn out Mchunu is to be redeployed to Parliament after all, the lists would have to be amended. And a spot would have to be found elsewhere for someone, who would give way.

That’s the politics of the lists. DM

Photo by Greg Nicolson, 12 February 2015, State of the Nation Address, Cape Town.