For five days every political journalist’s eyes were trained on the ANC’s elective conference. While watching some of the scenes at Nasrec, one was compelled to ask, ‘What has the ANC become?’
As if on point, the conference itself started seven-and-a-half hours late. If there was any doubt about why our country is in the turmoil it is in, why infrastructure is collapsing and why we flounder around in the dark (literally), this conference provided all the answers.
It started with Pule Mabe vacuously rambling on about why exactly there was a late start. Anyone who has even cursorily followed the way in which the ANC operates would understand that a delayed start is par for the course.
Quite why the media believed Mabe would bring pearls of wisdom and why they hung around to cover this as “breaking news” boggles the mind. But those are weak editorial choices and as citizens we could simply tune out, which the majority of South Africans no doubt did – either because they could not bear the incompetence and venality on display, or because they had no electricity.
Of course, Nasrec was exempt from power cuts and ministers are exempt from them anyway. And so, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe could happily tweet about the ANC gala dinner on the eve of the conference while Stage 6 load shedding was in full effect and Eskom CEO André de Ruyter announced his resignation. The President, too, was silent. Presumably, too busy fighting for his political life.
But this disinterest in governance is what we have come to expect from a governing party venal to the core and obsessed with only one thing: power and access to state resources.
After much drama, which included a late day-one entrance by former president Jacob Zuma and much talk of a Mkhize presidency, none of it came to pass. In fact, President Cyril Ramaphosa slightly strengthened his hand with more votes than he garnered in 2017 at Nasrec, as well as five of the Top Seven in his “camp”. Of course, the Phala Phala report has been taken on judicial review and Zuma, at the eleventh hour, sought to lay a charge against Ramaphosa in a desperate bid to have him “step aside”.
And so, nothing is as it seems and the Zumarites/Radical Economic Transformation supporters on social media, together with the likes of Carl Niehaus and Iqbal Survé predicting a Mkhize ...