The road to Mangaung
The case for President Jacob Zuma’s second term as ANC president
By Cedric Gina
Numsa discussed the matter of leadership of the ANC at the national congress in Durban and decided that there must be both continuity and change and that Cosatu needs to pronounce on that continuity and change in its congress in September.
The national leadership of Numsa took time to reflect and plan for the next four years. In the planning, we posed a fundamental question: who needs to continue and who needs to change in Mangaung. We had a frank ideological discussion which culminated in all of the national office bearers (NOBs) agreeing that President Jacob Zuma must be given a further mandate to lead the ANC for another term.
We then took this proposal to the structures of our union. The whole union discussed the secretariat report that recommended Jacob Zuma for second term. The central committee finally met, and there was a discussion and an agreement on the way forward: more time was needed for regions to debate and this could happen at the regional policy workshops that were to take place in the week after the central committee meeting.
The Numsa secretariat, led by Irvin Jim and Karl Cloete called another meeting with all the regional secretaries in Cape Town, where a thorough political and ideologically rich discussion took place and agreed that the proposal by the national office bearers was sound and intelligent. They vowed to recommend the proposal in their regional policy workshops.
On September 7, a special national executive committee (NEC) tele-conference was convened. On the agenda were discussions about the Cosatu and ANC leadership. This meeting agreed that Jacob Zuma must be allowed to serve another term as a President of the ANC.
I want to use this article to explain why we think that President Jacob Zuma must continue to lead and heal the ANC. What happened in 2007 and 2008 may have been politically correct at the time, but it caused a huge amount of damage to the organisation. The formation of a breakaway political party, Cope, was just one of the symptoms of the damage.
This is a leader of the ANC who spoke about unity of the ANC in his closing address at the ANC conference in 2007. This is a leader who mentioned Thabo Mbeki in his speech and reminded all South Africans that he had been a friend of Thabo Mbeki for many years and never thought that they will contest each other one day.
The NEC members who pushed for the removal of Thabo Mbeki are modern day revolutionaries who are now calling for the head of President Jacob Zuma. We must ask what it is that he did not deliver to them. Did he refuse to allow Cosatu leaders to be charged in terms of Rule 25 of the ANC constitution?
What is evidently clear is that Cosatu has been on the receiving end of the NEC of the ANC. I shudder to think what would have happened if a man of the alliance, in the form of President Jacob Zuma, had not been the President of the ANC when the right-wing nationalists in our multiclass ANC were on the rampage against the left-wing axis of the alliance in the form of Cosatu and the SACP.
It is Numsa that first condemned Julius Malema when he attacked the secretary general of the ANC for holding two positions, one in the SACP and one in the ANC at the same time, and then announced a candidate three years before the elective conference of the ANC.
It is a fact that the removal of Mbeki six months before he completed his term was not the best decision and from the announcement before the NEC decision, it is clear that there were members of the NEC who could not wait for six months. The transition was handled well, however this dangerous grouping grew in confidence to do wrong in the ANC.
President Zuma’s cabinet was a consultative effort with alliance partners. During the reshuffle he removed a former leader of Cosatu for non-performance. What stronger message can a sitting president do to show his commitment to service delivery for our people? When there were allegations of corruption, the President removed some comrades who were very dear to him. What stronger message can a President send to show his resolve to deal with corruption?
I am in no way saying that President Zuma is a saint who has not made mistakes, but who can argue that all leaders have not made mistakes in their time.
I call on all our members who are active branch members to heed this advice and nominate President Jacob Zuma, and other working-class leaders, to work with him to implement a radical program that can deal with the triple crisis of unemployment, poverty and inequality which has unfortunately given our country the title of the most unequal society in the world.
We want the national democratic revolution to be implemented without fail, and on that score I wish to end my contribution by a quote by a Vietnamese leader, Le Duan, who said: “A revolution is a coup d’ etat; it is not the outcome of plots. It is the work of the masses.”
I think we are capable of exposing the plots that we are now seeing, and remember that the leaders of the plots are same people that ensured that the alliance political centre debate was defeated in the ANC NEC.
The President alone could not change their persuasion that it is the ANC alone that is the political centre. I think that giving any more power to these people will be extremely dangerous to the working class.
At this point in time, it is President Zuma who must be given an opportunity to heal the alliance – working with the new NEC members that are biased to the working class.
Our people must rise and defend the ANC and the alliance from those who do want the alliance.
Cedric Gina is Numsa president