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Sihle Zikalala, the youngest person to be elected ANC chairman in KwaZulu-Natal, keeps us waiting at the party’s provincial headquarters, Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme House in downtown Durban.
Half an hour after our set appointment, he walks into the boardroom where we have been kept waiting, dispenses with the niceties and asks to get on with business.
Sipping on a hot beverage from a mug, he sits down and immediately calls for the first question to be fired.
At 42, he is now the most powerful politician in KZN and is set to become the next premier of the province. His responses are measured; he never veers off the script.
“The plan of the ANC provincial executive committee emerging from the conference is to ensure that we build a strong organisation, both qualitatively and quantitatively. We want to ensure that the organisation grows its membership. And it’s work that we have already started,” said Zikalala, who may as well be reading from a prepared speech.
Zikalala holds a BA in Communications from the University of SA. He joins a list of younger leaders who have risen through the ranks of the ANC who are slowly replacing the old guard at the top.
They include Tshwane Mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa, Joburg mayor Parks Tau, Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi, Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba, Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula, ANC national spokesperson Zizi Kodwa and Deputy Minister in the Presidency Buti Manamela, to mention a few. Zikalala’s rise in the ANC has been meteoric – from secretary of the ANC Youth League until 2008, to deputy secretary-general in KZN, to secretary and now chairperson.
Zikalala’s election, however, isn’t without controversy. He is widely seen as a candidate of the so-called Premier League – a phrase used to describe the three powerful premiers of the Free State, North West and Mpumalanga who are consolidating their power in the ANC.
He is seen as their latest and most important victory, giving the Premier League control of the ANC’s biggest province.
But Zikalala immediately dismisses any suggestions that he is a pawn of the Premier League.
“If you say I am part of the Premier League, how do you connect me with it? Because it is said that it is a league of people who are premiers ... So how do you link me with that? There is no league which is called premier in the ANC,” he said.
Zikalala also disagrees that he was elected on a slate aimed at shutting out the group that supported ousted chairman and current premier Senzo Mchunu.
“If people are not elected, we think it is the politics of slates. We don’t know why those who were electing have taken a view that they are not electing these people. We just reach a conclusion that those elected are a slate.
“We don’t respond to the question: why were those not elected? Is it because people believe in these who have been elected?” he asked.
He described himself as a servant of the people.
“I joined the ANC to be part of the revolution and the struggle. I never joined the ANC to lead. I have always been prepared and ready to be led, and I am still led by the ANC. I have never had ambitions.
“In the ANC, you must avoid ambitions. In the ANC, we are not here for our own ambitions. My participation in the ANC is not a career. I could have been a journalist or an editor if I wanted a career. I am here because this is a revolution and we are pursuing the struggle,” he adds.
He may downplay his ambitions and has already dismissed any talk of replacing Mchunu with himself as premier, but those in the know say that possibility cannot be ruled out.
For now, though, the provincial cabinet and all other ANC structures in KZN report to him.
