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President Jacob Zuma has warned that the choice of who leads the party must not be dictated to by external players, and said that the influence of business interests was a concern.
In his last speech as ANC president after 10 years, Zuma rebuked ANC members who took the party to court, saying that a “judge should not be asked to dictate ANC organisational processes and the direction of the movement”.
The ANC is this weekend electing Zuma’s successor in a close race between his preferred candidate, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Dlamini-Zuma’s backers have accused Ramaphosa of serving the interests of big business, and Ramaphosa’s lobbyists insist that the ANC will implode and the economy will collapse if Dlamini-Zuma wins the election.
Zuma told the more than 4000 delegates attending the conference that “we must find a way of protecting the ANC from corporate greed and make sure decisions taken are not dictated to by business interests”.
He dismissed the threats to the ANC and the economy if the conference adopted “certain outcomes or elected certain candidates if these are not favoured by business”.
“All of you know what is the right thing to do,” Zuma said.
The five-day national elective conference in Nasrec in Johannesburg got off to a nail-biting start on the face of a scare that the crucial event might collapse and throw the governing ANC into disarray.
A series of court rulings this week placed the ANC on the back foot as high courts nullified structures from three provinces and blocked voting delegates from up to 52 branches from participating in the conference.
The affected 142 delegates represented KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and North West – three main ANC provinces that formed the backbone of the campaign for Dlamini-Zuma.
The remainder of the provinces preferred Ramaphosa, who would be emboldened by the developments ahead of the leadership election and the announcement of the results later on Sunday.
On Friday the high courts in Pietermaritzburg and Bloemfontein nullified both the KwaZulu-Natal and Free State ANC leadership over allegations of irregularities, while the Mahikeng court reversed the election of regional leaders in Bojanala, the North West’s bigger region in terms of membership.
KwaZulu-Natal lost 27 votes from its allocated 870 – the biggest contingent of delegates at the conference.
Free State also lost 46 votes, including 27 for the provincial executive and 19 from the 14 disqualified branches, while Bojanala had the nomination of 69 delegates from 38 branches declared unlawful.
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe told a media briefing after Saturday’s special national executive committee meeting that the disqualified delegates would participate in the conference as “non-voting” delegates.
Mantashe said the ANC could not risk allowing these delegates to vote because they could, in the eyes of the courts, place the legitimacy of the conference at risk.
Those attending the special meeting on Saturday morning spoke of the possibility of postponing the conference to June next year and converting this weekend’s sitting into a consultative conference but the proposal failed to gain traction.
On Thursday the ANC national executive committee threw out a proposal to change the voting process to accommodate candidates who lost the positions they were vying for in lower positions.
Mantashe said on Friday in a television interview that the sentiment in the national executive committee had been that one of the candidates would have the option of contesting for a lower position if they lost out in the first run.
Those in the CR17 camp (Ramaphosa’s backers) rejected suggestions that Ramaphosa could “compromise” and make way for Dlamini-Zuma, saying that he had previously done the same in 1994 to accommodate former president Thabo Mbeki.
The deputy president post is likely to be a three-horse race between Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza and outgoing treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize.
City Press heard that Mkhize, who had been linked to Dlamini-Zuma, was unlikely to accept any offer unless it was deputy president.
Despite the fact that no province had nominated Mkhize for the post – he was nominated by a number of branches in KwaZulu-Natal – it was expected that he would receive support from 25% of the conference delegates during nominations.
