Etienne Creux
Motlanthe
DEPUTY President Kgalema Motlanthe has come as close as he is likely to show willingness to challenge President Jacob Zuma for the ANC leadership at Mangaung before the party’s nominations process formally closes at the end of the month.
Speaking at the ANC Youth League’s 68th anniversary rally at Mbizana in the Eastern Cape on Saturday, Motlanthe made it clear he would not accept any back-room deal, or be part of a slate of preferred names for the top six.
By stressing that ANC members should be able to exercise their own free will in choosing their leaders, he implicitly invited them to nominate him.
Speaking on the sidelines of a South African Medical Association function in Durban on Saturday night, Motlanthe said there was “no basis to go out and campaign”.
He said leaders were elected to serve in their positions until the ANC gathered at Mangaung on December 16, and there was no need to canvass for support to stay in a position.
There have been intense behind-the-scenes efforts, largely driven by the ANC in Zuma’s stronghold of KwaZulu-Natal, to persuade Motlanthe to agree to accept nomination as Zuma’s deputy – but on the basis that he reject nomination for any other position.
But on Saturday night he told The Mercury he had made his long-held opposition to slates clear “as far back as Polokwane”.
At the rally earlier, Motlanthe made his rejection of any deal clear by stressing the right of ordinary members of the ANC to be allowed, through the branches of the party, to nominate their own choices for leadership.
Slates – and agreeing to be part of them – stripped ANC members of their right to choose and resulted in weaker leaders, he told the crowd.
This was because after their election they were beholden to the conditions set by the compilers of the slates, rather than to the organisation’s members as a whole.
“Today in the ANC, we take away the right of members to elect leadership because today we come with slates and we say to members: ‘This is the slate, and you must elect according to the slate,’” he was reported as saying.
“When we do that, we are taking away the right of members to elect leaders of the ANC. Now, by taking that right away, our leaders would be weaker.
A place on a slate implied support would be conditional, Motlanthe said.
On the other hand, if ANC members expressed their will freely, “then you can stand before them and say: ‘I am not your servant – you elected me.’”
Motlanthe cited the late ANC president Oliver Tambo as being someone who understood the ANC’s democratic processes, because he served as acting president while holding the organisation together during its difficult years in exile.
This was because normal intra-party elections were impossible owing to the numbers of leaders, including Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, who were banned or in jail.
Motlanthe went on to make the point – to loud applause – that “you never know someone well until they are in power”.
The rally, long planned, was postponed for a week after Zuma accepted an invitation from the ANC’s Eastern Cape leadership and Motlanthe deferred on the basis of not wanting to be seen to be competing with the president.
Those present at the rally included party luminaries who are seen as key players in the push for leadership change come December, including ANC treasurer-general Mathews Phosa, Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale and Western Cape secretary Songezo Mjongile.
