Booing, singing as ANC vote enters final stretch

POLOKWANE – African National Congress officials huddled behind closed doors yesterday to try to resolve an unusually public and bitter contest over who will take over leadership of the party – and possibly of the country.

President Thabo Mbeki is expected to lose the party leadership to Jacob Zuma, the current party deputy president. Their rivalry has seen delegates to the party conference booing, singing partisan songs and challenging attempts by the old guard to keep the process decorous.During the decades it was an underground movement fighting apartheid, the ANC prided itself on presenting a unified front.That makes what elsewhere might seem the typical trappings of democracy seem shocking.”The organisation is going through deep strain,” ANC spokesman Smuts Ngonyama told reporters.”We have never had contestation on this level because people have to choose between two leaders who are very popular with the people.”Indeed, the ANC leadership post hadn’t been publicly contested in 55 years.As the conference opened on Sunday, delegates loyal to Zuma booed leaders seen as Mbeki allies, carried pictures of Zuma despite a ban on partisan displays, and called for national chairman Mosiuoa Lekota’s removal.Zuma supporters broke into the anti-apartheid song “Bring me my machine gun,” which has become Zuma’s anthem, as soon as Mbeki had finished an address to the conference on Sunday.Speaking at a press conference, Jeff Radebe, a member of Mbeki’s Cabinet and of the party’s national executive committee, acknowledged Sunday’s atmosphere was not what ‘we are used to in the ANC’.Radebe said delegates had been made to hand over placards of candidates and that proceedings were expected to go more smoothly Monday.Voting during closed sessions was expected to begin later yesterday with results expected today or tomorow.”The mood was very robust but not as emotional as yesterday,” Radebe said.Political analyst Adam Habib said he had never seen such a divided ANC, but added: “This rough and tumble has a level of democracy to it.”During the nomination process last month in the ANC’s provincial and other internal bodies, Zuma was far ahead of Mbeki.It was a remarkable political comeback after a rape trial – which ended with his acquittal but left lingering questions about his judgement – and a pending investigation for corruption.The left in particular has embraced Zuma, counting on him to deliver houses, jobs and services to a black majority still impoverished 13 years after South Africa’s first all-race elections ended apartheid.That reflects frustration with Mbeki’s approach, which has been to rely on pro-market policies to lift South Africa’s economy, and with it lift the poor.Mbeki’s moves toward greater investment in health and social welfare may have come too late.But Zuma was unlikely to radically change the economic agenda for fear of scaring off foreign as well as domestic investors.Zuma has called for AIDS and crime to be ‘treated as national emergencies’, something many South Africans have criticised Mbeki for not doing.On foreign policy, Zuma has challenged Mbeki for insisting on quiet diplomacy over confrontation with neighbouring Zimbabwe, where the autocratic Robert Mugabe is accused of ruining the economy, undermining democracy, and thereby threatening the region’s stability.Much has been made of the personality and class differences between Mbeki and Zuma, former allies who are both 65 and spent years in exile during apartheid.Mbeki, a foreign-educated academic who sprinkles his speeches with Shakespeare, is seen as aloof.Zuma had no formal schooling and was a leader of the exiled ANC’s military wing.If Zuma wins, he would be in line to be the party’s candidate for president of the country in the 2009 elections.The ANC candidate would likely win, given the party’s wide support.Mbeki is barred by the constitution from seeking a third term as president of Africa’s political and economic powerhouse.But remaining at the helm of the ANC would give him a say in who succeeds him and in the policies his successor adopts.In his 21?2-hour speech to the conference on Sunday, Mbeki described ‘matters’ affecting Zuma as being ‘one of the most difficult and painful challenges we have faced over the last five years’.Mbeki fired Zuma as the country’s deputy president in 2005 after Zuma’s financial adviser was convicted of trying to elicit a US$70 000 bribe for Zuma to deflect investigations into an arms deal.Charges were withdrawn against Zuma but the National Prosecuting Authority has indicated it may revive them.Last year, Zuma was acquitted of raping a family friend.During the trial, he outraged AIDS activists by testifying that he had unprotected, consensual sex with the HIV-positive woman and then took a shower in the belief that it would protect him from the AIDS virus.Nampa-APTheir rivalry has seen delegates to the party conference booing, singing partisan songs and challenging attempts by the old guard to keep the process decorous.During the decades it was an underground movement fighting apartheid, the ANC prided itself on presenting a unified front.That makes what elsewhere might seem the typical trappings of democracy seem shocking.”The organisation is going through deep strain,” ANC spokesman Smuts Ngonyama told reporters.”We have never had contestation on this level because people have to choose between two leaders who are very popular with the people.”Indeed, the ANC leadership post hadn’t been publicly contested in 55 years.As the conference opened on Sunday, delegates loyal to Zuma booed leaders seen as Mbeki allies, carried pictures of Zuma despite a ban on partisan displays, and called for national chairman Mosiuoa Lekota’s removal.Zuma supporters broke into the anti-apartheid song “Bring me my machine gun,” which has become Zuma’s anthem, as soon as Mbeki had finished an address to the conference on Sunday.Speaking at a press conference, Jeff Radebe, a member of Mbeki’s Cabinet and of the party’s national executive committee, acknowledged Sunday’s atmosphere was not what ‘we are used to in the ANC’.Radebe said delegates had been made to hand over placards of candidates and that proceedings were expected to go more smoothly Monday.Voting during closed sessions was expected to begin later yesterday with results expected today or tomorow.”The mood was very robust but not as emotional as yesterday,” Radebe said.Political analyst Adam Habib said he had never seen such a divided ANC, but added: “This rough and tumble has a level of democracy to it.”During the nomination process last month in the ANC’s provincial and other internal bodies, Zuma was far ahead of Mbeki.It was a remarkable political comeback after a rape trial – which ended with his acquittal but left lingering questions about his judgement – and a pending investigation for corruption.The left in particular has embraced Zuma, counting on him to deliver houses, jobs and services to a black majority still impoverished 13 years after South Africa’s first all-race elections ended apartheid.That reflects frustration with Mbeki’s approach, which has been to rely on pro-market policies to lift South Africa’s economy, and with it lift the poor.Mbeki’s moves toward greater investment in health and social welfare may have come too late.But Zuma was unlikely to radically change the economic agenda for fear of scaring off foreign as well as domestic investors.Zuma has called for AIDS and crime to be ‘treated as national emergencies’, something many South Africans have criticised Mbeki for not doing.On foreign policy, Zuma has challenged Mbeki for insisting on quiet diplomacy over confrontation with neighbouring Zimbabwe, where the autocratic Robert Mugabe is accused of ruining the economy, undermining democracy, and thereby threatening the region’s stability.Much has been made of the personality and class differences between Mbeki and Zuma, former allies who are both 65 and spent years in exile during apartheid.Mbeki, a foreign-educated academic who sprinkles his speeches with Shakespeare, is seen as aloof.Zuma had no formal schooling and was a
leader of the exiled ANC’s military wing.If Zuma wins, he would be in line to be the party’s candidate for president of the country in the 2009 elections.The ANC candidate would likely win, given the party’s wide support.Mbeki is barred by the constitution from seeking a third term as president of Africa’s political and economic powerhouse.But remaining at the helm of the ANC would give him a say in who succeeds him and in the policies his successor adopts.In his 21?2-hour speech to the conference on Sunday, Mbeki described ‘matters’ affecting Zuma as being ‘one of the most difficult and painful challenges we have faced over the last five years’.Mbeki fired Zuma as the country’s deputy president in 2005 after Zuma’s financial adviser was convicted of trying to elicit a US$70 000 bribe for Zuma to deflect investigations into an arms deal.Charges were withdrawn against Zuma but the National Prosecuting Authority has indicated it may revive them.Last year, Zuma was acquitted of raping a family friend.During the trial, he outraged AIDS activists by testifying that he had unprotected, consensual sex with the HIV-positive woman and then took a shower in the belief that it would protect him from the AIDS virus.Nampa-AP