Zuma to win Mangaung
2012-12-02 14:39
Carien du Plessis and Mandy Rossouw, City Press
Bloemfontein - President Jacob Zuma will win a second term as ANC president.
The
nominations season, which reached a zenith on Saturday, shows that he has
already secured more than the required votes for victory at the party’s
conference in Mangaung later this month.
Zuma thus far has the support of 2 259 ANC delegates, slightly more than the 2 251 he needs to secure a second term.
Deputy
President Kgalema Motlanthe has thus far received 482 nominations for
the position as president, while the nomination conferences in three
provinces fell apart.
These provinces constitute 986 delegates, so can’t materially alter the outcome.
Zuma’s preliminary figures exclude nominations from the ANC Women’s League and Veterans’ League.
Endorsement
Both leagues endorsed him, but we have excluded their delegates in our tallies as their final votes were not yet compiled.
Leagues send 45 delegates each to Mangaung while provincial executive leaders have 180 votes.
Motlanthe
has his back to the wall. He has received 156 nominations for deputy
president, while Cyril Ramaphosa garnered 1 851 nominations, even though
he is a latecomer to the campaign.
In Gauteng, where Motlanthe was nominated for president, campaigners have resigned themselves to defeat.
“We know Kgalema is going to lose, but he is going to run just to make a point,” said a key Motlanthe lobbyist in Gauteng.
Zuma’s
early victory is bittersweet. Three provincial nominations meetings
collapsed amid violence and chaos, complaints were laid about voting at
meetings and an assassination attempt was made on a provincial
secretary.
Still outstanding
Nominations from Limpopo, North West and the Western
Cape were still outstanding by Saturday, the ANC’s deadline for
nominations for its elective congress in Mangaung in two weeks’ time.
Violence marred nominations in Limpopo, where police had to disperse warring factions by using tear gas, at gunpoint, on Friday.
In
the North West (increasingly the ANC’s Wild West), unknown gunmen on
Friday morning opened fire on provincial secretary Kabelo Mataboge in
front of his home in Mahikeng.
In the Eastern Cape, Motlanthe’s last outpost for a Mangaung victory, the results came out overwhelmingly in favour of Zuma.
Motlanthe’s
lobbyists are planning to contest the outcome in Mpumalanga and the
Eastern Cape following allegations that not all the delegates going to
Mangaung are entitled to vote.
A special national executive
committee meeting is scheduled for tomorrow to hear complaints from
provincial nominations conferences.
“This outcome is a big problem,” said a Motlanthe lobbyist.
Undermine the conference
The
discrepancies in figures in some provincial nominations meetings showed
there were delegates who weren’t nominated by their branches.
Another
Motlanthe lobbyist, also an MP, said: “That will undermine the
conference. Our constitution says 90% must be branch delegates. It
brings the whole Zuma support into question. Where did they get those
extra numbers?”
Zuma’s supporters in the Eastern Cape said his
victory was due to Motlanthe’s reluctance to campaign, meaning the lobby
did not have a face.
In an era of personality politics, the idea of change was not enough to muster support.
A
government official, who is a key lobbyist for Motlanthe, said he
thought Zuma supporters had put up Ramaphosa’s name to force Motlanthe
to declare that he will stand as deputy president.
“Now it appears as if Cyril is serious about standing.”
Race for deputy
If all accept nomination, the race for deputy president will be crowded.
Motlanthe
will be in a contest with businessman Cyril Ramaphosa, chairperson
Baleka Mbete, Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale and ANC
treasurer-general Mathews Phosa.
Of these, Ramaphosa, with 1 941
votes, is in the lead while Sexwale is in second place with 411. Next
in line is Mbete with 235 votes. Motlanthe trails with 194 votes. Phosa
got a paltry 83 votes.
He said he was still “agonising” over
whether to accept nomination or not. “It might sound like ducking and
diving ... (but it’s not).”
He cast an image of himself as a servant leader, not a brazen campaigner. He foreshadowed defeat.
Leadership
“I
believe I will always do my humble work at whatever level. I do not
have to be in a position of leadership. I am not a professional
politician.”
Could victory be snatched from Zuma once the conference gets under way?
Die-hard Motlanthe lobbyists claim he will get more support than he currently has.
They said the voting pool at Mangaung was bigger and it was easier to hide dissenting votes.
In
smaller conferences, it is easier to identify those who voted
differently, while in larger ones like Mangaung, it is more difficult to
identify who voted against the will of the leaders.
Some also
claim that, although delegates are mandated by their branches to vote
for a certain candidate, they can still be swayed by lobbying ahead of
Mangaung and during the congress.
