Every now and again we get some fascinating contributions from the Biznews community. The mailbox feature is one of the avenues we use to give the audience a voice. And below is another interesting take from Paul Trewhela on the current conflict between Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and President Jacob Zuma. And while the two have apparently made peace, Trewhela says the party has not seen such conflict within the ANC’s structure since the leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) returned legally to South Africa from exile in 1990. He says a first-rate political conflict has opened up inside the ANC between two top-level former MK operatives. – Stuart Lowman
By Paul Trewhela
For the first time since the leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) returned legally to South Africa from exile in 1990 – Jacob Zuma among the earliest of them – a first-rate political conflict has opened up inside the ANC between top-level former MK operatives.
That is the significance of the major rift within the Zuma government between President Zuma and his former subordinate within MK’s Operation Vula in KwaZulu-Natal in the late 1980s and into mid-1990: the former head of the South African Revenue Service and current Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan.
Given that this conflict relates to South Africa’s worsened credit rating with international credit agencies and Zuma’s perceived incapacity as head of government, this is potentially a more profound conflict within the ANC than the struggle for supremacy between Zuma and former president Thabo Mbeki ahead of the ANC national conference at Polokwane in December 2007 which decided the issue in favour of Zuma.
Mbeki was never a leader or a significant member of MK. By contrast, Gordhan took the risk of active membership of MK in KwaZulu-Natal while Zuma was co-director of the ANC security department, Mbokodo, in exile in Lusaka, Zambia.
The conflict between Gordhan and Zuma over South Africa’s economic mismanagement therefore takes the form of a conflict between ANC members themselves, grounded in the ANC’s political support base among MK from exile and within the country.
The Daily Maverick article by Ranjeni Munusamy should be taken seriously, given Ms Munusamy’s previous career as a journalist in KwaZulu-Natal and as moderator of the Friends of Jacob Zuma website during the period of his prosecutions for rape and corruption in 2005, under the Mbeki government.
As she wrote in 2012, South Africa is now “crippled with internal strife under Zuma’s presidency. Corruption and the manipulation of government tenders has made ANC membership a swear word. The abuse of state resources to fight political battles, the thing Zuma so loathed during Mbeki’s presidency, is now evident on his watch.”
