Zuma factor changes dynamics in the ANC

It has taken a long time for former president Thabo Mbeki to take his revenge on Jacob Zuma.

The two ANC stalwarts became bitter enemies after many years of being together in exile trenches.

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Their time together in Lesotho during those dark days of apartheid was an amazing moment depicting a camaraderie made in heaven, as some would say.

However, Zuma was behind all the humiliation of his comrade after he took over the ANC presidency in 2007.

His supporters called him the “unstoppable tsunami” – a reference to the rapid rise to the helm of the party.

Indeed, nothing could have stopped a deluge of that nature. Mbeki electoral defeat in Limpopo was imminent. The odds were stacked against him.

His electoral demise was not an embarrassment, we could say it was democracy. That’s fine.

The real humiliation was to come about 10 months later when Mbeki was recalled from the Union Buildings to make way for Zuma.

With Zuma’s new henchman, Gwede Mantashe, leading the process, Mbeki did not resist at all, truly acting in the old ANC spirit of saying “how high” when ordered to jump.

He resigned in a televised address. It was a shock to see the republic’s most effective president being removed in that shabby manner – a mere eight months before his term ended.

Mbeki outperformed iconic Nelson Mandela in governance and promoting the ANC, which gave the party a little over a two-thirds majority.

Polokwane marked the beginning of the new culture of head-chopping in the organisation that Pixley ka Isaka Seme founded.

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Although some like sociologist Dr Fumene George Tsibani argue that the real founder of the ANC was Dr Walter B Rubusana, with his Imbumba Yamanyama (black unity) launched in 1891, that was preceded in 1882 by Ingqungquthela ka Rubusana (Rubusana’s conference) as historian Prof Jeff Pereis once described it.

Zuma went out of his way to marginalise Mbeki throughout his nine-year presidency, despite being available especially to attend to African crises.

This notwithstanding the fact that Mbeki facilitated reconciliation in Zimbabwe and presided over the process leading to an independent South Sudan, among others. Instead of using him, Zuma called Mbeki names – one being a “dying snake”, a term with all negative connotations.

Mbeki stopped attending the ANC NEC meetings during Zuma’s term and only returned when President Cyril Ramaphosa took over.

Last week, Mbeki, finally took his revenge on Zuma, now an opposition uMkhonto weSizwe party leader, calling him a “wolf in a sheep’s skin” for his role in an attempt to sell the SA Revenue Service to the highest bidder, working with former commissioner Tom Moyane.

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There is no doubt that Ramaphosa begged Mbeki to campaign for the ANC with a hidden agenda for him to match Zuma in the campaign battlefield.

He knows him deeply from their days in the struggle. Already, Mbeki has revealed in detail that the Polokwane tsunami that brought us Zuma was in fact an apartheid “counter-revolutionary” project.

There is refreshed rapport between Mbeki and Ramaphosa. For them to quote each other on the same day in separately events marking Freedom Day could not be a coincidence.

In his speech at Freedom Park, Mbeki quoted Ramaphosa at length as he attacked the ANC “counter-revolutionaries” and praised him for his thoughtful choice of Shamila Batohi to head the National Prosecuting Authority.

On the other hand, Ramaphosa did the rarest thing to quote Mbeki a few times in his address in Cape Town. Maybe things are changing – thanks to the Zuma factor.