The 18-month-old Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK Party) has once again effected a change in one of the most strategic positions as their chief whip in the National Assembly, with Mzwanele Manyi biting the dust in favour of Coleen Makhubele.
This is the third chief whip that the MKP would have had since the start of the seventh administration after the May 2024 national elections.
Sihle Ngubane started the term before being removed after Manyi defected from the EFF. And he himself has been chucked out after Makhubele defected from Cope.
But the changes in the chief whip posting for MKP are not a new thing in the party.
Reshuffling leaders
Reshuffling leaders across positions is the norm at MKP, especially in the all-powerful position of the secretary-general that has been occupied by five people since party launch in December 2023.
So far, the only person in a strategic position outside party leader Jacob Zuma who is yet to get reshuffled is national spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela.
The merry-go-round in MKP positions, it would seem, is a tool for total and unchallenged control by Zuma.
At the centre of his strategy to remain the alpha and omega of the party, Zuma started off by banning conferences for the election of leaders.
He instead gave himself unfettered powers to chop and change as he pleases without consulting anyone.
Such is the bizarre running of a political organisation in 2025.
Elective conferences banned
Zuma has cleverly argued that MKP will not hold elective conferences until he decides otherwise. This he says is to curb the buying of leaders and conferences to emerge into positions of power without organic popular support.
He would know this coming from the ANC, where positions go to the highest bidder. And which has seen a drop in the quality of leaders the once glorious liberation movement produces.
As much as Zuma has a point about the buying of conferences, he, however, selectively forgot to share that the current dispensation of appointed leader in the MKP gives him total control.
Essentially, the MKP is a dictatorship where all serve at the behest of the party head, or shall I say, owner.
In this system, puppets across the board in all positions exist for a mere difference. Zuma may see him on the streets the next day.
Dangerous system
This is a dangerous system of choosing leaders, for tiptoeing on issues becomes the order of the day to avoid offending the one who appoints and fires as he pleases.
In fact, those who have been removed unceremoniously from their posts might have been the victims of the very system that Zuma would like all of us to believe works best.
How do you expect appointed leaders to act with boldness and decisiveness in responsibilities bestowed upon them if they cannot say with certainty that it won’t offend Zuma?
What you end up having are leaders who are scared to act or take decisions because they want to be on the safe side of protecting their bread.
But inadvertently, one may, by doing so, be inviting the fury of Zuma, who will remove you, arguing you are indecisive and ineffective.
It is a double-edged sword where everyone is doomed if they do and doomed if they do not.
Absolute power
The only safe person in such a system is Zuma, because he is the only one who cannot be forced or changed by anyone.
This scribe is convinced that this is exactly what Zuma has always longed for: an absolute power where he is the beginning and the end.
Some will recall that he once expressed his fantasy of dictatorship when he was head of state and demonstrated his obsession with absolute power with his late-night cabinet reshuffles at the time.
But imagine if this same man had the power he now has at MKP when he was head of state.
Where would South Africa be? Where would independent and critical media be?
Thank God such things can only happen in his organisation, which, in all fairness to Zuma, only banked the 2 million-plus votes it received, making it parliament’s third-largest party, purely because of his larger-than-life personality. Qhuba Msholozi, umthetho uyavuma.
