Thuthukile Zuma, the daughter of MK Party president Jacob Zuma, has likened her father’s party to an amoeba, saying that it is shapeless, directionless, lacking clear ideology or substance and difficult to follow.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Sunday World Engage podcast, Thuthukile, a member of the Joburg Regional Task Team (RTT), also dismissed speculation that she is a sleeper agent who secretly supports the MK Party, which was established in 2023 following Zuma’s departure from “the ANC of President Cyril Ramaphosa”.
“I am not sure what their policies are. I’m not sure what their ideological inclination and leanings are. I’m not entirely sure what it is that they are offering to the electorate in terms of where they want to take South Africa,” she remarked.
She stressed that her commitment remains firmly with the ANC and rebuffed any efforts to undermine her loyalty by invoking her family name.
For Thuthukile, her focus is on “servicing our people and changing lives for the better”.
While reflecting on the complex challenges facing Johannesburg under coalition governance, Thuthukile remained resolute about her loyalty: “We have to introspect as the ANC, but I am steadfast – we must work hard to win back our people’s trust, not be distracted by entities that stand for nothing.”
Thuthukile is adamant that while the ANC was not perfect when it had outright power in the city before 2016, the “glaring failures” were occasioned by the DA-led coalition nine years ago.
According to her, just in recent history, between 2011 and 2016, when ANC’s Parks Tau was the mayor, Joburg did not have the crisis of dysfunctional streetlights it now has, the non-functional traffic lights and rampant potholes.
These anomalies, she insists, found footing under the DA-led coalition.
Pressed to account for what the ANC, which is now leading in the city, had done, she said they had inherited a collapsed municipality from the DA and Action SA.
If anything, she charged, the ANC was trying to bring back good governance but was
limited by coalition arrangements, which forces them to the negotiation table for every little decision, ultimately stalling service delivery.
“If you think about Comrade Parks Tau and those who came before him, you never really had these glaring service delivery failures. You never really had a city that was in the red and completely bankrupt.
“Of course, it was a government. So, you had weaknesses, you had challenges, but never glaring failures. And the problem started when the ANC was unable to garner the 50% plus 1 [majority], and at that time, the ANC lost elections and went to the opposition benches.
And the DA led a coalition, later Action SA, and that’s where the problems really started.
“So, you would know, even in our (the outgoing ANC regional executive committee) tenure, when we came in, we were in the opposition benches, and one of the regional congress resolutions where I was elected was that we would then get the city back, because we understand that governance is an important part to which we can service our people and change people’s lives for the better. So, on that front, I think we’ve done well in that we’ve achieved that congress’ resolution, but it’s historical challenges,” she went on.
The current ANC-led coalition in the city, with the likes of EFF and Patriotic Alliance, she said, cannot do everything it wants to improve service delivery.
“So you can make decisions, you can try to implement those decisions the best you can, but it’s so different when you don’t command the authority and the power to take and implement decisions the way that the ANC knows how to.
“You have to consult many different stakeholders and political parties with who you are not necessarily aligned ideologically, in terms of how they see the city and where they want to take it. So, it becomes a very, very difficult road to navigate.
“And you must take this ship, and you must turn it around, but you turn it around with different coalition parties, and every time you want to take the smallest of decisions, you must consult. It must be taken to a political management committee. It just makes decision-making and implementation of the work so difficult, notwithstanding what I think, we have to introspect as well as the ANC, and say what our part is and all of that.”
Zuma said that she was hopeful that the ANC was turning the tide if recent by-election results in the city were anything to go by.
“We’ve been doing quite well with by-elections, which shows that the people themselves still crave the leadership of the ANC; when they see these glaring service delivery failures, they still have confidence that the ANC is the one that can turn the ship around. This is why we have to work hard in next year’s local government elections to make sure that the ANC can garner more support, so that it’s easier to govern, govern with the necessary authority needed to turn the ship around.”
