North West ANC succession race takes shape but a struggle could be brewing

By midnight yesterday, the lifespan of the ANC’s North West provincial executive committee ran out. By Tuesday, if the timetable holds, the party’s national executive committee is expected to replace it with a provincial task team, an interim leadership that will be appointed rather than elected.

That distinction is significant but only to a certain extent.

Behind the process is a political contest that looks like an elective conference campaign.

Names are being canvassed, regions counted, alliance structures sounded out and rival camps measuring who can carry what into the next phase.

“The popular view is that the premier must be given this machinery to convene,” an ANC insider involved in the lobbying said of Premier Lazarus Mokgosi.

The insider said Bojanala, the ANC’s biggest region in the province, was central to calculations around who should become coordinator, with former MP Philly Mapulane among the names being discussed.

The case being made for Mokgosi is built on a contradiction his supporters believe works in his favour. “In terms of government there’s improvement but in terms of the ANC there’s a decline,” the insider said. “So it tells you that if you say: ‘Premier, convene the ANC’, there’s a high possibility that there will be improvement.”

But the provincial task team (PTT) will be appointed by national leaders. That makes lobbying upward just as important as organising downward.

Lobbyists said Mokgosi’s campaign started when the ANC was preparing for a provincial conference that failed to materialise.

When the conference fell away, the campaign changed destination. “It transformed into a lobby for the PTT role.”

That is where regional arithmetic becomes important. The insider described Bojanala and Ngaka Modiri Molema as the two big building blocks in a future conference contest, with smaller shares needed from Dr Kenneth Kaunda and Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati to complete a winning coalition. “Regions are very critical,” he said.

On the other side is a grouping associated with former ANC Youth League president Collen Maine and allies of provincial chairperson Nono Maloyi.

The insider said the camp was looking beyond retaining Maloyi and towards a longer-term Maine succession project.

“The plan is really on Collen more than Nono,” he said.

Rivals describe the camp as “resourced”, which introduces one of the oldest dilemmas in ANC internal politics.

Campaigns require transport, meetings, organisers and access to networks. But once money enters a leadership contest, suspicions quickly follow.

The insider’s account shows that access to resources is treated as political strength, while rival organisers speak of building branches around people less financially dependent on political patrons.

Alliance structures are another battlefield. Mokgosi’s backers claim support in the South African National Civic Organisation, the Women’s League and Veterans’ League, while describing the Youth League as divided.

Tuesday’s announcement will not merely settle who manages the ANC in North West until the next conference. It could determine who controls the machinery that prepares for the conference. That is the central contradiction of the PTT process in that the ANC suspends elected provincial leadership in the name of interim stability but the appointed structure becomes part of the struggle over who will eventually be elected.

Setumo Stone