S’THEMBISO MSOMI | Will vote-buying legacy come back to haunt ANC at the polls?

It is telling that in her retraction of the comments she made about Ronald Lamola and the buying of votes at ANC conferences, party veteran Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma decided to say nothing about similar accusations she made about party secretary-general Fikile Mbalula.

Both Lamola and Mbalula had threatened legal action against the former cabinet minister after Dlamini-Zuma alleged, in an interview with politician-turned-podcaster Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, that Lamola was involved in buying votes at the ANC’s 2017 conference and that Mbalula was seen distributing money to delegates at another national conference five years later.

While Dlamini-Zuma on Tuesday conceded that she had no evidence of Lamola’s wrongdoing and accepted his insistence that it is not his voice on the voice note she had cited as proof of his use of money to prevent her from getting elected as ANC president, she said nothing of Mbalula.

Dlamini-Zuma, who lost the ANC presidential race in December 2017 to the incumbent Cyril Ramaphosa, had alleged in the podcast that vote-buying in the ANC did not end with that conference, but that it persisted at the next conference in 2022 where Mbalula, she claimed, was seen dishing out wads of cash at a clinic close to the conference venue.

Like Lamola, Mbalula has denied the allegations and warned that he may be forced to take legal action if Dlamini-Zuma does not withdraw the claim and apologise.

But whether he carries through with the threat, hence making history by becoming the first ANC secretary-general to sue a fellow National Executive Committee (NEC) member, remains to be seen.

Also available to him, one assumes, is the option of hauling Dlamini-Zuma through the party’s disciplinary processes on the grounds that she has brought the ANC into disrepute with her remarks.

However, given the fragile state of the ANC as it goes into this year’s local government elections, it is unlikely that Ramaphosa and other party leaders would have an appetite for such a step, which could have huge implications for unity within the NEC.

The party had already demonstrated its aversion to taking a confrontational approach towards Dlamini-Zuma when it failed to act against her when she broke rank and went against the ANC’s line of march during the December 2022 parliamentary vote on whether impeachment proceedings should have been started against Ramaphosa over Phala Phala.

If they couldn’t act then, out of fear that such a move would divide party ranks, why would they act now when they seemingly live in constant fear that some of their prominent leaders may be tempted to defect to their former president Jacob Zuma’s MK Party?

It would be dishonest to claim that the 2018 conference was the first in which money was used to decide key positions in the ANC’s highest decision-making body.