THE LOWLY NEWSPAPERMAN: Ramaphosa’s GNU survived an ANC rebellion, but Joburg will test everything

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> As local elections approach, the ANC’s weakened position and Johannesburg’s crisis will test whether Ramaphosa can keep the DA in government.

During those hectic days in the winter of 2024, when post-election coalitions were being stitched together at national and provincial levels, South African Communist Party General Secretary Solly Mapaila was running around like a nyaope boy desperate to find a fellow addict to help him out with a fix.

The drug he was seeking was a common, intense hatred of the DA that would prevent the ANC leadership from making a deal with the blue party.

Mapaila was knocking on the door of every influential and semi-influential ANC leader he could find, rallying Cosatu and Sanco comrades to the cause and engaging with potential coalition partners such as the EFF and other parties.

It did not matter that he didn’t have the mandate to negotiate any deal, which was the sole purview of the ANC’s national leadership that had been elected at the national conference in December 2022. He was on public platforms railing against the inevitable.

At the time, the EFF, his preferred main coalition partner, was sensing the ANC’s vulnerability and making impossible demands. With less than 10% of the national vote, the EFF was demanding heavyweight portfolios, including finance.

Jacob Zuma’s party, which some in the ANC were advocating as a partner alongside the EFF, insisted that the ANC drop Cyril Ramaphosa as its presidential candidate.

While Mapaila and others were running around trying to achieve the impossible, ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula’s official team was putting together a more realistic deal with willing partners. It was this putative deal, with the DA as the second-most important player in the 10-party Statement of Intent, that was driving the SACP mad.

It was bad because it was, in the SACP’s view, the construct of “right-wing, DA-led anti-ANC neoliberal forces”. The crux of the panic was that these forces were trying to stymie the aims of the National Democratic Revolution by trying to capture the ANC.

“The core of the DA-led neoliberal forces, highly supported by dominant sections of capital, mainly the white bourgeoisie whose roots can be traced to the era of colonial and apartheid oppression of the black majority, organised itself into the so-called multi-party charter.

“This grouping also received support from Western foundations,” the SACP said, as it went into conspiratorial overdrive.

The Multi-Party Charter had indeed initially been driven by the DA leadership, but had included leaders who were far from being John Steenhuisen’s running dogs.

But where Nats saw “a red under bed”, Mapaila sees a neoliberal conspiracy at every corner. Since he and his cohort failed to scupper the composition of the GNU, Mapaila has not stopped frothing at the mouth about it, which he has called the “highest form of betrayal of our people”, and has continued to mobilise against it within the ANC.

This hook-up was never popular in ANC ranks, so Mapaila had plenty of ears listening to him and applauding his resistance campaign.