Business Day editor Tim Cohen wrote in last week’s column (How dirty tricks show Zuma camp anxiety, September 4) of the leadership race within the ANC being "an enigma inside a conundrum", but let us see whether we can unwrap some of it nonetheless.
We know a number of things, the most important of which is that Jacob Zuma is a master strategist. No one who has bet against him has ever won. That he survives at all is testimony to his political acumen. The bumbling country-bumpkin persona is a foil to lure his adversaries into a sense of false security — a view we have consistently held since hosting him to address investors shortly after his axing by Thabo Mbeki.
It is when the odds are against him that he often seems at his tactical best, as a number of incidents out of his past attest. Too few groups whose interests conflict with his have realised that, as an adversary, he should be accorded the greatest respect — anything less is to virtually assure him of victory.
The other things we know are the following:
Even as he departs the scene, Zuma’s infrastructure may outlive him, which is why it is wrong to fixate on the man and not focus on the system he has helped to cement.
Moreover, to win at year-end, Ramaphosa needs strong support from the very people who have profited so from Zuma’s time in office, possibly making Ramaphosa an encumbered ANC leader at a time when SA will require swift action on governance and structural reform. When these points are stacked on top of each other, the sobering conclusion is that the assessments that the Zuma camp is already beaten have been overdone. At the very least, observers must admit that a very close race is being run and that the outcome may, unsatisfactorily, be a variation on the current theme, even as a great deal may initially appear to have changed.
Just how close that race is was revealed when an investment bank asked us to estimate who would win an internal ANC leadership election. Of the seven models we produced, Zuma’s camp triumphed in five, in four of which the margin was narrow.
Yet this is exactly where Zuma is vulnerable — the moment when an ANC branch delegate walks into a voting booth to cast a ballot. In that moment, the hold of ANC patronage and intimidation may slip briefly, revealing an all too rare chink in Camp Zuma’s armour.
It is in that moment, the models showed, that Ramaphosa could beat Camp Zuma, especially if he could turn at least Mpumalanga and a hefty chunk of KwaZulu-Natal his way while guarding effectively against any manipulation of delegate numbers (this is why we believe it makes sense that some in the Zuma camp favour a unity slate).
It is because of that small chink that the stigmatisation campaign against Ramaphosa must be taken seriously. It is seeking to establish a level of moral equivalency that may just muddy the waters sufficiently to deny Ramaphosa an ANC majority.
Returning to the editor’s conundrum: we know that Ramaphosa can win and we know how. So that is an outcome that must be on the radar. But the alternative was brought into stark relief when a Zuma insider, who had sight of our models and acknowledged they were good, added: "But you must know that we developed such models many years ago and they are better than yours."
Because of everything implicit in that statement, our advice to the groups that seek it is that Ramaphosa should win … except that his opponent is Zuma. And for that fact alone, you should be sufficiently hedged in the event of a win for Camp Zuma — whatever form that camp may take.
Read article on Business Day here
