In the absence of a seamless ANC leadership succession plan, and with a vicious battle to take over at all levels, the entry of anyone with formidable credentials is bound to cause a stir. Beyond the Tambo-to-Mandela-to-Mbeki succession transition, the ANC has never had an open discourse on the type or quality of leadership it wants for the phases it finds itself in. This is now overdue. 

The tradition of having men and women, from which an obvious shortlist of leaders was drawn, was thrown into disarray when individuals became more important than the organisation and its mission. This erosion of fairness fuels frustration and distrust among South Africans. 

 

The 2017 and 2022 ANC succession battles have institutionalised the importance of funded slates in determining who leads the ANC.  The search for who has the money to fund a succession campaign became more pronounced than the search for who can lead. Beyond the ideological shifts this entailed, there was confirmation of the triumph of liberal democracy rituals over the ANC’s tradition of democratic centralism. The contest for ANC President assumed the character of the US Presidential Election Primaries. 

 

The extension of universal franchise to all South Africans has grown to become the destination of the liberation struggle. When leaders are touted to be president of the ANC, social and economic justice, human dignity, human rights, and the capability of persons to deliver these are no longer criteria. 

 

Who and how the ANC presents those it is eyeing for its President, and arguably its Premiers, has now become a benchmark with which the opposition complex would line up its versions. While this is good for South Africa’s ultimate choice of its State President, it has not yet reached a point where the country’s national strategy shifts along with its roster and ranking of leaders. 

 

The turning of ANC succession battles and politics into primaries for South Africa’s presidency has shifted the responsibility for determining them away from the ANC’s internal processes. At best, ANC branches, which are supposedly the organisation’s basic
units for making such determinations, have been commodified and put up for sale to the highest bidder. 

 

With the ANC reported to have fewer than 1,5 million members, at its organisational efficiency apex, its national elective conference is likely to have 3000 to 5000 voting delegates. At a maximum of R50 000 per delegate to vote for you, the cost of buying the ANC conference can be pegged at R250m, translated to a meagre $16m at R15 per dollar rates. For the growing geopolitical importance of South Africa, the cost of buying the ANC, where its soul matters, its conferences, is not prohibitive. Even if the auction closes at $50m, it will still be affordable. 

 

It is at this point that an analysis of who is likely to take over leadership of the ANC becomes a conversation entirely different from what it used to be. The traditional approach of looking only at those who were ANC activist leaders can no longer be the default. The context might call for a conscious decision to either expand or bypass the current leadership team in favour of an outsider, as a way for the ANC to make a powerful statement about the fundamental change South Africa is going through. 

 

The new science and art of selecting a capable ANC President to succeed Ramaphosa has more to do with where South Africa sees itself beyond the narrow interests of the ANC membership. Finding a leader capable of bringing the national vision to fruition should be a priority in the criteria. The brute truth is that no ANC succession process has proceeded in a (political, economic, ideological, and,
lately, identity politics) vacuum.

 

There are already attempts to invoke so-called struggle credentials, proximity of touted candidates to the economic establishment, ageist generational criteria, and the desperate house-nigger indices that airbrush the thirty-year opportunity space that might have created new leaders. What these criteria fail to do is address the assumption that South Africa has not developed or created a self-standing, financially resourced, and highly networked African establishment capable of presenting to society a globally competitive leader or president. 

 

The geostrategic significance of South Africa as an economy, player in multilateral institutions, and continental leader requires well-planned leadership successions that start with a thorough delineation of a national strategy, which must serve as a road map for the rest of the leadership succession process. These matters must be openly discussed, and those vying for the ANC leadership, if it is still the main primary for state presidency, must be subjected to such a process. 

 

The revelations of commissions of inquiry over the last ten years have made the politics-as-usual environment within the ANC a compromised operational context for trust, if the changing political context is the prize of engagement. A deeper understanding of what South Africa Incorporated requires in a changing World must inform the leadership capital we require. Current breeds of leadership must be held to a new standard, and those that fail to tick the bare minimums must do the honourable thing.