DON MAKATILE | Do unto Zuma what ANC did to 'Group of Eight'

The temperature inside the plenary hall at the University of Limpopo in Polokwane got even hotter than the overall provincial summer heat in December 2007, as some delegates objected to then president Thabo Mbeki’s attempt at securing a third term at the helm.

They wanted Jacob Zuma installed in the hot seat, by hook or by crook, including behaving in what was widely considered behaviour inconsistent with being a cadre of the movement, un-ANC conduct.

Such acts included heckling the national chairman, Mosiuoa "Terror" Lekota, at the time a hard man inside the governing party. I posit that he was more shocked than those delegates who booed him off the podium. It was a novelty, unheard of.

In that boorish atmosphere, only one man had the gravitas to appeal to the throng of Zuma supporters who were hellbent to see the back of the "aloof" Mbeki. That man was Kgalema Motlanthe.

In calming the tempers inside the hall, he related the story of how the ANC had historically dealt with dissenting rogues, bad apples among their ranks. He told the story of the expulsion of the Group of Eight, led by Tennyson Makiwane.

The history lesson seemed to have the desired effect, albeit for a while. They still wanted Mbeki out and would not leave Polokwane with the mission incomplete.

Since Polokwane 2007, I’ve heard Motlanthe retell that Group of Eight story at least one more time. Hearing him each time has reinforced the view in my head that Motlanthe is his own man, he calls it as he sees it; without fear or favour.

But the tone of his rebuke is now becoming indistinct.

History attests that somewhere in September 1975, the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC holds a session in Morogoro, Tanzania, and unanimously expels eight members due to what the party described as “disruptive factionalist activities based on reactionary racial grounds”.

Among those expelled were Alfred Kgokong Mqota, Tennyson Makiwane, Jonas Matlou, Ambrose Mzimkulu Makiwane, George Mbele, Thami Bonga, Pascal Ngakane and O.K. Setlhapelo.

Of late, there has been this growing narrative of describing the governing party as the “ANC of Ramaphosa”. This is at the core of “reactionary racial grounds”.

Zuma has never been known to object to this description, stopping those who did so by declaring “not in my name”.

This is the same man who did not object when his followers wore T-shirts emblazoned with the tribal slogan “100% Zulu Boy” while he was still in the good books of the ANC.

The current NEC is sleeping at the wheel. The man who rewrote the Makiwane script (and some) is being mollycoddled to appear at a sham of a disciplinary hearing that was cancelled  last week.

Motlanthe has now resorted to some quasi diplomacy peppered with confusing semantics. In a word, he is obfuscating. He said last week while on the campaign trail for the ANC that Zuma “has made his own choices and that’s his history”.

Why then does the elder of the ANC not advise his organisation against dragging a man to a DC who has made his choice expressly clear by donning the regalia of, and speaking for, a rival political outfit? If, as Motlanthe puts it, “all of us as individuals, as leaders and members of organisations, [we] write our own history by the choices that we make”.

Zuma has made his choice unambiguously, crystal clear.

Following close on Motlanthe’s wheels was another elder of the party known for his diplomacy and bombast, Thabo Mbeki. While doing electoral legwork last week, Mbeki said his organisation "did well" by hauling Zuma before the DC.

Then David Mabuza added his own hyperbole when asked about the DC that never was. Tokyo Sexwale could only say that the party was in trouble.

• Makatile is the publisher of The Sentinel