Loyiso Masuku was elected regional chairperson of the ANC in Johannesburg at its elective conference a week ago.
She is the first woman in the ANC region’s history to be elected to this position, defeating Dada Morero, who had been the chairperson of the region and its former secretary for two terms, by a big margin.
There is no question that Masuku ran a better campaign and that her victory was deserved. Even her strongest critics will admit that Masuku, who was deputy regional secretary in the previous term, has earned her stripes in the Congress movement.
Masuku has served in the party’s youth and women’s leagues and the South African Students Congress. She also has extensive experience in the local government, where she serves as finance MMC in the Joburg metro.
This combination of party experience and administrative knowledge has been cited as the reason why she has what it takes to bridge political expectations and day-to-day governance, with her supporters arguing she should immediately assume the mayoral seat in SA’s richest city.
But this would be a terrible decision for Masuku and for the ANC broadly.
In fairly recent ANC history, it has become common for the chairperson of a region to be deployed as a mayor in the region. This practice is rooted in the vulgar argument that doing so mitigates against the creation of “two centres of power”.
The debate on the ”two centres of power” was put to rest at the Mahikeng conference in 1997, where it was correctly resolved that the ANC is the strategic centre. The conference called for strengthening the ANC’s structures and for the national deployment committee to guide state policy and personnel.
The linking of the party and the government roles became entrenched under the leadership of former president Jacob Zuma, following his victory over Thabo Mbeki at the 2007 Polokwane conference.
Mbeki would argue, correctly, that the concept of “two centres of power” was a spurious and non-existent problem concocted to justify political leaders using the party as a vehicle to access positions in the state.
He said the Polokwane decision to align party and state leadership was directly linked to political violence and challenges in the ANC and that it had created instability and undermined party discipline.
To Mbeki, having separate individuals for party chair and mayor or premier and even for ANC president and state president is the correct approach for good governance and party health.
This argument is compelling and no one who is genuine about the history and future of the ANC would argue otherwise.
Masuku has told the media that she is more interested in rebuilding an ANC that is people-centred and focused on alleviating the challenges that confront society.
If this is genuine, then her first test of leadership would be to move away from the entrenchment of the “two states of power” theory, which undermines the ANC’s place as the strategic and only centre of power.
There is less than a year before the local government elections, and Masuku’s focus should be on strengthening ANC structures in Johannesburg, which would have a much greater impact on the party’s long-term fate.
If Masuku opts for insisting on becoming the mayor, then she would be confirming what Mbeki warned about — that party positions are being used as a vehicle to access power in the state for no other reason than to gain access to state resources.
This would make her part of the problem that she says she wants to fix.
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