S'THEMBISO MSOMI | Ramaphosa's successor in the ANC not guaranteed to take over state power in 2029

Imagine this scenario. It is May 2029, and South Africans have just returned from the polls where, like in 2024, there was no outright winner at the national level. The ANC continued to bleed votes but remained the single largest political party. The DA grew, but not enough to surpass the ANC or to be able to form a government that excludes the ANC and two of its biggest offshoots – the EFF and MK Party.

Both MKP and the EFF succeeded in holding on to their positions as the third and largest political parties, but, even with a post Cyril Ramaphosa ANC leadership that is open to forming a coalition with the two parties, their combined figures still fall short of the 50% plus one threshold needed in parliament to elect a president and, therefore, form a government.

The most viable route for the largest parties – the ANC and the DA – is to once again work together in a coalition government that involves a series of smaller and politically moderate parties. GNU 2 is on the cards. But this time the DA has learned from its past “mistake”.

It refuses to give carte blanche to the ANC to appoint the next president from the former liberation movement’s ranks. GNU 1 would have taught the DA that, in our constitutional arrangement, the party that occupies the presidential seat in a multiparty government basically wields the power.

Rather, neither of the two big parties gets the presidency, it would argue, to ensure peace and the smooth running of the administration. A smaller, but significant enough party, should then provide a presidential candidate to be elected by the National Assembly.

If such a scenario were to prevail, the IFP could be in the best position to field that candidate. An IFP president for SA? Sounds too far-fetched? Maybe.

But remember that the 50-year-old and KwaZulu-Natal-based party is currently the fifth largest political party by votes and therefore discussions about what’s likely to happen in the future cannot exclude it.

I remember the hearty laughter I had when the editor of this newspaper, then a colleague at the Sunday Times, walked into my office one day and informed me that a Freedom Front leader is lobbying for IFP president Velenkosini Hlabisa as a presidential candidate for the now defunct “Moonshot Pact”.

His party was too regional, I argued, for “the pact” members to be able to sell him to the electorate nationally. He had little charisma and had not shaken off the perception of him as a “token” IFP president, with Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who was still alive, recognised as the real power, even though he was by then retired from party politics.

But so much has changed since then in South African politics that I am no longer willing to dismiss the idea out of hand.

The era of coalition governments, at the national level, means that the next president need not be the most popular candidate, but one that enough parties in the National Assembly can agree to vote for.

Hence, I think political commentators and other participants in the political arena are making a mistake by limiting their focus on who from the ANC  is likely to succeed Ramaphosa at the Union Buildings.

The ANC’s 2027 national conference may very well elect Paul Mashatile, Fikile Mbalula, Nomvula Mokonyane, who raised her hand in the Sunday Times yesterday, or even billionaire businessman Patrice Motsepe –  although he sounds like he is not keen. But there is no guarantee that an ANC president will then go on to take state power in 2029.

It is therefore important, as 2029 approaches, to watch leadership contests and debates in all of the major parties closely.

The IFP was scheduled to hold its national conference sometime this year. But since the dates have not been announced yet, there is uncertainty in some quarters that it will take place at all. This, however, has not stopped factions in the party from launching campaigns for their preferred leaders.

For a while, the general belief was that if Hlabisa was to be contested for the party presidency, his rival would be the party’s KwaZulu-Natal leader and premier, Thamsanqa Ntuli. However, it would seem that there is now a strong lobby for Inkosi Mzamo Buthelezi, the minister of public service and administration and IFP deputy president, to take over from Hlabisa.

What does each of these three men stand for? It may not have mattered for anyone outside of KwaZulu-Natal in 2019 when the IFP last held its elective conference, but it does now. For one of them stands a real chance of being the country’s next president or deputy.

Of course, the same argument applies to the other parties, and we should spend as much time and effort studying them as we do the ANC.